Ron Hogan of Beatrice schmoozes with NBA nominees Joan Silber and Lily Tuck.

“Last year, when the National Book Foundation nominated Stephen King for a lifetime achievement award,” [Tuck] recalled, “there was a huge hue and cry about how he was a popular writer, not a literary writer. Now they’re screaming and yelling that we’re too literary and not popular enough.”

I’m intrigued by the ways in which this year’s group of nominees — five women, all living in New York City — are being knit into a set, both socially and critically. The whole thing seems like a good subject for a Margaret Atwood novel.

The critical half of the set-making is broached by Caryn James in today’s New York Times. James charges that the nominated books have “a claustrophic sameness” and argues that “[t]his year’s list serves readers who like only a certain style – the style, say, of Rick Moody, the novelist and short-story writer who is chairman of the five-person fiction panel and who has been known to write some woozily poetic prose of his own.”

Link via OCIC, whose thoughtful insight into the matter vis a vis the snark factor should be read here.