The Mumpsimus

And if my thought-dreams could be seen They’d probably put my head in a guillotine — "It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)"  First, some axioms. Points. Nodes. Notes. (After which, a few fragments.) From Alfred Nobel's will: "The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: ...one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction..." Even if every winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature were universally acclaimed as worthy, there would still be more worthy people who had not won the Prize than who had. Thus, the Nobel Prize in Literature will always be disappointing. The history of the Nobel Prize in Literature is a history of constant, repeated disappointment. The Nobel Prize in Literature's purpose is not to recognize the unrecognized, nor to provide wealth to the unwealthy, nor to celebrate literary translation, nor to br...

According to the Caine Prize on Twitter , the winner of this year's award is Rotimi Babatunde for "Bombay's Republic". You can read the story as a PDF via the Prize website. It was the first of this year's nominees that I wrote about as part of the Caine Prize Blogathon, and my post also has links to other bloggers' (quite varied) takes on the story. It was certainly among the top of the stories for me, though I'm glad I didn't have to make the choice, as this year's group of nominees was generally impressive overall . Congratulations to everyone involved!

I've voiced my qualms about the Caine Prize for African Literature before, particularly in terms of the stories that often end up winning the award, and so I found this statement by this year's Chair of Judges, Bernardine Evaristo , encouraging: I’m looking for stories about Africa that enlarge our concept of the continent beyond the familiar images that dominate the media: War-torn Africa, Starving Africa, Corrupt Africa — in short: The Tragic Continent. I’ve been banging on about this for years because while we are all aware of these negative realities, and some African writers have written great novels along these lines (as was necessary, crucial), isn’t it time now to move on? Or rather, for other kinds of African novels to be internationally celebrated. What other aspects of this most heterogeneous of continents are being explored through the imaginations of writers? I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with individual Tragic Continent stories — I ...

I am a juror for this year's Shirley Jackson Awards (along with Laird Barron, Maura McHugh, Kaaron Warren, and Gary K. Wolfe), for which the nominees have just been announced . It's a diverse and interesting list, I think, but then, I'm one fifth of the people responsible for it, so I'm a bit biased. The winners will be announced at Readercon in July. NOVEL The Devil All the Time , Donald Ray Pollock (Doubleday) The Dracula Papers , Reggie Oliver (Chômu Press) The Great Lover , Michael Cisco (Chômu Press) Knock Knock , S. P. Miskowski (Omnium Gatherum Media) The Last Werewolf , Glen Duncan (Canongate Books, Ltd.) Witches on the Road Tonight , Sheri Holman (Grove Press) NOVELLA “And the Dead Shall Outnumber the Living, ” Deborah Biancotti ( Ishtar , Gilgamesh Press) “A Child’s Problem,”  Reggie Oliver ( A Book of Horrors , Jo Fletcher Books) “Displacement,”  Michael Marano ( Stories from the Plague Years , Cemetery Dance Publications) The Men Upst...

The only Oscars ceremony that had a specific effect on my life happened thirty years ago, when I was six years old. It was the 54th Academy Awards , and On Golden Pond  was our local hero, having mostly been filmed about ten miles away from my house. Everybody I knew seemed to have at least a little connection to it somehow, or claimed to. At six years old, I didn't really understand what any of it meant, but I knew how much the adults seemed to care, and how special the moment seemed to them. The movie immediately became an indelible part of my life. If that had been it, I'd look back on the 1982 Oscar ceremony with the sort of gauzy nostalgia that fills the movie. But Ernest Thompson won an Oscar that night for adapting his play into a screenplay, and I've known Ernest now for an amount of years neither of us will admit to, and worked with him on numerous local projects. We have really different aesthetics, and I love that — he's been at times the ideal teacher...

I'm a juror for the Shirley Jackson Awards this year, so perhaps I'm more sensitive than normal to pundits carping about award results, but something about awards brings out people's desire to complain, and they don't usually come out looking very good by doing so. The ones people always complain about get complaints again this year -- the Nobel and the National Book Awards. The two articles I've seen linked to most frequently are Tim Parks on the Nobel and Laura Miller on the National Book Awards . The Parks piece isn't terrible, but I'd agree with M.A. Orthofer at The Literary Saloon that it's "somewhat careless" . (Parks has written a bit more thoughtfully about the Nobel in his essay "The Nobel Individual" .) I certainly agree that the Nobel is inevitably in a tough position because it's supposed to be so international and definitive, and people give it almost mystical reverence, but its track record really isn't tha...

The winner of this year's Caine Prize for African Writing is NoViolet Bulawayo for her story "Hitting Budapest" , originally published by Boston Review . "Hitting Budapest" was the first story we wrote about for the Caine Prize blogathon, and it's held up better in my memory than I expected it would. Despite my qualms about some aspects of it, there's a vividness to the language that gives it some freshness. Were I on the jury, it wouldn't have been my first choice (that would be "The Mistress's Dog" ), but it might have been second, or tied for second with "In the Spirit of McPhineas Lata" , though that's a story that, unlike "Hitting Budapest", has diminished in my memory.

