|
 |
 | | | | | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| | You are in: Entertainment: Arts | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | | Thursday, 15 November, 2001, 18:00 GMT Franzen wins US book prize  Winfrey chose The Corrections as her book of the month An author who had a much-publicised spat with Oprah Winfrey has won the $10,000 (�6,900) prize at the US National Book Awards. Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections picked up the fiction prize at the award ceremony hosted by Steve Martin. He recently hit headlines for refusing to allow his work to be Winfrey's book of the month for her book club in September. But Franzen said using her logo on his book cover was nothing more than a corporate endorsement, and that he was worried it would affect his standing in high-art circles.
Fellow writers such as Andre Dubus III and Thom Jones also criticised his elitist attitude. Accepting his National Book Award, Franzen joked that he had become "blood sport entertainment" and confessed he would welcome anyone to come and take his place as a hate figure. He thanked Winfrey for her "advocacy" and trumpeted books as "the most lovely things human beings make". The Corrections, a 500-page tome charting the life of a dysfunctional Midwest family, received critical acclaim on its release. The National Book Awards non-fiction prize was awarded to Andrew Solomon for The Noonday Demon and Virginia Euwer Wolff won the young people's literature prize for her novel True Believer. The winner in the poetry category was Alan Dugan for Poems Seven. | | See also:  Internet links: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites Top Arts stories now:  Links to more Arts stories are at the foot of the page. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Links to more Arts stories |
 | | ^^ Back to top News Front Page | World | UK | UK Politics | Business | Sci/Tech | Health | Education | Entertainment | Talking Point | In Depth | AudioVideo ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To BBC Sport>> | To BBC Weather>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © MMIII|News Sources|Privacy  |
E-mail this story to a friend