John Lithgow to give John Ashbery a Lifetime Achievement Award, natch

The National Book Foundation has just alerted us to this lovely lovely factoid:

We are pleased to announce that internationally renowned poet John Ashbery will receive the 2011 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the 62nd National Book Awards Ceremony and Benefit Dinner on Wednesday, November 16, 2011 in New York City.

Hearty congratulations to John Ashbery! But wait, there's more:

Also that evening, Mitchell Kaplan, co-founder of the Miami International Book Fair, will receive the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. Actor, writer, and musician John Lithgow will host the event.

Congrats also to Mitchell Kaplan. But John Lithgow? Is it the Tony's!? Less music, more lyrics (hey-o). Actually, it's not the first time this has happened. Harvard grad John Lithgow honored John Ashbery in 2009 as well, when he became the recipient of the Harvard Arts Medal. Merely imagining that those two are friends really brightens our day.

A bit more about the National Book Foundation Medal:

Every fall, in conjunction with the conferring of The National Book Awards in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People's Literature, the Board of Directors of the Foundation also presents a Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, which comes with $10,000. The recipient is a person who has enriched our literary heritage over a life of service, or a corpus of work.

Past winners for 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010, respectively, were Joan Didion, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gore Vidal, and Tom Wolfe. View all of the medal's recipients here. Our sincere congrats again to one of the worlde's finest.