This one's for Frank: McCann dedicates book award to friend
Friday November 20 2009
NOVELIST Colum McCann has dedicated his American National Book Award for Fiction to his late friend and fellow Irishman Frank McCourt.
McCourt, who penned 'Angela's Ashes', had been a big supporter of McCann who added the US's most prestigious award to his growing collection late on Wednesday night.
"I think he's dancing upstairs," McCann said in his acceptance speech at the glittering prizegiving at the Cipriani Wall Street hotel in New York.
McCourt praised McCann's book 'Let The Great World Spin' when it first appeared. He called it "a groundbreaking, heartbreaking symphony of a novel", saying that "no novelist writing of New York has climbed higher, dived deeper".
The National Book Award is the most prestigious annual literary prize in America. It guarantees huge sales in the US, where McCann's book is already a bestseller.
Judges described the work as an "indelibly hallucinatory portrait of a decaying city".
Founded in 1950, the event aim is to enhance the public's awareness of exceptional books written by Americans.
Dublin-born McCann qualifies because he has lived in New York for more than 10 years. He received a $10,000 (€6,700) cheque and a crystal sculpture.
Arts Minister Martin Cullen said the award recognised McCann's immense talent.
"The Irish imagination is one of our greatest assets and the individual creative success of modern Irish writers like Colum McCann continues to make an enormous contribution to cultural life both at home and abroad," he said.
The Arts Council said the novel was bold, brave and beautifully written. Chairman Pat Moylan said McCann was dedicated to the craft of writing.
"An affecting and tender metaphor for post-9/11 America, the novel tells the stories of a handful of seemingly disconnected individuals in 1970s New York," she said. "McCann captures their voices with precision and compassion, wholly absorbing the reader in this complex and stirring narrative."
Acclaimed
The novel has been acclaimed by American critics as the most successful post-9/11 work. The 'New York Times' said it was "one of the most electric, profound novels in years".
The book begins with a real event, the day in 1974 when French trapeze artist Philippe Petit walked a tightrope between the World Trade Centre towers. McCann uses this moment as a way of linking the stories of various New Yorkers. It adds up to an unforgettable portrait of the city, with a sense of foreboding about what is to come.
Irish Independent critic John Boland said it was one of the best novels by an Irish writer in years.
This year's winners included Gore Vidal, who received the Lifetime Achievement Medal.
- John Spain Books Editor
Irish Independent
