Biography/Autobiography Awards, 1917-1992: From the Lucky Discoverer of America to an Unfortunate Vietnam Veteran 3598301707, 3598301804, 9783598301704

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THE PULITZER PRIZE ARCHIVE A History and Anthology of Award-winning Materials in Journalism, Letters, and Arts Series Editor: Heinz-Dietrich Fischer Ruhr University, Bochum Federal Republic of Germany

PART D: BELLES LETTRES

Volume 10

K G - Saur München • New Providence • London Paris 1997

Novel / Fiction Awards 1917-1994 From Pearl S. Buck and Margaret Mitchell to Ernest Hemingway and John Updike

Edited with general and special introductions by Heinz-Dietrich Fischer in cooperation with Erika J. Fischer

K G - Saur München • New Providence · London Paris 1997

Gefördert durch Prof. Dr. Dietrich Oppenberg aus Mitteln der Stiftung Pressehaus NRZ Essen

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme The Pulitzer prize archive : a history and anthology of award winning materials in journalism, letters, and arts /ser. ed.: Heinz-Dietrich Fischer. - München ; New Providence ; London ; Paris : Saur. ISBN 3-598-30170-7 NE: Fischer, Heinz-Dietrich [Hrsg.] Vol. 10 : Pt. D, Belles lettres. Novel, fiction awards 1917 - 1994 : from Pearl S. Buck and Margret Mitchell to Ernest Hemmingway and John Updike / ed. with general and special introd. by Heinz-Dietrich Fischer in cooperation with Erika J. Fischer. - 1996 ISBN 3-598-30180-4

Θ Gedruckt auf säurefreiem Papier Printed on acid-free paper Alle Rechte vorbehalten / All Rights Strictly Reserved Κ. G. Saur Verlag GmbH & Co KG, München 1996 A Reed Reference Publishing Company Printed in the Federal Republic of Germany by WS-Druckerei Werner Schaubruch, Bodenheim Bound by Buchbinderei Schaumann, Darmstadt Cover Design by Manfred Link, München ISBN 3-598-30180-4 ISBN 3-598-30170-7 (Complete Set)

ν

PREFACE With the volume on hand this series of publications for the first time is turning to the field of fiction that holds an eminent place within the Pulitzer Prize system. J. Douglas Bates once tried to account for this fact by offering the following explanation: "An argument can be made that Joseph Pulitzer's journalism prizes never would have become famous if he hadn't tacked on the separate awards in arts and letters. These first national prizes for books and plays captured the public attention right from the start. And that happened primarily as a result of headline-grabbing controversy." Indeed the other Pulitzer Prizes hardly ever provoked such controversial opinions as the one that in the early years from 1917 onwards was known under the term of "Novel" and in 1949 was renamed "Fiction". In all eight decades of awarding the prize there was repeatedly strong, sometimes even harsh criticism of the decisions made by the jury and the Pulitzer Prize Board respectively. And time and again names of authors were publicly discussed that - for whatever reasons - were never even considered for the prestigious award. In this respect the book at hand not only is a complete documentation of the laureates but - running along the jury reports - an exciting inside-story on the annual decision-making process of selecting, nominating and bestowing the prize in all of the various committees. Franz Schneider stated once that, from the point of view of an communications scientist, "the interdependency of the decisive discussions of such committees and the so-called public opinion" forms actually one of the very "central problems of communication sciences." That the time-consuming research for this and the preceding volumes could be carried out, once again is largely due to the kind support of Prof. Dr. Dietrich Oppenberg (publisher of the NRZ - Neue Ruhr/Rhein Zeitung, Essen, and head of the ECON book publishing company, Düsseldorf)· To Professor Seymour Topping and Mr. Edward M. Kliment (The Pulitzer Prize Office at Columbia University, New York) we are indebted for the provision of important material. Help and support in various forms came from Mr.

