When Shirley Hazzard received the National Book Award in 2003 for The Great Fire in the Marriot Ballroom in Times Square, the other guest of honour was Stephen King, who was there to receive a Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. The contrast of acclamations and models of value could not have been more profound. King took the opportunity to speak of popularity and populism as the marks of literary success; Hazzard feistily defended reading across time, the nuanced experiences literature affords, and the private and complex pleasures that are irreducible to sales, fame or notoriety.
