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10/3/94
PHOTOCOPY
PRESERVATION
Clinton Presidential Records
Digital Records Marker
This is not a presidential record. This is used as an administrative
marker by the William J. Clinton Presidential Library Staff.
This marker identifies the place of a publication.
Publications have not been scanned in their entirety for the purpose
of digitization. To see the full publication please search online or
visit the Clinton Presidential Library's Research Room.
OBSESSION
)
A GALA CELEBRATION OF
THE PEN/FAULKNER
AWARD FOR FICTION
The Folger Shakespeare Library
Washington, D.C.
October 4, 1993
P.
MEMORANDUM
Filloken
DATE:
JULY 5, 1994
TO:
PATTI SOLIS
FROM:
ANN STOCK AS
RE:
PEN/Faulkner Gala October 3, 1994
I just received the attached from Barbara Pryor. Please handle ASAP. Last year they were
put off for a long time and when they finally received a regret letter from Presidential
Scheduling, it was sent to Congressman and Mrs. Pryor.
DAVID PRYOR
ARKANSAS
dean ann-
- visited with Canolyn
Peachy and she suggested the
cocooo
letter Q bout PEN/Fauckner
0.000
000
It's such a wonderful the non-
100000
C
CCC
politcal event, I know it -
100000
COROCO
Clintons would enjoy To
000000
Bungen lunch- - Let's setit up!
Looking forward our
LOVE - BARBARA
"Obsession"
The PEN Faulkner Award for Fiction Gala
The Folger Shakespeare Library
I/We would like to request
tickets for the Gala dinner at $350
per person. (The tax deductible portion of your contribution is $300
per ticket.)
I/We will be unable to attend but wish to contribute $
Washington, DC 20002
AN world wound 11195
The PEN. Faulkner Award her Fiction Gala
Name
Address
City
State
Zip
Telephone (daytime)
(evening)
Please make checks payable 10 the PEN/Faulkner Gala. All contributions are
tax deductible according to applicable Federal tax laws
Please list guests on reverse side.
For further information call (202) 636-8745.
My/Our guests will be:
PEN/FAULKNER
PEN
AWARDFORFICTION
Sally Danforth. Barbara Pryor. Susan Richards Shreve,
Elizabeth Stevens. Roger L. Stevens
Co-Chairmen
The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction each year honors the best published works
of fiction by contemporary American writers. Named for William Faulkner.
Susan Mary Alsop
Elisabeth Griffith and
Donna McLarty
who used his Nobel Prize funds to support and encourage other writers, the
Senator Max Baucus and
John Deardourff
Alison and William C. Paley
PEN/Faulkner Award was founded by writers to honor their peers. Award judges
Dr. Wanda Baucus
Karen and Werner Gundersheimer
Ann and Walter Pincus
read widely among the books of American fiction published annually in order
Joan Bingham
Shirley and Elliott S. Hall
Senator David Pryor
to select five nominees. The designated winner receives $15,000 and the other four
Senator and Mrs. Bill Bradley
Representative Jane Harman and
Eden and Jerry Rafshoon
writers $5,000 each, at a ceremony held each May at the Folger Shakespeare
Rita Braver and Robert Barnett
Sidney Harman
Marina Marshall Rust
Constance and Thomas Bruce
Library. Support of the award is raised by special events, gifts, grants and the
Mrs. H. John Heinz III
Donna E. Shalala, Secretary of I
Ann Buchwald
Ann and Vernon E. Jordan, Jr.
and Human Services
proceeds from readings which are given by the authors for the award fund.
Senator and Mrs Thad Cochran
Jurate Kazickas
Representative Louise Slaughter
Catherine M. Conover
Senator J. Robert Kerrey
Christine Stevens
The PEN/Faulkner Foundation's activities of outreach to the Washington com-
Senator John C. Danforth
Judy and Peter Kovler
George Stevens. Jr.
munity include joint sponsorship with the D.C. Commission on the Arts and
Katharine Graham
Polly Kraft and Lloyd Cutler
Ellie and Sandy Trowbridge
Humanities of the annual Larry Neal Awards for Washington writers, and the
Mary and Donald E. Graham
Kate and Jim Lehrer
Wren and Tim Wirth
Writers in Schools Project. This project, funded by the D.C. Commission, the
Meg Greenfield
Jacqueline and Marc Leland
Catherine Wyler and Richard Ryr
Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, and the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz
Foundation, places noted authors in D.C. public high schools to discuss their
writing with students who are studying their work.
Sally Danforth, Barbara Pryor, Susan Richards Shreve,
Elizabeth Stevens, Roger L. Stevens
Co-Chairmen
The Benefit Committee
PEN Faulkner Foundation Board of Directors
The Board of Directors
request the pleasure of your company at
Robert Stone harman
Stephen Goodwin. President
"Obsession"
Richard Bausel
I Ethelben Miller
A Gala Celebration
Louis Begley
lobs Olson
to benefit
Michael R Bese hloss
I Barrett Prettyman, Ir
The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
Jackson R Brver
Drane Rehm
Conrad Calritz
Earth Sale
with readings by
Thomas Caplan
Susan chards Shreve
Louis Begley David Bradley Robert Olen Butler Thomas Flanagan
Hodding arter
Susan Stamberg
Ernest Gaines Barry Hannah Elizabeth Hardwick Maureen Howard Jayne Anne Phillips
Elena Castedo
Lou Stovall
George Plimpton Francine Prose Vikram Seth Mary Lee Settle Ntozake Shange
Alan Cheuse
William Warner
Elizabeth Spencer Scott Spencer Wendy Wasserstein
Patricia Browning Griffith
Mary Helen Washington
Master of Ceremonies
Werner Gundersheimer
Deborah laylor Ashford. Counsel
Roger Mudd
Nick Kotz
Jamee I Delancy, Executive Director
Monday, October 4, 1993
Wilda Lewis
The Folger Shakespeare Library
201 East Capitol Street, S.E.
Washington, D.C.
ack tie
6:30 p.m. Reception
s.v.p. card enclosed
7:30 p.m. Readings
8:30 pm. Dinner
This evening is made possible by Ford Motor Company
Copyright 1994 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
May 23, 1994, Monday, Final Edition
SECTION: STYLE; PAGE B1
LENGTH: 945 words
HEADLINE: Chilly Scenes of a Winner;
Amid PEN/Faulkner's Hoopla, Philip Roth's Cool 'Confession'
SERIES: Occasional
BYLINE: David Streitfeld, Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
"I thought writing was like a 100-yard dash," Dagoberto Gilb confided to the
audience at the ceremony Saturday night marking the PEN/Faulkner Awards for
Fiction. "I got into it, ran real fast. But when I looked up, no one was there."
So he kept going - 400 yards, a mile, took up jogging. Cars passed, some people
glanced at him, most didn't Finally Gilb got thirsty, and decided to go into a store-
for a drink.
"And suddenly -- zshoom! - I'm the millionth customer!"
The festivities, at the Folger Shakespeare Library, were the reward for those long
months and years of trudging along: fans and admirers, official recognition, white
chocolate truffles and rare roast beef. Plus, of course, a check. Gilb, one of the four
nominees who got $ 5,000, was almost giddy.
Philip Roth, who received $ 15,000 as the PEN/Faulkner winner, was by contrast
somewhat icy. But then, few have ever accused him of being a hail-fellow-well-met
type. He read a scene from his winning book, "Operation Shylock: A Confession," in
which a concentration camp guard remembers how much fun it was to torture:
"What a job! A sensational blowout every day! One continuous party! Blood!
Vodka! Women! Death! Power! And the screams! Those unending screams! Great
while it lasted, stupendous while you were young and fearless and on a tear."
This wasn't exactly celebratory, but everyone agreed later that it was certainly
masterful in an in-your-face way. One woman went up to Roth and told him how
much she liked it. The writer responded, she said, with something to the effect of:
"Well, of course it was great. I wrote it."
Roth isn't the only writer to have a high opinion of himself. Stanley Elkin, a finalist
for "Van Gogh's Room at Arles," was represented by his daughter, Molly. She said
her father couldn't come "because of his debilitating disease."
People nodded; it couldn't be easy to travel here from St. Louis in a wheelchair.
But it turned out Molly Elkin was talking about an ailment even more crippling and
insidious than his multiple sclerosis: "his writer's ego."
At 64, three years older than Roth, Elkin has written many well-regarded books but
has never had his younger colleague's sales, income or attention. For whatever
reason, he was one of the very few nominees not to attend the awards ceremony
during the 14-year history of PEN/Faulkner.
The other two finalists, both for first books, were Kate Wheeler, author of "Not
Where I Started From," who was very nervous, and Fae Myenne Ng, author of
"Bone." Ng thanked an extensive list of people, including her husband and fellow
novelist, Mark Coovelis, whose "Gloria" she described as a "powerful and
tough-minded novel that challenges and inspires you."
A wife blurbing her spouse -- now there's an unbiased critic.
Master of ceremonies was '93 PEN/Faulkner winner Annie Proulx, who
incidentally triumphed over Roth last month in the Pulitzers. "Every other week," she
said in her opening remarks, "someone says the book is dying or dead, that just
around the corner is the black hour when books will be curiosities like stereopticon
slides or milk stools."
Yet perhaps, she went on, it isn't so much that readers are disappearing as that
they're shifting away from a concentrated elite and into the blurry mainstream.
Proulx saluted the small publishers and university presses that, scattered across the
country, are doing so much to carry the banner of literature. She pointed out the
amazing rise in the amount of fiction written by women, by gay men and lesbians, by
all sorts of hyphenate-Americans.
She also noted the pervasiveness of book discussion groups: "People read, they
meet, they discuss, they deliberately exercise their mental faculties, they engage their
sense of value, they consider meaning." As for computers, they are wonderful for
transmitting information, but "no one is going to sit down and read a novel on that
twitchy little screen."
Roth, as it happened, was one of those who has been saying the serious reader is
dying or dead. Last year, he told an interviewer that "we are down to a gulag
archipelago of readers." Sixty thousand, was his guess. "I assure you there are no
more." Well, at most 120,000.
So who's correct, the old hand or the new kid on the block?
Proulx is "exactly right," said publisher Morgan Entrekin. And even if Roth was on
the mark with his 120,000 estimate, "that's probably 25,000 more than there ever were
before."
Biographer Scott Donaldson, on the other hand, found Proulx "inspirational but not
entirely convincing." He voted for 150,000, "but that may be high."
"Maybe 30,000?" wondered a gloomy Scott Spencer, one of the three PEN/Faulkner
judges.
But Scott, hundreds of thousands of people read your novel "Endless Love," which
is certainly serious fiction.
He quibbled that that was due to the Brooke Shields movie, but even so moved his
count up to a couple of hundred thousand. "That's a lot. It's a cadre upon which from
time to time a larger cultural statement can be made."
Shawn Wong, another judge, commented: "Probably one adult out of 50 sits down
after dinner and reads a book - any book. A serious book? One out of 500." That
translates into about 400,000 people. "Ah," he concluded, "it's probably half that."
At the other extreme, Kim Witherspoon went on the record with 12 million. But
then, as the agent for two of the nominees, Gilb and Wheeler, she was having a good
night.
People will continue to debate this, because there's no final answer. "Half a
million," suggested D.C. lawyer Whitney Ellerman. He shrugged. "It's like knowing
how many people have warts in this country. I have no idea."
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, PHILIP ROTH ACCEPTS HIS AWARD BEFORE FELLOW
NOMINEES (FROM LEFT) KATE WHEELER, DAGOBERTO GILB AND FAE
MYENNE NG. MARY LOU FOY
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE-MDC: May 23, 1994
Copyright 1994 News World Communications, Inc.
