2009 Thurber Prize for American Humor

Ian Frazier has won the 2009 Thurber Prize for American Humor for his book Lamentations of the Father. (Find this book in our catalog)
The frequent contributor to the New Yorker won the first Thurber prize in 1997 for his Coyote vs. Acme.

This is what it says in our catalog about Lamentations of the Father:
"When The Atlantic Monthly celebrated its 150th anniversary by publishing excerpts from the best writing ever to appear in the magazine, in the category of the humorous essay it chose only four pieces—one by Mark Twain, one by James Thurber, one by Kurt Vonnegut, and Ian Frazier’s 1997 essay “Lamentations of the Father.” The title piece of this new collection has had an ongoing life in anthologies, in radio performances, in audio recordings, on the Internet, and in photocopies held by hamburger magnets on the doors of people’s refrigerators. The august company in which The Atlantic put Frazier gives an idea of where on the literary spectrum his humorous pieces lie. Frazier’s work is funny and elegant and poetic and of the highest literary aspiration, all at the same time. More serious than a “gag” writer, funnier than most essayists of equal accomplishment, Frazier is of a classical originality. This collection, a companion to his previous humor collections, Dating Your Mom(1985) and Coyote v. Acme(1996), contains thirty-three pieces gathered from the last thirteen years."

Runners-up for the Thurber Prize this year were:
* Sloane Crosley for I Was Told There'd Be Cake.
* Don Lee for Wrack and Ruin.
* Laurie Notaro for The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death:
Reflections on Revenge, Germaphobia, and Laser Hair Removal.