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November 15, 2006 in City
Book award finalists guard hopes
The two Spokane-connected finalists for the National Book Award, Jess Walter and Timothy Egan, refuse to believe that their own names might be announced at tonight’s gala Manhattan banquet.
“Long shot,” said Egan.
“I haven’t written an acceptance speech,” said Walter.
Yet they’re still floating around in a happy cloud, because they made the five-person short list in their respective categories – fiction for Walter, nonfiction for Egan.
In fact, when the National Book Awards people called them with the news, both were convinced that their friends were playing a practical joke.
“I was totally floored,” said Egan, a Gonzaga Prep grad and roaming national reporter for the New York Times. “Even though I work for an East Coast newspaper, I’m a third-generation Westerner, and I have always grown up with the chip-on-the-shoulder idea that the East Coast literary establishment totally ignores the West.
“Even more stunning – and I still haven’t gotten over this – is that there are two guys from Spokane. I think that’s amazing. If you think of this as the Academy Awards of books, that’s like two people from Spokane being nominated for Best Actor. It’s cool for Spokane.”
Cool is an understatement. People all over the Inland Northwest are already drawing inspiration from this newfound literary recognition.
“It reinforces the idea that great writing comes from all over,” said Jonathan Johnson, director of Eastern Washington University’s creative writing program, for which Walter has taught. “The writing program here, since the 1970s, has considered itself of national significance. Now that we have someone nominated for arguably the top national award for fiction, that just reinforces how we have felt about our program.”
Over at Walter’s old high school, East Valley High School, English teacher Tammy Hovren calls Walter “a great inspiration to a lot of the students.” He returns periodically to give talks; he “has a great sense of humor and relates well to the students.”
Christian Birrer, English department head at Gonzaga Prep, said that both authors are a source of pride at the school; especially Egan, who once walked those halls and received an early grounding in English and history. Yet even there, teachers are also excited about Walter’s nomination, because he chose to remain in Spokane.
“One of the unique things about me is that I have lived in one place,” said Walter. “Most authors – Richard Ford is a good example – have typically moved around to find places to write about.”
Walter never found that necessary, even though his nominated novel, “The Zero,” takes place in New York City in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Egan, who wrote about Spokane in 1994’s “Breaking Blue,” also tackled an issue far from his Seattle home in his nominated book, “The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl.” It’s about the farmers who stayed put in Oklahoma and Texas during the Great Depression.
Both authors began these books with more than the usual trepidation. Walter set out to write a story that plays strange tricks with time. “The Zero” (referring to Ground Zero) is about a New York cop who has shocking memory gaps in the aftermath of the World Trade Center collapse. He continually finds himself jolted to consciousness, with no idea where he is or how he got there. The reader, too, has no clue.
“It was really risky and very tough,” said Walter. “So to have a panel of judges say, ‘Hey, you did the thing you set out to do’ …”
Walter called it a “great affirmation,” because it meant a panel of award-winning authors read 300 novels and chose his as one of the five most commendable.
As for “The Worst Hard Time,” Egan said he originally “had real doubts about whether there was really even a book there.” After talking to Dust Bowl survivors, and reading their diaries, he became convinced that there was.
“I knew I had written a clean, good, strong book,” said Egan. “But I really thought, boy, this is going to be a tough sell. It’s a very dark story and a very dark period. Who’s going to want to read about dust storms in the 1930s?”
As it has turned out, this book has sold faster nationally than any of his four previous books.
When it comes to awards, it certainly helps that both authors demonstrate a gift for uncommonly well-crafted prose:
From Walter’s “The Zero”: “A line of windows facing The Zero was blasted open; black fangs hung from the frames. Through the jagged opening Remy stared down on the well-lit pile. At the edges, the rubble was dark, a black tangle of shadowed forms, but the center was spotlighted bright; it was like coming across a high school football game in the middle of a bomb crater.”
From Egan’s “The Worst Hard Time”: “In the afternoon, the sky went purple – as if it were sick – and the temperature plunged. People looked northwest and saw a ragged-topped formation on the move, covering the horizon. The air crackled with electricity. Snap. Snap. Snap. Birds screeched and dashed for cover.”
From a sales standpoint, a National Book Award finalist nod has an impact, but a small one.
“It’s not flying off the shelves,” said Walter. “Being a finalist certainly helps, but my novels are not typically best-sellers. Honestly, if I had wanted to write a best-seller, I wouldn’t have written this book. I wrote it because I had to.”
“Nobody remembers who the NBA finalists are, I don’t think,” said Egan.
Yet the impact is huge inside the publishing world.
“It’s a badge of honor for the rest of your life, something that follows you to your grave and your obit,” said Egan. “It doesn’t change your life or anything, but it’s a hell of a thing from your peers.”
“When I won the Edgar Award (for best mystery novel), I thought, ‘I wonder if this is going to be at the top of my bio forever?’ ” said Walter. “And six months later, it moved to the second thing in my bio. That’s pretty cool.”
But what if they win?
“Do you know who William Vollmann is?” asked Walter. “He’s the guy who won last year. People keep asking me, ‘Is this going to make you famous?’ Well, I hate to break it to them, but I really don’t believe that fame is a commodity that authors have.”
In any case, both authors maintain that they probably won’t be up at the dais making an acceptance speech tonight.
“Vegas doesn’t do odds,” said Walter. “But if I were to guess, the favorite would be Richard Powers (nominated for ‘The Echo Maker’). I’ve been a Richard Powers fan forever.”
Egan thinks the frontrunner in his category might be Taylor Branch, nominated for the third volume in his monumental civil rights history, “At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68.”
Still … what if?
“It’s like you just won the lottery,” said Walter. “How great would it be to win another? It would be twice as great, but …”
Jim Kershner’s this day in history 
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