Quote of the Day: Why the Pulitzer for Fiction Is Important

Ann Patchett (right), Karen Hayes at their book store.

"Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.

"Unfortunately, the world of literature lacks the scandal, hype and pretty dresses that draw people to the Academy Awards, which, by the way, is not an institution devoted to choosing the best movie every year as much as it is an institution designed to get people excited about going to the movies. The Pulitzer Prize is our best chance as writers and readers and booksellers to celebrate fiction. This was the year we all lost."

--Novelist and bookstore owner Ann Patchett on this year's lack of a Pulitzer Prize for fiction (here)

Photo of the Day: Enough Wings To Fly

Mark Puckett of ACI Holdings and me with the wings.

I'm not sure it's fair, to be honest. Every time I enter any contest at any business gathering, I seem to win something. The latest win is a year's supply of Buffalo Wild Wings. Mark Puckett, president of ACI Holdings in Roanoke, which owns a bunch of the restaurants, handed over 52 tickets for six wings each when my name was called.

Explaining the Pulitzers: A New Dynamic Arises in Year of the Young Woman

Sara Ganim prepares to receive a Pulitzer hug.

Some of us are trying to get a handle on the Pulitzer Prizes, announced yesterday. They are far more interesting this year for what they aren't than what they are. There is no fiction winner, no editorial writing winner and two of the major prizes went to online news organizations. The two largest print news organizations in the country didn't win at all and the NYTimes only won two.

Quiara Algeria Hudes

It is the Year of the Young Woman with 24-year-old Sara Ganim of the Harrisburg, Pa., Patriot-News winning for her Jerry Sandusky coverage; 34-year-old Quiara Algeria Hudes, who had two previous nominations, winning for her Iraq war play "Water by the Spoonful"; and 40-year-old Brooklyn poet Tracy Smith winning in that category.

There are reasons for all of this, but the myriad explanations can be boiled down to this: the world of information is changing and this is an exclamation point.

Tracy Smith

Nowhere is that world changing more substantially than in books, where a good one is as likely to be only available online (e-book) as it is in hardback. "Self-publish" is no longer the mark of a book that can't be published anywhere else, any more than a self-published music collection is necessarily less than what the studios would present you. Control is shifting and the Pulitzer boys recognize some of that and are fighting the rest.

I asked my friend Betsy Gehman in Lynchburg--who's seen a lot of these changes in her 90 years (next month) and she had this to say: 

I think it's confusing to those Pulitzer judges who really can't make a decision about what actually makes a book "good" when so many books are self-published these days.

I picture the doddering old white-hairs of the Pulitzer "industry" as confused and bewildered without the kiss of approval on a book that used to be conferred only by those long-established upper-crust publishers who threw lots of money into ad campaigns for their own very limited product. Pretty much like our political campaigns: the more money thrown at the advertising of their books, the more likely their candidates might be nominated.

They're all part of The Establishment.

You remember that once upon a time Hollywood was controlled by five or six all-powerful studios. Independent films were treated like trash. Today, there are no more studios. And coming soon: no more book publishing monoliths.

The Distant Early Warning has been sounded! Say farewell to Johannes Gutenberg. He had good long run!

Here's a look at who won and who made news (The NYTimes, of course, led with its two prizes, but jumped straight to the real importance of the story without taking a deep breath).

Some Simple Facts About Gun Ownership (Surprise!)

There are few stats on Women in their Underwear Who Own Guns, but the pix is good

Those of us who believe gun ownership in the United States should have significant limitations, got a bit of a boost with the new issue of The New Yorker Magazine and an article by Jill Lepore titled "Battleground America."

The story presented these simple facts:

• There are about 300,000,000 (300 million) privately-owned firearms in the U.S., one per person. That breaks out to 106 million handguns, 105 million rifles, 38 million shotguns.
• We're No. 1 (in the rate of civilian gun ownership in the world) and No. 2 Yeman has half as many guns per capita as we do.
• That said, most Americans don't own guns (which makes one wonder why in the hell the gun laws are as they are). Three fourths of people who own a gun in the U.S., own two or more. Gun ownership, in fact, has declined in the past several decades. In 1973 half our households had guns; in 2010 it was 1 in 3. Thirty years ago, a third of Americans owned guns. That's down to 20 percent.
• Men own guns at a rate of 1 in 3 (half in 1980) and women have remained steady at about 1 in 10 (though NRA scare tactics has kept that stat from falling).
• Another surprise: Gun ownership is higher among white people than among blacks. It is, of course, higher in the country than in the city, and among older people than younger people.

(Photo: gunslot.com)

Photo of the Day: Good Ol Girl, Ernie and Me

This was taken yesterday afternoon at the Hollins University Theatre, shortly before the production of "Good Ol' Girls" began. On the left is director Ernie Zulia, the theatrical genius who runs the program at Hollins and produces play after play of exquisite value.

