Very funny! Now go back in your room and don't put the ceremonial branches on the fire until you're finished.
"I think it's an outrageous insult. Only one finished real novel among the finalists, AND they can't pick a winner. DO YOUR FRAKKIN' JOB." --Ron Charles of the Washington Post Book World
8 comments:
That's kind of a major diss to Swamplandia, not that I would argue it is the most deserving Pulitzer candidate of the year, but come on.
Exactly. I don't get why they would name three finalists and no winner, although the rumor on Twitter is that the three judges just couldn't agree and the committee let them get away with it. (For shame!)
You know, I tend to defend the world of literary fiction when people claim it's insular and missing all the best works, but the Pulitzer committee isn't exactly helping me out with this decision. How many thousands of novels were published in the United States in 2011? How many did they actually consider?
Yeah, it would be nice to see some reading logs or a list of titles considered. According to the Pulitzer website the jury was sent about 1,000 books. (New life goal: Become Pulitzer judge, make furniture out of my mail.)
Correction, the jury gets it from 1,000 to 3, and then the board decides. Just so we all know who to picket.
I like how Pale King joins Gravity's Rainbow as a book the Pulitzer committee couldn't agree to give the award to. Seems appropriate.
The panel picked three weird books this year. I enjoyed Swamplandia!, but Train Dreams is a relatively minor Denis Johnson book (maybe they were trying to make up for past oversights?) and The Pale King, which I haven't finished yet, just seems like a weak pick to me. I love David Foster Wallace and he may be the greatest writer of his generation, but, to paraphrase Arthur Phillips, I find it difficult to believe that a partially-finished Wallace novel was better than every (or at least every but two) novel that ANY other writer published last year.
I believe it but I'm such a uber-fan. I bought the Pale King paperback (after already reading the hardcover) for its 22 new pages and found myself thinking, "I'm basically paying 77 cents per page of new Wallace material. Yeah, that's fine."
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