The Ellstrom Award for Literature—2008

Dear World of Literature,

I have been thinking about the 2008 non-cash, no notoriety award that is the Ellstrom Award for Literature. Named after JJ Ellstrom, see picture below, I feel compelled to make the right decision, if for no other reason than that I named the thing for my grandfather.



As I pointed out several days ago, I am considering a stiff field of books. I was quite impressed by them all. Think about Percy's Last Gentleman. It contains, to my way of thinking one of the greatest scenes in literature. The last 5th of the book is pretty spectacular. However, it also contains some skewed thinking, including subtle views of women and blacks that are hurdles I can't get over when naming my winner. Sorry Walker. (I'll write.)

Then, how about that book, Sand Child, by Tahar Ben Jelloun. It stuck in my mind for weeks. I still haven't figured it out. And that is the problem. A little too obscure. Great, but obscure. Perhaps I will read this book again and then I can consider it again next year.

Then there is that great book by Richard Wright, Black Boy and American Hunger. I think Wright painted an amazing self portrait on top of a canvas filled with revelations of culture and politics. I am not sure why this book didn't rise to the top of my list. It just didn't, perhaps writing style.

The last two books are about equal in my esteem. Vladimir Nabakov created two amazing characters in his book, Lolita. This work was not an easy one for me to even want to read. The subject matter seemed too much for me--a man molesting a child over and over again. Yet, Nabakov handled the subject matter so sensitively, delicately, completely, yet not more than necessary, that it is hard to say the book was anything but masterful. One would expect to come out on the other side of such a book either desensitized or perhaps hating Humbert Humbert, the man who stole Lolita's childhood. Yet the reader is not forced to become hardened, nor are they left without empathy for Humbert. And because of that we are able to see ourselves better, understand our own obsessions, and perhaps be more compassionate toward those who we normally would neither see nor value. This book is truly one of the classics of twentieth century writing.

But it is The Plague by Albert Camus that wins the 2008 Ellstrom Award for Literature.

JJ Ellstrom and Albert Camus, whose book The Plague won the 2008 Ellstrom Award

Why, this book, you ask? I think it is that it faces death and suffering with grace, courage, and compassion, and hope. It is not an easy book, but it is a good one. And it is the one I chose.


Congratulations Albert and The Plague. Congratulations World.

brd

The Ellstrom Award for Literature—2007

Dear JJ aka PapPap,

I have named an award after you. The Jan Josef (Joseph) Ellstrom Award for Literature. I guess we could less formally call it Joe's Award. I remember Nana calling you Joe, but your friends from the Swedish Lodge called you JJ, didn't they.

In my adulthood I have learned that life with you was not all peaceful. So, I will not call this a peace prize; I shall save that for the prize I name for Nana. However, my remembrance of you is very good. I remember the sizzling smell of your blacksmith shop and the sweet smell of your pipe from which you let us take clandestine puffs when sitting at your feet on the front porch of the green house on 27th Street. I remember your gruff reprimands when we escaped that porch, not via the steps, but over the front banister, climbing like spiderpeople onto window ledges and down to the front sidewalk.

I remember you in your "easy chair" near the highback piano, calling for each of us to bring to you our report cards, signs of the work we had accomplished during school semesters. At the time, little Pennsylvania girl that I was, I did not sense your vision of the significance of those cards. I saw them with the eyes of a child playing bingo at the lodge, here a winning, there a losing. You saw them as a passport like the one you had earned with hard labor at eighteen in Varmland and that could take us as far from a smithy shop as yours had taken you from Ternskog.

So, I named my literature award after you, for you valued learning and education. I have come to value them, too.

I have decided to award a 2007 prize before I move on to 2008. I got thinking about the things I read in 2006 and decided that this had to be done. Plus I still can't decide about 2008 yet. I'm stymied on 2008, but not on 2007.

The 2007 Ellstrom Award for Literature goes, hands down, to Beloved by Toni Morrison.

2006 was the year that I immersed myself in the books of Toni Morrison. I still have a few to read, but I've read enough to know that I consider her the premiere living American author. So, I think it appropriate that the first Ellstrom award goes to her. Her passport has been stamped by much hard work, and shows the signs of overcoming the kind of obstacles that you, my immigrant ancestor faced and overcame.

And the story of Beloved and her family has all the marks of migration and the high price of that flight. You paid that price too, arriving by boat at Ellis Island with $11.00 and and an address of a relative in Altoona, Pennsylvania. So, I believe, you might agree with my first choice.


Betsy