I was quite pleased and excited to see that Bonnie  Jo Campbell, an alumna of my MFA program and Kalamazoo literary celebrity whom I interviewed for this blog, was nominated for the National Book Award this year for her collection of short stories, American Salvage. It was interesting to see her nomination announced on one of my favorite blogs, Jezebel, via this short post, “Nine Female Authors Finalists for National Book Awards”. That means almost half of the nominees are women, which is supposedly pretty good. Of course, we all know there are more male winners of major awards like the Pulitzer Prize and the Booker, but I wondered about the ratio of men to women nominees and winners for the National Book Award.  As a feminist whose sexism detector is always on fairly high alert, writing is one area of my life where I think about sexism the least. I read men and women equally without discrimination, and I don’t think my gender has anything to do with whether I am chosen for publication or accepted into a writer’s conference.  At all. But it is interesting to see that although there are just as many female aspiring writers, more men end up winning big prizes later in their careers.

In my very non-scientific study during a bout of writer’s block, I decided to take a look at the nominees and winners of the National Book Awards over the last 20 years, focusing only on fiction. From 1989 to 2008, there have been 45 female nominees and 55 male nominees–while women are still behind, it is certainly not by a huge margin. But in this same time, there have been 13 male winners and only seven female winners.  That’s almost twice as many men as women. In fact, the last female winner was Lily Tuck for her novel, The News From Paraguay, which took the award in 2004, a year when all the nominees were women. Since that year, things  have been going downhill somewhat; between 2005 and 2008, there were six female nominees, 14 male ones, and not a single female winner.

It’s interesting to see how these awards parallel women’s progress in many other areas of life. Though more women cook than men, there are still more male top chefs. Though more women ride horses than men, there are still slightly more men winning medals in the Olympics. Etc., etc.

An author’s gender has little to do with the experience I have with his or her book and obviously I am sure that the well-respected judges of the major book awards feel the same way.  But you can’t  help but wonder if sexism plays some kind of part when a beautiful book like Home by Marilynne Robinson, with its somewhat “domestic” subject matter, loses last year’s award to Shadow Country, by Peter Matthiessen, a book which explores the life and violent death of outlaw E.J. Watson, much more “masculine” subject matter.  In 20 years, it will be interesting to look back at the National Book Awards to see if the ratios have changed somewhat, or if women are still in close second.

Chances are good that you’ve never heard of John Williams the author; no, when you think of John Williams you think of the award-winning film score composer. The John Williams I’m speaking of is the National Book Award-winning writer, author of Augustus (NBA 1973), Stoner (our topic of discussion), and others. Williams was director of the creative writing program at the University of Denver for over 30 years. He died in 1994 of respiratory failure.

I just today finished reading Stoner and it’s a shame the book isn’t more well-known. Ultimately, John Williams presents us with a story of futility; William Stoner is an English professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, a man whose inability to act, his search for personal enlightenment through his studies, and his fear of life outside of academia keep him running in place until his uneventful death. It is a heartbreaking story and often I had to put the book down as I just couldn’t bear to see Stoner let another person walk over him. But the story itself is so compelling, told in such an uncomplicated and frank tone, and the psychology of a man confined is so well displayed, I would quickly pick the book back up and consume more of Williams’ tale.

I purchased this book without recommendation; I was recently turned onto the New York Review of Books Classics series by a friend’s suggestion of Oakley Hall’s Warlock. I enjoyed Warlock so much that I had to have another book in the series and after a bit of research, Stoner seemed right for me. As a writer of literary fiction myself, compelled to write in the rarely-evoked genre of midwestern gothic, Stoner appeared to fit into my search of the greatest midwestern gothic novels out there. The novel demonstrates the life and death of an academic in the midwest; I couldn’t ask for anything greater. It is a simple story but it contains so much human toil, living a life where almost every person and every thing encountered feels pitted against you, and even though Stoner feels downright pathetic at times, your empathy will never wane.

If anybody ever lets me loose in front of a classroom, John Williams’ Stoner will certainly be on my reading list.