Peter Matthiessen has won the U.S. National Book Award in the fiction category for Shadow Country (Modern Library/Random House) – the first NBA win in nearly 30 years for the octogenarian author. The book’s nomination inspired a mini-controversy, since it’s actually a revision of an earlier trilogy of novels, now condensed into a single volume. As Harold Augenbraum, the executive director of the National Book Foundation, told The New York Times:

“We allow collections of previously published material […] Collected poems, collected essays, short-story collections – books like that. We don’t allow reprints, but we didn’t consider this a reprint. There’s a lot of new writing here.”

Other NBA winners last night:

• Non-fiction: The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed (W.W. Norton/Penguin Canada)
• Poetry: Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems by Mark Doty (HarperCollins)
• Young people’s literature: What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell (Scholastic)

Sarah Palin. Multi-million dollar book deal.

We’d like to think that the press is just mixing up Palin with Tina Fey, but it does seem that rumours are flying about a $7-million deal for a Palin memoir. As “one literary insider” tells NBC:

“Bill Clinton made more than $10 million when he signed his deal in 2001 and that was the most for a former president […] Sarah brings something different to the table – there is so much curiosity surrounding her and her life. If they move fast and get this thing on shelves, then a $7 million advance could be worth it.”

Not to be snarky, but it must be pointed out that on the campaign trail Palin was guarded, disingenuous, overly reliant on familiar talking points, and often garbled in presentation. What possible interest would a whole book’s worth of that stuff hold?

In other news, Joe the Plumber is also publishing a book.

The Canadian Press is reporting that Canadian sales of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series have begun to outstrip Harry Potter. The news comes via Indigo, which reported this week that sales of the Twilight series have surpassed 600,000 copies in 2008.

According to CP:

The paranormal romance of Bella, Edward the vampire, and Jacob the werewolf has become so popular among young readers this year that the Twilight Saga has eclipsed the number of Harry Potter books sold at the Canadian bookstore in 2007, including the launch of the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. This sales milestone comes in the same week as the highly anticipated Twilight movie hits the big screen.

“I never expected to see another series sell as many copies as Harry Potter did in 2007. For the Twilight series to have sold more copies in 2008 than the Harry Potter series did last year is truly extraordinary,” says Trevor Dayton, Vice President, Kids and Entertainment at Indigo Books & Music Inc.

Our neighbours to the south will be handing out The National Book Awards tonight. Before they do, here’s some handy links to get you up to speed on some of the nominees:

• The full list of nominees
• Controversy in the fiction category (The New York Times)
• Texans well-represented (The Dallas Morning News)
• Joan Wickersham on her nominated non-fiction work The Suicide Index (The Boston Globe)
• Teens schmooze with the YA nominees (School Library Journal)
• Reflections from an NBA juror (The Washington Post)
• A brief history of The National Book Awards (Time)

We should take this opportunity to point out that the jury has already perpetrated a grave critical injustice by failing to nominate the second volume in M.T. Anderson’s majestic, two-part The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation, which New York Times reviewer Jerry Griswold recently described thus:

It may be hard to conceive of making the claim about a young adult book, but I believe Octavian Nothing will someday be recognized as a novel of the first rank, the kind of monumental work Italo Calvino called “encyclopedic” in the way it sweeps up history into a comprehensive and deeply textured pattern.

The first volume won the National Book Award two years ago, so maybe the jurors just wanted to share the wealth?

Since 1993, A Different Drummer Books in Burlington, Ontario, has given Drummer General’s Awards to books that have been passed over for Canada’s most esteemed literary honours, like the Governor General’s Awards and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. According to a press release from A Different Drummer:

Once again it is our responsibility to provide a corrective to the other awards. Let us begin with an honourable mention for Helen Humphreys’s fine novel, Coventry (HarperCollins Canada). Ultimately, though, we decided our award for fiction must belong to Patrick Lane for Red Dog, Red Dog (McClelland & Stewart)…. For non-fiction, we quickly decided for Russell Wangersky’s powerful memoir Burning Down the House (Thomas Allen Publishers). It has not escaped our notice that our laurels this year are given to titles which, in fact, were both listed for Writers’ Trust prizes. However, we strongly feel that they merited the approval of the GG juries and the full national attention and prestige pertaining thereof.

Lane was given the Drummer General’s Award in 2004 for his non-fiction work There is a Season. There is no cash prize for the Drummer General’s Award – winners receive a certificate hand-printed by artist and illustrator Wesley Bates.