VI

Carroll Brown (President of the American Council on Germany, New York) as well as his fellow workers Mrs. Karen Furey and Mr. Eric Graage. Unfortunately, in most cases it was not possible to obtain the rights to reprint short excerpts from the Pulitzer Prize-winning books documented in this volume. The authors or their descendants usually could not be traced, and the publishing houses only rarely responded to requests relating to this matter. Then Dr. Daniel Boehnk, attorney at law (Cologne/New York), meritoriously turned our attention to the "Doctrine of Fair Use" as embodied in the United States Copyright Act of 1976, as amended. According to this doctrine excerpts of copyrighted works in the context of a compendium or a work of reference - as is absolutely the case with the book on hand - may by reprinted when the quotation does not encompass a substantial portion of the copyrighted work and enhances public awareness and value of the work in question. As we are obliged to a number of other people who helped that this book could be completed in the long run, we would like to express our gratitude and give them credit by naming them in alphabetical order: Mr. Tony Abrahamson (New York), Mrs. Gitte A. Berkelie-Hinze (Frankfurt a.M.), Mrs. Elizabeth Brennan (New York), Mrs. Teresa Buswell (New York), Mr. Mac Chaudhry (Marco Island, Fl.), Miss Mady Cohen (New York), Mr. Jonathan Delcour (New York), Mr. Jürgen Η. Giesbert (New York), Mr. Larry Heinzerling (New York), Mrs. Becky Hemperly (Boston, Ma.), Mrs. Brigitte James (Bonn), Mrs. Anne Lewis (Washington, D.C.), Mr. Norman Mailer (New York), Mrs. Lori Mardock (Minneapolis, Min.), Mr. Robert McCormack (New York), Mr. Jonathan W. Pilgrim (Munich), Mr. Stephen Plotkin (Boston, Ma.) and Mrs. Erika Seidman (New York). At the Ruhr-University Bochum Mrs. Ingrid Dickhut made the manuscript ready for print, drew up the index and furthermore accomplished the typographical design of the book, as she has done for all the previous volumes in this series. In the same proven way, Mr. Olaf Jubin, M.A., took on tasks of translation and coordination, whereas Miss Friederike Erlinghagen attended to biographical assignments and Mr. Miicahit Yildiz was engaged in specific bibliographical research. Bochum, FRG August, 1996

E.J.F./H.-D.F.

VII

CONTENTS

PREFACE

V

INTRODUCTION By Heinz-Dietrich Fischer, Ruhr-Universität

XXI Bochum

HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR NOVEL / FICTION SELECTIONS FROM AWARD-WINNING ENTRIES REMARKS ABOUT THE SELECTIONS CRITERIA 1917 AWARD: ABOUT THE WITHHOLD OF THE NOVEL PRIZE

XXI 1 2 3

By The Advisory Board NAMES OF THE BOARD MEMBERS VOTING FOR "NO AWARD" 1918 AWARD: ABOUT THE MIDDLE-AGED FATHER OF AN OLD NEW YORK FAMILY

4

5

By Ernest Poole STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1919 AWARD: ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PATTERNS OF THE GROWTH OF THE NATION

6

9

By N. Booth Tarkington STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1920 AWARD: ABOUT THE WITHHOLD OF THE NOVEL PRIZE

10 13

By The Advisory Board NAMES OF THE BOARD MEMBERS VOTING FOR "NO AWARD"

14

VIII 1921 AWARD: ABOUT THE PICTURE AND ANALYSIS OF A CASTE DURING A PERIOD

15

By Edith N. Wharton STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1922 AWARD: ABOUT THE SYMPATHIC PORTRAIT OF A MIDDLECLASS HOME-LIFE

16

19

By N. Booth Tarkington STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1923 AWARD: ABOUT THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A NEBRASKAN IN WORLD WAR ONE

20

23

By Willa S. Cather STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1924 AWARD: ABOUT THE FRONTIER LIFE OF THE SCOTTISH PRESBYTERIANS

24

27

By Margaret W. Wilson STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1925 AWARD: ABOUT THE EFFORTS MAKING A DEBT-RIDDEN FARM PROSPEROUS

28

31

By Edna Ferber STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1926 AWARD: ABOUT THE PHASES IN THE CAREER OF A MEDICAL RESEARCHER

32

35

By H. Sinclair Lewis STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1927 AWARD: ABOUT THE MARRIAGE OF A WOMAN INTO A WEALTHY FAMILY

36

39

By Louis Bromfield STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1928 AWARD: ABOUT THE COLLAPSE OF A BRIDGE AND THE FIVE PEOPLE KILLED