The Washington Times
May 23, 1994, Monday, Final Edition
SECTION: Part C; METROPOLITAN TIMES; ABOUT TOWN; PARTY LINES; Pg. C12
LENGTH: 680 words
HEADLINE: PEN proves mighty rewarding
BYLINE: Mark Carnegie
BODY:
Grand man of fiction Philip Roth walked off with the top prize of $15,000
atSaturday night's PEN/Faulkner Awards at the Folger Shakespeare Library's theater.
Runners-up Dagoberto Gilb, Fae Myenne Ng, Stanley Elkin and Kate Wheeler were
awarded $5,000 each.
The PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction is arguably the most coveted writer'sprize in
America, treasured as much for its prestige as its largess. The judges are writers as
well, so the award marks artistic recognition by peers that can have an enormous
impact on the winner's career. Almost nobody had heard of E. Annie Proulx before
she copped the PEN/Faulkner last year; she's been awarded virtually every major
prize since, including the Pulitzer.
"This is the night of the book," declared Ms. Proulx, who served asmistress of
ceremonies at the festivities. In an amusing speech that sang the praises of the
printed word, she dismissed books on computer by crowing, "Nobody's going to read
a novel from one of those fidgety screens, ever!" The crowd of about 200 literary
glitterati and their admirers laughed and cheered.
All the nominees read from their nominated works. The affable Mr. Gilb,who
two years ago was still working in construction, read from his short-story collection,
"The Magic of Blood." Although he got tangled up in his own words a number of
times in the very short passage, he won over the audience with his casual attire - a
short-sleeved print shirt with khakis and cowboy boots - and his unaffected reading
style.
"Oooh, he's cute," one woman purred.
Miss Ng nearly broke down in tears while describing the lives of the
Chineseimmigrants she chronicled in her novel "Bone." "The writing took 10 years,"
she said of her spare and somber work, but the audience barely responded to her
unenthusiastic reading.
Kate Wheeler was more warmly received as she laughed her way through part ofa
story in her collection, "Not Where I Started From." Clearly thrilled by the award and
buoyed by the presence of her father, Ms. Wheeler punctuated her reading
involuntarily with smiles, grins and chuckles.
Washington lawyer Molly Elkin was similarly cheery as she accepted the awardfor
her father, Stanley, for his trio of novellas titled "Van Gogh's Room at
Arles." The writer could not attend because of illness, Miss Elkin said. "Not his MS
[multiple sclerosis]," she deadpanned, "but a far worse and more devastating
condition - his writer's ego."
Looking regally bored on the dais as the relatively unknown went throughtheir
bits, Mr. Roth nevertheless brought the crowd to its feet with a fiery reading from
his winning novel, "Operation Shylock," about John Demjanjuk, the Cleveland
ironworker accused of being the notorious Treblinka concentration camp guard Ivan
the Terrible.
Although a number of listeners admitted they hadn't been able to get throughMr.
Roth's somewhat dense novel, a few noted that the author's impassioned reading
made them want to take another look.
After the awards, guests repaired to the Great Hall for a cocktail buffetand a bit of
schmoozing. The writers, not surprisingly, remained largely among themselves,
talking shop. Less literary types who had paid $50 for the privilege of attending
scooped up roast beef and strawberries while trying to chat up as many honorees as
possible.
"This is my husband, he's just written a novel," Miss Ng offered from
astrategically chosen table before being deluged with autograph requests.
"I hear Philip Roth is very depressed," another woman said, shortly beforetaking
off across the room to track him down.
Copies of the winners' books were being hawked from the entry to the hall, which,
if a little less than good form socially, didn't seem to bother either the writers or their
fans.
"I do hope it's a first edition," said a lady who lunches as Ms. Wheelerwas
inscribing a book to her. "Oh yeah," the writer replied hopefully, "the first printing
hasn't sold out yet."
Copyright 1994 The Hearst Corporation
The San Francisco Examiner
April 20, 1994, Wednesday; Fourth Edition
SECTION: STYLE; Pg. B-2
LENGTH: 360 words
HEADLINE: Philip Roth wins PEN / Faulkner Fiction Award
SOURCE: EXAMINER BOOK EDITOR
BYLINE: GARY KAMIYA
BODY:
PHILIP ROTH was awarded the 1994 PEN / Faulkner Award for Fiction for his
1993 novel "Operation Shylock: A Confession," it was announced Wednesday.
Roth, whose brilliantly inventive pursuit of his many selves, Jewishintellectual,
sexual neurotic, questing son, postmodern fabulist, in 20 works of fiction and
autobiography has established him as one of the preeminent American writers of his
time, is the 14th writer to win the award.
With a prize of $ 15,000, the PEN / Faulkner is the largest juried prize forfiction in
the United States. Previous winners have included Tobias Wolff, T. Coraghessan
Boyle, E.L. Doctorow, John Edgar Wideman and Don DeLillo.
"Operation Shylock" (Simon & Schuster) is a wildly imaginative explorationof one
of Roth's favorite themes: the relationship between truth and fiction. Someone named
Philip Roth, and who looks like the "real" Philip Roth, appears in Jerusalem, calling
for Jews to return to the lands that had banished them. When the "real" Philip Roth
goes to Israel to find out what's going on, a Mobius strip of illusion and reality
unfurls, especially when the "real" Roth pretends he is the "imposter." "I doubt there
will be a better novel published in 1993," wrote David Lehman in the Washington
Post.
Roth, whose previous works include "Portnoy's Complaint," "The Counterlife"and
"Patrimony," will be honored at a ceremony at the Folger Shakespeare Library in
Washington, D.C., on May 15. Last year's winner, E. Annie Proulx (the first woman
to win the PEN / Faulkner, she also won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year for
her novel "The Shipping News") will be master of ceremonies.
The four other nominees for the prize, each of whom will receive $ 5,000,are
Stanley Elkin ("Van Gogh's Room at Arles"), Dagoberto Gilb ("The Magic of Blood"),
Wiley, Annie Proulx, T. Coraghessan Boyle), masters due for a revival (Peter Taylor,
James Salter) and sometimes big names in their prime (Don DeLillo, E.L. Doctorow).
The award prides itself on its collegiality -- the four runners-up are invited to a
ceremony here for an evening that honors them almost as much as the winner. The
runners-up almost always come, although occasionally under pressure from their
publishers. A $ 5,000 check offers further encouragement to be nice.
This year, it will be particularly interesting to see if the volatile Roth, win or lose,
makes an appearance on May 21. "Operation Shylock" is about a charlatan who calls
himself Philip Roth and gets into all sorts of trouble in Israel with some kooky
theories, enmeshing the real Roth in the fracas. Some of the reviews said the book
was Roth at the top of his considerable form, while others found it as stimulating as
being trapped in an elevator with a fellow explaining the modern Middle East at
peak volume.
As the book was being published, Roth noted that it was subtitled "A Confession"
and declared that it actually happened. This meant the author had done some spying
for Israel's Mossad agency, among other things.
All this brought Roth a fresh round of attention, but the book never managed to
crack the bestseller lists. Indeed, readers deserted him; by winter, Roth was said to be
despondent -- and detached from Bloom.
Maybe the PEN/Faulkner nomination is part of a rebound for the author. Last
month there was a dramatic reading in Manhattan of "Portnoy's Complaint," and
folks who talked to Roth there say that, whatever the extent of his troubles, he
appeared fine.
While Roth is practically a brand name, Dagoberto Gilb must be considered a very
dark horse. "The Magic of Blood," a collection of stories published in a small edition
by the University of New Mexico Press, is technically his second book; a small press
in El Paso issued some of these same stories in 1985. To all intents and purposes,
however, this is a new voice, one that has been welcomed by the critics.
In a review in The Nation, Ray Gonzalez said Gilb's "stories of blue collar workers
are not just about the heartbreak of the working class but about the strength,
madness and beauty its members possess." Gilb is currently teaching at the
University of Wyoming, but for a dozen years was a union high-rise carpenter.
Fae Myenne Ng worked for a decade on her nominee, "Bone," which describes the
aftershocks in a Chinese American family when one daughter commits suicide. A tale
of becoming American and finding one's own identity, it is part of a boom in ethnic
fiction of all sorts. Published a year ago, "Bone" went through several printings and
sold 20,000 copies - excellent for a literary first novel.
"Van Gogh's Room at Arles" is Stanley Elkin's 16th book. The first and longest of
its three novellas concerns a wheelchair-bound professor in St. Louis whose wife
leaves him just as a party for his students gets truly wild. Elkin, who teaches at
Washington University in St. Louis and won a National Book Critics Circle award for
his novel "George Mills," has multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair.
Elkin's and Ng's books were issued by the same house, the three-year-old
Hyperion, and had the same editor, Patricia Mulcahy. "Because we're owned by
Disney, people thought we were only going to do show business books," Mulcahy
said. "But we're also making a commitment to fiction, whether it's launching careers
like Fae's or relaunching ones like Stanley's."
The final nominee, Kate Wheeler, seems to have had the most peripatetic life: born
in Tulsa, grew up in South America, became a nun in Rangoon, taught
mountaineering in Wyoming. The 10 stories in "Not Where I Started From" reflect
this mileage: The characters are all searching for transcendence in unlikely places.
So, it appears, was their author. In the two years she worked for the Miami Herald,
Wheeler told her publisher in a self-interview, "My error file was the fattest,
surpassing those of reporters who'd been there for decades. No matter how hard I
tried not to, I filled gaps with what I was sure would have happened."
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, NOMINEE PHILIP ROTH GOT MIXED REVIEWS FOR
"OPERATION SHYLOCK."
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE-MDC: March 23, 1994
Copyright 1994 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
April 20, 1994, Wednesday, Final Edition
SECTION: STYLE; PAGE D1
LENGTH: 593 words
HEADLINE: Philip Roth Out of Dumps With PEN Fiction Prize
SERIES: Occasional
BYLINE: David Streitfeld, Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
Philip Roth's "Operation Shylock" has won the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction,
presumably providing a measure of vindication for the author. Roth was said to be
hugely disappointed that the novel, his 20th book, did not become a bestseller despite
some enthusiastic reviews and what was certainly massive media coverage, at least
for a book. The novel was also one of the two runners-up for this year's Pulitzer
Prize, announced last week.
Roth's pleasure can only be presumed, because he didn't respond to a call for
comment yesterday. A message left on his New York answering machine was
returned 90 minutes later by a spokeswoman for his agent. "Mr. Roth is in seclusion
working on a new novel and can't be interrupted," she said.
A new novel! These guys never quit. Seeing as how Roth is said to be on the outs
with his previous publisher, Simon and Schuster, who's doing the new one?
"No comment," said the spokeswoman, who then hung up.
Francine Prose, one of the PEN/ Faulkner judges, said yesterday that " 'Operation
Shylock' is brave, risky, extremely funny, ambitious -- I admired how much it
attempted and how much it succeeded." As to why some people were apparently
turned off, she speculated: "It's very funny and so daring that unless people do have
a sense of humor, they might not understand and be disturbed by it."
Subtitled "A Confession," the tale plays around with reality -- the back cover of the
paperback edition states that it "may or may not be fiction," while the front displays
four passport-size photos of Roth, something that would never be done with a
traditional novel.
The plot revolves around Roth's discovery that a Roth impostor is causing all sorts
of ruckus in Israel with ideas like having the Jews return en masse to Europe. Then
there's the recovery group Anti-Semites Anonymous that "Roth" has founded (Tenet
No. 10: "In the fellowship of A.-S.A. we strive to master the temptation to Jew hatred
in all its forms").
