Patti Smith's memoir of her friendship with Robert Mapplethore could win a National Book Award Wednesday night in New York. It's a finalist in nonfiction.
Go here to listen to a podcast from NPR of Smith reading two great sections from her book, "Just Kids." She and the not-yet-famous photographer Mapplethorpe walk in snow to Times Square on New Year's Eve 1969 and see a giant John & Yoko peace billboard. Later, she runs into Allen Ginsberg at the automat, where he helps her buy a sandwich and mistakes her for a boy.
In other National Book Award news:
If Karen Tei Yamashita's "I Hotel," a finalist in the fiction category, wins an award, it will be the first for its publisher, Coffee House Press of Minneapolis. Coffee House publisher Allan Kornblum and associate publisher Chris Fischbach are in New York for the awards dinner. One critic, Tom LeClair, said he thought "Hotel" deserved to win, but admitted it was a long shot. Read his excellent essay, including short excerpts from all the nominated novels, here. And go here to read Emily Carter's glowing review of the book in Star Tribune.
Some commentators have predicted a win in fiction for "Great House," by Nicole Krauss, who was recently in the Twin CIties for Talking Volumes. She talks here about her new novel.
In addition to Krauss and Yamashita, the fiction finalists are Peter Carey, ("Parrot and Olivier in America"), Jaimy Gordon ("Lord of Misrule") and Lionel Shriver ("So Much for That").
