National Book Awards Finalists Named

Fifteen books, including two by first-time novelists, have been named finalists for the 1992 National Book Awards for fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Also among the nominated writers, chosen from a record 561 books submitted by publishers, are two past winners of National Book Awards.

Nominated for fiction are “Bastard Out of Carolina,” a first novel by Dorothy Allison (Dutton); “Dreaming in Cuban,” a first novel by Cristina Garcia (Alfred A. Knopf); “Lost in the City,” by Edward P. Jones (William Morrow & Co.); “All the Pretty Horses,” by Cormac McCarthy (Knopf), and “Outerbridge Reach” by former National Book Award winner Robert Stone.

The finalists for nonfiction are “The Promise of the New South,” by Edward L. Ayers (Oxford University Press); “Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman,” by James Gleick (Pantheon Books); “Truman,” by two-time National Book Award winner David McCullough (Simon & Schuster); “Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story,” by Paul Monette (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), and “Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America,” by Garry Wills (Simon & Schuster).

In poetry, the finalists are “Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991,” by Hayden Carruth (Copper Canyon Press); “The Wild Iris,” by Louise Gluck (The Ecco Press); “Rapture,” by Susan Mitchell (HarperCollins/HarperPerennial); “New and Selected Poems,” by Mary Oliver (Beacon Press), and “No Nature,” by Gary Snyder (Pantheon).

The three winners will each receive a $10,000 award and a bronze sculpture, to be presented at a Nov. 18 ceremony and dinner in New York City.

In other book award news announced this week, the 1992 Irish Times-Aer Lingus International fiction Prize has gone to American Norman Rush for his first novel, “Mating,” published by Simon & Schuster. “Mating” also won the 1991 National Book Award for fiction in the United States.

The prize, given for a work of fiction written in English or Irish and published in the United States, Ireland or the United Kingdom, carries a cash award of about $47,000, the largest fiction prize in the three eligible countries. It will be awarded Nov. 20 in Dublin.

Rush is the third American to receive the prize since its inception four years ago. Previous winners are Don de Lillo for “Libra” in 1989, A.S. Byatt for “Possession” in 1990 and Louis Begley for “Wartime Lies” in 1991.