Sunday, September 21, 2003

By Bob Hoover, Post-Gazette Book Editor

So Stephen King will get an award for his "contributions to American letters" from the National Book Foundation, sponsors of the National Book Award.

So what?

There's been a bit of a hue and cry since the foundation made the announcement last week because it takes a stretch to include King's oeuvre under the "letters" rubric.

King will assume the mantle worn by such literary lions as Oprah Winfrey when the winners are announced Nov. 19 in New York. The TV hostess was anointed in 1999.

The 39-year-old Michael Chabon, retaining his reputation for boyish enthusiasm, told an Associated Press reporter:

"I think [King's] a force for good in the world. People like writers to stay in the boxes. The 20th century was supposedly about breaking down those barriers between high art and popular culture, and yet it still feels like there's some kind of transgression when Stephen King gets a National Book Award medal."

Take that, you snobs.

The basic intent of this "lifetime achievement" prize of sorts is to honor "an American author who has enriched the literary landscape through a lifetime of service or body of work."

King has definitely worked in the service of writing. He has contributed generously to libraries and schools, advised younger writers and championed electronic publishing as an alternative to the traditional route.

He's also made his traditional publisher lots of money, a fact certainly not lost on the book foundation which is supported by the mainstream press.

Commercial success is what the National Book Awards are all about as well, particularly in the most-watched categories, fiction and nonfiction. (Since there's very little dough in poetry, that prize maintains a higher literary standard.)

Getting the book award is viewed as a good bet to boost sales, so the politicking and schmoozing, while not approaching the one-step-away-from-bribery Oscar campaigns, is all part of the scene.

In stark contrast to King was last year's winner, Philip Roth, the prickly novelist whose body of work outshines his service to the book world as brightly as it overshadows King's banality.

Yet Roth, who cannot be accused of writing novels for the booboisie, saw a way to cash in on last year's award. His acceptance speech is now copyrighted so he can reuse it in a book.

The speeches of most past winners can be read on the foundation Web site, www.nationbook.org, but Roth's is marked "unavailable."

He wrote it, so technically he owns it. I only wish I had taken better notes at the ceremony because he did examine the fascinating subject of the "new American," the child of immigrants who eagerly embraces the traditional literature of the country in order to become a red, white and blue Yankee.

But back to King. He's not my style, mostly because I'm not attracted to the monster-in-the-closet (or psyche) genre, but I have dutifully made my way through a few of his novels and his 2000 memoir-advice effort, "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft," which contained some gems among its self-indulgences and self-pity.

King said he gravitated to the horror school because of unpleasantness in childhood, which included a flatulent baby sitter.

Guess that'll do it.

Regardless, his hair-raisers have found an enthusiastic and free-spending audience who buy his books in the millions. King also has inspired a gaggle of imitators like the tireless Dean Koontz, the outre Patricia Cornwell and the plodding James Patterson.

Each strains to outdo the other with bigger, bloodier and more brutal fantasies, a constant message that these are dangerous times but that good will always prevail. Lately, though, the last part of that message has been dropped by a new collection of funhouse authors who offer no hope.

The hottest writer right now is Chuck Palahniuk, creator of such bleak violent tales as "Fight Club," "Lullaby" and "Choke." The latest from Palahniuk is "Diary," which takes desperation to another level.

His last book tour stop was Tuesday at the University of Pittsburgh, and he drew the biggest crowd of fans in their 20s that I've ever seen in this town for a writer.

They packed the auditorium at Alumni Hall, the former Masonic Temple, in Oakland, standing in the aisles and stretched out in front of the stage.

The writer, a good-looking, trim 41-year-old, warned his crowd, with much pride, that the story he would read, "Guts," had led to more than 25 fainting spells, including one that sent the victim into convulsions.

He apparently added at least two more to his hit list on Tuesday.

Palahniuk's implication was that making people sick was the gold standard for literature. His story, read with a diabolic eagerness, was about the dangers of autoeroticism in the modern age and featured a swimming pool pump among its sex toys.

There's simply no way I can reveal more details about the story except that it was grosser than even King could imagine. It was the verbal equivalent of a two-headed fetus in a jar from a carnival sideshow.

Palahniuk has done better work, which is now being embraced by the mainstream, albeit with some nose-holding. Yet his appeal to the 20s crowd on Tuesday sends the same kind of message to publishers that King's fright-night books did: Money.

Can you think of a better reason to give him a prize?

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