Book news: John Updike dies, NBCC awards announced

John Updike, prolific and gifted writer, has died at the age of 76. I'll be the first to say he wasn't my kind of novelist or poet (though I liked his art criticism). But I may have encountered him too early: I read my mother's copy of Rabbit Redux when I was about 14, surely before I was prepared for it. (That summer I also read John Irving's The World According to Garp, another novel for grownups.) In any event, his death has meaning for this class because Updike managed to combine best-seller status with serious literary attention. Not many writers can do that.

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The finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Awards have been announced. The NBCC is one of the three big prizes for literature in America (the other two are the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize). I'm not surprised at the fiction nominations (Roberto Bolaño's 2666 was probably the best-reviewed novel this year), but the poetry nominations are surprising. They included Pierre Martory's The Landscapist, translated from the French by John Ashbery. I didn't know translated works were open to nomination. Would the award go to Martory or to Ashbery, the most important American poet alive?

Another poetry nomination for Devin Johnston's Sources. When I first met Devin, he was, I think, barely a teenager. He's matured into a remarkable poet.

Check the list of nominees, and note the presses. Which have you read? Which would you like read? Why? What do you notice about the differences in publishers for the different categories?