The novel also includes scenes from the real trial of accused war criminal John
Demjanjuk, an interview with the real Israeli writer Aharon Appelfeld, as well as
much invention. Presumably, this latter province includes the memorable scene in
which a woman has sex with a corpse. "Anyone who thinks that was
wrong," she says, "doesn't know what real love is." Anyone who remembers the liver
episode in "Portnoy's Complaint" will recognize this as one of Roth's signature motifs.
By this stage in his career, Roth, 61, has an ample shelf of awards. He got a
National Book Award for his first work, "Goodbye, Columbus," and National Book
Critics Circle prizes for his novel "The Counterlife" and memoir "Patrimony." His
complete works are in the process of being republished by Vintage.
The PEN/Faulkner, administered at the Folger Shakespeare Library here, is the last
literary award of the season. Judged by a different team of three writers each year, it
has been given since 1981 to an eminent group of authors, all but one of them (last
year's winner, E. Annie Proulx) men. It comes with a check for $ 15,000.
Runners-up, all of whom will receive $ 5,000 at the May 21 ceremony at the Folger,
are Stanley Elkin for "Van Gogh's Room at Arles," Dagoberto Gilb for "The Magic of
Blood," Fae Myenne Ng for "Bone" and Kate Wheeler for "Not Where I Started From."
The judges -- who also included Scott Spencer and Shawn Wong - evaluated 289
novels and short story collections published in the United States in 1993. Prose called
their discussions "passionate but never rancorous."
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE-MDC: April 20, 1994
Copyright 1994 The Seattle Times Company
The Seattle Times
April 20, 1994, Wednesday, Final Edition
SECTION: BOOKS; Pg. E5
LENGTH: 436 words
HEADLINE: NOVELIST ROTH WINS PEN/FAULKNER AWARD
BYLINE: BY DONN FRY
BODY:
Philip Roth was today named winner of the 1994 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
for his novel "Operation Shylock," which was published last year to mixed reviews.
Roth was chosen over four other nominees for the award, which is the largest
annual juried prize for fiction in the United States. The novelist and short-story
writer, who first gained famed in 1960 when his novella, "Goodbye Columbus," won
the National Book Award, will receive $ 15,000 for the PEN/Faulkner honor.
The other nominees, who will each receive $ 5,000, include Stanley Elkin for "Van
Gogh's Room at Arles" (Hyperion); Kate Wheeler for "Not Where I Started From"
(Houghton Mifflin); Dagoberto Gilb for "The Magic of Blood" (University of New
Mexico Press); and Fae Myenne Ng for "Bone" (Hyperion).
Roth and his fellow writers will all be honored May 15 in a ceremony at the Folger
Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. The novelist E. Annie Proulx, last year's
PEN/Faulkner winner - and recent winner of the Pulitzer Prize for her novel "The
Shipping News" - will host the ceremony.
"Operation Shylock" (Simon & Schuster) was Roth's 20th published book in a long
career that has included such works as "Portnoy's Complaint," "Letting Go,"
"Zuckerman Unbound," "The Ghost Writer," "The Counterlife" and the memoir of his
father's death, "Patrimony."
An inventive novel that blurred the lines between fact and fiction, "Operation
Shylock" is about an American Jewish novelist named Philip Roth who learns that an
impostor - his double - is using his name in Israel while advocating the return of
Jews to the European nations they emigrated from. In the novel, Roth the writer
travels to Tel Aviv to meet Roth the impostor.
The novel, wrote D.M. Thomas in The New York Times Book Review, is
"animpassioned quarrel within the author's consciousness." Reviewing the book in
The Washington Post Book World, David Lehman praised the body of 'Roth's work
for its "stunning originality and wild inventiveness - novels as brilliant as any
American has produced in the latter part of our century." Judges for this year's
PEN/Faulkner Award included Shawn Wong, a fiction writer and director of Asian
American Studies at the University of Washington, and the novelists Francine Prose
and Scott Spencer. In deciding on Roth's book, they
evaluated 289 novels and short-story collections published in the United States
during 1993.
The PEN/Faulkner Award was first given in 1981. Past winners besides Proulx
include Tobias Wolff, E.L. Doctorow, Don DeLillo, T. Coraghessan Boyle and (twice)
John Edgar Wideman.
GRAPHIC: PHILIP ROTH
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE-MDC: April 21, 1994
Copyright 1994 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
March 23, 1994, Wednesday, Final Edition
SECTION: STYLE; PAGE B1
LENGTH: 973 words
HEADLINE: Philip Roth Among PEN Nominees;
Elkin, 3 Others Get Nods for Fiction Prize
SERIES: Occasional
BYLINE: David Streitfeld, Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
Philip Roth's "Operation Shylock" is one of the nominees for this year's
PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation announced here
yesterday. The novel's mixed critical and weak commercial reception reportedly sent
the author into a tailspin that culminated with a separation from his wife, actress
Claire Bloom.
Stanley Elkin -- like Roth, one of the aging grandmasters of postwar American
letters - also received a nomination, for "Van Gogh's Room at Arles." But the three
other finalists for the $ 15,000 prize were debuts.
Each arose out of one of the country's different ethnic or religious subdivisions:
"Bone" by Fae Myenne Ng (San Francisco's Chinatown), "The Magic of Blood" by
Dagoberto Gilb (the Chicano Southwest) and "Not Where I Started From" by Kate
Wheeler (white middle class, filtered through Buddhism).
"I initially resisted nominating any first books," said one of the judges, Scott
Spencer. "PEN already has an award for them, the PEN Hemingway. I don't think
any of us wanted to poach on their territory. But these books fought their way to the
top."
The three judges - Spencer, Francine Prose and Shawn Wong - read 289 novels
and story collections published during 1993. "I thought there was a lack of danger
and vitality in a lot of the books," said Spencer. "There were 25 or so that rose from
the pack, but the rest were just going through the motions."
Founded in 1980 and administered at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the
PEN/Faulkner is one of the country's most prominent literary prizes. The judges,
who are always writers themselves, have spotlighted talent on the way up (Richard
Wiley, Annie Proulx, T. Coraghessan Boyle), masters due for a revival (Peter Taylor,
James Salter) and sometimes big names in their prime (Don DeLillo, E.L. Doctorow).
The award prides itself on its collegiality - the four runners-up are invited to a
ceremony here for an evening that honors them almost as much as the winner. The
runners-up almost always come, although occasionally under pressure from their
publishers. A $ 5,000 check offers further encouragement to be nice.
This year, it will be particularly interesting to see if the volatile Roth, win or lose,
makes an appearance on May 21. "Operation Shylock" is about a charlatan who calls
himself Philip Roth and gets into all sorts of trouble in Israel with some kooky
theories, enmeshing the real Roth in the fracas. Some of the reviews said the book
was Roth at the top of his considerable form, while others found it as stimulating as
being trapped in an elevator with a fellow explaining the modern Middle East at
peak volume.
As the book was being published, Roth noted that it was subtitled "A Confession"
and declared that it actually happened. This meant the author had done some spying
for Israel's Mossad agency, among other things.
All this brought Roth a fresh round of attention, but the book never managed to
crack the bestseller lists. Indeed, readers deserted him; by winter, Roth was said to be
despondent - and detached from Bloom.
Maybe the PEN/Faulkner nomination is part of a rebound for the author. Last
month there was a dramatic reading in Manhattan of "Portnoy's Complaint," and
folks who talked to Roth there say that, whatever the extent of his troubles, he
appeared fine.
While Roth is practically a brand name, Dagoberto Gilb must be considered a very
dark horse. "The Magic of Blood," a collection of stories published in a small edition
by the University of New Mexico Press, is technically his second book; a small press
in El Paso issued some of these same stories in 1985. To all intents and purposes,
however, this is a new voice, one that has been welcomed by the critics.
In a review in The Nation, Ray Gonzalez said Gilb's "stories of blue collar workers
are not just about the heartbreak of the working class but about the strength,
madness and beauty its members possess." Gilb is currently teaching at the
University of Wyoming, but for a dozen years was a union high-rise carpenter.
Fae Myenne Ng worked for a decade on her nominee, "Bone," which describes the
aftershocks in a Chinese American family when one daughter commits suicide. A tale
of becoming American and finding one's own identity, it is part of a boom in ethnic
fiction of all sorts. Published a year ago, "Bone" went through several printings and
sold 20,000 copies -- excellent for a literary first novel.
"Van Gogh's Room at Arles" is Stanley Elkin's 16th book. The first and longest of
its three novellas concerns a wheelchair-bound professor in St. Louis whose wife
leaves him just as a party for his students gets truly wild. Elkin, who teaches at
Washington University in St. Louis and won a National Book Critics Circle award for
his novel "George Mills," has multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair.
Elkin's and Ng's books were issued by the same house, the three-year-old
Hyperión, and had the same editor, Patricia Mulcahy. "Because we're owned by
Disney, people thought we were only going to do show business books," Mulcahy
said. "But we're also making a commitment to fiction, whether it's launching careers
like Fae's or relaunching ones like Stanley's."
The final nominee, Kate Wheeler, seems to have had the most peripatetic life: born
in Tulsa, grew up in South America, became a nun in Rangoon, taught
mountaineering in Wyoming. The 10 stories in "Not Where I Started From" reflect
this mileage: The characters are all searching for transcendence in unlikely places.
So, it appears, was their author. In the two years she worked for the Miami Herald,
Wheeler told her publisher in a self-interview, "My error file was the fattest,
surpassing those of reporters who'd been there for decades. No matter how hard I
tried not to, I filled gaps with what I was sure would have happened."
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, NOMINEE PHILIP ROTH GOT MIXED REVIEWS FOR
"OPERATION SHYLOCK."
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE-MDC: March 23, 1994
The annually awarded PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction was established in 1980 by
Mary Lee Settle and the PEN American Center to honor the best work of fiction
published by an American writer in a calendar year. There is a monetary prize of
$7500 to the first place winner and prizes of $2500 to each of four other nominees.
This award is unusual in that it was founded as a way for writers to honor their
peers.
PEN is the international writers' organization that sponsors the award. The
PEN/Faulkner award is based on the prize William Faulkner created from his Nobel
Prize money and on the now defunct National Book Awards. The NBA was replaced
by the" industry dominated" American Book Awards and PEN decided to boycott the
ABA on the grounds that they were too commercial. In place of the ABAs PEN
created the PEN/Faulkner awards.
PEN is an acronym for poets, playwrights, editors, essayists and novelists. For more
description of PEN see enclosure.
"The judges are prepared - obliged, even - to celebrate artistic genius wherever they
find it of course, but at its writerly heart this award belongs to the rebel, the
iconoclast, the transformer." The winning themes are generally all-American. But the
judges usually award eclectic styles. (By 1992, there was still no female winner of the
award.)
At the PEN/Faulkner Awards the literary readings come first in the Folger's Reading
Room and the reception comes afterward in the Great Hall.
Generally the nominees and winners read from the work for which they are being
recognized.
PAGE
2
13TH STORY of Level 3 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1992 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
March 3, 1992, Tuesday, Final Edition
SECTION: STYLE; PAGE B6
LENGTH: 435 words
PEN/Faulkner
HEADLINE: Variety Marks PEN/Faulkner Nominees
articles
SERIES: Occasional
BYLINE: David Streitfeld, Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
This year's nominees for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction are the usual
diverse lot: from the 10th novel by an acknowledged master to a first book, with
stops in between.
"Mao II" by Don DeLillo, "Frog" by Stephen Dixon, "Extraordinary People" by
Paul Gervais, "White People" by Allan Gurganus and "The Almanac Branch" by
Bradford Morrow were selected from 261 novels and short-story collections
published in this country last year.
The only thing they all have in common is the sex of their author, a matter
chance that nevertheless assures for the 13th year in a row the prestigious $
00 literary prize will be won by a man.
