National Book Awards: Joys of Spinach

On the day the National Book Award finalists were announced, Laura Miller wrote a column at Salon.com titled “How the National Book Awards Made Themselves Irrelevant. Miller argued that the judges—and she singled out the fiction judges—“categorically rule out books a lot of people like” and that ever year “the fiction jury is locked in a frustrating impasse with the press and the public” as to what deserves award attention. One of this year’s fiction judges, novelist Victor LaValle, responds.—Ed.