autobiography category for his memoirs city boy. [applause] >> joyce carol oates is a writer of great compassion. she has written with warmth and understanding about the lives of oppressed women, boxers, movie stars, overly proud father is a, suicidal gay grooms, tattooed girls, the desperately poor of detroit, rich people who look middle-aged when they are young people still a jeffrey dahmer like a murderer who can never perfect for the right kind of zombie to keep him a mine, a female vampire, a boy scientists and well the sleepwalker dies of

a kitten scratch. another girl his abusive parents turn him into a baby beauty queen and exploit her. she has written about a man who flees the holocaust for america and becomes a grave digger. what has she not written about? she has a range of a modern shakespeare. i am human so i consider nothing human to the alien toomey. this might well be her motto. but as deeply interesting as to be the friend of a great writer i have been privileged to be over the last dozen years. we have offices right across the hall from each other. in what days was -- i would definitely say they are equally compassionate and curious and all embracing but where as a writer deals regularly with violence joist is easily shocked by aggressiveness. the woman is as savvy as the writer, is capable of sizing up a risk you're dubious situation.

she may be pure but she is not naive. i have seen her suffer through books as i recall the composition of blond nearly did hurt in. she is a lot funnier than the writer. in real life joyce is a terrific teaser though a gentle one. joyce the woman is one of the most sensitive friends i ever had. joyce has friends everywhere. many of them are here tonight. you could never list them all. stranger's assume such a productive rider must be a recluse but in fact she keeps up with friends and loves to give parties. she is amazing. she writes of these reviews end entertains regularly. she teaches full-time and writes

a lot. joyce woman is erudite on a vast array of subjects from the inner workings of emily dickinson's poetry to the fine points of boxing and the brain damage suffered by the typical sociopath. the writer and the person coincide in terms of energy. oats has turned out novels and poems, young adult novels and mysteries where is the woman is also vigorous in her activities. maybe this listing sounds exhausting but choice as a writer and a person is gifted with great powers of concentration and calm as well as sources of creativity and generosity. she has vast understanding but isn't analytic. she can be and starck and gothic

as falkner and place us into a process and slowly feel her way into an alien sensibility. mostly she had and originality of vision and style that makes her like no other writer. she can be central in her riding but also in the service of the dynamism of her characters. some where there is a bit of dialogue that seems to apply. a character asks must we be central in order to be human and the other character replies yes. compassion is in the guts and tenderness is on the skin. in this passage this should have been both the warmth and specificity of votes's pros and the broad reach of her sympathy. that warmth and vigorous reach make her our most outstanding novelist. [applause]

>> he made this himself. he was working so hard all day instead of talking on the phone. i am so thrilled. i was wondering what he would say next and he didn't say it. i have one other posthumous -- i mean lifetime award. i am very touched and the slide show is so touching. i wonder who did that.

whoever had that concept of a writer is a little bit sadistic because everyone in the audience is a writer and we don't really write our novels in that way. it is much more organized. this person looks like she is under a trance or a spell and and she has been riding for 40 years or something. someone should put her out of her misery. i didn't now i was supposed to say anything this evening so i have nothing prepared but i want to thank all of you so much. as well as being a writer of fiction i am also a critic. i love to write essays and reviews and read essays and reviews. the non-fiction voice which fades into memoir is so engaging and extremely interesting, the kind of writing i do for the new york review of books which is so

hospitable a place with many other wonderful publications that published literary reviews and i am sinking into a nice warm wonderful dimension where the mind opens up and you are so interested in what you are reading i could sit forever and read really fought for reviews and essays. is different -- when i am working on a novel they are not my own voice but something as representative of the fiction, the world of fiction so the characters in the novel's setting have come together to create the music that is appropriate so that each book of mine is quite different. whereas the reviewing voice is

my own foists and the one i go back to. i feel a real kinship with all of you and i thank you very deeply. [applause] >> i had the pleasure of the committees this year, our slides accompany my notation of finals. the first of which was wendy's the hindus, an alternative

history. and forgotten jungles city, metropolitan books. richard holmes at the age of wonder. and the beauty and terror of science. tracy kidder, strength and what remains, random house. and imperial viking. the protocol we are following through these awards is the chairman of various categories will name the finalist will be read by the person we blog about all these books since announcing our files. >> we think of scientific research as a reducing of rational formulas but the age of

