The morning after the biggest night of his life, Justin Torres was a wreck. Not too many hours earlier, amid the Greek revival splendor of Cipriani Wall Street in Manhattan, he’d been stunned by an announcement: Blackouts, his elliptical reclamation of lost queer histories, had just won one of American literature’s most prestigious honors, the National Book Award for fiction. Clad in a white tuxedo jacket and a droopy black-ribbon tie, Torres pantomimed a sprint as he made his way to the lectern.