Stylistic Transition? The 2013 NBA Shortlist

In which I look at the books on the 2013 shortlist

Hi, Y’all! Glad You're Here—

Over the last few weeks, there has been a little influx of new followers—welcome to everyone who is new here. If you haven’t yet, you can check out previous newsletters by clicking here—yes, I am still working on my National Book Award reading project. I am ALMOST done with the 1960s, but have been breaking it up by reading and reviewing the books from the 2010s. Today we are looking at the five books on the 2013 shortlist, and I think it’s going to be super fun! Thanks to everyone who is just joining us and for those who have been along for this whole ride. I appreciate you all! Now, let’s get on with the show.

The first book we’re going to look at is Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland, a book which I couldn’t wait to read because I just love a good title font. I had previously read Lahiri’s Pulitzer-prize winning Interpreter of Maladies—not to be confused with the non-fiction Pulitzer Prize winner The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer—which received universal acclaim and is often cited as one of the best short story collections of the last fifty years. The Lowland received a more mixed reception, with several major outlets critiquing her approach to the novel, some comparing it unfavorably to a screenplay—a common criticism of modern literature—and others saying it didn’t really have any bigger ideas. I read this one a few years ago, and I remember enjoying it, being captivated by Lahiri’s prose, finding myself swept up in her world and characters. To my mind, there’s really nothing Lahiri can’t do.

The novel is about two brothers, though most of the book’s focus is on the older brother, Subhash, and the ways their lives diverge and are inevitably drawn back together. Lahiri plays with structure in such interesting ways with this novel, in how she continues to pull the reader back in time to the 60s, to specific moments that are reconsidered and looked at from various angles, in how she thinks about these characters and the way their lives are impacted by the world around them. While I think this is a more demanding work, in some ways, than her other books, I was captivated throughout and had a hard time putting it down—not just because of its plotting, but also because I think she’s a genius. I feel like this is one of those books that people might even come to appreciate more as time goes on.

The next book we’re looking at is from a previous NBA winner, Thomas Pynchon—he first won in the 70s with his door stopper, Gravity’s Rainbow, and is back here with Bleeding Edge, a book about 9/11. I actually feel like this book would be in interesting conversation with another book that I cannot reveal due to spoilers. Anyway, I have always struggles to read Pynchon, and in fact, the only reason I had previously attempted his work was because of Mary Karr saying his name in her mesmerizing Texas twang. He writes books that are always so challenging, so confusing, confounding, exciting, stupid, brilliant—I can never quite figure out how he’s doing what he’s doing, but I still can’t help but marvel. We spend three hundred pages on this single day, and it’s not like other authors haven’t done similar things, but it’s the way that Pynchon moves throughout time that is so unique and impressive. Even as I scratched my head at this one (I’m still not entirely sure of what i’ve read) I couldn’t help but marvel. I won’t dwell on this one and pretend like I know what I’m talking about, but I honestly think Pynchon deserves to be on this list for the sheer audacity of his work.

Moving on to our next book, Tenth of December by George Saunders. I had heard about George Saunders in 2013, from an interview that Karen Russell did on a New Yorker panel where she discussed the writers who influenced her work. As a big fan of Russell, and someone who was desperate to write like she did, I wanted to read the people who influenced her, in the hopes they would influence me in the same way. I added him to my ever-growing list of must-read authors and hunted for his books at the goodwill bookstore on my days off. This was back when I worked three crappy jobs that barely paid enough money to make ends meet, so I was careful to only buy new books when I was almost certain I would love them. It took six weeks before I discovered one of Saunders’s books in the dusty bookcases of the store—a sticky old hardcover of his collection Portlandia, published by Riverhead. I flipped the book open, read half of the first story, and didn’t go back to visit his work until 2016.

A few months before my wedding, in August of 2016, my Momma took me shopping for books for my birthday. We hadn’t really been able to celebrate my birthday for a few years due to some personal stuff she was going through, and so she was thrilled to be able to take me to a bookstore to get whatever books I wanted. I remember us scanning the stacks of the Books-A-Million in Tallahassee—the same one she and I used to stop at every time we came to Tallahassee when I was a kid—and me seeing the newly released paperback copy of Tenth of December, with the printed-on National Book Award sticker. This was back when I was first beginning to pay closer attention to the National Book Award, and I remembered the interview with Karen Russell, so I added it to my basket and told Momma all about how excited I was to be able to get this book.

I read the first two stories of that collection pretty soon after buying it. I remember being pretty lukewarm about his work, still, but I loved the book itself just because it became associated with my Momma’s possible rehabilitation. It would be another year later, when Lincoln In The Bardo came out, before I’d begin to appreciate his stories. But I feel like the idea of his work, and of Tenth of December specifically, became so weirdly tethered in my mind to these moments, both of creativity, and of personal healing, that it’s hard to disentangle them now. I’ve talked for years about the ways that our personal journeys to get to the books we read are just as important to our reception as the books themselves.