"The plain fact is, we read the books themselves and never thought about the
sex of the writer, the color of the writer or the publisher's name,' Doris
Grumbach, one of the three judges, said yesterday. "These are the books that we
liked best. It would be nice if there was a woman or a black or an Oriental but
there isn't, and that's the way the cookie crumbles."
"Frog," Dixon's fifth novel, was also a National Book Award nominee. It uses
interrelated forms of fiction to tell a family epic. "Mao II," DeLillo's 10th
work, is about an isolated writer who enters the world of political violence.
"White People" is a collection that came on the heels of Gurganus's enormously
successful first novel, "Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All."
The two least known books on the list are "Extraordinary People," a first
novel about a New England family by a visual artist who lives on a farm in
Tuscany, and "The Almanac Branch," about a woman's struggle to find her own
identity in a family of headstrong men. It's the second novel by Morrow, the
founder and editor of the literary magazine Conjunctions.
"It was an interesting year, commented Grumbach, a longtime Washington
writer who now lives most of the year in Maine. "There were a lot of books by
extremely good writers, but this wasn't their year for a good book. On the other
hand, there were quite a lot of good books by people whose names I wasn't
iliar with."
The PEN/Faulkner Award was founded in 1980 as a way for fiction writers to
honor their peers. This year's judges, in addition to Grumbach, are Richard
PAGE
3
The Washington Post, March 3, 1992
ey and Joy Williams.
It's the third of the four major fiction awards to be announced each year
7
coming after the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle prize and
before the Pulitzer. The winner will be announced in early April, with an awards
ceremony to follow at the Folger Shakespeare Library on May 16. Traditionally,
all the nominees come to the event.
E
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
POSSIBLY GOOD SPEECH
IDEAS
PAGE
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37TH STORY of Level 3 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1984 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
March 18, 1984, Sunday, Late City Final Edition
SECTION: Section 7; Page 1, Column 1; Book Review Desk
LENGTH: 3169 words
HEADLINE: ONB READING 300 AMERICAN NOVELS
BODY:
This is, in essence, a defense of a judging bias. The occasion is this
year's PEN/ Faulkner Awards, which I, along with fellow novelists Mary Gordon
and David Bradley, am in the process of selecting. The pool is some 250-300 new
books of American fiction, all published in 1983. It is our charge to choose
five or six books of particular distinction, with a first prize for one of them.
An impossible task of course and, at root, perhaps a political one.
I've never before read so many works of fiction
Robert Coover whose most recent novel is 'Spanking the Maid, teaches at
Brown University. at once, much less all new ones from a single country. It's
humbling just to see so much imaginative energy on display, even if most of it
is soon to be pulped and forgotten. What it has taught me, as if I needed such a
lesson, is a renewed appreciation of those few innovative narratives that break
molds, challenge the conventions. It's not simply their novelty, their
laration of personality; it runs deeper than that. And thinking about it has
given me a way of approaching this massive, sometimes painful, assignment.
Perhaps all judges of literary prizes go through this: chasing some illusive
subtext as a way of willing themselves through their mind-numbing task, hoping
for some insight into the tribe's view of itself as a reward for so bruising
their minds. That old cabalist pursuit of the hidden pattern. The encoded
message.
It's dangerous, I know, to use any art form as a kind of keyhole into
'something beyond'' - into God's privy or society's secret cancers or ''human
nature, whatever. In one of the crime novels in this mountain of 1983 books
now piled on my study floor, the photographer-hero ridicules those critics who
pretend to see in his photographs such things as "a frontal attack against the
assumptions of a technological society" or "a compendium of humanity's defeat
at the hands of venture capital. When some guy, dragged to the gallery by his
wife, remarks flatly, "I think he takes pictures to make a buck, and anything
else is fringe, the photographer says, "I would've kissed the guy, but it
might've ruined his perspective.'
The author of this particular book is of course a manipulator of stereotypes
out to make a buck, but he's right: Any art object treated as mere social
documentation or inquiry is going to be misunder stood. Each art form has its
own unique internal history, its own pattern of development, projected from
hin, much as DNA projects an organism. Some would even say that the great
vative artists are those who most wholly surrender to the demands of the
evolving form - its servant, not its master. Each art form is an international
self-generating technology of sorts, like that of microchips, video, lasers
PAGE
5
The New York Times, March 18, 1984
bombs.
But that same photographer-hero, when pressed, admits, quoting a fellow
artist, a great Depression Era photographer, that what he's really looking for
are images whose meanings exceed the local circumstances that provide their
occasion. He wants the world to "show" itself to him through his art. True,
he wants to capture it intuitively, rather than talk about it, but still he
wants revelation, interaction. It is hard to get away from this. Art lives in
the world, and the world in it. This is especially true of fiction, which can't
even speak unless the world speaks. Echoes are bound to be heard, from one to
the other.
Structuralists believe that the relationship is even more profound than this,
that art and society actually help to shape each other in their innermost
configurations, even if unconsciously, and that therefore if you can perceive
the inner structures of one, you can discover insights into the other. The
theoretician Lucien Goldmann called this mirroring of artistic and social forms
a 'homology of structures.' For all the rebellion and inventiveness of
individual artists, their work as a whole, it is assumed, will necessarily
reflect the political forms, social patterns and ideological beliefs of the
tribe, else it will have no meaning at all.
FROM this perspective, this huge pile of books now spread all over my study
floor like chips in a board game might be seen as a single chapter in the
ping American mythology, processive and essentially anonymous, the individual
hors dissolving against their will, of course into a single communal
voice. Indeed, the very naming of all these individuals, and the attachment of
those names to monetary exchange values, reflect powerful forces in our tribal
world-view, having to do with the ideology of individualism, the icons of
commerce and how they're made, the idealized patterns of a "significant" life.
Because the rise of the novel is coincident with the rise of the industrial
mercantile democracies - and is itself obviously an industrial product, secular,
"prosaic," and mass-produced - it is easy to see the novel as Hegel saw it, as
the epic of the middle-class world, a form somehow tied to the fate of that
world, each sustaining and promoting the other, each at risk if the other should
fall. If that's so, then, judging by most of the books on my floor, though
pollution, missiles, corruption, unassimilated technology and banking crises may
threaten it, the world of the industrial bourgeoisie is safe at least for
another year from the American novel. If not necessarily the other way round.
For here we have all the themes and procedures familiar to us since
"Pamela' - the emphasis on private lives and sentimental relationships,
'character' as a theater for the defense and revision of the doctrine of
individualism, "point of view" its metaphysical demonstration, space (or
place) a kind of storage bin for artifacts (how we love our catalogues!), or
else an artifact itself - exotic settings offered as new acquisitions for the
consuming mind. Everything here from ancient Egypt to modern Pago Pago, from the
toilettes of movie stars and duchesses to the sinkholes of bums and immigrants
the death seats of condemned criminals, from primitive post-apocalyptic
OWS to the magical land of outer space. It's a kind of voyeurism, which
remains a dominant feature of this particular chapter of the American mythology.
There seems to be a great unappeasable craving to see what cannot ordinarily
PAGE
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The New York Times, March 18, 1984
seen. Maybe it's just that if the whole world is privately owned, we have to
ak a peek to get a piece of it, possession being incomplete until we're privy
the vilest corners, the darkest secrets (incest and child- murder are big
this year).
If frontal assaults on these structures are missing here, this multivolume
book on my study floor does seem to reflect a number of adjustments being made
in the tribal mythos. Family, for example, is still a central structural
metaphor, but it is more complex than it used to be: There is a scattering of
relatives and chapters like jump cuts in film, conjoined and severed at the same
time. Familial arrangements (which are often the equivalent of "plot") are
predictably unpredictable, as though principles from other disciplines - the
principles of randomness, say, or relativity - were seeping in, not so much to
undermine these structures as to restore their viability.
Homosexual love is finding its place in the world through the appropriation
of the conventions of erotic heterosexual literature, including lush prose as a
kind of seduction of the imagination. Traditional pornography, contrarily, now
seems "dated," having lost its place perhaps to the home video cassette,
though the fascination with death and orgasm persists, the erotic imagination of
male writers increasingly beguiled, it would appear, by love's cruelty.
Women, in fiction as in life, seem to be taking hold of their lives as never
before (the world of this particular group novel is literally chockablock with
dle- aged ladies on the make), though they tend to discover, almost
halistically, the same angst and fevers that plagued male heroes before them,
as though the fòrms themselves might have them in thrall. One senses, as
throughout this composite text, an aura of diminished hopes, reflected not least
of all by the pervasive lack of formal ambition in the fictions themselves.
Vietnam, dread incubus of our communal nightmare, is being dragged forcibly,
over and over again, into the harsh but conventional light of novelistic day:
fiction as exorcism. The devil, however, usually turns out to be something more
like Fate or ''human nature'' than ordinary political or military decisions. The
enemy, with rare exception, is not so much another character as a metaphysical
condition, and mere survival, as one might expect in this system, has achieved
the status of maximum value. Vietnam literature, I should say, is coming to
constitute a whole new genre, allied in many ways to that of horror, and it is
projecting its own, truth out into the world - that there are no heroes and no
victories. Our great civilizing Myth of the American West, meanwhile, goes on
being revised, celebrated, humanized, enlarged, narrowed, scorned, enshrined. It
is popular now to take the Indian's point of view. Perhaps that's one way of
absorbing and deflecting the experience of Vietnam.
But the dominant musical note in this community fiction is not
yippee-ti-yi-yo or the slapping of leather, it is the sound of urban voices:
city folk talking to each other. What there is of the pursuit of mystery in many
of these books seems to be concentrated in the devout attention being paid to
this tuneful discord. Mingled in are the sometimes embittered voices of the new
es of immigrants, the bitterness itself perhaps a characteristic of the
te.
PAGE
7
The New York Times, March 18, 1984
THERE are other elements notable for their absence. The militarization of the
world, for example, is not taking place in this group novel. You will not find
much here about the economy or foreign policy or acid rain. The third world does
not quite exist in it, except occasionally as a dangerously fractious source of
raw material or a stage for American initiation rites. There is some sense of
the impact of telecommunications and computerization (almost all writers have
gone on-line with something by now after all), but few of these fictions seem
shaped in any serious way by information or communication theory. Indeed, it is
hard to find any ideas in most of them more current than Darwinism. Organized
religions are here, but serve mainly as complications in secular plots, as
though in tacit compliance with constitutional orthodoxy on this matter. They
are still an obstacle now and then to an individual's ''growing up,'' but may be
making a comeback as a source of solace in the face of apocalypse and
existentialist gloom.
It's likely, of course, that the particular set of fictions that has been
preselected for us - only about 10 percent of the year's total - is distorting
the overview. There aren't many so-called 'genre novels'' here, for example -
westerns, romances, detective and spy novels, war stories, science fiction,
fantasy and suspense - and some of these do at least incorporate current events,
fashionable anxieties, and contemporary technology and theory, even if the forms
the authors use remain paradoxically archaic, the language simplistic.
At times, indeed, the few popular novels that we do have - many of which we
e had to ask for ourselves, publishers seemingly dubious about the literary
it of their own successes - seem so far removed from the majority of these
texts both in "quality" and in subject matter as to suggest a completely
different literature. Or if not a different literature, at least a different
voice. It is as though not one but two world-views, two mythologies, one
"popular," the other "serious," were operating concurrently upon our
communal psyche.
Perhaps this has always been true. If, for example, you take apart that
wonderfully generative fiction, The Book of Genesis, breaking it down into its
various constituent ''authors,' as linguists have now been able to do, you will
discover these separate traditions of popular and establishment literature;
there they are found in the interlaced folkloric and "priestly" voices, the
one superstitious, secular, action-oriented, and open-ended, the other carefully
reasoned, authoritative, stylish, enclosed in the "truth.' Though they often
seem to contradict each other, it is their coexistence in this text - the
popular tradition sanctioning enlightenment, and vice versa - that gives it its
ultimate power.
