Sontag Wins National Book Award

Thursday, November 16th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) â€” With Steve Martin serving as master of ceremonies, the National Book Awards felt just a little bit like the Academy Awards. They felt even more so when Susan Sontag, the very image of the serious-minded author, won the prize for fiction.

'`To say I'm astonished is an understatement,'' said the 67-year-old Sontag, who didn't pretend not to enjoy the award, or to say she expected it. ``I'm really more moved than I could say.''

Oscar winners like to joke that they rarely win for their best work; many would say the same about ``In America,'' the novel that brought Sontag her first NBA Wednesday night.

Based on the life of the 19th century stage performer Helena Modjeska, ``In America'' was Sontag's first novel since the acclaimed 1992 best seller ``The Volcano Lover.'' Although highly anticipated, the new book spent little time on best-seller lists and received a number of negative reviews. The New York Times' Michiko Kakutani labeled it ``a banal, flat-footed narrative.''

Sontag, author of such influential nonfiction works as ``Against Interpretation'' and ``Illness as Metaphor,'' was also criticized for the uncredited borrowing of passages from other sources.

But novelist Ron Hansen, chair of the NBA fiction committee, praised ``In America'' as the ``heart and majesty'' of American writing in 2000. In a post-ceremony press conference, Sontag said she was too ``squeamish'' to read reviews and questioned their value.

``I often feel that I really know better what's wrong than any reviewer does,'' she said.

Other fiction finalists included Joyce Carol Oates' ``Blonde,'' based on the life of Marilyn Monroe; Francine Prose's ``Blue Angel'' and Charles Baxter's ``The Feast of Love.'' Alan Lightman was nominated for ``The Diagnosis.''

Also Wednesday, the nonfiction award went to Nathaniel Philbrick for ``In the Heart of the Sea,'' the story of the whaling ship tragedy that inspired Herman Melville's ``Moby-Dick.'' Runners-up included 92-year-old Jacques Barzun, author of the 800-page best seller ``From Dawn to Decadence,'' and Patrick Tierney, author of the much-debated anthropological investigation ``Darkness in El Dorado.''

The poetry prize went to Lucille Clifton for the compilation ``Blessing the Boats,'' and the young people's literature award went to Gloria Whelan for ``Homeless Bird,'' the story of a girl in India married and widowed at age 13.

Ray Bradbury, best known for the futuristic novel ``Fahrenheit 451'' and the science fiction classic ``The Martian Chronicles,'' received an honorary medal.

The awards are sponsored by the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization. Winners receive $10,000, other finalists $1,000.

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On The Net:

National Book Foundation: http://www.publishersweekly.com/NBF/docs/nbf.html