Win Some, Lose Some

It's never clearer how movies and books exist in alternate universes than during the fall awards season. In the cinematic world, the last few months of the year bring on the Academy Award hyperbole, as the phrases "Oscar-worthy" and "red carpet" get bandied about with increasing regularity. Movie studios small and large bring out their big guns — attempted showstoppers dripping with stars in assumed powerhouse roles — and the newspapers crank up their film coverage in anticipation. For books, though, things are a bit more subdued.

On Oct. 10, the U.K.'s big-deal Man Booker Prize for Fiction was announced: Kiran Desai, author of the novel The Inheritance of Loss and the youngest woman ever to win, received $50,000. The Man Booker is Britain's most prestigious prize and known to increase sales — last year's winner, The Sea by John Banville, has sold a quarter of a million copies so far, which isn't bad for a rather snoozy atmospheric novel with a twist ending — but the Chronicle didn't even bother covering this year's contest, and the Examiner ran an Associated Press wire brief. The Quill Awards had their day on Oct. 11, to radio silence from the Chron and some AP stories in the Examiner (it would appear that AP's Hillel Italie writes most of the local dailies' book awards stories). On Oct. 12, the winner of the Nobel Prize in literature was named — Turkey's Orhan Pamuk — to a few quiet stories on NPR and some more AP noodling. The Chron ran a story about the "grousing" that surrounds this "mysterious joke" of a prize, then picked up some pieces from (you guessed it) AP and the Los Angeles Times.

The biggest local occasion was the announcement of the National Book Awards finalists at City Lights on Oct. 11 — the first time that that call had been made from the West Coast in the award's 57-year history. The Chron published our friend Italie on the results, plus a 500-word item by a staff writer (hurrah!) on how the Bay Area was "well represented" among the finalists — because we had three writers (one from Fremont, one from Berkeley, and one from Santa Cruz) in the 20-book mix. Oscar Villalon, the paper's book editor, was at the City Lights event (joking that his khaki pants and sports coat were "really an elaborate jumpsuit; you just can't see the zipper" — presumably he has to make lots of clothing changes, like a live sketch comedy star), but he didn't report on it, not even in the paper's so-called Culture Blog (which, on the day after the announcement, was still talking about the Westfield mall two weeks after it opened).

All of this is to say that, at least in the Bay Area, we don't seem to care much about national and international book awards, even when a whole bunch of big-name local authors show up to a press conference at 9 a.m. to have their photo taken outside a historic indie bookstore.

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City Lights' co-founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti wore a red shirt, a skinny black tie, and jeans, his blue eyes a bit blurry, perhaps due to the early hour (or maybe because he's 87). He had been honored by the organization that oversees the competition, the National Book Foundation, last year with a new prize created just for him, the "Literarian Award"; this year he made a few quick comments before handing the mike over to Paul Yamazaki, a buyer at the store. "It's sort of like we've just been discovered by Magellan or Lewis and Clark," Ferlinghetti said of the awards being held in San Francisco. The first time the explorer came by it had been foggy, he explained, "but it's clear today."

Indeed, it was a gorgeous Indian summer morning when City Lights filled with writers known and unknown. Michelle Tea was there, dazzling in a striped top, plaid skirt, and excellent shoes, her incredible tattoos on full display. S.F.'s poet laureate, Jack Hirschman, looked a little scruffy, but maybe he'd been up all night writing. Ishmael Reed, Anne Lamott, and Barry Gifford joined a group of about 25 fellow authors for a photo in front of the store, an annual tradition at City Lights. Tourists drove and walked by, gawking.

Inside, the NBF's executive director, Harold Augenbraum, explained his respect for this city. He'd gone to a neighborhood coffee shop, he said, where he'd seen a twentysomething patron pull out a copy of Sartre's Nausea — in French. "Where else do you find people talking about great literature?"