~Post by Brian C.
It should be noted that I don’t know what I’m talking about. I don’t know why the Pulitzer Prize panel for fiction didn’t pick a winner. Maybe Michael Cunningham secretly hates Denis Johnson, DFW, and Karen Russell. Maybe Susan Larson and Maurreen Corrigan made their selections in an NPR whisper, and no one heard them. Maybe they all got drunk and forgot to submit a winner. Maybe something happened that perfectly explains not picking a winner. Who knows?
What I do know is that they should pick a winner. Picking a winner helps publishers, booksellers, authors, and readers. And that’s good enough reason to make a choice. But more importantly, the reason to pick a winner is that it avoids the type of ridiculous blog post that I’m writing right now. The 2012 Pulitzer Prize will be mostly remembered as being one of those years that they didn’t make a selection. That’s sad, and it’s untrue. With the weight of all the opinion pieces coming out about the lack of a winner, what’s lost is the focus on those who did win.
Most notably, Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention won the Pulitzer Prize for History, and Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: How the World Became Modern won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Both of these authors, along with all the other winners, should be basking in the glow of personal pride and commercial success that a major award brings, but all we can talk about is who didn’t win. That kinda stinks.
So I say, let’s pick a winner. Always. It’s just easier that way. It’s also the nice thing to do.
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