Oates leads field of finalists with nods in 2 categories

Tim Weiner was nominated in the nonfiction category for ‘Legacy of Ashes: A
History of the CIA,’ winner of a National Book Award.

By LOUISE CHU

ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN FRANCISCO — Joyce Carol Oates led a field of National Book Critics Circle finalists announced Saturday, with nominations in both fiction and autobiography categories.

Oates was nominated in fiction for “The Gravedigger’s Daughter,” along with Junot Diaz’s “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” which was passed over for a National Book Award nomination last fall.

Other nominees were Marianne Wiggins’ “The Shadow Catcher,” Hisham Matar’s “In the Country of Men” and Vikram Chandra’s “Sacred Games.”

Missing from the list was Denis Johnson’s “Tree of Smoke,” a 600-page journey through the physical, moral and spiritual extremes of the Vietnam War, which captured the National Book Award.

Winners of the 34rd annual National Book Critics Circle prize will be announced March 6 in New York City. There are no cash prizes.

Oates also got a nod for her autobiographical “The Journals” in a relatively new award category. Also nominated were Joshua Clark for “Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone,” Edwidge Danticat for “Brother, I’m Dying,” Sara Paretsky for “Writing in an Age of Silence” and Anna Politkovskaya for “Russian Diary: A Journalist’s Final Account of Life, Corruption and Death in Putin’s Russia.”

In nonfiction, the finalists were Tim Weiner’s “Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA,” which won the National Book Award, as well as Philip Gura’s “American Transcendentalism,” Daniel Walker Howe’s “What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America 1815-1848,” Harriet Washington’s “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present,” and Alan Weisman’s “The World Without Us.”

Poetry nods went to Mary Jo Bang for “Elegy,” Matthea Harvey for “Modern Life,” Michael O’Brien for “Sleeping and Walking,” Tom Pickard for “The Ballad of Jamie Allan” and Tadeusz Rozewicz for “New Poems.”

Works in biography focused on authors, with Hermione Lee’s “Edith Wharton,” Arnold Rampersad’s “Ralph Ellison” and Claire Tomalin’s “Thomas Hardy” named as finalists. Tim Jeal’s “Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer” and John Richardson’s “The Life of Picasso: The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932” rounded out the category.

The criticism category, meanwhile, ranged widely from Susan Faludi’s “The Terror Dream,” which probes the cultural response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the familiar American mythology that framed our reaction, to Julia Alvarez’s “Once Upon a Quinceanera,” which explores this traditional rite of passage for young Hispanic girls. Also nominated: Joan Acocella’s “Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints,” Ben Ratliff’s “Coltrane: The Story of a Sound” and Alex Ross’ “The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century.”

Two honorary prizes for criticism also were announced at Saturday’s event in San Francisco. Sam Anderson won the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, and Emilie Buchwald won the Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award.

The National Book Critics Circle, founded in 1974, has around 500 members.