• Patrick Ness’s first book for children, The Knife of Never Letting Go, wins the Booktrust teenage prize
• Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight causes a tourism boom in Forks, Washington
• Is Obama Book Club the newest craze?
• A mother sues her judge daughter for the daughter’s claims of childhood abuse in her memoir, Ugly
• Massachusetts-based author founds a “Robin-Hood style publishing model” with non-profit publishing house Concord Free Press

Further to the previous post, it appears that the Simpsons are hard at work defending the English language, not just by getting new words inserted into the dictionary, but by highlighting words that have been unceremoniously removed. Over at the Paper Cuts blog, David Kelly points to Sunday night’s episode, which tipped its hat to words that seem to be dropping out of the lexicon:

Will Shortz, the crossword puzzle editor of The New York Times, was on last night’s episode of The Simpsons, helping to heal a rift between Homer and Lisa. Earlier in the show, Lisa participated in a crossword competition during which there was a tribute to words that had been removed from the dictionary in the previous year: “skedaddle,” “Nixonian,” “zounds,” “mimeograph” and “hootenanny.”

Quillblog will grant that “mimeograph” has probably outlived its usefulness, but the other four are still in use, albeit not in common parlance (and the word “Nixonian” sounds so much more presidential than “Bushesque”). Perhaps a concerted effort is required to keep these and other such words — “cockamamie,” “yonder,” “betwixt,” “towsack,” etc. — in use. For Lisa’s sake.

Apparently the English lexicon in the early 21st century owes a hefty debt to The Simpsons. In 2001, the Oxford English Dictionary legitimized the term “d’oh,” Homer’s iconic expression of frustration, by including it within its pages. Now another expression from the show – “meh” – has made it into the Collins Dictionary.

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The origins of “meh” are murky, but the term grew in popularity after being used in a 2001 episode of The Simpsons in which Homer suggests a day trip to his children Bart and Lisa.

“They both just reply ‘meh’ and keep watching TV,” said Cormac McKeown, head of content at Collins Dictionaries.

The dictionary defines “meh” as an expression of indifference or boredom, or an adjective meaning mediocre or boring. Examples given by the dictionary include “the Canadian election was so meh”.

Notwithstanding the precision of that usage example, Quillblog would like to suggest some other words or phrases that should be officially sanctioned in the English language: OMG, lolcats, my bad, misunderestimated, and awesomesauce.

Hanged for treason in 1885 as a result of his part in the Northwest Rebellions, Louis Riel has seen an uptick in his reputation in the last 40 years or so. But it’s unlikely that most people would associate him with Canadian poetry, even though Riel was apparently a fairly prolific poet. According to an article entitled “The Political Poetry of Louis Riel: A Semiotic Study” by Glen Campbell (presumably not the singer), Riel “wrote a considerable amount of poetry in the form of fables, love poems, songs, letters in verse as well as political and religious compositions.”

This week, several of the handwritten poems he wrote in prison while awaiting execution will go on the auction block in Toronto.

According to the CBC:

The poems came to light after being held by descendants of North West Mounted Police Const. Robert Hobbs, who gave the Métis leader the writing pad in his jail cell shortly before his execution for treason.

In return, Riel gave the poems to Hobbs as a gift.

The poetry, which is expected to fetch upwards of $5,000, is of interest from an historical perspective, but is not likely to put the reputations of Robert Service or Duncan Campbell Scott into question. One of the poems to be auctioned off reads, in part:

Prophet of the new world, I
Do the work of the Most High.
I assert it with no pride.
I live in humility:
Is there any one to side
With me?

Although these lines could easily be mistaken for lyrics to a Stryper or Creed anthem, the poem is signed “Louis ‘David’ Riel.”

The winner of the second annual Man Asian Literary Prize has a Canadian connection – the 31-year-old Filipino author lives in Montreal, where he works as a copy-editor at The Gazette.

Miguel Syjuco, who received an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University, picked up the $10,000 (U.S.) prize yesterday in Hong Kong for his debut novel Ilustrado, which tells the story of fictional man-of-letters Crispin Salvador. The novel was written in English but has yet to find a North American publisher. (The Man Asian is awarded to books that are unpublished in English.)

The judges’ panel was presided over by the Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson, who praised the book for its stylistically daring premise:

Ilustrado seems to us to possess formal ambition, linguistic inventiveness and sociopolitical insight in the most satisfying measure. Brilliantly conceived, and stylishly executed, it covers a large and tumultuous historical period with seemingly effortless skill. It is also ceaselessly entertaining, frequently raunchy, and effervescent with humour.