Photo: National Book Foundation via YouTube As 18 nominees and winners shuffled offstage after last night’s 74th annual National Book Awards ceremony, a reporter couldn’t help but state the obvious to another colleague: “It was so not controversial at all.” “It,” of course, referred to the much-whispered-about pro-Palestine statement that closed the event. Read by Aaliyah Bilal, nominated for her short-story collection Temple Folk, the brief declaration called for a cease-fire in Gaza “to address the urgent humanitarian needs of Palestinian civilians, particularly children.” Flanked by winners including Justin Torres (fiction, Blackouts), Ned Blackhawk (nonfiction, The Rediscovery of America: Native...