It’s the second round of 2014 Brooklyn Invitational Nobel Prize for Literature Fantasy League Draft at Commissioner Dave Carpenter’s apartment in Sunset Park, and Margaret Atwood and Joyce Carol Oates are still on the board when it’s my turn to pick.
My team, The Stockholm Syndrome, is going heavy on women this year. The ladies are overdue. Sure, Artisanal Artie Weggle’s Ghostface Poets won with Alice Munro last year. But before that, it had been four years since the Academy had picked a woman, Herta Müller, which pissed off the entire league because nobody had ever heard of her, never mind drafted her. All of which is to say, I crunched the numbers and the Nobel bigwigs have a lot of catching up to do in the women department.
My first-round pick, Algerian novelist Assia Djebar, provoked a huge amount of derision for being a pretentious pick. Wanker, wanker, wanker, went the chant at the table. But I feel really good about Djebar. She’s got tremendous upside: Totally obscure, woman, Muslim. I was set to take French playwright-novelist Yasmin Reza in the second round, but the Commish got her with the last pick of the first round, which detonated a Too Young, Too Young, Too Young chant that I happily joined.
So there they are: Oates and Atwood, two masters with all the tools. My pre-draft power rankings have Oates at #15 and Atwood at #13. Neck and neck, really. Of course, I don’t always follow my Power Rankings, which factor in pure talent, contribution to literature, and whether I think an author deserves to win. Philip Roth is ranked #1 for the sixth straight year on my list. But after years of picking him, I’ve learned my lesson. If he’s still on the board in the fifth and final round, I’ll take him, but only because true love dies hard.
I put down my power rankings list and flip through my scouting report. Joyce Carol Oates: American. Writes to all fields: novels, poetry, drama, short stories, YA. Ontario Review. Oprah factor. Rumors of HGH use tied to prolific output, probably bogus. Then there is this: Margaret Atwood: Quadruple threat, novels, criticism, nonfiction, activism. Doyenne of Dystopia. PEN. Spunky grandma everyone wants. Canadian like Munro.
Do the other teams know something I don’t? You would think these women would be on everyone’s top 20 list and off the board by now.
Phil-ip-Roth! Phil-ip-Roth! Phil-ip-Roth!
Then I remember. They are playing hunches, too. Louise “Princess Kale” Mayfield is doing what she always does with The Bushwick Bookies: hoping the Academy picks an African or black American. She nabbed Ngugi Wa’Thiongo (down to #27 on my power rankings) with the third pick, and made Percival Everett (up to #16 on my P.R.) her second round choice.
Max “Remember Dial Up?” Beier, owner of the PoMoMoFos, is picking South American authors. Again. Dial Up used the PoMoMoFos’ first pick on Eduardo Halfon, a Guatemalan Jew who has a book—a good one- — called The Polish Boxer. But really, the guy isn’t even 50. And Sergey “Google Gogol” Gomes is convinced that Arabia is bound to carry the day. His team, The My Back Pages, has picked the same guy for three years running: Adonis. (“You know,” says the Commish. “The Charles Atlas of Arab poetry!”)
There is one minute left on the clock (you only get three minutes, per league rules). A new chorus starts in an attempt to distract me: De-lil-lo! De-lil-lo! De-lil-lo! At least it has a nice meter.
I’m thinking hard about the Academy. They go for a body of work. But what does that mean? Do they want Oates, whose body is sort of a gothic-tinged literary octopus with ADHD, or Atwood, who is known for her novels and essays, but is really just as varied and versatile as Oates. I close my eyes and think: The Handmaiden’s Tale or We Were the Mulvaneys? The Blind Assassin or them?
The chant has changed. One side of the table says Julian Barnes! And the other responds: Ian McEwan!
“Okay, shut up!” I said, standing up at the table. “The Stockholm Syndrome proudly deploys its second-round pick to select Margaret Atwood.”
Instantly the chant switches to Too Canadian, eh! Too Canadian, eh!
“Atwood’s like, vice president of PEN, too.” I say, defending my pick.
Nancy “No-Name” Walker, who used her first pick to select Pynchon — I mean, an American man in the first round? Has she learned nothing? — immediately stands up. “After a deep interior monologue,” she says, “Walker’s Home For Lapsed Recovering Novelists emphatically select Joyce Carol Oates!”
Steroids! Steroids! Steroids, goes the chant. No-Name turns to me. “You know, Owen, I was going to take Atwood . . . ” she says.
“Really?”
“ . . . in the sixth round.”
Jhumpa! Jhumpa! Jhumpa!
It’s a cutthroat league.
Seth Kaufman is the author of The King of Pain.