wonder published -- returns to an era when astronomy was awesome, chemistry was sexy and anthropology could leave you unsuited for the knoll social hypocrisy. exhaustive resources is a page turner written with an easy-going elegance without making jokes. the scientists in its pages were also poets sometimes literally sew and poets, more traditional sort are racing to catch up into the universe. the result is a book that is in all senses wonderful. [applause] >> good evening. i am obviously not richard

holmes but i am thrilled i am katie freeman. i am thrilled to read this acknowledgment from richard and we are thrilled that this book has taken the award. i am little nervous. i want to acknowledge my fellow nominees each of his books is as deserving as mine and each list of previous accomplishments makes for a daunting reading. the response of american reviewers and critics allowed themselves to get much more excited about their british counterparts about the theme that inspired me to write this account of romantic science but the human imagination is a common source for final scientific discovery and the enthusiasm prompted by the first encounter, recognize books with the accolade which touches me deeply. and the one who really made this

book well-known in america so that more people than just us. thank you from all of us. [applause] >> elizabeth taylor here to announce the finalists for autobiography. first all, diana athill towards the end. and deborah lived through this. a mother's memoir of blown away daughters and reclaimed potent milk. mary car from harper. kathy mar in, enemies of the people, my family's journey to america. and edmund white, city boy and

here to announce the final list is part winslow. [applause] >> the award is going to diana andhill for somewhere towards the end. in somewhere towards the end her report from the twilight zone of old age, british author diana athill remarks that anyone looking back over 89 years should see a landmark pockmarked with regrets and yet they are few and far between in this memoir and the ones that do appear selfishness here and capitulation to laziness their, and shame over cruelest or a cousin's children are trifling enough to show that athill takes at heart her own advice to the elderly. let us not waste our time.

the slide into pessimism is very boring and it makes dreary the last year's even drearier. athill has had the proverbial interesting life. fortunately and off in a publishing house to have edited the works of writers including napalm, philip roth, norman mailer, john updike, that up down stint is reduced to a few fleeting illusions here as athill extended falling away in life. and romanticism, physical deterioration and the inevitability of death often large. surely the part of life with it

-- which is within our range the fact of life is mysterious and exciting enough in itself and explaining her atheism to particular facing us all perhaps not exactly comforting but acceptable because truth. noting that within its own framework a life is amazingly capacious so that it can contain many opposites. athill treats us to several of her own. if they're buying emerges as a mythbreaking account that runs against the grain of many received notions of romance, death and guilt and the experience of old age and perhaps her most lyrical line in a book that generally avoids lyricism athill rights we are not just dots at the end of thin black lines into nothingness but our parts of the many colored river teeming with beginnings

and becames and new beginnings are part of it and are dying will be part of it. we congratulate dianne. [applause] >> i am not diet athill. i am her editor at norton. you know that she is a wonderful writer but a wonderful correspondent and i get e-mails from her. she is 92 and on e-mail. fantastic news. the competition must be formidable. she sat with her authors expecting the worst of sadistic

ceremonies in which all the competitors have to sit around after a huge dinner to see who won. that is how she described the cost. won the autobiography category. and dear tom i have to report the world has run mad. two days ago i was too ill to enjoy it but it was amazing to know that our the newspaper appeared without a picture of me. a newspaper was prepared to pay for and extract. today i had a long interview with enamored young man from the times and briefing about a television interview which commands four million viewers. i don't believe the book will win the prize but i begin to think after all this that anything can happen so fingers crossed. after living all these years as

a cheerful but inconspicuous gray-haired backseat publishing lady to become and 91 a showstopper. and having not realize that i went to a party that was jaw dropping. some great beauty had arrived. i am sure when she wakes up tomorrow to this news qb as profoundly honored as i am to receive this honor. [applause] >> i had a great pleasure of chairing the committee on biography this year. i will read the names of our five finalists. blake bailey for a cheater alive

enough. brad for flattery, life of flannery o'connor. benjamin mozer for widest world, a biography of claris of boston university's press. bidder spring, published by bernard. and passing strange a gilded age tale of love and deception across the color line. and to announce our award this year i will turn the microphone over to stephen. [applause] >> the nbc award for biography this year goes to blake bailey. [applause] >> writing fiction saved john cheever's life. on the strength of a collection of short stories that he himself

