Book News
Three vie for humor prize
A former writer and producer for “The Simp- sons,” a former writer for “Saturday Night Live” and a former president of the Harvard Lampoon are finalists for the Thurber Prize for American Humor, a $5,000 award.
Larry Doyle, a contributer to The New Yorker whose previous credits include “The Simpsons,” was nominated for “I Love You Beth Cooper,” his debut novel.
Patricia Marx, a children’s book author who has written for “Saturday Night Live” and is a contributing editor to Time magazine, was cited for the novel “Him Her Him Again the End of Him.”
The third finalist is Simon Rich for “Ant Farm,” an essay collection. Rich, son of New York Times columnist Frank Rich, is a Harvard University graduate who served as president of the Harvard Lampoon, the school’s famed humor magazine.
The Thurber Prize, named for author- illustrator James Thurber, was founded in 1996.
The prize has been awarded to the likes of Ian Frazier, David Sedaris and Christopher Buckley.
This year’s judges include Buckley, Firoozeh Dumas and Robert Kaplow.
The award will be presented Oct. 6 at the famed Algonquin Hotel in New York, where Thurber once lived. The Associated Press;
First Lines
The Army of the Republic by Stuart Archer Cohen
“Television is the closest thing we’ve got to God in America, an all-present eye that creates the world, ceaselessly and seamlessly, twenty-four hours a day. A comic book bible made of light; they build their phony universe with pictures, pictures, pictures!
” ‘Business figure John Polling was shot to death today outside a Seattle apartment building. . . . ‘
“A visual of an ambulance in the black drizzly cavern of television night, a cordon of hard-eyed cops, a dead body under a sheet.
” ‘Yes!’ Tonk shoots his fist into the air, does a few quick struts across the living room. ‘Check it out, America! The big man goes down!’ It’s kind of awesome to see the divine stamp of Big Media imprinted on our sketchy little lives. Lilly, Sarah, and Kahasi say nothing, sit uneasily with their tea and toast. People are frightened by large moving objects, and an assassination is a very large object, moving very fast.”
Top sellers at independents
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1. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
2. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski
3. The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein
4. Moscow Rules, by Daniel Silva
5. The Host, by Stephenie Meyer
Nonfiction
1. The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch
2. When You Are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris
3. Goodnight Bush: An Unauthorized Parody, by Erich Origen and Gan Golan
4. The Way of the World, by Ron Suskind
5. The Obama Nation, by Jerome Corsi
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