40

43

By Thornton N. Wilder STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

44

IX 1929 A W A R D : ABOUT THE LIVES OF B L A C K S O N A S O U T H CAROLINA PLANTATION

47

By Julia M. Peterkin STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1930 A W A R D : A B O U T THE R E S U L T S O F A TRAGIC A M E R I C A N INDIAN LOVE AFFAIR

48

51

By Oliver H. La Farge STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1931 A W A R D : A B O U T THE LIFE OF A W O M A N A N D T H E A M E R I C A N SOCIAL S C E N E

52

55

By Margaret A. Barnes STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1932 A W A R D : ABOUT THE C H I N E S E F A R M E R RISING TO A WEALTHY L A N D O W N E R

56

59

By PearlS. Buck STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1933 A W A R D : A B O U T THE C R U M B L I N G OF THE O L D A N D T H E BIRTH OF A NEW S O U T H

60

63

By Thomas S. Stribling STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1934 A W A R D : A B O U T THE E X P E R I E N C E S O F A FAMILY IN THE GEORGIA WILDERNESS

64

67

By Caroline Miller STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1935 A W A R D : A B O U T THE LIVING CONDITIONS O N A S M A L L M I D W E S T E R N FARM

68

71

By Josephine W. Johnson STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1936 A W A R D : A B O U T THE MIGRATION F R O M THE H O P F I E L D S TO E A S T E R N O R E G O N

72

75

By Harold L. Davis STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

76

χ

1937 A W A R D : ABOUT THE HUMAN RELATIONS IN THE CIVIL WAR AND A F T E R W A R D S

79

By Margaret M. Mitchell STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1938 A W A R D : ABOUT THE PERSONAL PORTRAIT OF AN INFLUENTIAL BOSTON IAN

80

83

By John P. Marquand STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1939 A W A R D : ABOUT THE COMING OF AGE OF A POOR BOY IN A FLORIDA AREA

84

87

By Marjorie K. Rawlings STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1940 A W A R D : ABOUT THE MIGRATION OF THE DUST BOWL OKIES TO CALIFORNIA

88

91

By John E. Steinbeck STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1941 A W A R D : ABOUT THE WITHHOLD OF THE NOVEL PRIZE

92

95

By The Advisory Board N A M E S OF THE BOARD M E M B E R S VOTING FOR "NO AWARD"

1942 A W A R D : ABOUT THE FAMILY M E M B E R S FROM A VIRGINIA TIDEWATER CITY

96

97

By Ellen A. Glasgow STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1943 A W A R D : ABOUT THE A M E R I C A N S RECOGNIZING THE THREAT FROM GERMANY

98

101

By Upton B. Sinclair Jr. STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1944 A W A R D : ABOUT THE PRISON OF LONELINESS OF A V E R Y S U C C E S S F U L MAN

102

105

By Martin A. Flavin STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

106

XI 1945 AWARD: ABOUT THE AMERICANS IN ITALY DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR

109

By John R. Hersey STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1946 AWARD: ABOUT THE WITHHOLD OF THE NOVEL PRIZE

110 113

By The Advisory Board NAMES OF THE BOARD MEMBERS VOTING FOR "NO AWARD" 1947 AWARD: ABOUT THE TRAGEDY OF THREE FORMER CHILDHOOD FRIENDS

114

115

By Robert P. Warren STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1948 AWARD: ABOUT THE SOUTH PACIFIC ISLANDS DURING WORLD WAR TWO

116

119

By James A. Michener STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1949 AWARD: ABOUT THE DEEPER MEANING OF HUMAN CONFLICT SITUATIONS

120

123

By James G. Cozzens STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1950 AWARD: ABOUT THE DREAM OF THE RICH LANDS IN THE AMERICAN WEST

124

127

By Alfred B.Guthrie Jr. STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1951 AWARD: ABOUT THE AMERICAN PIONEERS ON THE WAY TO CIVILIZATION

128

131

By Conrad M. Richter STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1952 AWARD: ABOUT THE LIVES OF MEN ON SHIPBOARD AND THEIR PROBLEMS