This post is part of a series initiated by Aaron Bady of Zunguzungu in which various bloggers will write about the five short stories nominated for this year's Caine Prize for African Writing. For more information, see my introductory post . I think Aaron is right to say that NoViolet Bulawayo's "Hitting Budapest" fits into a genre of African writing (fiction and memoir): "the story of children left behind by their society, either running wild in perverse and monstrous ways (as in the child soldier narrative, in particular) or festering in horrible ignorance and social pathology" -- and genre  is a pretty good word for it, because such stories vary considerably in quality and effect while displaying some common features. It's a genre the Caine Prize is particularly welcoming toward, as I noted in my review of the anniversary anthology of Caine winners. The paragraph about "Jungfrau" in that review applies pretty equally to "Hitting B...

Aaron Bady has come up with a great idea : since the Caine Prize for African Writing will be awarded in five weeks, and there are five short stories nominated, why not write about one story a week until the award? I'm going to throw myself into this, because I think the Caine Prize is important, and the exercise could be fun. I hope lots of other folks will join in. Here are the nominated stories, all available online as PDFs: NoViolet Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) ‘Hitting Budapest’ from ‘The Boston Review’ Vol 35, no. 6 - Nov/Dec 2010  [or direct link to the story at Boston Review ] Beatrice Lamwaka (Uganda) ‘Butterfly dreams’ from ‘Butterfly Dreams and Other New Short Stories from Uganda’ published by Critical, Cultural and Communications Press, Nottingham, 2010 Tim Keegan (South Africa) ‘What Molly Knew’ from ‘Bad Company’ published by Pan Macmillan SA, 2008 Lauri Kubuitsile (Botswana) ‘In the spirit of McPhineas Lata’ from ‘The Bed Book of Short Stories’ published by ...

When I found out I was nominated for the Last Drink Bird Head award, I thought the other folks in my category were so immensely talented and deserving that it was inconceivable -- INCONCEIVABLE! -- that I could win. Jeff VanderMeer asked me to appoint someone to accept the award in my absence should I win, and also to write an acceptance speech in case I happened to need one. I got busy and forgot about this request, and remembered a couple days ago and thought, "No, there's no way." And then I won . So here I am, like the occasional Oscar winner who doesn't write a speech because there's just no way in heckapalooza they could win, and then they do, and they speak extemporaneously and bizarrely, and everyone then thinks, "Wow, that person is a bird brain!" Here, after the fact, is my extemporaneous acceptance speech upon winning the Last Drink Bird Head award in the category of "Expanding Our Vocabulary": Oh wow. Gosh. Wow. Okay. ...

Jeff VanderMeer has announced the second year of the Last Drink Bird Head Award nominations , and I was wondrous amazed to find myself listed there in the category of "Expanding Our Vocabulary: In recognition of writers whose nonfiction, through reviews, blogging, and/or essays, exposes readers to new words and, often, new ideas..." The other nominees in the category are the sagacious Anil Menon , the acroatic Abigail Nussbaum , and the argute Adam Roberts -- lambent flames of intellect, each! The nominees in the other categories are marvelous as well, and I do not envy the judges their judging, because I would never want to distinguish between such distinguished folks -- in all of the categories, the nominees are people I read with great pleasure and from whom I've learned a lot over the years. Now I must go back to poring over lexical tomes, preparing to vanquish my rivals in the grand mudwrestling-while-reciting-the-OED event that will, I'm told, determine ...

Chris Garcia of the fanzine Drink Tank asked me if he could reprint my blog post on Julian Comstock in a Hugo issue, and after taking a look at some of the hundreds of back-issues, I happily said sure thing.  I'm woefully ignorant of most fanzines, but enjoyed what I read at Drink Tank , and the Hugo Special that's just been put up as a PDF is really a great read.  It's full of opinionated and not at all orthodox pieces about the Hugo Awards in general and this year's slate in particular. At Readercon last week, I was talking with John Kessel and Brett Cox about generational differences in the science fiction world, and the fact that many young writers got into SF through movies and books of the '80s and '90s rather than classics from the " Golden Age" eras.  John said, "But you seem to know some of that work," and I said I'm a weirdo because most of the SF I read in my early, most impressionable years came from a college library th...

Here's some fun news for the day: Samuel Delany is one of the five judges for the National Book Award in the Fiction category for 2010 . The entire panel is interesting: in addition to Delany, it includes Andrei Codrescu, Sabina Murray, Joanna Scott, and Carolyn See. Oh, to be a fly on the wall for the discussions amongst such a group!

Dear Nebula Voters, I know what your real purpose is with the nominees for this year's award.  Don't think you can hide your secret, conspiratorial goals from me!  I know what you really want to do is cause me immense angst by putting some of my favorite people up against each other in your various (nefarious!) categories.  You know when it comes to awards I root for the people I know and like before I even consider anything else, because of course the people I know and like are all the greatest writer in the world, but what am I supposed to do when you, for instance, put VanderMeer up against Barzak in the novel category?! I'm safe, at least, with the short story category.  Jim Kelly is the only writer I know well there, so obviously he should win.  Novelette is worse -- Paolo Bacigalupi is the one person whose short stories have caused me to write a long essay , and he's a really nice guy (well, as long as you don't burn lots of hydrocarbons in front...