IN the folk tradition, which
finds its modern incarnation
in genre fiction, well-known
PAGE
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The New York Times, March 18, 1984
formulaic tales are retold, over and over again, in new yet ever familiar
pes with an emphasis on entertainment, frequently invoking a "what-if"
ality, the use of magic (read technology in some cases), exotic travel and
other narratively interesting wish-fulfillment situations. Its characters, while
often vivid, remain somehow generic, abstract, interchangeable. Invention is
spent on plot complications, amusing eccentricities, evocations of the fabulous.
One is reminded of the oral tradition, in which everything flows relentlessly
forward to its climax, focusing on conflict and certain elemental themes,
avoiding affectations of style, indeed anything ''high-minded'' that might slow
it down or lose a reader, and so seeming even more anonymous in its authorship
than the "serious" books on my floor.
These, contrarily, while using no less familiar forms, clearly seek to
transcend mere storytelling, to reach past entertainment for its own sake into
speculative and morally perplexing realms, projecting their complex characters
into ironic and ambiguous situations. Critics praise these books for their
vision, style, commitment, sensibility, honesty, their 'intense realism.
Hundreds of creative writing workshops, or cells, have been established across
the country to perpetuate these ideals - a kind of literary creed - and indeed
there are a startling number of quality short story collections here, many more
than I would have expected, most of them obviously polished and in the end
somewhat homogenized by one or another of these programs. This in spite of the
fact that a characteristic peculiarity of these fictions is a conscious search
for a personal "voice," a distinctive rhetorical and consistent vision.
Ultimately, of course, both of these voices are conservative. Both tend,
pugh formal acquiescence, to extend the reign of the cultural establishment,
1 while challenging it now and then on the surface. The voice of the
bourgeois novel, of 'serious literature, moves its self-reflective heroes
through problematic situations toward what is basically a confirmation of the
accepted character-centered world-view, occasionally proposing or reflecting
slight modulations, reinterpretations, new modes of acceptance. A corrupt father
is embraced on his deathbed; the failure of a character is compensated for by
the author's elegant style. The folkloric voice of genre fictions moves its
exemplary heroes and heroines through a sequence of entertaining actions toward
a system of punishments and rewards, in what is ultimately a harmonious world -
or else its contrary, a disharmonious hell. What if eases the pain of what is.
The "serious" voice tends to be more profound, more poetic, more
intellectually and emotionally complex, almost priestly in its honed and elegant
revisions of the tribal mythos. The popular one tends to be livelier, more
playful, even subversive to the established world-view at times, though in the
way folk art is always subversive - distrustful of all change, even that which
has already taken place, nostalgic instead for a return to the old values of
that simpler and happier past that lives on in the popular imagination. Which,
of course, is the only place it has ever existed.
But occasionally - rarely - a third voice arises, radically at odds with the
priestly and folk traditions alike, though often finding its materials in the
latter and sharing with it a basic distrust of the establishment view of things.
This voice typically rejects mere modifications in the evolving group mythos,
ther surface variations on sanctioned themes, and attacks instead the
borting structures themselves, the homologous forms. Whereupon something new
enters the world - at least the world of literature, if not always the community
beyond.
PAGE
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The New York Times, March 18, 1984
Though this voice is often thought of as disruptive, eccentric, even
ccessible ( which is how some previous PEN/Faulkner Award winners have been
ewed), it could easily be argued that it is true mainstream fiction, emerging
from the very core of the evolving form, peculiarly alert to the decay in the
social forms that embrace it, early signals of larger mutations to follow.
SOMETIMES this revolution of form seems almost accidental. Disparate elements
are somehow juxtaposed, in art or life or both, creating a kind of dissonance,
and an artist comes along who resolves that dissonance through the creation of a
new form - a Chretien de Troyes, for example, who secularized the monkish
appetite for allegory and raised fairy tale to an art form by enriching it with
metaphor, design, fortuitous mistranslation and exegetical tomfoolery, thereby
inventing the chivalric romance, a form that dominated the world for five
centuries. Something similar might be said of Cervantes as well, who brought an
end to the tradition of chivalric romance by submitting its artifices to the
realities of the picaros and conquistadors of his day. or of that eclectic
"Redactor" of Genesis, for that matter, who pressed the folk and priestly
voice of his tribe into a contiguous relationship so profound that I myself am
still affected by it, 20-some centuries later.
At other times - as with Ovid or Kafka or Joyce - this new form is clearly
the conscious invention of a creative artist, pursuing his own peculiar, even
mischievous, vision with the intransigence of a seer or an assassin. For these
writers, the ossified ideologies of the world, imbedded in the communal
gination, block vision, and as artists they respond not by criticism from
hout but by confrontation from within. In effect, in mythopoeic dialogue,
they challenge these old forms to change or die.
And it seems to me that it is this sort of artist - whether intuitive or
intellectual - that the PEN/ Faulkner Award in its brief life has sought to
honor. It is not surprising to me that its selections have sometimes seemed
outside the 'tradition.' Its judges are are prepared - obliged, even - to
celebrate artistic genius wherever they find it of course, but at its writerly
heart this award belongs to the rebel, the iconoclast, the transformer. The
mainstream. B
GRAPHIC: photo of Robert Coover; drawings
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PAGE
2
4TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1990 Chicago Tribune Company
Chicago Tribune
October 2, 1990, Tuesday, NORTH SPORTS FINAL EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 20; ZONE: c; OVERNIGHT
LENGTH: 627 words
HEADLINE: Literary giants help South rise again at gala
BYLINE: By Michael Kilian, Chicago Tribune
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY:
Devote America's most glittering literary evening of the year to readings by
famous authors of writing that conveys "a sense of place," and where do you
think most of these authors are going to hail from?
If you guessed the South, you're not only right, but can also probably spell
Yoknapatawpha, the legendary fictional Mississippi County used by novelist
William Faulkner as the setting of so many of his richly southern tales.
The evening was Monday night's Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction gala dinner at
Washington's venerable Folger Library, and of the 16 literary giants who strode
the podium to talk or read about their sense of place in writing, fully seven
e from the South: Eudora Welty, the grand dame of American letters;
novelist/historian Shelby Foote, star of the recently concluded public
television series "The Civil War;" Blanche Boyd, National Public Radio essayist
and author of "Nerves;" National Book Award nominee Ellen Douglas; African
American Writers Guild President Marita Golden; Larry "The Best Little
Whorehouse in Texas" King; and Kentuckian Bobbie Ann Mason, author of "In
Country."
New York was represented by the ubiquitous Norman Mailer; naturalist/novelist
Peter Matthiessen, who talked about the beauties of the Hudson River Valley
though his best-selling novel "Killing Mr. Watson" is about the Florida
Everglades; and young Jay "Bright Lights, Big City," McInerney, who with a
straight face spoke on the poetic beauties of New York city.
Pittsburgh was represented by John Edgar Wideman, author of "The Philadelphia
Fire;" Los Angeles by Geoffrey "The Duke of Deception" Wolfe; and even Poland
had a spokesman in Jerzy Kosinski. But absolutely no one was there to represent
the Midwest, let alone wax rhapsodic about the Gary, Ind., steel mills at dusk.
The closest they came was Wolfe, who recounted a train trip he had once taken
through Minnesota, though he devoted most of the journey to reading a book by F.
Scott Fitzgerald about Long Island.
The bearded Foote, looking every inch the Southern literary gentleman, was
perhaps in the finest fettle of the group, invoking his fellow Mississippian
lkner, whom he said, "would have run barefoot over broken glass to avoid a
hering like this," and who he said "wrote about the South because that was
what he knew; any place else would require research, which he could not abide at
all."
PAGE
3
In her movingly simple remarks, Boyd said she had left her native
rleston, S.C., in the 1960s because she felt her fellow white southerners
fe on the wrong side of the civil rights struggle. She subsequently returned
because she found in her travels that there were only two places in the country,
"Charleston, and not Charleston
home, and not home."
King said that the rough, rural Texas he'd grown up in had disappeared, and
that now "Southern California collides with Georgia on a great slab of
concrete." He warned, "Any place that runs out of its myths and legends runs the
risk of ending up New Jersey."
McInerney confessed he was from New Jersey.
In an earlier chat, Foote said the fame that's come his way from the Civil
War series "has driven me stark, staring mad," and that he's even received phone
calls from women proposing marriage, offers that he said, "I could burn through
in a hurry just by arranging to meet the ladies."
He said he'd received some complaints from fellow southerners that the PBS
series was unfair to the South, "though I think it's the fairest treatment the
South's ever received on television."
He said producer Ken Burns "knew from the beginning that the closer he got to
the truth, the better the program would be - and that if anything untrue got in,
it would stain all around it."
PHIC: PHOTO (color) : Norman Mailer (left) and his wife, Norris, chat with
writer John Edgar Wideman at the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction dinner Monday
night. Tribune photos by Ernie Cox Jr.
PHOTO (color) : Shelby Foote, of the public television series "The Civil War,"
shared his views with fellow writers.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PAGE
4
7TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1988 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
May 16, 1988, Monday, Final Edition
SECTION: STYLE; PAGE B1
LENGTH: 1292 words
HEADLINE: Boyle Takes The Prize;
PEN/Faulkner Honors 'World's End' Novelist
BYLINE: Charles Trueheart, Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
Literary Washington's high society tipped its hat Saturday night to another
wave of talented writers, foremost among them this year the theatrical T.
Coraghessan Boyle.
As winner -- for his third novel, "World's End" -- of this year's
PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, announced on April 20, Boyle was honored in a
clubbishly good-natured evening of writerly performance and literary chitchat,
all amid the august surroundings of the Folger Shakespeare Library on Capitol
Hill. So too were Boyle's fellow nominees Cynthia Ozick, Alice McDermott,
Laurence Thornton and Richard Bausch.
Russell Banks, the novelist, served as one of the judges of the $ 5,000 prize
wrote four of the five award citations. Standing before a crowd of 250, he
called Boyle "a major creative force in American fiction today," listed the five
"all-American themes that "World's End" contains (race, place, family, sex and
class), and remarked that it read like a collaboration between Nathanael West
and William Faulkner.
Then Boyle, standing a tall and skinny 6-3, had the ladies and gentlemen in
party dress reeling and wheezing in delight at his variety-revue rendition of a
West Coast PR guy trying to help Ayatollah Khomeini improve his eccentric image.
For eight years now, the award ceremonies have been a favorite spring rite
among people who read books, write books, write about books and talk about books
in modern Washington. And PEN/Faulkner has been eclectic enough in its choices
IX
to receive almost any kind of writer with respect and interest (although it
happens that no woman has won the prize).
But for sheer spectacle, the presence of such an unconventional and
entertaining figure as Boyle was said to be unprecedented, if not universally
adored, by those on hand Saturday night.
Boyle affects a haircut that leaves his apricot-colored fuzz in a pelt high
onhis skull, wears a metal clip in one ear and speaks in a deceptively drowsy
monotone. To receive this literary prize, he donned a gray suit, blue and red
athletic shoes, a black T-shirt with a cryptic design on the front, and a
klace of blue plastic beads tied around his long bare throat.
After his routine, in which he mimicked the brisk patter of a Los Angeles
hustler trying to talk the imam out of wearing a towel on his head and a
PAGE
5
The Washington Post, May 16, 1988
throbe all day, Boyle shuffled amiably among the tables laid out with catered
w, shaking hands with the guests, signing books thrust his way, talking
Ilingly about himself.
