Goon Squad Takes the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

I was ruminating a bit about the Pulitzer Prize this week and wondering why it isn’t a bigger deal. The bookstore I worked at in Los Angeles may not be indicative of national trends, but while I was there, the Booker Prize and the National Book Award moved more books than the Pulitzer. (The Nobel Prize had a bigger impact on sales than all the other awards combined, believe it or not.) I think part of the reason that the Pulitzer fails to capture the interest of readers is that it’s much less controversial than other awards. Pulitzer winners are almost always safe picks. But part of it, I think, is that the award has no build up. The judges do not announce the nominees (aka the shortlist) in advance, instead the finalists are revealed at the same time as the winner. It’s pretty obvious that having a shortlist would build interest – some might say artificially – by placing the prize in the public eye for longer. But I’d argue that the Pulitzer is worthy of this treatment. Though the picks are often safe, taken together, the Pulitzer winners are an incomplete, but still compelling bunch of books. The Pulitzers are primarily a journalism award, and that, I think, matters too, in that it allows us to equate the novel with journalism, which, at its best, is meant to be a noble and unfrivolous pursuit. (And this isn’t just the J-school grad in me talking.) Finally, giving the Pulitzer a shortlist would just be more fun and it would give us book bloggers more to natter on about.Previously: Excerpts and links for the Pulitzer winners and finalists.

This morning the Guardian points to the shortlist for the National Short Story Prize, a British contest that attracted more than 1,400 entries. The point of the contest is to “re-establishing the importance of the British short story,” and as such there are some recognizable names on the shortlist to get people interested, including master of the form William Trevor and novelists Rose Tremain and Michel Faber. Also making the list is James Lasdun whose book The Horned Man I very much admired. The Guardian story has some very brief excerpts of the stories, and BBC 4 (one of the organizers of the Prize) has bios of the shortlisted writers. BBC4 will be broadcasting readings of the five stories from the April 10th to the 15th, a unique idea that is especially suited to short stories, and the winner – to receive 15,000 pounds – will be unveiled on May 15th. I hope they put the text of the stories online at some point, too.Update: Found some links related to the final stories, and I thought I’d share.”Men of Ireland” by Trevor was originally published in the New Yorker. James Tata writes about the story here.”The Safehouse” by Faber was discussed at Bookworld. The story appeared in Faber’s collection, Farenheit Twins.”The Anxious Man” by Lasdun appeared in The Paris Review #173. They’re sold out but Amazon has a couple of copies“The Ebony Hand” by Tremain will be part of a collection called The Darkness of Wallis Simpson in December. The collection is already out in England, and there’s a brief synopsis of the story at readingadventures (scroll down).”Flyover” by Rana Dasgupta is in the collection Tokyo Cancelled.Some thoughts on the story prize from Tim Worstall.