I'll admit it: I have a sentimental love of the Hugo Awards . The Hugo Winners anthologies edited by Isaac Asimov were essential to forming my early view of what science fiction is and can be (Asimov's introductions to the stories were as important as the stories themselves, painting a portrait of a community of readers and writers that I deeply wished I could join). The Hugo Winners volumes 1-5 sit proudly on my living room bookshelves -- below shelves of Chekhov and Kafka, above a shelf of Virgina Woolf and a shelf of Shakespeare. I didn't have a problem with Adam Roberts's recent call for the Hugos to get "better", because in amidst the shouts of "elitist!" and "nuh uh!" it led to some good conversation. Criticism of the Hugos is an important tradition. Soon after I discovered the Hugo Winners anthologies in a library, I discovered in a used bookstore two anthologies edited by Richard Lupoff: What If? volumes one and two . Sub...

Now and then, those of us who write book reviews let our guard down and make generalized statements that could be proved wrong with a single exception. Sometimes we buffer such statements with qualifiers that technically relieve them of being pure generalizations, but I doubt many readers are fooled. For instance, last year I wrote a somewhat less than positive review of Nisi Shawl's short story collection Filter House . I even said this: While I find it easy to believe readers will experience Shawl's stories in different ways -- such is the case with any basically competent fiction -- I cannot imagine how a reader who is sensitive to literature's capabilities and possibilities could possibly say these stories offer much of a performance. I certainly made a point of highlighting my subjectivity here: "I cannot imagine how...", but still. The intent is clear. I spent most of the review saying, in one way or another, that this book seemed to me the epitome of m...

Okay, now the world feels small. For the first time, I know someone in all the fiction categories of the Nebula nominees . And not just like encountered on Facebook once (though there is that...) -- but was roommates at the World Fantasy Convention with (Dave Schwartz), wrote a story with (Jeff Ford), have known since I was in the 7th grade (Jim Kelly). Rick Bowes keeps my first child in a basement in Hell's Kitchen. Kelley Eskridge I know the least of the group, but she's among the awesomest people on Earth, so I have to claim her anyway. (She's teaching my second child to dance.) John Kessel I met for the first time this summer, but I think he was the one who convinced Rick that my first child needed a basement and some electrodes. It's a good thing I'm not a SFWA member, because my approach to awards is to root for my friends, and I would have trouble voting with so many good people nominated. I think I'd advocate for mud wrestling to determine the win...

Matt Bell has won the StorySouth Million Writers Award for his story "Alex Trebek Never Eats Fried Chicken" from Storyglossia . (Galleycat has a good write-up about the award and Matt here .) I'm noting this not because I'm a big fan of awards, but because I had not noticed Matt's name before Jeff and Ann VanderMeer picked his story "Mario's Three Lives" for Best American Fantasy 2008 , and it's fun to see someone whose work we read without any knowledge of his background or abilities now achieving some recognition. So congrats to Matt, and let's hope this is just the beginning of many more accomplishments in the future!

It's the time of year for me to be utterly torn -- torn by my knowledge that the Oscars are a ridiculous ritual and by my fascination with them. They are, as somebody (I don't remember who) once said, the Superbowl for gay people, and I have often dreamed of tailgating the ceremony whilst wearing my pink feather boa. (Or maybe Tayari Jones's coat . Except I think I somehow look like Rudy Giuliani in that picture.) And yet I also agree with a lot of what A.O. Scott said about them : "The Oscars themselves may be harmless fun, but the idea that they matter is as dangerous as it is ridiculous." So I'm going to give up on matter for the moment, and instead indulge in harmless fun by offering unsolicited and utterly useless opinions on films I have seen and not seen. (Do note, though, that last year I lost on Oscar betting to Ms. McCarron .) Here we go, with the help of the official list : Actor: Consensus seems to be that Daniel Day-Lewis will win, and that ...

The latest issue of Strange Horizons has been posted and includes a column in which I blather on a bit and then recommend some literary journals that adventurous readers might enjoy. While I'm here, I'd like to offer congratulations to the World Fantasy Award winners for this year -- especially to such friends, supporters, and critics of The Mumpsimus as Mary Rickert, Jeff Ford, and Ellen Datlow. I was not at the World Fantasy Convention, for various reasons, but I had a little mini-convention all of my own. Friday's highlight was a panel on laundry. On Saturday, I participated in a kaffeeklatch with a writer I admire, Richard Larson , then continued on with him to see the associational (because its title invokes a fantastic creature) movie Before the Devil Knows You're Dead , which he liked overall a bit more than I did, but which I nonetheless thought was certainly worth seeing. And then on Sunday, to finish it all up, I moderated a special session of the SATs ...