Having been immersed in the MFA for three years, I’m behind in my controversies. I’m now reading Joan Silber’s Ideas of Heaven: A Ring of Stories. I’ve vowed to eventually read all five of the books nominated for the 2004 National Book Award. Judging from the comments made by the irate, the problem with the books–in decreasing order of persuasiveness–is that they were written by writers from New York, that they hadn’t sold many copies, and that many people in publishing hadn’t read them. This last argument, which actually brandishes the speaker’s own ignorance, combines liberal indulgence of uninformed opinions with the capitalist idea that the customer is always right–even if they haven’t quite yet gotten around to being a customer. If you haven’t read the nominees for a literary award, you have nothing to say about them, so shut up. The substantive attack on the books is their sameness and safeness. We’ll see.
Soon I will talk about the actual book. So far, it’s quite good.
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