His favorite recent bit of publicity, he said, was in The Boston Globe, which
ran Boyle's photograph with a caption that read: "T. Coraghessan Boyle:
Brilliant, brutal."
"Man, that's it!" exclaimed Boyle with joy, rocking back on his rubber heels,
" 'Brilliant, brutal.' That's my epitaph!"
At least as large and persistent a knot of people stood around Richard
Bausch, whose latest book of short stories, "Spirits," was the local
popular-vote runner-up for this year's PEN/Faulkner.
"Richard is a first-rate maker of tales. He risks writing about emotion,"
declared Susan Richards Shreve, the Washington novelist who serves as president
of PEN/Faulkner, from under her black straw hat.
Though the two other judges, novelists Robb Forman Dew and Jamaica Kincaid,
did not attend the ceremonies, Dew took the time to write the official citation
for Bausch's book.
"Throughout this collection, she said, "there is always the acknowledgment
of those dark corners of the soul, an acknowledgment of the fact that anyone may
blunder into chaos at the outer edges." And yet, Dew wrote, "one comes away from
S book with a cautious hopefulness, an odd sense of solace."
National Public Radio's Susan Stamberg, as husky-voiced master of ceremonies,
said Bausch "has become PEN/Faulkner's favorite bridesmaid." As he heard this
while sitting at the head of the room beside her, the red-haired Fairfax
novelist was stony-faced, as who would not be after being twice nominated and
twice denied?
But when he rose to the microphone to begin his reading, Bausch turned droll.
"It's always a pleasure," he said to giggles of relief, "to be nominated for the
PEN/Faulkner Award."
Bausch's reading from "The Man Who Knew Belle Starr" and Boyle's ayatollah
riff bracketed the ceremonies. Cynthia Ozick ("The Messiah of Stockholm") and
Alice McDermott ("That Night") could not attend by reason of Bryn Mawr
commencement address and the imminent birth of a child, respectively; Myra
Sklarew, recently departed from Washington to run the Yaddo writers colony, read
from Ozick's book.
Laurence Thornton was on hand to hear his novel of political and metaphysical
intrigue, "Imagining Argentina,' cited for summoning to mind "Kundera's
remembered Prague or Coetzee's unnamed South Africa or, dare one say it,
Corporate America's advertised America." Thornton proceeded to read the
beguiling opening pages of the book.
Reversing the usual order of big public feeds, at PEN/Faulkner, literary
dings come first in the Folger's Reading Room, and eating and drinking and
aver come later, next door in the Great Hall. There, broad glass cases
protecting priceless manuscripts and artifacts found themselves useful as
PAGE
6
The Washington Post, May 16, 1988
faces for platefuls of pasta, pa^te' and spanakopita.
Novelist Robert Stone led a decent showing of the rest of the board of
directors. The likes of Michael Beschloss, Hodding Carter, William Warner, E.
Ethelbert Miller, Kate Lehrer and, from New York, Putnam's editor Faith Sale
were still awake and standing after a more intimate (60 guests) private soiree
the night before at former congressman Jim Jones' Capitol Hill town house, and a
four-hour board meeting that morning.
In one corner Washington lawyer-agent Ron Goldfarb was rubbing shoulders with
a regular attender from out-of-town, Mitchel Levitas, editor of The New York
Times Book Review, who volunteered his admiration for the informality and
writerliness of the PEN/Faulkner Award ceremony. Standing not far away, USA
Today book critic Robert Wilson conversed with novelist-newsman Jim Lehrer,
Roger Mudd and Amanda Vaill, Boyle's editor at Viking. Spotted here and there
around the room were Washington writers Alan Cheuse (one of next year's judges),
Doris Grumbach, Mollie Dickenson and Elizabeth Benedict. Carrying the flag of
the institution that administers PEN/Faulkner year-round, the Folger Library's
director, Werner Gundersheimer, told a story about discovering Boyle's work from
a bookstall proprietor in South Hadley, Mass.; buying up all his books, in first
editions, on the spot; and hearing his wife declare, when he confessed what he
had done, "This isn't like you, Werner."
An hour into the socializing, people were still talking about Boyle's
animated performance.
Some veterans of PEN/Faulkner thought it was an informal rule that the
inees and winners should read from the work for which they're being
recognized, as Boyle did not. Others thought it was a refreshing break from the
usual serious fare at these occasions, and said he "teared up" he laughed so
hard.
One newcomer thought the ayatollah-bashing was "too crude for Washington, but
it might work in L.A." One of the PEN/Faulkner also-rans said the story was
"perishable." And still others thought it was off-key, verging on racist,
spoofery of religious customs. Yet an Iranian in the room pronounced herself
entertained by Boyle and his reading.
Throughout the evening, busy in a corner, representatives of the Bookstall in
Potomac looked tired after selling out their entire provision of Boyle's books,
and of Bausch's, and nearly all of Thornton's.
By night's end, almost everyone who had come to the Folger was clutching a
copy or a short stack of brand-new books to take home and read.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, T. CORAGHESSAN BOYLE, WINNER FO THIS YEAR'S PEN/FAULKNER AWARD.
GERALD MARTINEAU
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PAGE
7
12TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1982 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
April 12, 1982, Monday, Final Edition
SECTION: Style; C1
LENGTH: 1229 words
HEADLINE: Literary License;
Authors Frolic at PEN Award Ceremony
BYLINE: By Curt Suplee
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.
BODY:
The moment was sliding into symbolism.
David Bradley had just won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Saturday night,
and was approaching the podium in the Rotunda at the University of Virginia.
Above him was the vast domed radiance of Thomas Jefferson's architecture, before
him a silent constellation of literary lights: judges Walker Percy, John Hawkes
and Wesley Brown, prize organizer Mary Lee Settle, fellow nominees Robert Stone,
Richard Bausch, Marilynne Robinson and Mark Helprin, and over 100 envoys from
the world of contemporary letters, including publisher-author Robert Giroux and
Hardison of the Folger Library.
In this austere and elegant room, designed by a slave owner, the 31-year-old
black author--whose novel, "The Chaneysville Incident,' follows five generations
of a black family's odyssey from slavery to Vietnam--was about to give his
acceptance speech. The air was thick with purport.
But Bradley, a compact, balding figure with bottle-bottom glasses and a
rough-thatched beard of Old Testament proportions, peered out over the throng
and immediately disarmed the solemnity. After talking for two days with his
fellow nominees, he said, "I do feel a little strange" being chosen above them.
"But I'm going to keep the big check anyway. He thanked the organizers, read
briefly from his book, and then paused ominously. "And now, he intoned into the
eager hush, "in the immortal words of Ray Charles
let's go get stoned!"
It was a sentiment widely shared during the weekend gathering, and fervently
acted upon directly after the restrained brevity of the ceremony. Mary Lee
Settle, head of the southern chaper of PEN, the international writers
organization that sponsors the award, opened the event by tracing its history
from two antecedents: the prize William Faulkner created from his Nobel Prize
money; and the now-defunct National Book Awards. The PEN/Faulkner prize arose
when the NBA was replaced by the industry-dominated American Book Awards, but
represents, Settle said, no animosity toward the Association of American
Publishers, whom she thanked "for 30 years they did not interfere" with the NBA
selection process and "protected" the judges from criticism by commercial
erests.
Short citations were read for each of the six finalists. Bausch's "Take Me
Back" was called "a seamless, perfectly wrought novel" in which the author's
PAGE
8
The Washington Post, April 12, 1982
ntrol was "exhilarating"; Stone's "A Flag for Sunrise" was deemed "a brilliant
itation on our best and worst intentions as a nation"; and Bradley was lauded
having "fashioned a tale of how the past is commemorated in ritual and keeps
a hold on our lives." After each citation Hardison, an author himself who said
he was there "as an attendant lord to swell a pageant," gave checks for $1,000
to all the nominees except Donald Barthelme, who failed to attend. Richard
Gilman, head of the PEN American Center in New York, presented the Award for
Fiction and Hardison handed Bradley a $5,000 check.
"The best part of this whole thing,' Bradley said afterward, relenting
momentarily from his buoyant sarcasm, "has been hanging out" with the other
writers, "drinking and telling lies." Many of them met for the first time on
Friday--either at their hotels (agog at the sumptuous antebellum aura of his,
Bradley said, "They asked me if I wanted anything, and I said, 'Yeah--I want a
slave!' "), or at the evening reception given by university president Frank
Hereford and his wife, Ann, at their home. It was the first of many
opportunities to irrigate the imagination during two days of mutual
autographing, story-swapping, ribald jokes and general acclimatization to the
white-columned ambiance, as bourbon gushed like tap water and the nominees'
sharp accents scuffed at the lustrous southern consonants of local worthies.
The honors touched each author differently. Bausch, who teaches at George
Mason University and proved the most zealously gregarious of the nominees, at
times seemed bemused by his success: "I just shook hands with Walker Percy! I
just kissed Mary Lee Settle on the cheek!" Marilynne Robinson, the author of
"Housekeeping" who arrived with her husband from Northampton, Mass., said, "This
the first thing I've ever written and I'm just flattened by the attention
S getting," although "I'm looking forward to the time when they'll quit
calling me a 'young writer.' "
Stone, deeply tanned from a year teaching at U.C.L.A., was less enthused, and
kept to the perimeter of most gatherings. But then his new novel has had
considerable commercial success, and is nominated for an American Book Award, to
be given later this month. "Yeah, I've had a good run with it," he said, "but I
got on The New York Times best-seller list by mistake. There was a computer
error and they told me about it afterward. But I sold a lot of books that I
otherwise wouldn't have sold."
Helprin, 35, a product of Harvard, Princeton and Oxford, arrived from his
home in Brooklyn. An earnest man with carefully parted hair and horn-rim glasses
("My mother says she's proud of me because I look like George Will"), Helprin
said, "This is the first prize I ever won in my life.' It's surprising, since
the author of "Ellis Island and Other Stories" is something of an intellectual
dynamo: He just completed a 1,500-page novel about "an Irish burglar in New York
and his horse," while also finishing a PhDdissertation on European defense
strategies and plotting a run for New York State Assembly. His only worry about
the award is that "I detest writing for an elite. I'm ridiculously egalitarian."
Bradley, who teaches at Temple University in Philadelphia, had some qualms
himself. "I'm a perfectionist and I'm worried about it making me a little
sloppy." But, he says, "the truth is in the typewriter."
The judges agreed. Settle said that one of the "built-in safeguards" of the
award is that among the three judges, "there is always one representative of
experimental writing, one traditional novelist, and one tough Young Turk,
PAGE
9
The Washington Post, April 12, 1982
ank God, to watch us all." But all three found most of the 265 books they
mined to be disappointing and poorly written. Walker Percy, a gray and
urtly eminence, said, "So many of them were bad. I hear people say how hard it
is to get novels published these days," but judging from the entries, "I find it
hard to believe that anybody had any trouble." The breakdown: "I would say that
200 were bad, 20 were good and 10 were first-rate." Wesley Brown, author of
"Tragic Magic," agreed. Although "we have different tastes" all put a premium on
stories that "took risks," thus eliminating "a lot of genre books, spy novels
and detective stories, which were limited in what they set out to do. He had
urged Bradley's book on the other two judges, neither of whom had read it early
on.
John Hawkes, whose latest novel, "Virginie," will be published by Harper &
Row next month, discerned a "new American realism" with "insistence on concrete
detail" and applauded a trend toward novels like Bausch's in which "a full
measure of the ordinary is very important." But he said, "the general quality
was not good," and "the majority of books simply really aren't serious,' and
didn't "exemplify minds concerned with language."
What does it augur for the future of the American novel? "I can't say," said
Percy, "that I feel too hopeful."