Back in 2020, I finally finishing Tenth of December and I ended up loving it. I thought his work was sharp and funny and deeply moving. With this collection in particular, I think it’s an exciting addition to the list of National Book Award books. It feels in connection to many of the books I’d read from both the fifties and the sixties—Saunders writes about many people living in suburbia, lots of outcasts and weirdos, and the way he engages with these settings and these people feels like a subversion of all of the ideas explored in these books from all of these years ago. There’s one story in particular, “Home”, about a soldier returning from an unnamed war in the Middle East, and the way he approaches that story has the same authenticity of the writers from the fifties who had served in the war, but the way he brings his own spin to the narrative somehow hits the heart even harder than one could imagine. I find it really fascinating. I think because his work so often borders on the weird, quirky side of things, we don’t always take into account where his references are, or how he manages to reconfigure his influences to fit into his own brain, but I am now more than ever impressed by what he’s able to do on the page.

Funny enough, it was that same shopping trip with my Momma where I bought a copy of the next book we’re looking at, The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner. I remember buying this one for several reasons—one, because I loved the cover, and two, because of that same NBA sticker, but when I finally plopped into the bathtub one early morning to start it before work, I had the hardest time getting into it. I can’t even remember why I struggled so much, maybe that I found the subject matter a little too far from my usual interests, or that Kushner’s voice was unique enough that I didn’t know how to process the rhythm of it yet—I’m not a very good reader, despite the frequency with which I read, and so it can take me multiple reads over several years before a book finally sits right with me. That’s what happened with The Flamethrowers.

I finally finished the book specifically for this newsletter, and while it took me some time to settle into it, I ended up loving it. Kushner’s prose are sharp and clear, the structure itself is more traditional, but I think that’s necessary for what she’s doing narratively. This is a book that explores art, industrialism, pornography, motorcycle racing, and so much more, and though the work fluctuates in time, we never get lost or feel confused, because Kushner keeps us steady and focused. There’s something so impressive about the way that Kushner is able to ground us so clearly in time and place with how her characters engage in conversations around the politics and culture, but without it ever feeling contrived—I was reminded of Makkah’s The Great Believers, which was also well researched and operated in a historical setting for most of the book. I think Kushner approached her research for this book through the lens of her characters in such a brilliant way. I don’t know, I was just very impressed. It’s also made me very intrigued to read her first novel, Telex From Cuba. I have read her novel The Mars Room, and enjoyed it, despite it feeling very similar to Orange Is The New Black—I also just remembered she has essays, which I’m sure are brilliant.

Anyway, overall I can tell why this book made the shortlist for the NBA, because it’s just so smart and controlled. I feel like it’s one I need to sit with a bit more, and will likely re-read, but it’s definitely worth your time.

The last book we’re looking at is actually the winner of 2013, The Good Lord Bird by James McBride. This was my third read of his, after his memoir and 2020’s Deacon King Kong. I really enjoyed The Good Lord Bird, and I think McBride writes with such a great energy and has such a fun, playful voice on the page. I had very little knowledge regarding the historical aspects McBride pulled into the narrative, and I enjoyed being able to research what parts were real and not. Henry Shackleford, later known as The Onion, is a really exciting character and strong narrator, and I actually thought the way McBride approached Henry’s being mistaken for and going on to pose as a girl really thought provoking, despite it being played for laughs a majority of the time. I think it added a lot of commentary without being overdone.

When you consider The Good Lord Bird against the other four books on the short list, it stands out mostly because of its mode of storytelling feels so different in comparison. So much of why this book works is because of the narrative voice, how funny and sharp Henry is, how irreverent it is when discussing something that, for a long time, was only approached with a great seriousness. While a book like The Good Lord Bird feels almost commonplace now, with how it handles its subject matter and with the melodrama and wink wink voice, it really stood out in 2013. All of the other books—save Saunders, whose work has always been this way—have such a seriousness about them in general, and while all of them are dealing with greater ideas, none of them really poke fun in the ways that McBride does. At least, not within the awards circuit. So many of the books in the years before this were so serious, and yes, they dealt with bigger issues, but almost with so much reverence that there was no joy to be found within it.

I’m still trying to figure out how to articulate my thoughts on this—I think this is one of the interesting things about reading a book several years after it’s been published, because, if the book was good enough, it ends up inspiring so many other works that if you’ve read the books that it inspired, the source material almost feels stale now. To be clear, I am not saying that The Good Lord Bird is stale, but I think now there have been so many books inspired by it that if you just happened to have read those books first, you might not give this book the full credit it deserves for being a catalyst for the upswing in books of this style and tone. I don’t know if that makes any sense. Hopefully after I write about the other five books that made up the longlist, I will be able to better articulate myself. For now, I will just say that this was a fun year, and it feels like a year of transition in a way, style wise, and that’s always interesting to me.

If you have any thoughts about the 2013 shortlist, please let me know! Sometimes I have lots of ideas and no idea how to articulate them. Anyway, I guess that’s all for today. Thank you so much for reading and stay tuned for next week when we discuss the five books on the longlist!

Until then,

XOXO