The nominees for the National Book Critics Circle awards for the publishing year 2004 in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, biography/autobiography, criticism, and poetry have been selected. The winners will be announced this March at the organization’s 31st annual awards ceremony.
Most notable is a little memoir by the former Robert Zimmerman, which was particularly well received.
The awards ceremony will take place on Friday, March 18, at the auditorium of the New School, 66 West 12 Street, at 6:00 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. A gala follows directly at the New School and costs $40. Nominees will read from their works at an event held Thursday, March 17, also at the New School’s auditorium, at 6:00 p.m. This is also free and open to the public.
The National Book Critics Circle is a not-for-profit organization of book editors and critics with some 600 members nationwide. The organization was founded in 1974 to encourage and raise the quality of book criticism in all media and to create a way for critics to communicate with one another about their professional concerns.
A complete list of this year’s nominees follows.
Fiction
Edwidge Danticat, The Dew Breaker (Knopf)
Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty (Bloomsbury)
David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas (Random House)
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Philip Roth, The Plot Against America (Houghton Mifflin)
General Nonfiction
Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age (Holt)
Edward Conlon, Blue Blood (Riverhead)
Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation: A History (Viking)
David Shipler, The Working Poor: Invisible in America (Knopf)
Timothy B. Tyson, Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story (Crown)
Biography/Autobiography
Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (Penguin Press)
Bob Dylan, Chronicles Vol. 1 (Simon & Schuster)
Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (Norton)
Article comments
1 - Bill Lamb
Thanks for the heads up for everyone Eric. Some great stuff in all the categories as usual.
My pick for fiction would be "Cloud Atlas" Hollinghurst has already won the Booker Prize in the U.K., the first book with a homosexual lead character to do so.
I'd go for "The Working Poor" in non-fiction. It is a must read. Dylan has some VERY stiff competition...all of those bios are probably worthy of winning.
Then in poetry, 2 of our greatest, Rich and Snyder, are represented. Some great reading here.
2 - Eric Olsen
thanks Bill, would love to hear from others who have particular favorites
3 - Aaman
Fiction: None of the above (Many other fine books) If I had to choose, Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (otherwise, Jonathan Strange...)
Non-fiction: David Shipler, The Working Poor: Invisible in America (Knopf)
Autobio: Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare ("My Life" is missing??)
4 - Rodney Welch
The only fiction nominee I missed is Hollinghurst, which is too bad because that's the one that won. Of the rest, I'd give the nod to either Gilead or Cloud Atlas, but I'm a little surprised to see no mention of Russell Banks' The Darling.
5 - Eric Olsen
man, I wish I had time to read contemporary books - thanks Rodney, what's up?
6 - ClubhouseCancer
Cloud Atlas is indeed great, and the Roth is provocative and, if you like him, as I do, a great read as usual. The other three I haven't gotten to, but I've got Gilead on my list.
I enoyed Dylan's book, but that Shakespeare one is just terrific.
7 - Eric Olsen
huh ... readers
8 - Eric Berlin
Lists like these always prove to me how much Out There there is to read... and how little of it I actually get to.
9 - Eric Olsen
I look forward to the Matrix-like method of ramming all this stuff in your cranium post haste so you don't have to sit around reading all the damn time, which I do working on this site 12 hours a day anyway, so if I have an hour or two to myself at night the last thing I want to do is stick my head back in a fucking book that is going to take me a month at an hour-a-night to read anyway. So fuck it.
On the other hand I really like to read books, so I have to find a way to make more time
10 - Eric Berlin
Too true, that (and that).
11 - Eric Olsen
so bring on that brain-loading thing
12 - Eric Berlin
Didn't they call it the "neuralizer" or something?
Complete aside: my wife has pink-tinted glasses, and when she wears them she looks a lot like the blonde Euro-ish chick who buys it during the scene when Joey Pants plays Judas to the Matrix gang.
Anyway, as soon as she dons them, I say, "No... not like this... not like this..." which always pisses her off to no end.