132

135

By Herman Wouk STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

136

XII

1953 A W A R D : ABOUT THE OLD FISHERMAN IN THE WORLD OF THE GULF STREAM

139

By Ernest M. Hemingway STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1954 A W A R D : ABOUT THE WITHHOLD OF THE FICTION PRIZE

140

143

By The Advisory Board N A M E S OF THE BOARD M E M B E R S VOTING FOR "NO AWARD"

1955 A W A R D : ABOUT THE REVOLT OF A FRENCH A R M Y UNIT IN WORLD WAR ONE

144

145

By William Faulkner STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1956 A W A R D : ABOUT THE CONFEDERATE PRISON STOCKADE IN THE CIVIL WAR

146

149

By MacKinlay Kantor STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1957 A W A R D : ABOUT THE WITHHOLD OF THE FICTION PRIZE

150

153

By The Advisory Board N A M E S OF THE BOARD M E M B E R S VOTING FOR "NO AWARD"

1958 A W A R D : ABOUT THE DEATH IN A CLOSELY KNIT FAMILY FROM T E N N E S S E E

154

155

By James Agee STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1959 A W A R D : ABOUT THE JOURNEY OF A FATHER AND HIS S O N TO CALIFORNIA

156

159

By Robert L. Taylor STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1960 A W A R D : ABOUT THE SMOKE-FILLED COMMITTEE R O O M S OF THE U.S. SENATE

160

163

By Allen S. Drury STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

164

XIII 1961 A W A R D : ABOUT THE Y E A R S OF D E P R E S S I O N IN A S M A L L A L A B A M A TOWN

167

By N. Harper Lee STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1962 A W A R D : A B O U T THE PORTRAIT OF A P R I E S T A N D IRISHA M E R I C A N LIFE

168

171

By Edwin G. O'Connor STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1963 A W A R D : ABOUT THE J O U R N E Y OF T H R E E M I S S I S S I P P I B O Y S TO M E M P H I S

172

175

By William Faulkner STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1964 A W A R D : A B O U T THE WITHHOLD OF THE FICTION PRIZE

176 179

By The Advisory Board NAMES OF THE BOARD MEMBERS VOTING FOR "NO AWARD" 1965 A W A R D : ABOUT THE LIVES OF B L A C K S A N D W H I T E S AT THE GULF C O A S T

180

181

By Shirley A. Grau STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1966 A W A R D : A B O U T THE A S S E M B L E D T A L E S A N D S T O R I E S ON V A R I O U S T O P I C S

182

185

By Katherine A. Porter STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1967 A W A R D : A B O U T THE T R A N S F O R M A T I O N F R O M A LITTLE M A N INTO A BIG O N E

186

189

By Bernard Malamud STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1968 A W A R D : A B O U T THE REVOLT LED BY AN O U T S T A N D I N G BLACK P R E A C H E R

190

193

By William C. Styron Jr. STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

194

XIV 1969 A W A R D : ABOUT THE R O O T S A N D THE S O U L OF THE N O R T H A M E R I C A N INDIAN

197

By N. Scott Momaday STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1970 A W A R D : ABOUT THE THIRTY S T O R I E S F R O M A M E R I C A N AND EUROPEAN AREAS

198

201

By Jean Stafford STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1971 A W A R D : A B O U T THE WITHHOLD OF THE FICTION PRIZE

202 205

By The Advisory Board NAMES OF THE BOARD MEMBERS VOTING FOR "NO AWARD" 1972 A W A R D : A B O U T THE LIVES OF FOUR G E N E R A T I O N S OF AN A M E R I C A N FAMILY

206

207

By Wallace E. Stegner STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1973 A W A R D : ABOUT THE M E M O R I E S OF G R O W I N G UP IN A MISSISSIPPI TOWN

208

211

By Eudora Welty STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1974 A W A R D : ABOUT THE WITHHOLD O F THE FICTION PRIZE

212 215

By The Advisory Board NAMES OF THE BOARD MEMBERS VOTING FOR "NO AWARD" 1975 A W A R D : A B O U T THE M O S T C R U C I A L BATTLE DURING T H E CIVIL W A R TIME

216

217

By Michael J. Shaara Jr. STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1976 A W A R D : ABOUT THE TRIALS A N D T E M P T A T I O N S OF THE A M E R I C A N ARTIST

