It’s halftime at the National Book Awards, and here’s the score:

Funniest speaker: Fran Lebowitz
Speaker who most reminds me of Toby from “The Office”: Michael Cunningham
Pretty Interesting: Terry Gross
Okay, I’m sure she’s a nice person but I still can’t agree she’s a genius: Joan Didion

The awards will follow! Ed wants blog back. Later.

Come on, Terry! Say FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESHHHHHHHH AIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!! There would be more conviction in that than what you’re saying right now.

“Gee, you know, I enjoy hearing Ira Glass talk about anything. But hearing him talk about me? That’s absolutely thrilling!”

Terry Gross is not planning on improvising. So good on her for knowing her limitations. She has not yet said FREEEEEEEEEEEEEESHHHH AIRRRRR!

“I never dreamed that I would be honored at the National Book Awards, and without even having to write a book.”

“Book interviews can be pretty perplexing. I once met a political correspondent who stormed out when I asked him a question that wasn’t in the book.” By contrast, an actor who wrote a book wouldn’t answer questions because the answers were already in his book.

“Why do I love talking to writers? Well, because non-fiction writers tell us things we don’t ever know.”

Really?

She’s boasting now about J.T. Leroy’s interview being used as court evidence.

“Fiction allows a novelist to get at the truth.”

Really? I did not know that.

This is the longest presentation speech I think I’ve ever heard.

Lebowitz’s response to Didion’s speech: “pretty funny.”

Ira Glass is now presenting. They don’t applaud for Ira in quite the same way that they do for Didion. But it could be because Ira is wearing all black.

Yes, he’s presenting for FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESHHHHHH AIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

First 9/11 reference of the night! What the hell do 9/11 hijackers have to do with Terry Gross? Oh, he’s rambling on about a 9/11 interview. “And then this interview goes incredibly barebone, when this writer confesses — that when he started reading — that, uh, yeah this was an amazing interview. Not just the strippers. The flying planes in the building.”

Ira, this is not your therapist’s office. You are presenting an award. You are not accepting an award.

“It was great radio, of course.”

Of course.

Didion is now on stage. A lengthy applause. And now a standing ovation.

Didion is very small, as everybody has often reported.

“I didn’t start writing to get a lifetime achievement award. In fact, it was pretty much the last thing on my mind.”

Words on “Self-Respect” written in 1961 in Vogue. A real writer at Vogue at that time was “pretty much anyone who wasn’t on staff.” Lengthy stuff about San Bernardino. Yes, the woman can write, but to reproduce this speech is to possibly bore you readers. Didion-is-read-ing-like-this-in-a-flat-line-voice.

“Overwhelming impulse. I need to go back to the airport. So each of these pieces was a job, a craft. But each of these pieces were an exercise in learning how to live.”

Aha, the first Mailer mention of the night! “There was someone who really truly knew what writing was for.”

Michael Cunningham — the author of The Hours — is now up to present the Lifetime Achievement Award. He is accompanied by a young gentleman who looks like a Williamsburg hipster. I presume he is the “assistant.”

Cunningham: A long pause, then a sigh. He is nervous and then not so. What’s that? An audience! The literary establishment at my beck and call! Talking about a long trip to Los Angeles. He is emphasizing words like “frighteningly” and looking more than a bit pompous. The air that escapes from his lungs does so with a stunning regularity. This is a windbag that came from the factory. If Didion kicks Cunningham in the ass when she gets the award, I will have nothing but good words to say of her from now on. The likelihood of this happening is nil, seeing as how Didion avoided an interview from videographer Jason Boog.

One thing’s for sure: I don’t believe that he loves Didion as much as he says he does.

Lebowitz is now holding a sixty-page list containing the non-winners since 1950. She points out that A Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger is a “non-winner.” Beloved by Toni Morrison also lost. “She didn’t go to New Hampshire. In fact, she’s here tonight. (applause) And if were to ask me, she looks kind of expectant.”

Lebowitz’s barbs are quite funny (at our table, Marydell even tittered!), but it is too clear that she is reading from the paper.

I will have more podcasts later, but Fran Lebowitz has taken the stage. She is mentioning many things about the writer strikes and, contrary to her thoughts expressed to me on the podcast interview about winging it, she’s reading from a piece of paper.

Of reruns replacing first-run television shows: “Apparently, there are some people who observe the difference.”

“So in the generous spirit that I know exists in this room, if there are people at your table who you cannot place, please extend a warm welcome to the Bailey family from Toronto, who couldn’t get in.”

“It was rumored that illegal immigrants were given library cards.”

This is light humor, but she has the crowd downstairs laughing.

“There are four categories, yet there are twenty finalists. Therefore, there will be four winners and sixteen non-winners. I am happy to call them non-winners, but I must tell you that of all the phrases that bug me, the oft-repeated ‘win-win’ that bugs me. We know there’s no such thing as ‘win-win,’ because it’s often spoken by the winner-winner. There is such a thing as lose-lose, and that’s what is known as life-life. And there has in one case been lose-win, which was known as Bush v. Gore.”

Tayari Jones is here. A white woman smiled at her and said, “I loved your reading last night.” This is because Tayari, like 5 Under 35 winner Asali Solomon, is African-American.

I just asked Franzen why he didn’t add me as a Facebook friend. He said that I talked too fast and that I sounded like I worked in advertising. There is audio.

I am here talking with Harold Augenbraum, the Executive Director of the National Book Foundation.

Me: Who do you use instead of PricewaterhouseCoopers?

Augenbraum: DB Bistro Moderne. [HA has confused my question with the caterer, but this is also interesting and he is a convivial fellow.] One of the perks of being a judge is that they get to pick the restaurant they get to go to. They get $2,500 for six months’ worth of work. Fortunately, Per Se is not open for lunch.

The Almighty Five Bloggers now have their own table here. There was a last-minute pitstop to Best Buy, but we’re all ready to go. More meaningful journalism coming soon.

Denis Johnson, incidentally, isn’t here. He’s in Iraq. The first of many swipes against the good people here at the National Book Foundation. More to come.

As you may or may not know, five bloggers are employing various journalistic experiments tonight using an arsenal of technology — some of it theirs, some of it borrowed, some of it having no apparent origin of acquisition that we can trace — at least, not legitimately. But however successful or unsuccessful our efforts, we’ll be covering tonight’s National Book Awards as it happens (and sometimes after it happens).

The following bloggers will be there tonight:

Levi Asher
Jason Boog
Marydell
Sarah Weinman
Yours truly

So if you want to check out what’s happening tonight on these pages, keep refreshing this page. I’ll be putting up everything under the “National Book Awards” category, reporting impressions, observations, and being an all-around wiseacre. Plus, we’ll be getting up the winners as they are announced.

Stay tuned! It’s just like the Oscar Blog, except we’re actually going to have people attending the ceremonies!