Winner of the National Book Award

Back when Miss Edith worked in a real-life bookstore, the kind where someone walked in and you’d say hello all friendly-like and then studiously ignore him or her until you realized they needed your help and then you’d be, like, the single nicest person in the world, who also did free gift wrapping, back in those days, Miss Edith read a novel she dimly remembered reading reviews of a few years before. It was a handsome paperback, published by Picador, and the title was Winner of the National Book Award. Written by someone called Jincy Willett, this was a book that made Edith snort with laughter. She chewed through it gleefully, and came back to work and ordered several copies of it. “This book is fucking hilarious,” she told her cronies. “If there were a God, this book would be on the best-seller list. People suck.” I mean, we’re in a college town, filled with Writers and Thinkers and normal people who’re just sort of around, and every type of Pompous Git you can imagine – and this is the cast of the novel, too. This novel should have been a guaranteed hit.
Edith stacked up the books face out and set up a little card next to them saying, “We heartily recommend Jincy Willett’s Winner of the National Book Award. Anyone who reads contemporary fiction should read this. We cannot fathom why it’s not on the best seller lists… Ok, we can. But that just goes to show you…. This book is GREAT!”

The book began to sell. At first it was one or two copies a week. Then it became a copy a day. After a while, management decided it might be fun to compile a shelf of in-store bestselling books, so people could really see what their peers and fellow café denizens were reading (as opposed to what was on the NEBA or New York Times lists, which often were books no one in our store cared about at all). It turned out that Jincy Willett’s novel was the best selling book. By a long shot.

So we set up the display. The book sold even better. It sold and sold and sold. I contacted the publicist for Picador to see if they were doing publicity for it or anything; was WotNBA being promoted for book clubs or anything? Nope; the publicist who got back to me asked me roughly how many copies we were selling (he could tell that we were ordering a lot, but of course had no way of knowing how they were really moving) and I told him. He was floored.
I asked a bookseller in Cambridge, MA, if it sold well there. He’d never heard of it. The posh place in Madison, Connecticut that readers rave about, of which I’ve never been too fond, didn’t even carry it. (Too bad for them.) It seemed that New Haven was unique in its craving for Jincy Willett.

That novel remained on the in-store bestseller list, in the top 5, for the rest of my tenure at the store. When I quit, last June, it was still in the top 5, and usually at number 1, 2, or 3. When I went into the store – long story – about six months after quitting, I noticed that my card was still hanging there, and I took it down. Two months after that, the book was still in the top 10. I don’t know if it’s up there now, but I should have a look. Maybe when I’m next walking around there I’ll stop in, wearing shades. Edith tries to slink around incognito, you know.

I think this is a significant story about bookselling, but maybe I’m wrong. It’s interesting, at any rate. What got me thinking about it again was a Daily Galley Cat emailing I got yesterday that cited a New York magazine article about “Great Books of the Last Ten Years No One’s Read” or something like that. Kurt Andersen’s pick was Jincy Willett’s Winner of the National Book Award. I can’t say as I agree with everyone’s picks on this list – and quite frankly, I don’t care; to each his own, right? – but I was glad to see Miss Jincy there. (Edith feels she can be on a first-name basis with her, since she must have provided her with enough royalties to count for something.) If you’re curious to see the list – I’m not big on linking things, but in this case I’ll make an exception.