{"id":3389,"date":"2010-02-25T14:11:29","date_gmt":"2010-02-25T18:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2010\/02\/25\/penfaulkner-finalists-announced\/"},"modified":"2016-06-08T17:04:40","modified_gmt":"2016-06-08T21:04:40","slug":"penfaulkner-finalists-announced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2010\/02\/25\/penfaulkner-finalists-announced\/","title":{"rendered":"PEN\/Faulkner Finalists Announced"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t remember the PEN\/Faulkner announcing finalists before announcing the winner.\u00a0Have they done that in the past?\u00a0I know that last year I only heard about the finalists when I heard who won,\u00a0as is the case with\u00a0the Pulitzer.\u00a0This year they have announced five finalists from which a winner will be announced on March 23, 2010.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Sherman Alexie: <strong><em>War Dances<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Barbara Kingsolver: <strong><em>The Lacuna<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Lorraine M. L\u00f3pez: <strong><em>Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Lorrie Moore: <strong><em>A Gate at the Stairs<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Colson Whitehead: <strong><em>Sag Harbor<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m afraid I&#8217;m not going to be any help here.\u00a0Not only have I read none of the finalists, but I have no current plans to read one of them.\u00a0I loved Kingsolver&#8217;s <em>The Poisonwood Bible<\/em>, but I have heard that <em>The Lacuna<\/em> has been a disappointment in comparison, and I&#8217;m afraid I would compare.\u00a0I haven&#8217;t heard anything too positive about\u00a0Moore&#8217;s <em>A Gate at the Stairs<\/em>, even from lovers of Lorrie Moore, and I didn&#8217;t like the excerpt I read in <em>The New Yorker<\/em>.\u00a0I also didn&#8217;t particularly like the excerpt from Whitehead&#8217;s\u00a0<em>Sag Harbor <\/em>published in <em>The New Yorker <\/em>in 2008. Which brings up the side point that I rarely like these excerpts when published in <em>The New Yorker<\/em> (except for David Foster Wallace&#8217;s excerpts from <em>The Pale King<\/em> published in the last year), so perhaps I need to stop judging the novel on the short story. I have heard nothing about L\u00f3pez&#8217;s <em>Homicide Survivors Picnic<\/em>. If you go search for it at Amazon, it appears almost no one else has either. There are no reviews of it up there yet, and I haven&#8217;t seen any in print or on blogs. I can&#8217;t even find a good description of the book except for on the PEN\/Faulkner press release. It does look interesting, but in this case I&#8217;m going to wait for someone else to confirm that for me.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m a bit more interested in Alexie&#8217;s <em>War Dances<\/em>.\u00a0I think Alexie&#8217;s a fine writer, and\u00a0<em>War Dances<\/em>\u00a0is apparently a freewheeling collection of stories and poetry and other mixes.<\/p>\n<p>Still, not really compelled to read any of them right now.\u00a0Perhaps that&#8217;s because it is February.\u00a0I&#8217;ve never gotten on with February, and this latest blizzard I&#8217;m watching right now does little to lighten my mood. Maybe come spring one of the titles, if not the winner, will call my name.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m interested in any thoughts on the titles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The finalists for this year&#8217;s PEN\/Faulkner Award have been announced. <a href=\"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2010\/02\/25\/penfaulkner-finalists-announced\/\"><u>Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[798],"tags":[],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-3389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/PEN-Faulkner-logo.png?fit=224%2C225&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-SF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3389"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18490,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3389\/revisions\/18490"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3389"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}