We're posing with Mary Ellen Apgar, one of my favorite cast members of the student production (I love redheads; used to be one before it all grew out)--and a production that is very nearly as good as the professional version I saw several years ago. Mary Ellen, who is a Horizon student and history major, had some great numbers and so looked and talked the part of the good ol' girl. She's a senior and will graduate next month.

The show runs through Sunday and you are required to see it. It is quite marvelous.

Get on Board with Karen Kwaitkowski in the 6th District

Karen Kwaitkowski: Vote for her!

We've established pretty solidly over the years that I have almost nothing in common with Republicans and that me casting a vote for a Republican is about as likely as a cat asking, "How may I help you, sir?"

Then comes this 6th District Congressional challenger Karen Kwaitkowski and her "scorch the earth with the truth" campaign against incumbent Bob Goodlatte (a guy who originally ran on a platform of limited terms, but he hit the limit and kept going).

Goodlatte, like his colleague and political bunkmate Morgan Griffith, seems to believe that the less of his record and his core beliefs you know, the better for him. He won't even answer Karen (and forgive the familiarity of the first name, but I like her; hell, I like Bob, too, personally) when she asks if he'll debate her.

Griffith has spent an entire career--mostly in the Virginia General Assembly and now as the 9th District Congressional rep--for one term we'll pray to whomever we pray to--avoiding anything that has to do with telling you what he thinks and how he votes. If he could do it all in secret with no paper trail, my guess is he would. Bob seems to be going there, too.

Karen's a tough, smart, intellectually elegant former military officer and my guess is that she's going to give Bob a good campaign bruising before being defeated by a voting public that's not paying any attention at all. She makes a lot of good Libertarian points (and I share some issues with the Libs--like opposing wars, favoring medical [and personal] marijuana use, opposing absurdities like the Patriot Act and, in general, leaving people the hell alone unless they're doing something stupid or illegal).

I'm not sure where Karen stands on abortion, but regardless of which side, my guess is that it's honest, honorable, consistent and deeply felt--not a changing dynamic based on what the few people in the district who vote for wacked-out Republicans believe. My guess would also be that she would strongly support the rights of the people in Richmond this most recent general assembly session who did a whole lot of protesting about the war on women.

Regardless of where you're standing this political season--and the rest of the year--voting in the Republican primary for Karen against Bob Goodlatte is a good choice. Bob is part of the dysfunctional wing of the party, the one that is subverting the Constitution at every turn and rolling back gains we've made for nearly a century. His environmental record is one of the worst since those records have been kept. My guess is that I'll slip into the Repub primary, vote for Karen and feel good about it.

She's going to need money. Give her some, even if you're a liberal like me. She's honest, direct, a little goofy sometimes, but worth your time.  E-mail her campaign here or call Karen directly--at home--at 540-477-2821. She'll talk to you and, more important, she'll listen to you. She's a good one.

'Good Ol' Girls' Is as Good as the Professional Version

I anticipated the production of "Good Ol' Girls" at Hollins University for more than six months and even gave Christmas gifts based on having seen this wonderful show (written by Hollins grads Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle). This one would give me the opportunity to compare a professional, touring production of a little more than a decade ago with Ernie Zulia's version, using Hollins students as the actors (and everything else, nearly).

I'd call it a tie. The professional company, as I recall, has six crackerjack actors who played their own backup music. Today's show featured seven Hollins students, one 1980s graduate and a Roanoke actress with a good resume. Today's production also had a tight four-piece band that added extra life to a show that doesn't need it. Julie Hunsaker's (formerly of the Grandin Theatre) costumes were spot-on, as they always are.

Martha Boswell of Roanoke (who had a striking segment as an old lady in a nursing home that was funny and poignant) and JoAnn Lindsey Hairston of Abingdon (an '82 grad) were the non-students. Most of the students are seniors, giving their last performance and making the most of it. Ernie Zulia has turned out some fine talent and this group will rank with the best of it.

The students in this production are Mary Allen Apgar, Sarah Ingel, Maria Latiolais, Meredith Levy, Lianne Jackson McCray, Elaine Previs and Emma Sperka. They all had wonderful individual moments, highlighted for me by Emma Sperka's ballad "Lying to the Moon" and Elaine Previs' expressive "Late Date with the Blues."

"Good Ol' Girls" is an homage to those wonderful Southern women we grew up with, loved, argued with, were mothered by and adore every day of our lives. Nobody knows them better than Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle, who are Southern girls and Southern writers all at the same time.

Ernie says today's crowd was the oldest and most sedate of the series (as old as I am, I felt positively youthful with this group), but the evening crowds this week have "been raucous," said Ernie. "It's been really lively here" and if you know the music, you know why.

The play will run Thursday through Sunday of this week, then appear again in late May. The writers will be at the April 20 performance to sign books. Get tickets here.