Economy Aside, High Spirits At Book Awards

(AP)  Judges for the National Book Awards honored a comeback Wednesday night, giving the fiction award to Peter Matthiessen's "The Shadow Country," a revision of a trilogy of novels from the 1990s. The 81-year-old author last won a National Book Award 30 years ago.

Other winners were Annette Gordon-Reed in nonfiction, for "The Hemingses of Monticello"; Mark Doty's "Fire to Fire" in poetry; and former genre writer-for-hire Judy Blundell in young people's literature, for "What I Saw and How I Lied."

Publishers, who were paying as much as $25,000 for a table even as they worried about sales, dined on baked taglioni and roast filet of beef at a literary celebration held under the 70-foot ceiling and Wedgwood dome of Cipriani on Wall Street, a setting unlikely for literature or celebrating.

"Wall Street is not at the moment a street of riches, but of ruin and broken dreams," attendee Ron Chernow, a business historian and former book award winner, told The Associated Press. "We're having cocktails and wearing tuxedos, and it doesn't feel completely right."

Awards host Eric Bogosian joked to the audience about the gilded venue: "This was a bank once, and they built banks like this because banks never fail."

The economy inspired nervous laughter; the name Barack Obama, happy, relieved applause. Bogosian called the bookish president-elect "in the broadest sense of the word, a reader." Noting that Obama has been openly influenced by Doris Kearns Goodwin's Lincoln biography, "Team of Rivals," Bogosian commented, "That's just so cool."

Honorary award winner Maxine Hong Kingston, who like Obama spent many years in Hawaii, praised his way of "putting things right by talking them through." Fellow honorary winner Barney Rosset, a publisher and literary agitator, called Obama "a dynamic leader," a miracle. Declared the 86-year-old Rosset, who walked gamely to the podium, with a cane, but grinned boldly: "For the first time in recent memory I am not thinking of renouncing my American passport."

Also nominated for fiction were Marilynne Robinson's "Home," Aleksandar Hemon's "The Lazarus Project," and debut authors Salvatore Scibona ("The End") and Rachel Kushner ("Telex from Cuba").

Runners-up in nonfiction were Jane Mayer for "The Dark Side," a close look into the war against terrorism; Jim Sheeler's "Final Salute"; Joan Wickersham's "The Suicide Index"; and Drew Gilpin Faust's Civil War history, "This Republic of Suffering."

In poetry, the nominees were Frank Bidart, for "Watching the Spring Festival"; Mark Doty, "Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems"; Reginald Gibbons' "Creatures of a Day"; Richard Howard's "Without Saying"; and Patricia Smith, for "Blood Dazzler."

The other young people's literature finalists were Laurie Halse Anderson's "Chains," Kathi Appelt's "The Underneath," E. Lockhart's "The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks" and Tim Tharp for "The Spectacular Now."

Winners each received $10,000.

The awards, founded in 1950, are sponsored by the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization that offers numerous educational and literary programs.