218

221

By Saul Bellow STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

222

XV 1977 A W A R D : ABOUT THE WITHHOLD OF THE FICTION PRIZE

225

By The Advisory Board NAMES OF THE BOARD MEMBERS VOTING FOR "NO AWARD" 1978 A W A R D : A B O U T THE LIFE AT THE B O R D E R L I N E O F BLACK A N D WHITE A M E R I C A

226

227

By James A. McPherson STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

228

1979 A W A R D : ABOUT THE SIXTY-ONE S T O R I E S DEALING WITH A LONG-LOST W O R L D

231

By John Cheever STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

232

1980 A W A R D : ABOUT THE C R I M E AND P U N I S H M E N T O F A CONVICTED MURDERER

235

By Norman Mailer STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

236

1981 A W A R D : A B O U T THE R E N D E R I N G OF REAL LIFE IN D O W N T O W N NEW O R L E A N S

239

By John K. Toole STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1982 A W A R D : ABOUT THE CHIEF S A L E S OF A M O T O R C O M P A N Y

240

REPRESENTATIVE 243

By John H. Updike STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

244

1983 A W A R D : ABOUT THE H E R O I C LIVES O F T W O S E P A R A T E D AMERICAN SISTERS

247

By Alice M. Walker STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER 1984 A W A R D : A B O U T THE R E T U R N OF A F O R M E R P L A Y E R TO ALBANY

248 BASEBALL 251

By William J. Kennedy STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

252

XVI 1985 A W A R D : ABOUT THE C R O S S I N G OF THE PATHS OF TWO AMERICAN A C A D E M I C S

255

By Alison Lurie STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1986 A W A R D : ABOUT THE CATTLE DRIVE OPERATIONS FROM T E X A S TO MONTANA

256

259

By Larry J. McMurtry STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1987 A W A R D : ABOUT THE PRIVILEGED SOCIETY OF WELLBORN T E N N E S S E A N PEOPLE

260

263

By Peter H. Taylor STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1988 A W A R D : ABOUT THE LIFE OF A FORMER SLAVE IN POSTCIVIL WAR OHIO

264

267

By Toni Morrison STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1989 A W A R D : ABOUT THE R E T R O S P E C T ON AN ENTIRE LIFE OF A MARRIAGE

268

271

By Anne Tyler STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1990 A W A R D : ABOUT THE VARIOUS SIGHTS AND S O U N D S OF AN ERA IN MUSIC

272

275

By Oscar Hijuelos STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1991 A W A R D : ABOUT THE LOOKING FOR R E A S O N S TO LIVE AT LATE MIDDLE AGE

276

279

By John H. Updike STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1992 A W A R D : ABOUT THE VERY SPECIAL WORLD OF A THRIVING FARM IN IOWA

