Deborah Eisenberg’s The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg has won this year’s PEN/Faulkner. I have the lovely, large books, and think it is a deserving winner. Long live the short story!
It doesn’t hurt, in my estimation, that Eisenberg’s long-time companion is Wallace Shawn (whose father was long-time editor of The New Yorker).
Eisenberg is great. What’s going on anyway? All the right people seem to be winning awards. It’s all very strange. You can trust the UK awards to reset the balance askew…
Of course, Lee, some of us don’t think of Egan as “the right people”. :-)
I know, Kevin, I know…I’m just astonished that I haven’t had reason to be perplexed by recent award decisions…I simply can’t get used to it!
Ha, Lee. Turns out your taste is migrating towards the “middle” where awards juries lie — probably a process of aging, I would say. As for me, my choices continue to be rejected, indicating that I remain isolated on my promentory of taste. :-)
Probably absolutely spot-on there, though allow me to delude myself a while longer until this year’s hopeless Booker collective dwindle the opportunity to cast the spotlight on interesting work and wheel out the usual set of dodderers….
You were happy with last year’s Booker win, Lee. I’d say you’ve been pleasantly surprised for about 6 months now!
It’s true, Trevor, I was – it can’t last! Watch them have a ‘dry run’ for the next decade!