GRAPHIC: Picture 1, Richard Gilman presenting PEN/Faulkner award to David
Bradley, by UPI; Picture 2, David Bradley after award, by AP
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PAGE 10
13TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Proprietary to the United Press International 1982
April 10, 1982, Saturday, AM cycle
SECTION: Regional News
LENGTH: 331 words
HEADLINE: Bradley Wins Pen/Faulkner Award
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.
BODY:
Novelist David Bradley of Philadelphia, was named Saturday night the second
winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction for his work, "The Chaneysville
Incident.
The $5,000 award for the best work of fiction published in 1981 by an
American writer.
Bradley's novel was among six nominated for the award, which is named for the
international writers' group and American author William Faulkner.
The competition was judged by writers Wesley Brown, John Hawkes and Walker
Percy. The judges' citation for the book, published by Harper & Row, commends
the author for his ''ambitious'' work.
'The Chaneysville Incident' explores the powerful claim of ritual in our
lives. In this novel, ritual takes the form of someone telling a story that
forces a man to abandon his formal understanding of the world in order to come
to terms with his own past, the citation said.
"David Bradley's novel is ambitious in scope and daring in conception; and
most impressive of all, it realizes the promise of just about every risk he
takes, the citation said.
The other nominees, each of whom won $1,000, were "Sixty Stories, by
Donald Barthelme; "Take Me Back, by Richard Bausch; "Ellis Island & Other
Stories, By Mark Helprin; ''Housekeeping,' by Marilynne Robinson; and "A
Flag For Sunrise,' By Robert Stone.
The board of advisors for the award were writers Ann Beattie, Vance
Bourjaily, Shirley Hazzard, Bernard Malamud and Grace Paley.
The Pen/Faulkner award for fiction is sponsored by Pen American Center and
Pen South. It is described as the only national literary prize that is judged
administered and largely funded by writers.
Pen is an international organziation of poets, playwrights, essayists and
novelists. The south region is based at the university. The winner of last
year's award was Walter Abish, for ''How German Is It.
'The Chaynesville Incident' is the Philadelphia author's second published
vel. "South Street'' was published in 1975.
PAGE 12
14TH STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.
Copyright 1981 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
April 18, 1981, Saturday, Late City Final Edition
SECTION: Section 1; Page 9, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk
LENGTH: 250 words
HEADLINE: Notes on People;
New York Writer Getting PEN/Faulkner Award
BYLINE: By Albin Krebs and Robert Thomas
BODY:
The first annual PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction will be presented today to
Walter Abish, a Vienna-born writer who now lives in New York and lectures at
Columbia University.
His novel ' ' How German Is It'' was chosen as the best American novel of 1980
over four other nominees, including ''A Confederacy of Dunces, by the late
John Kennedy Toole, which this week won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction.
Mr. Abish's novel, published by New Directions, never made a bestseller list
but, said the judges' citation, it "helps keep the American novel alive in its
time.
'The prose of this novel, it adds, "is as cold as snow in a storm, and as
driven. It deals with a young German's effort to reconcile the modern,
democratic Germany with its heritage.
The 50-year-old novelist, who became an American citizen in 1960, spent much
of his childhood in Shanghai and has served in the Israeli Army. He was recently
awarded a Guggenheim fellowship.
The $2,000 award, named for William Faulkner, will be presented to Mr. Abish
today in the rotunda of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. It is
sponsored by the American Center of PEN, an international organization of poets
playwrights, essayists, editors and novelists, and PEN South.
The PEN/Faulkner award was established last year shortly after PEN voted a
boycott of the American Book Awards, on the ground that they were "too
commercial.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
1
PEN
Description
Section 6
Cultural Organizations
Writers *10183*
$35. Staff: 5. Regional Groups: 4. Local Groups: 15. Multinational.
of letters in all countries in the interests of literature, freedom of expression,
Promotes advancement and improvement in published and unpublished writers.
and international goodwill. PEN stands for the principle of unhampered
Provides opportunities for writers to critique works and exchange ideas.
transmission of thought within each nation and between all nations and
Libraries: Type: reference. Holdings: periodicals, business records, archival
members pledge themselves to oppose any form of suppression of freedom of
material. Subjects: fiction, poetry, plays.
expression in the country and community to which they belong." The acronym
Publications: Muslim Musings, bimonthly. Newsletter. Price: $6.00. Circula-
PEN stands for poets, playwrights, editors, essayists, and novelists.
tion: 500. Advertising: not accepted.
Membership is by invitation to qualified writers, editors, and translators.
Conventions/Meetings: annual conference.
Approximately 100 such autonomous centers in 60 countries are associated
with the international organization. Bestows numerous awards. Sponsors
writing competitions for prisoners in U.S. prisons. Committees: Censorship;
*10177* MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA (MWA)
Freedom to Write; PEN Emergency Fund for Writers; Translation; Writers-in-
17 E. 47th St., 6th FI.
Prison.
New York, NY 10017
Priscilla Ridgway, Exec.Dir.
Publications: Grants and Awards Available to American Writers, biennial
PH: (212)888-8171
Liberty Denied. Studies the current rise of censorship in America.
Founded: 1945. Members: 2,400. Staff: 1. Regional Groups: 9. Local
Newsletter, quarterly PEN American Center: A History of the First Fifty
Groups: 1. Professional writers in the mystery-crime field; publishers and
Years Prisoner Writing Information Bulletin, periodic The World of
agents are associate members. Awards: Edgar Allan Poe Award. Frequency:
Translation. Compilation of 39 papers.
annual. Type: recognition.
Conventions/Meetings: annual international conference.
Publications: Anthology, annual MWA Directory, annual. Price: available to
professional members only. Circulation: 1,300 Mystery Writers Annual.
Journal. Features a collection of articles on a general theme. Includes listing
of nominees for the Edgar Allan Poe Awards. Price: included in membership
*10181 PEN CENTER U.S.A. WEST (PCUSAW)
dues; $10.00/issue for nonmembers. Circulation: 3,000. Advertising:
c/o Sherrill Britton
accepted The Third Degree, 10/year. Newsletter. Includes market news
672 S. Lafayette Park PI., No. 41
and other issues of interest to writers. Price: available to members only.
Los Angeles, CA 90057
Circulation: 2,500.
Sherrill Britton, Exec.Dir.
Conventions/Meetings: annual meeting - always late April or early May, New
PH: (213)365-8500
FX: (213)365-9616
York City
symposium symposium and workshop.
Founded: 1952. Members: 950. Membership Dues: $55. Staff: 3.
Budget: $250,000. Regional Groups: 3. State Groups: 1. Poets,
playwrights, essayists, editors, and novelists (PEN). Promotes freedom of
*10178* NATIONAL WRITERS ASSOCIATION (NWC)
expression nationally and internationally; works to effect the release of
1450 S. Havana, Ste. 424
writers imprisoned because of their writings. Encourages awareness of the
Aurora, CO 80012
western U.S. as a vital literary and journalistic community. Conducts
Sandy Whelchel, Dir.
educational and charitable programs. Awards: PEN Center West Literary
PH: (303)751-7844
FX: (303)751-8593
Award. Frequency: annual. Type: recognition. Affiliated With: International
Founded: 1937. Members: 4,000. Staff: 4. Budget: $249,000. Local
P.E.N. Formerly: (1989) International PEN U.S.
Groups: 15. Professional members must qualify by having: material paid and
Publications: Center, quarterly. Magazine. Includes information on members
published in national or regional magazines; book issued on standard royalty
and calendar of events. Price: included in membership dues. Advertising:
basis; stage, movie, or television plays produced; associate membership is
accepted PEN Center U.S.A. West Membership Directory, annual.
open to anyone seriously interested in creative writing. Offers home study
Conventions/Meetings: semiannual congress
competition.
course in magazine writing for members. Libraries: Type: reference. Holdings:
2,000; books. Subjects: writing. Affiliated With: Associated Business
Writers of America. Formerly: (1993) National Writers Club.
Publications: Authorship, bimonthly. Includes informational and instructional
*10182* P.E.N. CLUB OF PUERTO RICO (PENCPR)
materials for writers, publishing industry news, obituaries, marketing, and
Poets, playwrights, essayists, editors, and novelists (P.E.N.) united to
computer columns. Price: included in membership dues; $18.00/year for
promote mutual understanding and respect among countries; provide for the
nonmembers. Circulation: 4,000. Advertising: accepted Flash Market
"unhampered transmission of thought" within and between nations; combat
News, bimonthly Market Update, bimonthly Professional Freelance
Writers' Directory, annual . Reports.
the supression of freedom of expression; to oppose arbitrary censorship and
Conventions/Meetings: annual conference annual workshop
annual
the "evils" which often accompany a free press, such as deceptive publication
competition, for books, poems, articles, and short stories.
and deliberate falsifications for political or personal gain. Holds book readings
and presentations. Address unknown since 1994 edition. Awards: Type:
recognition. Recipient: for literature. Affiliated With: International P.E.N.
*10179* NOMADS OF THE TIME STREAMS INTERNATIONAL MICHAEL
Also Known As: International P.E.N. Puerto Rico.
MOORCOCK APPRECIATION SOCIETY
Publications: Boletin Informativo (in Spanish), quarterly.
PO Box 451048
Conventions/Meetings: periodic conference.
Atlanta, GA 30345
Paul W. Cashman, Pres.
PH: (404)634-3609
*10183* ROMANCE WRITERS OF AMERICA (RWA)
Founded: 1988. Members: 175. Staff: 3. Budget: $1,000.
13700 Veterans Memorial Dr.,
Multinational. Individuals in 9 countries. Promotes the works of British writer
Ste. 315
Michael Moorcock. Acts as a clearinghouse of news and information and as a
contact point for Moorcock's fans. Encourages literacy. Libraries: Type:
Houston, TX 77014
reference. Holdings: archival material. Telecommunication Services: Compu-
Linda Fisher, Contact
serve, 71520.3130, via Genie P. CASHMAN o electronic bulletin board,
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1337
S also the author
upon as civilized, receding just as fast into
reduced to genteel poverty. William was the
consists of the sense-impressions of an idiot;
pot-boiling, nov-
barbarism? What can be said to be pos-
oldest of four brothers, one of whom be-
there are two characters in it, man and
in his reminis-
sible or impossible, wise or unwise? Utopia,
came a well-known aviator before he was
woman, with the same name; and it is
ishaps have been
sooner or later, must come true. Humanity
killed in 1935. After the fifth grade he at-
difficult to understand until after one has
must arise some day to another ideal than
tended school only desultorily, though he
finished it. Discouraged but not daunted. he
g Across Europe,
that of being led like cattle, and fooled,
took some high school work and also some
went to work on Sartoris, the first of his
There's No End To
and slaughtered.
special courses at the University of Missis-
many novels centering loosely around the
ed Coffins (English
Russia) 1930; The
"We shall not live to see the change.
sippi. For the most part, in his late teens, he
Sartoris (for which read Faulkner) family
Transgressor in the
That is why we must take refuge in fiction.
merely hung around Oxford, read a great
and the town of Jefferson (Oxford), Miss.
ake, 1938; Fugitive
I tell myself many beautiful tales which I
deal, wrote bad verse imitative of Swinburne
The principal character, Colonel Sartoris,
ck, 1941; Bomber's
mean to write-but I often desist because,
and Omar Khayyám, and tried to find him-
was a mingling of his grandfather and his
ay of a Transgres-
in the writing. their beauty fades."
self. The First World War woke him from
great-grandfather and namesake, a pioneer
pics, Behind God's
this lethargy. Flying caught his imagination,
railroad builder who was also author of a
This sketch, it need hardly be added, was
but he refused to enlist with the "Yankees,"
sentimental novel of the South. once popular,
sent by M. Fauconnier (from Barbezieux.