280

283

By Jane G. Smiley STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

284

XVII 1993 A W A R D : ABOUT THE MANY VIETNAMESE EXPATRIATES LIVING IN AMERICA

287

By Robert O. Butler Jr. STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

1994 A W A R D : ABOUT THE CRACKED-UP C O N T E M P O R A R Y AMERICAN FAMILY LIFE

288

291

By E. Annie Proulx STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

292

W I N N E R S O F T H E N O V E L / FICTION A W A R D , 1 9 9 5 - 2 0 0 5

295

INDEX

297

THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED TO

WILLIAM FAULKNER (1897 - 1962) PULITZER PRIZE WINNER 1955 AND 1963 ON HIS 100TH BIRTHDAY

XIX

INTRODUCTION HISTORY A N D DEVELOPMENT O F THE PULITZER FOR NOVEL / FICTION

PRIZE

by Heinz-Dietrich Fischer

When Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911) produced a first rough draft of an outline for the prizes to be named after him in his will of 1904, there were also prizes for the arts among them. "One does not know... precisely what was in the mind of Joseph Pulitzer... when he realized a long dream and set up his literary prizes," as Carlos Baker remarks and continues: "Encouragement to writers, certainly. He was a very vigorous writer himself... But Mr. Pulitzer... was first of all a newspaperman of very high standards. And a newspaperman has been defined as one who feels impelled, if he can find no excitement, to stir some up. The establishment of the prizes may be seen as a noble device for stirring up interest in American letters...".1 Pulitzer was indeed always extremely interested in issues and problems that extended beyond journalism. As an example of this one of his secretaries remembers a conversation with the newspaperman, of which he recounts that: Pulitzer "carried me from country to country, from century to century, through history, art, literature, biography, economics, music, the drama, and current politics."2 In view of such a wide-ranging spectrum of interests it came as no surprise in the end that the pressman Pulitzer also included honors for outstanding literary works in his prize categories. He defined the most prominent award, the prize for fiction, as follows: Annually, "for the American Novel published during the year which shall best present the wholesome atmosphere of American life, and the highest standard of American manners and manhood." 3 When the Advisory Board of the Columbia School of Journalism convened in May 1915 to undertake the task of advertising the competition for the first Pulitzer Prize for those novels to be published in the fol1 Carlos Baker, Fiction Awards, in: Columbia Library Columns (New York), Vol. VI/No. 3, May 1957, pp. 30 f. 2 Alleyne Ireland, An Adventure with a Genius. Recollections of Joseph Pulitzer, New York 1914, p. 80.

3 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes. A History of the Awards in Books, Drama, Music, and Journalism, New York - London 1974, p. 55.

XX

lowing year, "it approved the Plan of Award for the Pulitzer Prizes in substantially the same form as the wording of Pulitzer's will," Hohenberg writes, adding: "But on June 10, 1915, when President Butler (of Columbia University) presented the Plan of Award to the university's Trustees and the executors of the Pulitzer estate, he included in it amendments that he called 'slight' and 'insubstantial.' Apparently he had made them himself," 4 which led, to an extent, to irritations. Some of the minor changes carried out by Butler may have indeed been insignificant, yet "the only one that affected the specifications for the prizes," Hohenberg explains, "was the change in the fiction award from 'whole' to 'wholesomee' - which was carefully indicated with the added four letters being printed in italics... Evidently, the Pulitzer executors must have had their doubts. They asked Butler to refer this change, with the rest, to the Advisory Board for its approval. The president, never one to leave anything to chance, wrote individually to the Board members on June 22, 1915, enclosing a revised, printed Plan of Award dated June 10, 1915, and asking them to agree to it. They did, without argument. What prompted Butler's historic afterthought remains a mystery. But after the requirement for 'wholesome' fiction went into the Plan of Award, it remained there from the beginning in 1917"5 for about a decade. So "it was foreordained that the first Fiction Jury would have its troubles finding a respectable prize winner that was also 'wholesomee' in the Butlerian sense,"6 Hohenberg states. When the first Pulitzer Prize Novel jury (Robert Grant, William M. Payne and William L. Phelps) came together in the spring of 1917 to determine a prize-winner based on the novels published in 1916, the following situation arose: "There were only six applicants for the prize," as the report of the jurors indicates verbatim, "one of whom sent, not a printed book but a manuscript, which fails to meet the requirement of publication during the year. Of the five books submitted in competition, all but one seem to us unworthy of consideration for the prize. We are unanimously of the opinion, however, that the merits of this book, though considerable, are no greater than that of several other novels, which though not included in the formal applications, have been taken into consideration by us in arriving at a verdict. We recommend," the jurors wrote furthermore, "that the award be withheld this year for the reason that no American novel of 1916 stands out so conspicuously from the rest as to deserve this special mark of recognition. An award 4 5 6

I Intl.. pp. 5 5 f. Ibid., p. 56. Ibid . p. π .

