America's preeminent literary prize, recognizing achievements in four separate genres: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People's Literature
Winners since the 1960s have been overwhelmingly leftwing
Since the 1960s, of the approximately 90 writers honored by the National Book Awards in nonfiction categories for books that dealt with historical, political, or political culture matters, only three or four could be called conservative.
A consortium of book-publishing groups sponsored the first annual National Book Awards ceremony on March 15, 1950 in New York City. Their stated goal was "to enhance the public's awareness of exceptional books written by fellow Americans, and to increase the popularity of reading in general." In the ensuing decades, the National Book awards have become America's most prestigious literary prizes, recognizing achievements in four separate genres: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People's Literature. The winners are selected by a five-member panel of judges, and are given $10,000 in cash and a crystal sculpture.Until the mid-1960s, the National Book Awards represented a fair recognition of great writing across different perspectives and genres. But increasingly since that time, the awards have been an exercise in political as much as literary judgment.
During the 1950s and into the early 1960s, a host of writers were honored who crossed the political and cultural spectrum. James Dickey, Wallace Stevens, John Crowe Ransom and Robert Penn Warren won in the arena of poetry. Walker Percy and William Faulkner took honors for their fiction. All were men of arguably conservative sensibilities, even if not notably political. Prominent liberals also were recognized, among them Rachel Carson, George Kennan, Ralph Ellison, Archibald MacLeish and William Shirer. Whether one agreed or disagreed with the choices, there was ecumenical representation that suggested the absence of political or cultural litmus tests.
Things began to change in the 1960s as the radical left began mobilizing against American power and the Vietnam War. In 1966, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. won for his adoring portrait of the short-lived Kennedy administration, A Thousand Days. In 1968, liberal icon George Kennan was honored for his memoirs. In 1969, Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night, an anti-Vietnam War memoir, captured a National Book Award.
Erik H. Erikson was honored in 1970 for his work on Gandhi and his non-violent techniques, a politically correct stance in the midst of the anti-war movement. Other winners included former communist and leftist Lillian Hellman for her memoir, An Unfinished Woman; James MacGregor Burns for his flattering biography of Franklin Roosevelt, The Soldier of Freedom; Joseph Lash for Eleanor and Franklin; and France Fitzgerald for Fire in the Lake, a book that glorified the Viet Cong.
This trend toward liberal and leftist perspectives continued over the next two decades. Winners included Murray Kempton, Peter Gay, Joyce Carol Oates, Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, Irving Howe, Arthur Schlesinger again for another Kennedy portrait, Robert Jay Lifton, Peter Matthiessen, Malcolm Cowley, Barbara Tuchman, Susan Sontag, Edmund Morris, Ronald Steel, Victor Navasky of The Nation magazine, Thomas Friedman of TheNew York Times, Alice Walker, and Alan Brinkley, to name just a few.
Not only are many of these authors left or liberal in their views, but so is the subject matter. For instance, there are biographies of Norman Thomas, the Kennedys, Huey Long, Walter Lippmann, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. There are multiple studies on Western complicity in the slave trade. There are critical accounts of the dropping of the Atomic bomb at the end of World War II, and the failures of the American system to deal with seemingly intractable social ills, but very little that celebrates Western contributions to freedom and democracy. No prominent conservative or Republican person is even the subject of a winning book save Theodore Roosevelt, though a number of authors are honored in the nonfiction categories for their critical reviews of the U.S. role in Vietnam -- Fitzgerald and Mailer being joined by Gloria Emerson (Winners and Losers), Neil Sheehan (The Bright Shining Lie), and James Carroll (An American Requiem).
In the 1990s, virtually every nonfiction winner was written by liberals or noted leftists: Orlando Patterson, at Harvard, for his book Freedom (1991);Gore Vidal, for his collection of essays, United States (1993); Tina Rosenberg, for The Haunted Land (1995); Carroll for An American Requiem (1996), Edward Ball, former Village Voice writer, for Slaves in the Family (1998); John Dower, for Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (1999); and Robert Caro, for Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (2002).
Scanning the list of NBA winners over three decades, it is difficult to find more than a smattering of conservative writers, historians or thinkers. Robert Nozick in 1975 was honored for Anarchy, State and Utopia, and Henry Kissinger in 1980 for White House Years. One could argue that Tom Wolfe, who won for Right Stuff, has conservative leanings. Likewise, though Fox Butterfield writes for the liberal New York Times, his book, China: Alive in the Bitter Sea, has been rightly praised for its honest portrait of life under communist rule. Carlos Eire, who won for his book, Waiting for Snow in Havana, did not hesitate to observe during his acceptance speech that he would be imprisoned for his writings were he still in Cuba. Bill Buckley won not for his political commentary, but for his mystery, Stained Glass. David Horowitz and Peter Collier managed a nomination for their book on the Rockefellers, but that was before their turn to the right.
Since the 1960s, of the approximately 90 writers honored by the National Book Awards in nonfiction categories for books that dealt with historical, political or political culture matters, only three or four could be called conservative. More than 60 have had clear ties to leftist/liberal causes or concerns.
A review of the National Book Award judges since 2001 turned up a disproportionate representation of writers with alternative or left to liberal perspectives: Richard Rodriguez, a liberal commentator for the Public Broadcasting System; Christine Stansell, a Princeton professor whose history on the Bohemians includes a romantic portrait of John Reed, Emma Goldman and other communists; Alex Kotlowitz, whose book, There Are No Children Here, documents life in a Chicago housing project; and Terry Tempest Williams, a prominent pro-environment activist from Utah. Others included Gail Buckley, author and daughter of entertainer Lena Horne; Mary Karr, a professor at Syracuse University; Jonathon Kirsch, book editor of the Los Angeles Times; Lawrence Jackson, professor at Emory University, and Michael Kinsley, currently the Editorial, Op-Ed and Letters Pages Editor of the Los Angeles Times. The only judge with any clear connections to conservatism was Terry Teachout, who has written for the Wall Street Journal and Commentary, and who edited a collection of Whittaker Chambers' journalism.
This profile is adapted from the article “Political Prize: The National Book Award,” written by George Shadroui and published by FrontPageMagazine.com on March 5, 2004.
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