Expect the sputtering rage to redouble now, because Coates' tome won the National Book Award yesterday. The first volley, which will be hard to beat, comes from an email newsletter called Prufrock from the The American Conservative. The item is by Micah Mattix:
The National Book Award winners were announced yesterday, and, of course, Ta-Nehisi Coates won the non-fiction award for Between the World and Me. Sigh: http://bit.ly/1NF58zj. I have read a few poems from Robin Coste Lewis’s Voyage of the Sable Venus, which won the poetry award, and was not particularly impressed. (I haven’t read Adam Johnson’s Fortune Smiles, which won the fiction award, so I can’t comment on it, but the reviews are interesting.) Anyway, if you know the Koch brothers, can you please tell them that a $500,000 gift to start a book award that honors actual literary merit, not identity politics, would do America a hell of a lot of good?I've often thought that's just what they should do, and if the Kochs are big enough suckers to fund it then why not? We can be sure "honors actual literary merit, not identity politics" is code for "lifetime achievement award for Tom Wolfe," and that the inaugural field of Ayns or Ronnies or whatever will be swept by Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Miller, and Kurt Schlichter, creator of "The Wildman." Shortly thereafter, the budget will be repurposed to fund Ted Cruz robocalls, and the awards themselves will be made available to any customer for each thousand dollars he spends at Goldline.
