Geoff and I went to the Anisfield Wolf Award ceremony last night.  My previous best memory of the Anisfield Wolf was from 1988, when Toni Morrison got it for Beloved.

Rita Dove, one of my favorite poets, was the surprise substitute as MC for their usual Harvard guy, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. who had to have surgery.   When the ceremony started, I kept looking at the very elegant lady in the chair waiting to be introduced.   She looked familiar -- a media star? Movie star?  Others seemed to recognize her.  If you've met Rita Dove, you are perhaps aware that she has a presence that can only be described as elegant beyond elegant.  So I was embarrassed when she was introduced; everybody else figured it out before I did.  (If only she had read a poem!  But her award introductions were filled with poetry, so it was okay.)

 But the real surprise was that they kept the name of one of the recipients a secret because she is the subject of death threats, and the man who produced her film script, Theo Van Gogh, was assassinated by Muslim extremists. Geoff had noticed the presence of armed Cleveland Police, not the just usual guards, in the reception area.  We all gasped when they announced the award to Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  I had read about her, although I haven't yet read Infidel.  I sure plan to do so now.

And yes, Theo Van Gogh is a direct descendant of Vincent Van Gogh's brother Theo.  

This coup has so far been reported only in the Plain Dealer:  here's the link.

Geoff and I bought a copy of Junot Díaz's short story collection, Drown.  We got a minute to chat with Díaz when we got our autograph, and Geoff and he spoke a bit about our mutual acquaintances, Joe and Gay Haldeman.  (Díaz and the Haldemans are all three MIT profs.)  Díaz said he was always sad when Joe and Gay leave Cambridge.  Díaz is an electric presence, and the reading he chose from The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was sensational.  It starts out a bit comic, then turns really deadly serious.  Audience members who hadn't read the book gasped.  (But if I overuse the word "gasped," I hope you will forgive me, because the whole evening was anything but predictable.)

I was intrigued by the other two award winners and plan to acquire and read their books.  Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a challenge to many Westerners' preconceived notions of social realities.  Hamid read an excerpt that sets up the monolog which constitutes the book, a traditional Islamic fundamentalist's narrative to an American tourist.  Then Hamid read an excerpt from the narrator's past, an encounter with a pretty girl on a topless beach, that showed how far the point of view character had moved toward traditionalism.  Very enticing sample.

William Melvin Kelley, who got a lifetime achievement award, read his New Yorker short story "Carlyle Tries Polygamy.  He lamented his lack of published output in recent years, and if this is so, the guy needs a good publicist or a good agent, because I loved the story he read.   The story had a good deal of pitch-perfect dialect in it, and humorous characterization to the max.  I understood from the introduction that much of Kelley's work has elements of surrealism.   I am going to investigate; this sounds juicy.

During the reception (crab cakes, roast beef, sushi, wine: yum yum) we got to speak briefly to Charlie Oberndorf, Ray McNeice , Thrity Umrigar, Sarah Willis, Toni Thayer, Ron Antonucci, Judith Mansour-Thomas, and Suzanne DeGaetano of Mac's Backs.  I had made the mistake of putting our dinner in a timed oven, so we had to rush home and were unable to stay to exchange viewpoints after the ceremony with our friends, alas.

An amazing evening.