NP - On James Wood

[David Morris]

http://www.salon.com/2012/10/11/national_book_awards_genre_fiction_dissed_again/

What you won’t find [in the National Book Award list] is the book that
many, many literary fiction buffs read and loved in the past six
months: Gillian Flynn’s best-selling crime novel, “Gone Girl.” Flynn’s
book is inventive, shrewd, mercilessly observant and stylishly written
— qualities that are very welcome and likely to be celebrated in a
literary novel. Her theme, the dissolution of a marriage in
recession-era America, is substantive. Her technique (which, at the
risk of spoilage, I’ll vaguely refer to as unreliable narration) is
sophisticated. But let’s face it: “Gone Girl” is still considered a
crime novel, and the likelihood of any work of genre fiction being
seriously considered for a major literary prize still seems as
far-fetched in 2012 as the election of a black president looked to be
in the 20th century.

The National Book Awards is no more to blame in this respect than any
other prize: The Pulitzer, the Booker and the National Book Critics
Circle prizes have all refrained from honoring any title published
within the major genres. (True, some observers considered “Snowdrops”
by A.D. Miller — shortlisted for the Booker last year — a crime novel,
but the entire 2011 Booker selection process was enveloped in
controversy arising from the judges’ much-denounced remarks on behalf
of “readability.”) The genres have their own prizes, but the most
prestigious of the awards remain the private reserve of literary
fiction.