UC Creative Writing Professor Named Finalist for 2016 National Book Award

Chris Bachelder, professor in the University of Cincinnati's McMicken College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of English and Comparative Literature, has been named one of five finalists for the 2016 National Book Award for fiction for his latest novel, The Throwback Special.

The novel, hailed as a “comic masterpiece,” follows a group of middle-aged men who participate in a yearly tradition that restages the infamous 1985 football game in which Joe Theismann suffered a career-ending leg fracture on live television. Bachelder shared stories about the novel and his writing work during Cincinnati’s 10th annual Books By The Banks festival, which took place Oct. 15.

Bachelder, who joined UC’s creative writing faculty in 2011, adds this latest recognition for the book to a long list, including the Terry Southern Prize. That award is bestowed annually by The Paris Review, recognizes humor and wit in a piece of writing published in their pages within the last year. The Paris Review was established in 1953 and remains one of the world’s leading literary magazines, publishing poetry and fiction from both established and new voices in contemporary literature.

The Throwback Special, published by W.W. Norton & Company in March, carries the distinct style readers now expect from Bachelder—a blurring of the comic and tragic, often rendered in excruciating, hilarious detail.   

“I began with a keen interest in writing about the Joe Theismann injury, and very gradually the injury became my context, not my subject,” Bachelder said in an earlier interview with Full Stop. “I didn’t set out to write about the melancholy bewilderment of middle-aged men, but that’s where I ended up.”

Bachelder, who watched the violent football play as it first happened, said that his writing naturally gravitates toward the humorous. “I can’t imagine writing a novel that is not essentially comic,” he said. “But as I’ve gotten older I’ve become less interested in zany gags or antic satire. We actually don’t have great ways of talking about the varieties of comic modes, so I don’t even know what to call it. In my mind, The Throwback Special is not satire. What I’m after is tonal complexity, a precise and probing narrative voice that contains paradox and ambivalence so that the humor is inextricably connected to sorrow, grief, frustration.”

From the National Book Foundation site:

National Book Foundation: Who did you write this book for?

Chris Bachelder: I wrote this novel for the tens of millions of ravenous readers out there who cherish both plotless literary fiction and football. No, I didn’t. The truth is that while I know some writers do conjure an audience as a generative and constraining force in composition, I don’t tend to think much about a specific reader or group of readers when I’m writing. Generally speaking, I’m interested in moving deeply and patiently into scene, and in fulfilling the imaginative potential of a premise. When I’m writing, I feel not in the presence of a reader, but rather up against the limits and possibilities of my own premise, which I hope to elaborate with precision, wit, and empathy. The book tends to have its own needs and requirements, separate from mine or a hypothetical reader's.

The Throwback Special is Bachelder’s fourth novel. Other works include the acclaimed Bear v. Shark—a farcical examination of American entertainment—and Abbott Awaits, which the New Yorker called “A sharp and brilliant and hilarious portrait of being a parent.” 

National Book Award winners will be announced during a ceremony and benefit dinner Nov. 16.