What if they gave out a fiction Pulitzer and nobody came?

Understandably it's hard to get emotionally worked up about news of the Pulitzer Prize Committee's 2013 honorees, including the fact that they indeed decided to award a fiction prize this time around. Would we be in another universe where we could properly honor Adam Johnson's THE ORPHAN MASTER'S SON for being the newest fiction book to sit atop that throne. (It also won the Tournament of Books this year, ensuring that that contest will be ever more closely watched in years to come -- I hope.) Johnson's novel about surveillance and fear in North Korea itself is a referent to violence, albeit that which has been expected, unlike the events of Monday.

Other honorees included Sharon Olds for poetry, Ayad Akhtar for drama and David Barstow and Alejandra Xanic von Bertrab for reporting on Walmart's Mexico misdeeds for the New York Times.