Step right up, bona-fide schmucks aspiring writers! The time has come to hand out the Sobol Award! Yes, $100,000 is on the table, kiddies! With $25,000 and $10,000 for the runner-ups! That’s some good bread, don’t you think? Why, all of you Writer’s Digest subscribers who have always thought about sending in your novels but haven’t done a thing because you fear rejection now have the perfect opportunity to get with the program right now! We’re the Sobol Awards! Why, the name’s almost a palindrome!
Oh, did we mention an $85 non-refundable registration fee? Well, contrary to those pesky critics of ours who claims that this isn’t an award. It is an award! Did you not see “Award” in “Sobol Award?” Is that noun not provenance enough?
Vanity presses? Poppycock. Did you not read the large print?
ONE. HUNDRED. THOUSAND. DOLLARS!
We think this should quell any doubts.
Who cares if we’re run by Sobol Literary Enterprises? You act as if a word like “enterprise” is a bad thing. Okay, so we’re not a foundation. But isn’t any writing experience an “enterprise” of sorts? Writing is an adventure! Embarking into the unknown. To boldly go…hey, you Star Trek fan fiction writers, I’m talking to you. Enterprise — it’s a good name, right? Send in your Kirk/Spock love stories to us and we might give you — what are those four words again? Let’s see.
ONE. HUNDRED. THOUSAND. DOLLARS!
Yes, that’s right!
Remember, it’s first come, first served. Just like any great scam. And if you’d like to send us $85 anyway, we’ll be happy to send you a postcard straight from Sobol Literary Enterprises headquarters thanking you for your money. Because that’s the kind of people we are.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
Congratulations! You’ve written an article that doesn’t say a thing. Are you in the agent business or something? I don’t know whether the award is good or bad. All I know is that the publishing industry is incestuous. Publishers use agents to screen manuscripts. All agents want is previously published writers. Frankly, I don’t know how new writers get discovered, unless they already have some sort of tie. I guess that’s also why most of what’s published is self-indulgent, contemporary crap.