XXI

by us would only mean a choice among equals and would be liable to misinterpretation."7 The Advisory Board of the School of Journalism and the Trustees of Columbia University, that in the end had the definitive last word on awarding the Pulitzer Prize, accepted the verdict of the jury and decided on "no award" in the novel category.8 As it could not be inferred from the jury-report of 1917 which books had actually been submitted, Hohenberg attempted to trace at least a few of the titles that were eligible and was successful. His investigation deemed that the following three titles were among the total of five novels that the jury had had at hand: Windy McPherson's Son, by Sherwood Anderson; The Leatherwood God, by William Dean Howells; Life and Gabriella, by Ellen Glasgow. 9 The dissatisfaction of the jurors with the submitted works of fiction led to a recommendation at the end of their report stating that "it would be advisable in future to give the jury a longer period for consideration, so that the field can be more comprehensively covered, especially if the material submitted by the formal applicants does not rise above the very low level of this year. It would seem well also," the jury suggested furthermore, "that the existence of this annual prize... should be more widely advertised, or at least called to the attention of the established writers of the country, so that in one way or another the important books may be included among the formal entries." 10 It is not known whether the suggestions of the jury were taken up and whether attempts to increase public awareness of the prize resulted in a higher number of submissions in the following year, because the report of that year's jury (Robert Grant, William M. Payne and William L. Phelps) does not impart any information on the number of contestants in 1918. It was stated concisely in the jury-report "that the majority of the Committee award the Pulitzer Prize for the best novel of 1917 to His Family, by Ernest Poole. The Committee unites in according honorable mention to Bromley Neighborhood, by Alice Brown."11 The Advisory Board as well as the Trustees accepted part of the jury's proposal and for the first time awarded a Pulitzer Prize in the novel category, which went to Ernest Poole, 12 whereas there is no information available on whether the jury's other proposal to 7 8 9 10 11 12

Robert Grant/William M. Payne/William L. Phelps, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, Boston, May 8, 1917, pp. 1 f. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes 1917-1991, New York 1991, p. 51. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 57. Robert Grant/William M. Payne/William L. Phelps, Report..., op. cit., p. 2. Robert Grant/William M. Payne/William L. Phelps, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, Boston, April 10, 1918, p. 1. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 51.

XXII bestow a honorable mention on Alice Brown also met with success. With regard to the prize-winning book by Poole, Hohenberg is of the opinion that it "had not made anything like the impression of Poole's earlier and more successful work, The Harbor, which was similar in spirit to the Edward Bellamy-Jack London type of sentimental Socialism. So, while His Family carried off the award, there wasn't much of a stir about it."13 In 1919, with the same jurors as in the two preceding years (Robert Grant, William M. Payne and William L. Phelps) once again in office, the chairman of the jury wrote to the President of Columbia University on behalf of all of the members: "I hereby report that the Committee, after careful consideration, has reluctantly reached the conclusion, that no one of the novels of 1918 merits this distinction."14 The Advisory Board hat practically already accepted this recommendation, when one of the members of the jury approached the administration of Columbia University, without previous notice, with nothing less than a revision of the initial jury vote camouflaged in the form of a question: "Is it too late to give the novel prize to Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons? I have a letter from Judge Grant..., who says Ί would have voted to give it the prize rather than not award one.'"15 Thus because two of the three jurors favored the same contestant, as Hohenberg reports, Columbia President Nicholas M. Butler consequently "fired off telegrams to each member of the Advisory Board and drew unanimous approval for The Magnificent Ambersons. It was, accordingly, enshrined as the fiction winner for 1919 at Columbia's Commencement," 16 when Booth Tarkington received the Pulitzer Prize for best novel of the year.17 The jury acting in 1920 (Robert Grant, William L. Phelps and Stuart P. Sherman) had some new members. As can be quoted from its report, this jury was "of the opinion that 'no award' should be made,"18 and this was, in the end, also accepted by the Advisory Board and the Trustees. 19 Before the decision of the jury was reached, however, the discussions turned into a remarkable controversy, caused by the new juror Stuart P. Sherman: "He had 13 14

John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 57. Robert Grant/William M. Payne/William L. Phelps, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, Boston, April 22, 1919, p. 1. 15 William L. Phelps, Letter to Frank D. Fackenthal, Provost of Columbia University, New Haven, Ct., May 20, 1919, p. 1. 16 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., pp. 57 f. 17 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 51. 18 Robert Grant/William L. Phelps/Stuart P. Sherman, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, Boston, April 29, 1920, p. 1. 19 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 51.

