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Ander Monson named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
February 2011—Graywolf Press is pleased to announce that
Vanishing
Point: Not a Memoir by Ander Monson has been named a finalist for the 2011 National Book Critics Circle
Award for criticism. The winners of the NBCC Awards will be announced on March 11 during a
ceremony at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium.
Katie
Dublinski, Associate Publisher at Graywolf Press was delighted with the news. “It’s such a thrill to have Vanishing
Point recognized by the National Book Critics Circle,” she said. “Like all
of Ander Monson’s work, both in print and online, Vanishing Point pushes boundaries and reenvisions the possibilities
of memoir and essay.”
Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir is a provocative
and witty series of meditations in which Monson faces down the idea of the
memoir, grappling with the lure of self-interest and self-presentation. “In the New York Times Book Review, David
Shields wrote that Monson “turns the banality of nonfiction inside out and
thereby makes nonfiction a staging area to investigate claims of fact and
truth, an extremely rich theater for exploring the most serious ontological
questions.”
Ander Monson’s inquiry transcends the physical
limitations of the book through the use of typographical “daggers,” which
correspond to additional content on his website, Other Electricities. This type of
inventiveness and formal play led to praise such as Bookslut’s pronouncement that Monson is “one of the most original
voices in America. Monson challenges the reader, literally and
formally, to find themselves within an object that is fixed and unchanging—to,
ultimately, decide what is important and what can be set aside for the time
being, all in the service of better defining I.”
The National Book Critics Circle is a not-for-profit organization of
book editors and critics with some 600 members nationwide. The organization was
founded in 1974 to encourage and raise the quality of book criticism in all
media and to create a way for critics to communicate with one another about
their professional concerns (www.bookcritics.org).
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