It's a fact: Nonfiction judge didn't read all the entries

NEW YORK — The job seems impossible from the start: As a nonfiction judge for the National Book Awards, you have six months to read some 400 books on everything from environmental science to backroom politics.

At least one of this year's voters, columnist and television commentator Michael Kinsley, says he didn't even try.

In a column Thursday on Microsoft's online magazine Slate, the Seattle-area resident acknowledged he looked at a fraction of the submissions. He likened the awards to choosing "the best rhubarb pie at the state fair" and hinted that he didn't complete Wednesday's winner: Robert Caro's 1,000-page "Master of the Senate," the third volume of his Lyndon B. Johnson biography.

"Once every seven or eight years, Robert Caro wheels out another gargantuan volume in his legendary biography of Lyndon Johnson, now up to Vol. 6: The Kindergarten Era (Part 1)," Kinsley wrote. He said he agreed to be a judge out of "mainly vanity and a desire for free books."

"(D)id I actually read every page? I'll never tell."

Neil Baldwin, executive director of the National Book Foundation, which sponsors the awards, said yesterday he knew Kinsley wasn't keeping up. Kinsley felt "very contrite and apologetic" over the summer and had to be talked out of quitting, Baldwin said.

He also said he was surprised by Kinsley's remarks because he had seemed so happy about being offered the job.

Kinsley did not immediately return messages yesterday.

The chairman of the nonfiction panel, Christopher Merrill, said Kinsley was only speaking for himself and added that he was not surprised by the column.

Merrill and Baldwin said judges, who receive honoraria between $2,000 and $2,500, considered each text long enough to know whether it merited further attention.

Merrill said he and other members of the five-judge nonfiction committee had enjoyed a "period of maniacal reading."

"I read books I never expected to read," said Merrill, director of a writing program at the University of Iowa. " 'Master of the Senate' is a book I would have otherwise never read. I would have said, 'This is an important book and I'll get to it, someday.' But now I know the sweep of Caro's vision and what he brought to this ambitious project."