GalleyCat provides thorough coverage of who was nominated as well as some amusing field notes from the announcement party.

What ran through Tingle Alley’s mind on reading the nominations:

• It’s a nice slate of fiction nominees: Edwidge Danticat, The Dew Breaker; Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty; David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas; Marilynne Robinson, Gilead; and Philip Roth, The Plot Against America. But in discussing these nominees, can we have a moratorium on retroactive bashing of the National Book Award fiction nominees? Haven’t those five women from New York had enough bitter mixed in with their sweetness?

Hasn’t Rick Moody suffered enough?!?

• The books in the nonfiction, criticism and biography categories were all written by men with the exception of De Kooning: An American Master, which was cowritten by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan.

Just saying.

• Nothing against Dylan but I kind of don’t give a whup that Chronicles Vol. 1 is nominated in the nonfiction category. Just let the rock star duke it out in the trenches of obscurity like any other guy, I say.

• Adrienne Rich was nominated in poetry. Huh. I didn’t know she was still alive.

• And yeah, I’m totally rooting for James Wood to win for The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel. Sarvas and I are going halfsies on a corsage for Mr. Wood to wear to the ceremony. (I kiss all the petals before it goes to you…)

• Finally — while he made me forever self-conscious with that Heathers comment in his lit blogging article for the NYTBR — Tingle Alley was glad to see that David Orr had been awarded the “Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing.” According to the NBCC website, “The award, named after a longtime supporter of the organization, is given annually to a member who has demonstrated high critical standards in his or her work. The finalists included Stacey D’Erasmo, Claire Dederer, Andrew O’Hagan, Thomas Powers and Stacy Schiff.”

I don’t know which piece he won for, or if the award is given for a body of work, but I thought Orr’s review of The Best American Poetry 2004 was outstanding.