The six finalists for the Best of the National Book Awards Fiction award have been announced. Four of the six are short-story collections — all of them of the “complete” or “collected” variety, which seems a little like cheating. Those four are by John Cheever, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty. The other two finalists are Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.

When I first wrote about this, I (hesitantly) predicted that Invisible Man would win it. Go to the site, vote, and make me a visionary! If you give them your e-mail address, you’re entered in a contest to attend this year’s NBA ceremony in November and spend two nights at a Manhattan hotel.

(Update: I just voted, and they show you the current results. Flannery O’Connor is in the lead with 31% and Ellison is second at 24%. Looks like it will come down to one of those two. Cheever’s bringing up the rear.)