Terry Teachout attends the National Book Awards banquet as a judge. Stephen King’s speech was “interesting. He was clearly moved by the honor—he choked up. He was funny and unpretentious when paying tribute to his wife and talking about the “vulnerability” to self-doubt of poor, struggling authors (such as himself when young). I suspect he was the first National Book Award laureate ever to say “Oh, shit!” in his acceptance speech (he was describing the way an honest author might portray a terrified character in extreme circumstances). And he was simultaneously a bit defensive and more than a little bit aggressive when he informed the crowd that they’d be making a mistake if they treated their decision to give him the prize as an act of ‘tokenism’.”