Phil Klay, Evan Osnos, Louise Gluck, and Jacqueline Woodson, at last night's National Book Awards.
Not since 1974, the year a disheveled comic pretended to be Thomas Pynchon and a streaker ran across the stage, has the National Book Awards ceremony felt as radical-chic as it did last night. Some of it had to do with the best emcee in years, Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket), whose edges were as sharp as his timing. Maybe too sharp: His joke about African-American children’s-lit winner Jacqueline Woodson’s actual allergy to watermelon was roundly castigated today, and he’s issued an apology.
The star of the night was a renowned 85-year-old fantasy novelist with a white bowl haircut out of a German expressionist film. Ursula Le Guin, who accepted this year’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, got a standing ovation for castigating corporate publishers (including her own, for a brief “silly panic of ignorance”) and calling all writers to the barricades: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings.”
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