With the holidays and then gearing up for the National Book Awards 2007, I've been away from my blog for a while, but we haven't been idle. The other day we submitted a grant to the National Endowment for the Humanities to support 400 programs in libraries across the country on the literature of American immigration, from the 17th to the 21st century. Our Brooklyn Academy of Music series got off to a great start with Francine Prose and tonight Pete Hamill will be with us.

    As for my own reading, one thing that has impressed me lately has been fiction by Russian immigrants. Of course, everyone knows about Gary Shteyngart (Absurdistan), but have you read Olga Grushin's The Dream Life of Sukhanov? Or Lara Vapnyar's Memoirs of a Muse? It's hard to believe that English is a second language for either of these young writers. And two weeks ago the new Alejandro Springall movie based on Ilan Stavans' story "Morirse esta en ebreo" premiered at the New York Jewish Film Festival (the story appears in Stavans' The Disappearance.)



Recommended reading: Hermann Broch's work should be better known in the United States. Try his Death of Virgil. It's brilliant.

The Asian American Writers Workshop handed out its Asian American Literary Awards over a week ago at The Asia Society in New York and laurels were presented to Jeff Chang for Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation; Rattawut Lapcharoensap for Sightseeing (Rattawut was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Selection, as well), and Shanxing Wang for Mad Science in Imperial City, in addition to the Members' Choice Award, which went to Ed Bok Lee for Real Karaoke People. I'm writing this now since it's the first entry I've been able to get done since then.

    In the meantime, it's been a good season for National Book Award winners. On December 12th, Richard Powers, this year's fiction winner for The Echo Maker, appeared on Terry Gross's program Fresh Air and his sales shot up like crazy. NPR programs really do sell books. Then on December 13th, the city of Seattle honored this year's nonfiction winner Timothy Egan (for The Worst Hard Time) and his sales shot up, too. Perhaps local public appearances help, too.

    Today's Recommendation: Before Jess Walter was a finalist for the 2006 National Book in Fiction for The Zero (which, by the way, is a barnesandnoble.com holiday gift recommendation this year), his very literate mystery novel Citizen Vince won an Edgar Award for Best Novel. Check it out: you won't be able to put it down.

Last Wednesday evening found me at the Philippine Center on Fifth Avenue at 46th Street, fighting the crowds who converged on Rockefeller Center to see the lighting of the Christmas tree. I was there to speak about my translation of Jose Rizal's Noli Me Tangere, which was published in late June. Unlike Filipinos, we Americans have been for the most part unaware of Rizal, the foundational writer of The Philippines, whose two novels, known as the Noli and the Fili (the sequel was called El Filibusterismo), were published in 1887 and 1891, respectively. About 160 people attended, and after talks on Rizal's importance and Penguin's commitment to the publication of literature from around the world, I discussed my personal discovery of Rizal in 1992 and the subsequent thirteen years it took me to get a new translation into publication. I was followed by a series of rousing dramatic readings from the new translation by members of the Knights of Rizal, a fellowship organization of Filipinos from around the world, directed by that wonderful and energetic Filipino-American stage actor and director Victor Lirio. We sold out of books, and signing them all was never such a pleasure.

        I'm hoping now that the book's success will allow us to translate and publish the Fili and earlier books from the Spanish Philippines, such as Pedro Paterno's Ninay and Father Burgos' La Loba Negra (whose authorship is disputed these days), and even Rizal's edition of Antonio de Morga's 1609 Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, none of which are (easily) available in the United States.

        Reading Recommendation for Today: With the utmost of self-serving, Jose Rizal's Noli Me Tangere, translated by yours truly, published by Penguin Classics earlier this year.

Unfortunately, the current O.J. Simpson affair, re-surfacing after so many years, has dragged the National Book Awards into its sway. Media stories about National Book Awards Week have rarely included talk of Simpson-Regan, but those about Simpson have often included a mention that the book and television show announcement took place on the day of the Awards, laced with discussions of Jess Walters’s extraordinary Finalist book The Zero and the fact that he ghost-wrote Simpson prosecutor Christopher Darden’s In Contempt years ago. A few have even suggested that the 2006 Simpson affair has overshadowed the National Book Awards. I don’t think so. The buzz in New York publishing circles and perhaps in LA has been loud, but across the country the stories about the Awards have been separate, focused mainly on Fiction winner Richard Powers and Nonfiction winner Timothy Egan, often noting that they are decidedly not New York or LA (think Urbana and Spokane). It’s not my place to opine on the desirability of publishing If I Did It, except, like some people, to wonder about the tense of the title’s verb and to hope it will go away quickly and people can get back to reading good stuff over the holidays, even about tragedy.

