National Book Awards: Honoring the Best of 2007

Denis Johnson (Tree of Smoke, FSG), Tim Weiner (Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, Doubleday), Robert Hass (Time and Materials, Ecco/HarperCollins), and Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Little, Brown) were the winners of the 58th National Book Awards at last night's black-tie ceremony in New York City. Also honored were Joan Didion, who received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and Terry Gross, the recipient of the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.

From left to right: Robert Hass, Cindy Johnson, accepting on behalf of her husband, Denis Johnson, Sherman Alexie, Tim Weiner.

Johnson, who is working in Iraq on a magazine feature, was unable to attend. His wife, Cindy Lee Johnson, accepting the award on his behalf, told the audience: "He's in Iraq -- he is on an assignment, under contract, so he's legitimately absent." She read a statement from her husband expressing his disappointment at missing "this one chance to dress up in a tuxedo in front of so many representatives of the world of literature, and say thank you." Johnson's statement also included a thank you to his wife, "who makes it all possible."

Accepting the award for nonfiction, Weiner said he had about "120,000 people to thank," but first acknowledged readers, reviewers, and critics, and the archivists who made it possible for him to tell the story of CIA failures. He expressed appreciation for Doubleday and his editor, Phyllis Grann, as well as for his profession. "It's a great thing to be a newspaper reporter," he said. "You get paid to have an education." Weiner also credited the system of democracy, which allowed the record to reveal "what we have wrought abroad."

After the ceremony, Weiner told BTW about his experiences at various independent bookstores where, he explained, he has "been going all his life." He added, "When I walk into a place like Northshire in Vermont or Politics and Prose in D.C., I feel like it's a family reunion. People there love books and love language."

Haas, who quoted Emily Dickinson about the nature of success, acknowledged the talents of his fellow poets, most of whom he has been reading his entire writing life. "I'm terribly honored to have this award," he said, adding thanks to his wife, his publisher Ecco, and Dan Halpern, his editor of 30 years.

Hass told BTW that there "could be no democracy" without the power of local dissemination of information provided, in part, by booksellers. "For me," he said, "independent booksellers are the carriers of that dream."

Sherman Alexie, best known till now for his titles for adults, quipped, "I obviously should have been writing YA all along." He said Ezra Jack Keats and specifically Keats' poem about frying baloney as well as a line from an Adrian Lewis poem -- "Oh, Uncle Adrian, I'm in the reservation of my mind" -- led him to write. Alexie thanked the National Book Foundation, the judges, the other YA finalists, his family, and his publisher Little, Brown.

Each winner received a $10,000 prize and a bronze statue.

Presenting the third Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community, Ira Glass, host of NPR's This American Life, quoted an old Borscht-Belt joke: Two diners are eating at a Catskills resort restaurant and one complains that the food is terrible, and the other says, "and the portions are so small!" With Terry Gross and Fresh Air, however, Glass said it's the exact opposite: "It's of outstanding quality and mind-bending portions."

Gross told the audience that she never imagined being honored by the National Book Foundation and expressed her lifelong appreciation of writers. "Novelists," she said, "can be honest in ways others can't afford to be." She also expressed thanks to each member of the Fresh Air staff.

Joan Didion

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Cunningham presented Joan Didion, whose memoir The Year of Magical Thinking (Knopf), took the NBA for nonfiction in 2005, with the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. "I can't think of another contemporary writer who has so thoroughly shown us ourselves," said Cunningham.

As Didion walked across the stage, the audience of hundreds of publishers, writers, and journalists gave her a standing ovation. Didion observed that when she won the award for nonfiction, the late Norman Mailer was in the room. "There's someone who really knew what writing was for," she added.

Didion went on to describe her own gratitude to writing. "The craft gave me inexplicable pleasure and still does," she explained, noting that it allowed her a lifetime of education, made possible by her readers. "I want to thank everyone here," she said, "for letting me learn." --Karen Schechner with reporting by Nomi Schwartz