Dark people groaning. To mistake this book for a piece of art it would be necessary to not read it. To be sure, it's not as if any of the other nominees got robbed. And Sontag has certainly paid her dues. It is necessary to complain because American literary culture has arrived at a moment at which the blandest and most noncommittal hedging is often the only response writers and critics will give a bad book, while books of decent but unremarkable craftsmanship are crowned now and again like strange, stunted kings and queens.
Mediocrity is rewarded according to some inexplicable logic of publicity and luck.
And so, with the gargantuan chain bookstores piling hundreds of new titles onto their shelves and then pulping them days later to make room for the next potential sensation, the chances of readers finding what good books do exist are reduced and reduced. If books matter, then bad books matter, and it is vital that we treat them fiercely. In America is annoying and exasperating, inessential and ugly. That it won the National Book Award is a pity, but the notion that its improbable coronation should not be treated fiercely is part of the tragedy modern American literary culture is becoming. Finding a literature of worth in America becomes more and more difficult, until that literature disappears entirely, having slipped from being overshadowed by mediocrity to being made invisible by it.