Colum McCann Wins National Book Award By MOTOKO RICH

November 19, 2009
Colum McCann Wins National Book Award By MOTOKO RICH

Colum McCann won the National Book Award for fiction on Wednesday night for “Let the Great World Spin,” a novel featuring a sprawling cast of characters in 1970s New York City whose lives are ineluctably touched by the mysterious tightrope walker who traverses a wire suspended between the Twin Towers one morning.

In accepting the award, the Irish-born Mr. McCann, now a teacher of creative writing at Hunter College, said, “As fiction writers and people who believe in the word, we have to enter the anonymous corners of human experience to make that little corner right.” The book was published by Random House.

In the nonfiction category, T. J. Stiles won for “The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt,” a biography of the man who fathered a dynasty, presided over a railroad empire and, in the words of the judging panel, “all but invented unbridled American capitalism.”

Mr. Stiles, whom the judges praised for his “deep and imaginative research,” took a swipe at the recent move toward electronic books as he thanked a wide range of supporters, including editorial assistants, copy editors and marketing staffers, at his publishing house, Alfred A. Knopf.

“The advent of the e-book is fooling people into thinking that none of these people are necessary anymore,” Mr. Stiles said. “If they cease to exist, the books will only be worth the paper they are not printed on.”

Perhaps the most moving moment of the night came with the presentation of the award for Young People’s Literature, which went to Phillip Hoose for “Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice,” a biography of Ms. Colvin, who as an African-American teenager in 1950s Montgomery, Ala., refused to give up her seat on a bus nine months before Rosa Parks took the same stand.

Mr. Hoose brought Ms. Colvin onto the stage to accept the award. “My job was to pull someone who was about to disappear under history’s rug,” he said. The book was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

The awards, in their 60th year, were presented at a black-tie dinner at Cipriani Wall Street in Manhattan. About 640 attendees, down slightly from a year earlier, paid up to $12,000 per table.

The writer and comedic actor Andy Borowitz hosted the ceremonies, joking that just as he had been invited to perform services for no pay, publishing was similarly an industry that demanded “a lot of work, and then nothing.”

The award for poetry went to Keith Waldrop for “Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy,” published by University of California Press.

This year’s nominees had some in the publishing industry wondering about the relevance of the National Book Awards, in part because most of the titles had sold so little and few people had heard of them. The biggest selling finalist was Mr. McCann, with “Let the Great World Spin” selling 19,000 copies in hardcover, according to Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks about 70 percent of retail sales.

The award can sometimes fuel sales, but in other cases its effects are modest. Generally, readers seem to pay more attention the Pulitzer Prize, or even Britain’s Man Booker Prize. This year’s winner, Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall,” has sold 45,000 copies.

The novelist Dave Eggers received the 2009 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. Mr. Eggers, a co-founder of the independent publishing house McSweeney’s who also helped found 826 National, a nonprofit writing center for young people, said in his acceptance speech that he remained “an eternal optimist” about publishing.

“I think this is the most exciting and democratic time,” he said. “There is a pluralism in publishing that is unprecedented.”

The award for the Distinguished Contribution to American Letters was given to Gore Vidal, the novelist and social critic.

In wandering remarks, Mr. Vidal cited anecdotes about President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles. In his only comments about publishing, he puzzled the audience by noting, “Nowadays it seems the progress of literature is to first print the book and then pulp it,” adding: “It saves such a lot of time. It’s fun for everybody.”