Today’s Recommendation: Libra by Don DeLillo. It’s the 43^rd anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination, and a good time to revisit how a brilliant fiction author remythifies history.

This entry may be later than it should, but then I was intimately involved in National Book Awards Week last week and then hosted and attended a couple of book parties the day after the National Book Awards themselves so I spent the weekend just reading for pleasure (Richard Powers' previous novel The Time of Our Singing and a fascinating book on bookselling, Laura J. Miller's Reluctant Capitalists).



National Book Awards Week was tiring but fun. On Monday the 13th we had the first "5 Under 35" at the Paula Cooper Gallery on West 21st Street. Five former National Book Awards Finalists--Adam Haslett, Edward P. Jones, Joan Silber, Christopher Sorrentino and Rene Steinke (sorry Rene, I can't get this program to insert diacritics)--selected one writer each under the age of 35, with one book to his or her credit, Amity Gaige, Samantha Hunt, Bret Anthony Johnston, Ratawut Lapcharoensap, and ZZ Packer. After drinks and lots of indie rock (I confess a soft spot, if that's what it's called, for Ratatat, though Death Cab for Cutie is more my taste), the five former Finalists each introduced his or her under-35, who then read for a few minutes. Then back to indie rock and drinks. It was quite a departure for the National Book Foundation. One long-time supporter came in and said he couldn't believe it was a National Book Foundation event. "It's too hip," he said. Well, hipness not being my strong point, I'll have to give the credit to Foundation staffers Leslie Shipman, Sherrie Young, Adah Nuchi, Rebecca Keith, Evan Glasson and Nina Porzucki.



The following morning the five 2006 National Book Awards Finalists in Young People's Literature--M.T. Anderson, Martine Leavitt, Patricia McCormick, Nancy Werlin, and Gene Yang--had a press conference with 250 teenagers from New York schools, with amazing press materials designed by Erica Hart for Mindbolt in Alabama. Gene's book is a graphic novel so he had the kids yell out the sound effects in the comic panels. Then that evening the private medal ceremony at The New School introduced by Dean Linda Dunne and yours truly, followed by a reading by all 20 (yes, all 20) National Book Awards Finalists for this year, introduced by that most eloquent of hosts, New School Writing Program Director Robert Polito (himself a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award a few years back) and emcee'd by Nicole Krauss, one of the best young novelists in America with her most recent The History of Love.



By the time the Awards themselves rolled around on Wednesday, we had been through four events and the big one was still to come. It was all writers: even the background dinner music was recordings of writers covering rock and blues songs from Stranger than Fiction, released by Don't Quit Your Day Job Records (e.g., Stephen King covering "Stand By Me", Norman Mailer singing "Alimony Blues" and Amy Tan doing "Jungle Hop"). Fran Lebowitz was hilarious as the emcee, mocking my obsession with making sure we were finished by 9:45 (we weren't, but she was so funny, who cared?). Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters recipient Adrienne Rich was absolutely astounding on the politics of poetry and I'm hoping we can re-print her remarks. Winners were: Young People's Literature--M.T. Anderson for The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing; Poetry--Nathaniel Mackey for Splay Anthem; Nonfiction--Timothy Egan for The Worst Hard Time; and Fiction--Richard Powers for The Echo Maker.



Then, at the invitation of Grove/Atlantic president Morgan Entrekin about 60 of us headed to the Half King, Sebastian Junger's place on 23rd Street, for a loud aftermath. David Steinberger (of Perseus Books) and I couldn't get a cab so we ended up in a pedi-cab from the Marriott. NBA Judge (and uber-novelist) Jonathan Lethem, Hyperion Editor in Chief Will Schwalbe, Borders PR chief Ann Binkley, NBA Fiction Finalist Jess Walter, and a bunch of others joined us.



The following evening found me at Barnes & Noble Borough Hall in Brooklyn hosting the students of my best buddy writer Terry Quinn and his students for the publication party of From the Heart of Brooklyn, a wonderful student anthology Terry put together and Vivisphere published. You might want to catch me as Vladimir Nabokov at St. Francis College on December 16th in Terry's play "Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Friendship and the Feud" opposite Wilson biographer Lewis Dabney. Except for missing a few inches in height, with thinning hair, incipient jowls and far-sightedness, I'm beginning to look a bit like Nabokov. Now if I could only write so well.