SO went to Toronto and joined the Canadian
called The White Rose of Memphis. Sar-
French writer
Charentes, France) before the French defeat
Air Force, becoming a lieutenant in the
toris was published in 1929, the same year
in English) "1-
by Hitler. Until the present war his perma-
R.A.F. Biographers who say he got no near-
that its author married Mrs. Estelle (Old-
art or literature,
er France than Toronto are mistaken. He
nent address was Radès. Tunisia. Bar-
ham) Franklin, a widow with two children.
matters is not
bezieux was his birthplace, and he studied
was sent to France as an observer, had two
They now have a child of their own.
man who works,
law at Bordeaux, fifty miles South. His
planes shot down under him, was wounded
Unable to live by his writing, Faulkner
the man's work.
father died when he was twenty and he had
in the second shooting, and did not return to
took a job as- night superintendent of a
Oxford until after the Armistice.
greatest writers
to help bring up a large family of brothers
power plant. There, writing Oil an upturned
only great as
and sisters. He went to Singapore in 1905
He re-entered the university, and attended
wheelbarrow in the small hours of the
:rs and appear,
as assistant to a British rubber planter, and
it off and on from 1919 to 1921, though he
morning, he revised The Sound and the
rdinary life, just
soon became a planter in his own right.
was never graduated. As a veteran, he was
Fury, and at the same time deliberately set
et.y and foolish
After the First World War, in which he
able to waive the requirement of high school
about writing a pure horror story, aimed
yone else. Per-
served throughout, he returned to Malaya
graduation before becoming a regularly en-
at the collection of royalties, which he called
more so. For
until the collapse of the rubber boom. when
rolled student. In between times he worked
Sanctuary. After the establishment of his
nan can be uni-
he settled in Tunisia to write. Malaisie
as a house painter, painting the roofs of
reputation by The Sound and the Fury and
11. especially a
received the Goncourt Prize for 1930. Basil
several university buildings. He served
As I Lay Dying, he rewrote Sanctuary also,
upon to give an
Davenport called it "an exquisite book." M.
later as university postmaster, until he was
so that now it is part of the Jefferson cycle.
writer but as a
Fauconnier, a dark, slim man with a small
dismissed for inattention to duty. Then. at
It was the first of his novels to become
ssing my many
moustache, is unmarried. He is a member of
loose ends again, he drifted to New Orleans,
popular. From that time on he has not had
ou consider that,
the Royal Society of Literature, in London.
where he became a friend of Sherwood An-
to worry about money; he was able to mod-
must have acted
WORKS AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH Malaisie (in
derson, through whom he came to the notice
ernize his century-old house, to buy a private
England: The Soul of Malaya) 1931.
of the Double Dealer, one of the pioneers of
plane, to finance his brother's barnstorming
studying for the
ABOUT: Lalou, R. Histoire de la Littérature
"little" literary magazines. Faulkner's first
career, and to travel where he pleased. Holly-
Idenly absconded
Contemporaine; Saturday Review of Literature
published work was a poem in this maga-
wood bought Sanctuary and turned it into a
in a far-away
December 12, 1931; Spectator November 21, 1931.
zine, in 1922. He wrote Soldiers' Pay in
movie, and Faulkner was asked to assist in
idea of making
New Orleans, and Anderson recommended it
its filming. Since then he has spent much
hich was absurd.
FAULKNER, WILLIAM (September
to a publisher on condition that he would
time in Hollywood. though on his own
fided that rubber,
25, 1897- ). American novelist, who some-
not have to read the manuscript first It
terms. (On one occasion he asked permis-
ould not but go
times spells his name Falkner, was born in
was accepted, and Faulkner started work on
sion to do his writing "at home"; the studio
it burst most
New Albany, Miss.
Mosquitoes, the background of which was
consented, but when they tried to telephone
en war came, I
Statements that he
the New Orleans Bohemia. Before either
him in Santa Monica one day, they dis-
ch spirit as one
was born in Ripley,
of them appeared, however, he had suddenly
covered that he had meant "at home" in
nal occupation-
Miss., in October,
left on a freighter for Europe, where he
Mississippi, to which he had returned!)
ild never be an-
1897, are incorrect;
spent most of 1925. He had previously
He lives in Oxford for most of the time
now, though it
both villages, how-
spent a few unhappy months in New York
now, though he also has a thirty-five-acre
manity is mad-
ever, are near Ox-
as a clerk in a book-store, an utter misfit in
farm in the hills. His mornings are given
of it to which I
ford, seat of the Uni-
both the city and the occupation.
to writing, his afternoons to hunting, fishing,
is tottering old
versity of Mississippi,
Back in Oxford again, he worked as a
and conviviality. He takes his farming
racles.
which has been his
carpenter, farmed, fished, and hunted, saw
seriously, and even does his own brewing.
why not?
home since childhood.
his first two novels through the press, re-
Except among his intimates, he is silent and
which was prac-
His father was Murry
ceived critical acclaim but not much money,
unsocial, and has even been called "insolent";
jungle absorb in
C. Faulkner, owner of a livery stable but
and wrote The Sound and the Fury. Not
the fact. is that his manner is the result of
twenty centuries
also treasurer of the university; his mother
surprisingly, since it is the first of the
acute sensitiveness. In 1939 he won the first
uls and railroads
Maud (Butler) Faulkner. On both sides the
Faulkner novels written in his cryptic stream-
prize in the annual O. Henry Mamorial
ith modern life
mily belonged to the wealthy and powerful
of-conscio
style, at first no publisher
Award. He writes his books by
a
the world. looked
butherners ruined by the Civil War and
would loo
t. The long first section
fine, unreadable hand-on the right
ide
439
FAURE
of legal-sized sheets of paper, reserving the
he cannot be tamed into a drawing-room
of adult education:
left-hand side for corrections. He is slow
lion; he remains what he began-a child of
of his lectures then
and hesitant in his speech. much more eager
the Deep South, a product of social disinte-
his History of Art,
to talk about farming or hunting than about
gration and decay, who is also an authentic
to study while he
literature, and completely uncritical of his
and powerful story-teller.
gradually he evolve
own work. For example, he once told a
PRINCIPAL WORKS: The Marble Faun (poems)
life, which is his
college class that he had "never given the
1924; Soldiers' Pay, 1926; Mosquitoes, 1927; Sar-
history and criticis
subject of form a single thought." whereas
toris, 1929; The Sound and the Fury, 1929; As I
considered a social
Conrad Aiken said that form was his con-
Lay Dying, 1930; Sanctuary, 1931; These Thirteen
(short stories) 1931; Idvll in the Desert, 1931
of it primarily in
stant preoccupation. His own comment on
Light in August, 1932; A Green Bough (poems)
as a whole.
fiction-writing is: "If a story is in you. it
1933; Pylon, 1933; Absalom, Absalom 1936; Un-
He served throu:
has got to come out."
vanquished, 1938; Wild Palms, 1939; The Hamlet,
as a surgeon, retui
Faulkner's world is a nightmare realm,
1940; Go. Down Moses and Other Stories, 1942.
its conclusion. Alv
ABOUT Geismar, M. Winters in Crisis; Atlan-
"darkly reflected through distorting lenses,"
tic Monthly November 1939; Bookman September
pathies, a close fri
as Anthony Buttitta put it. Inordinately
and December 1931; Canadian Forum June 1938;
cialist leader Jear
imaginative, bitter, undisciplined, brilliant.
Nuova Antologia January 16. 1938: Poetry October
theme expanded to
and difficult, he is. as one critic remarked.
1933; Saturday Review of Literature. May 21, 1938;
Sewanee Review July 1932; Time January 23, 1939.
aesthetic philosoph
"extraordinarily powerful but extremely un-
the narrow sense.
even." Burton Rascoe gave him credit for
to issue brochures
FAURE, ÉLIE (April 4, 1873-October 31,
sardonic humor and a comic sense. but it is
1937). French art critic and historian, was
cluding Corot. Céza:
the. humor of the grotesque. He is the
and he wrote intr
born at Ste. Foy. Gironde, the son of Pierre
chronicler of decay, of viciousness, of per-
Faure, a peasant
collections of prin
version, of cruelty. Earle Birney said there
grower of wine
ample being his es-
were two Faulkners-"a stylized and morbid
grapes: At fifteen he
Diego Rivera well.
mystic. attempting a sequence of novels on
was sent to Paris, to
painted his pictur
the scale of an epic," and "a sharp and bril-
the Lycée Henri IV.
black-bearded, baldi
liant narrator of short stories." Granville
With his brother, he
comically the "typic
Hicks called his characters "twisted shapes
studied medicine at
in Paris at sixty-fo
in the chaotic wreckage of a mad world,"
the University, and
Montaigne, Shak
and said that he was in the tradition. not of
received his degree
he thought the type
the high tragedy of John Webster and
in 1899. Though he
He recognized. how
Robinson Jeffers. but of the "technical in-
practised his profes-
not intellect. which
genuity" and horror of Poe and Ambrose
sion. and was a sur-
D. Rivera
come to look upon
Bierce: "it is too easy for him to produce
geon for many years, his primary interest
aesthetic phenomer
shudders for him to bother to try to create
was always in art-as an amateur, not as a
as an artist creativ
tragedy." And all this is presented in what
painter himself. From childhood pictures
cessantly. in a kin
Aiken called "a strangely fluid and slippery
had entranced him. and he estimated the
and lyricism." As
and heavily mannered prose." In all his
major novels, Faulkner has to be re-read to
worth of his life at any period by the
easier, he began to
number of paintings he was able to see.
and had some fin.
be comprehended. and in some cases only
All through his student days he haunted the
the Impressionist
an acquaintance with all the novels makes
Louvre as a relief from the dissecting room.
school. Travel W:
for complete understanding of his intricate
He was married. to Suzanne Gilard, before
in 1931 he spent a
cross-narrative.
he was twenty-one, and one of their two
the course of whit
It is curious that this master of a compli-
sons died in infancy. He described this
States.
cated prose is in his verse flat and derivative,
period as "Boredom. Sickness. Death. Suf-
WORKS AVAILABLE
hardly more than what Bernard DeVoto
fering. A precocious education in responsi-
Art, 1921-30 (Ancien:
called him-"a gifted amateur." But he
1922; Renaissance Ar
bility and unhappiness. I saw hardly any
Spirit of the Forms,
cannot be dismissed so cavalierly as a novel-
painting." The famous Dreyfus case was
1923; Napoleon, 1924;
ist, even by those who dislike his grimness,
indirectly the cause of his salvation. An
1926; The Italian Ren
his morbidity, and his wallowing in horror.
ardent Dreyfusard, through his championship
Japan, 1930.
He is in a way a minor Balzac of a sub-
of the accused officer. Faure met Zola and
ABOUT: Ellis, H.
American Historical
human world. no more obsessed with ab-
Anatole France, and through their influence
February 1922, Angu
normality than was Dostoievsky, though com-
he was appointed art critic of L'Aurore.
cure de France Dece
pletely lacking in the spiritual implications
the paper which had become Drevius' chief
Revue de Littérature
which are Dostoievsky's signature.
organ of defense.
In appearance Faulkner is rather short,
Through these connections he met the
FAUSET, JESSII
slender, with very black hair and moustache
artists he had admired. and he began his real
American Negro no
now beginning to gray, and "sharp-eyed as
career with the publication of a brochure
delphia, Pa., and at,
a gambler." He is never likely to conform
on Velasquez in 1904. In 1905 the helped
where she was th
to any rules, either as a person or as a writer;
to found the Université Populaire, a school
her class. She
440