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On the Web Mon Jul 27 2009
1968 NBA Winner: The Eighth Day
University of Chicago faculty member Thornton Wilder was awarded the National Book Award in 1969 for his novel The Eighth Day.
Here, the National Book Foundation's Executive Director, Harold Augenbraum, remembers the honored work: "Without revealing too much, I will tell you--as Wilder does in the first chapter, with that wonderfully American literary structure of historifying in which the writer relates the most exciting event first and then fades back into the past and then rushes past the first event toward the narrative's events that come afterwards--though everything, of course, is still in the past, you're made to feel as if you are reading about the future--faceless riders from Coaltown, including a cloudy-faced minister, rescue the murderer, Ashley. Is he a murderer? Read it and you tell me."