And the Winner Is... Anonymous

Dear Harold Augenbraum,

Heard you were rounding up new judges for the 2009 National Book Award and sending out guidelines. First, thank you for my '08 appointment: a signal honor, books galore and a host of new authors to worship. Sorry I didn't get to meet you at the gala. I was at Table 35, an excellent one (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt editors and brass). You may have seen me (black dress, pearls, eyeglasses) across the room when the judges were asked to stand. Loved the corsage and especially enjoyed the baked tagliolini. Grazie!

Lunch earlier, I confess, left me dyspeptic—the two straight hours I spent arguing with my fellow judges over who our winner should be. Hope that's not too egregious a violation of the warning in my judges' packet: “ALL ASPECTS OF THE JUDGING PROCESS TO BE PRIVILEGED INFORMATION.”

Let me say, I was delighted with every fresh work, so wouldn't want you to think that this, my Fairness Doctrine for Enhanced Judging, impugns the '08-ers. I met two of our fiction finalists at the banquet, and they were adorable.

You might remember the first time we spoke when I accepted your kind offer to be a fiction judge. Unsolicited, I put forth my theory on how to de-bias the awards, a little initiative I'd had bottled up for years: that judges should read not from finished books or galleys but from unsigned manuscript pages, period.

I believe you said, “My staff would kill me.”

My penchant for anonymity was born of my experience with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, where utter scrupulousness, enforced by staff members with uncanny hearing, reigned. An identifying word murmured during the discussion (“This was excerpted in—”)? They scolded and shushed. The jury will disregard!

Before I had those models, I experienced judicial trauma. At a first meeting with my fellow judges for a PEN-sponsored award, three of my favorite books were received thusly: (1) dismissed for being a bestseller; (2) tabled for further discussion after a fellow judge said jauntily, “It looked good. I sent it to my son for Christmas, but I'll get it back”; and (3) another tabled when a judge said, “I looked at the author's picture. She looked rich, so I didn't read it.”

Therefore, please: edited manuscript pages only, no author, no publisher; not even the title, which might ring a bell or invite Googling. We shouldn't see the author's photo, biography, acknowledgments (therefore no editors, agents, famous mentors) or blurbs, previous titles, Guggenheims.

Instead,

Step 1: As ever, publishers decide who will be nominated. Editors write to their authors, “Please e-mail us the first 50 pages of (your beloved book). IMPORTANT! Neither its title, your name or ours may appear on this attachment.”

Step 2: Publishers double-check the submission to make sure that no authorial feet are showing.

Step 3: Publishers send their pages to you, along with postage (I'm thinking ahead to the fiduciary flags I may be raising) with a cover letter that identifies the author. You assign a number to the manuscript, log it, file the cover letter, mail the anonymous pages to the judges. C'est tout!

Why 50 pages? That's enough. We're only screening now, looking to fall in love on the first page. Further, it would send an excellent message to all writers: don't make readers slog through 100 pages before the going gets good. When we do fall in love, we'll ask for the whole thing. My guess: not so many. Once we've read whole manuscripts and hashed it out in conference calls, our foreperson will notify you of our winning numbers, our finalists. If they are famous already, so be it. If they are all of one sex, one race, too many youngsters or horse's asses, or from one publishing conglomerate, boo-hoo. We didn't know!

A blind read-off would, I believe, quash brand-name advantage and star power, prejudice for and against previous prize-winners. Most of all, bias against the small presses and the unanointed. Stated or unstated, we tend to muse, this book came from Knopf, whereas this one came from Bootstrap Press.

More manpower needed? This I've solved, too: unpaid interns (via Craigslist, NYU, Columbia, New School, community service) who will take 50-page bunches from one envelope, inspect, send back the cheaters and forward the clean.

Happy to help!

Love,

Elinor