NB Award, 1960

Fiction

Winner: Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth

others nominated:
Pursuit of the Prodigal by Louis Auchincloss
The Light Infantry Ball by Hamilton Basso
Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow
Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell, Jr.
The Mansion by William Faulkner
Wake Up, Stupid by Mark Harris
The War Lover by John Hersey
Men Die by H.L. Humes
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The Third Choice by Elizabeth Janeway
The Pistol by James Jones
The Cool World by Warren Miller
Malcolm by James Purdy
The Return of Hyman Kaplan by Leo Rosten
The Poorhouse Fair by John Updike
The Cave by Robert Penn Warren
The Devil's Advocate by Morris West

Poetry

Winner: Life Studies by Robert Lowell

there's no listing of others nominated in 1960 for poetry...strange

These lists are makin' me feel stoopid. All I read from this one is Goodbye, Columbus and The Return of Hyman Kaplan.

Where's the list of books that were missed in these years?

Here it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_in_literature

They missed To Kill a Mockingbird

It's rather humbling isn't it? And this is just the NB Award. Wait till we get to the Bookers, Pulitzers, Nobels. Nothing for me here, though I think I might have read that Shirley Jackson in hs.

Louis Auchincloss is a writer who comes up a lot on these lists; I grabbed one of his recently based solely on his reputation, knowing nothing about the book. He's known, I've come to find out, for chronicling Manhattan socialites. Curious if anyone's read him in particular.

H.L. Humes was one of the founders of the Paris Review. I lucked out awhile back and was able to grab his first novel, The Underground City: A Novel about the French resistance and Paris underground movement during wwii, but have never come across the one nominated here.

3> Harper Lee was nominated the following year, '61. It's confusing: the NB Awards nominate books from the previous year and then call whatever book wins the NB Award winner for 1960, even though (for instance, in Philip Roth's case) his Goodbye, Columbus had been published in '59.

Ah! Then the Big Miss looks like Naked Lunch to me! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1959_in_literature

Yeah that's pretty inexcusable. Now, NL was only published in France in '59, not the U.S.A. till '62, so I thought, hmmm, maybe that's their excuse for not nominating it in '60; maybe they nominated it, then, in '63, but they didn't nominate it then either.

Only Henderson the Rain King for me which I really should re-read. I read it in a bad place and don't remember most of it.

I read Goodbye Columbus and hated it. Nothing else there, though I did read an Auchincloss or two once upon a time -- very waspy. To Kill a Mockingbird, on the other hand, is of course, brilliant. So far, I can't say I'm very impressed by the NBR's choices -- who was choosing? What about Updike's Rabbit Run and O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away and best yet, Green Eggs and Ham????

Only the Bellow. Love Philip Roth, though, and I have Goodbye Columbus in my pile.

From books published that year and not nominated: Rabbit Run and Green Eggs and Ham.

Being a fourteen year old boy at the time, I was all over The Return of Hyman Kaplan or, more rightly H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N) and, although it wasn't what I hoped, it was, as I recall quite entertaining, even for a fourteen year old.

I've read Henderson the Rain King and Life Studies. Stanley Kunitz's Selected Poems 1928-1958 was written in 1959, so that was probably on the list under consideration.

I've read Goodbye Columbus and Henderson the Rain King. I also read Mrs. Bridge and its companion novel Mr. Bridge, both of which I highly recommend. They were made into the movie Mr. and Mrs. Bridge starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward which was also quite good.

Goodbye, Columbus and The Haunting of Hill House.

*Henderson*, *The Haunting*, The Mansion, and *H-Y-M-A-N*, but all so long ago that there's not much left of any of them in the old memory bank.