considered so wretched that he tried to destroy all copies of it. he was mustered out of the 22 inventory regiment and into writing fiction for the army navy screen magazine. assigned to storm utah beach on d-day most of the soldiers he trained with the eventually died in combat. and stories including the swimmer, 548, country husband and to radio, seem indelibly etched into the canon of american literature. they won the 1979 award for fiction. blake bailey whose biography of richard yates was an nbc finalist offers an ancestor's to afterlife biography of an heir to the yankee protestant defendants whose kitchen was

littered in bottles. a prodigious feat of research that required processing and coaxing testimony out of witnesses bailey's account fills 700 pages. bailey's attentive to his subjects triumphs as well as his bingees. john cheever once wrote literature is the salvation of the damned. it has inspired and guided lovers, routed despair and in this case can save the world. literature saved him from an early death in battle but in bailey's vivid portrait it could not save him from his own tormented self. we congratulate blake bailey. [applause]

>> i am blake bailey. thanks very much to the book critics circle for this honor and this was in many ways a dream project for me and i had so much help every step of the way. the achiever family was unbelievably supportive for their father, testing and been using. they always spoke of him with a deep affection but also withering objective of the. that is an ideal situation. and a certain getty too. it was wonderful collaborating with them on this. they didn't, except for a few

factual quibbles, anyone who reads my book knows it is pretty devastating in places but they just wanted the truth. a wonderful agent, david mccormick who struggled at the time to give me all the support and i have a wonderful editor who i absolutely adore and my beloved mother who has had an unwarranted degree of faith in me. finally, my wife who loved more than words can say. thank you very much. [applause]

>> my name is james marcus. it was my privilege to chair the criticism committee this year. and notes from nome man's land. american essays published by the great mass. steven burke, close calls with nonsense. also published by a great wolf press and dancing in the dark, cultural history of the great depression published by norton. and heroes and villains on music, movies, comics and culture to capitol press. and perfecting sound forever and oral history of recorded music. the award of the citation will be announced. >> i am pleased to say the award goes to no single man slam.

she began her career as a poet and notes blake stamps, her prose taking on heavy duty subjects. in time and distance overcome the network of telephone poles with the history of lynching. if she recounts her time among rowdy students of all iowa city and the treatment of new orleans residents during katrina, it is also the most affecting. in no man's land, fragments of the pioneer story of little house on the prairie's author with this experience as a resident in the rogers park section of chicago. able to draw insights from items as mundane as a bottle of tide left on the sidewalk as a boy submits to a pat down this

leaves us realizing our country remained gripped by the same myths, fears enthusiasms we had since we settled the prairie only in modern times. this is america, land of unexpected siblings and strange adoption of change, adaptation and surprising ancestry. when i was young, she writes, i believed this would of telephone wires was beautiful. now i tell my sister those polled, these wires -- it is innocent, my sister reminds me but nothing that remains unrepentant. this is telling us the story of our country and it is one we never saw coming. we congratulate you. [applause]

>> i didn't allow myself wild imaginingss so i have nothing to say accept there is no award i would rather receive, an award from people who care about books and read books for a living. it is incredibly meaningful. i know there is some attica's that offers are not supposed to talk about their reviewers but i do want to thank lindsay because she wrote three reviews of my book and they were not only positive, but they were reviews that really understood what i was trying to do with the book. i got other positive reviews about what i wanted to do and

that was really meaningful and i am deeply appreciative. and my editor at gray wolf, happens to have three books that he edited for nominations tonight which seems kind of incredible. the only other thing i will say is when i was writing this book about race which was really scary to write i kept comforting myself by thinking no one will ever noticed this book. no one will ever noticed this book. it will be published by small press and no one will ever read it. you took away my comfort. but thanks. [applause]

>> i am kevin, co-chair of the craig morgan and i am announcing the finalists. national book critics circle award and poetry. ray armonktrout for burst from wesleyan university press. louise blake for a village life. mr. powell for product from gray wolf press. eleanor ross taylor for captive voices, new and selected poems 1960-2008 from louisiana state university press. and rachel zucker for museum of accidents from wave books. james marcus will announce the winner.