Jennifer Egan

Jonathan Franzen

“Celebrated author Jonathan Franzen narrowly loses book award to a lady writer! Again!” quipped Tournament of Books “booth commentator” Kevin Guilfoile after Jennifer Egan‘s A Visit from the Goon Squad narrowly edged out Jonathan Franzen‘s Freedom in the tournament’s nail-biting conclusion. (The joke was in reference to the unfortunate Los Angeles Times headline and photograph after Egan, not Franzen, won the  National Books Critics Circle Award.) Goon Squad beat Freedom by a 9 – 8 margin in the tournament’s final round, in which all the judges were allowed to cast a vote, and a variety of metaphors were used:

Matt Dellinger: These books were like cocktail cousins made with the same liquor: a Manhattan and an Old Fashioned. A Visit from the Goon Squad is the more concocted, more garnished drink (e.g., the PowerPoint chapter). It’s wonderfully balanced and beautifully made. Freedom is the high-octane classic, not as easy to drink (e.g., 562 pages), but its seriousness delivers more wallop in the end. Goon Squad delighted me; Freedom clobbered me. The martini beats the Tom Collins.

Andrew Womack: How fortunate to find two books in the championship so comparable—both spanning decades (or beyond) and heavily centered on music. For me, this decision comes down to pacing, and Franzen is the Pink Floyd to Egan’s Sex Pistols; by the end of Freedom I couldn’t take another meandering guitar solo, while I was dazzled by how much Goon Squad packed into such a compact space.

Gender bias was a major topic of conversation throughout the tournament, as it has been throughout the literary community of late. Before the tournament even began, the tournament organizers made a point of including equal numbers of female and male authors and judges (only to discover, to their dismay, that they had created an almost entirely caucasian bracket.) First-round judge Jennifer Weiner (who coined the term “Franzenfreude”, and alongside Jodi Picoult, expressed displeasure with “old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it’s literature with a capital L”) again raised the gender-gap issue:

When women write literary fiction about little children, fiction that includes the quotidian details of childcare—the snack preparation, the sunscreen application, the way a poorly-packed diaper bag can turn any day into a disaster—they have to work harder than Ginger Rogers, dancing backward in heels, to show that they’re writing Serious Literature in spite of what’s perceived as unserious subject matter.

Weiner was particularly upset that Room by Emma Donoghue was not given as much praise and attention as Freedom. Still, Freedom marched inexorably on, even trouncing Room on its way towards the finals. C. Max McGee wrote: “I’m already imagining the headlines if Freedom wins this thing: ‘Hip Online Book Tourney Spills More Ink For Time Coverboy—Cranky White-Guy Novelist Re-Re-Ratified As No. 1.'”

In the end, gender still played a major role, as one of the website’s readers pointed out:

The most controversial thing to me about the final judging was that male judges broke 6-3 in favor of Freedom while female judges broke 6-2 for Goon Squad (with one judge, the now ignominious Weiner, picking Goon Squad solely because it was written by a woman, Weiner being, inexplicably, unable to find enough “fun” in either book). To obtain statistical relevance, we may need a bigger sample, but this is quite an interesting breakdown in a Tournament (and year) where gender disparities in the literary world were at the fore. Something gender-related is going on…..

For those who weren’t following along with the 2011 Tournament of Books, I highly suggest you go back and read through the contest. It was, once again, one of the most lively, spirited, and engaging literary conversations available on the internet. Also profitable—as I won both of my two ToB brackets.

For those who can’t get enough of literary contests, The Los Angeles Times Book Jacket blog is looking for the best Los Angeles fiction and non-fiction books. Currently, they’re trying to weed out the duplicate books by the same author. So go and vote. As of this writing, The Big Sleep has a big lead over Farewell, My Lovely, but Ham on Rye and Post Office are neck and neck.