XXIII

thought", as Hohenberg reconstructs the situation, "of recommending Joseph Hergesheimer's Java Head for the prize until he re-read the terms of the Plan of Award," that contained in place of Pulitzer's original wording 'whole' the term 'wholesomee', inserted by Butler.20 In a note to the chairman of the jury Sherman had "agreed that the Hergesheimer novel 'doesn't at all obviously conform' to the conditions of the award but protested: 'If the jury sticks to the letter of these conditions, will it not make itself a laughing stock to the younger generation?... We ought not to crown a licentious work, but I don't believe we should hold off till a novel appears fit for a Sunday School library.' Sherman's argument for a loose interpretation of the rules was rejected... Java Head hadn't been 'wholesomee' enough,"21 Hohenberg states. In 1921, the members of the jury (Hamlin Garland, Robert M. Lovett and Stuart P. Sherman) also differed in their opinions on who should win that year's Pulitzer Prize because, as John Hohenberg relates, "the issue posed by Sherman" in the year before "finally broke into the open with the publication of Sinclair Lewis's Main Street, the most controversial book of 1920... The crusty Hamlin Garland, ... chairman in 1921 in both the Fiction and Drama Juries... kept his guard up against Lewis... In particular, he held Main Street to be 'vicious and vengeful'... As late as March 1921 he was writing, 'All the novels I have read recently are lacking in style, workmanship. I cannot vote a prize to any of them'... Yet, Garland joined in the Fiction Jury's vote for Main Street... The Fiction report to the Board, at its meeting on May 24, 1921, was for Main Street... As the minutes of the session dryly recorded," as Hohenberg continues his description of the background, "there was 'considerable discussion' of Main Street... In any event, the Board unanimously overturned the jury's proposal of Main Street and decided by a split vote to give the prize to Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, which also had been favorably mentioned in the report."22 This is how Edith Wharton wound up being the Pulitzer Prize-winner in the category of 'novel'.23 After the public announcement of the winner, the bestowal of the award on Edith Wharton evoked a fierce debate as soon as the circumstances leading to the decision of 1921 were made public. As Hohenberg reports, Sherman and Lovett, the two members of the jury, "publicly protested in The New Republic... Neither Lovett nor Sherman threatened publicly to resign from a jury to which they had not yet been reappointed, an awkward action 20 21 22 23

John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 55. Ibid., pp. 55, 58. Ibid., pp. 58 f. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 51.

XXIV

Ή-

W

Η uJK 1 f/

XXV

to which some protestors later resorted. They merely wanted the record to show what actually had happened. Despite the row, Sherman was asked to be chairman of the Fiction Jury in the following year." 24 The jurors of 1922 (Samuel M. Crothers, Jefferson B. Fletcher and Stuart P. Sherman), however, had no difficulties in reaching the unanimous recommendation "that Booth Tarkington's Alice Adams is the best novel of 1921 which can be construed as coming under the terms of the Pulitzer competition. We accordingly recommend it for the Pulitzer novel prize." 25 The Advisory Board as well as the Trustees agreed and honored Booth Tarkington with the award without any contradiction, although he had already won the same prize once before just three years earlier. 26 The jury of 1923 (Samuel M. Crothers, Jefferson B. Fletcher and Bliss Perry) saw only slight changes in personnel when compared to the previous year. It also arrived at a common suggestion. Yet the jurors' vote, penned by Fletcher, the chairman of the jury, read as follows: "I beg to report that the Committee recommends for the Pulitzer Prize to be awarded for the best American novel in 1922, One of Ours by Miss Willa Cather. I might perhaps add that this recommendation is made without enthusiasm. The Committee, as I understand its feeling, assumes that the Trustees of the Fund desire that award should be made each year. In that case, we are of the opinion that Miss Cather's novel, imperfect as we think it in many respects, is yet the most worth while of any in the field." 27 John Hohenberg indicates what cannot be inferred from the jury report: "The 1923 Fiction Jury rejected Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt, a lampoon of American business." 28 Once again, similar to the situation two years earlier, a novel by Lewis was passed over, because the reservations about the author and his work had been too strong. After the first case of neglect, Lewis had publicly protested against the way he had been snubbed, but this time he took the decision with utmost composure, uttering that he didn't "care a hang." 29 Thus Willa Cather received the Pulitzer Prize for 'best novel of 1923,'30 this time without developing into a controversy.

24 25 26 27 28 29 30

John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., pp. 59 f. Samuel M. Crothers/Jefferson B. Fletcher/Stuart P. Sherman, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, Urbana, II., April 24, 1922, p. 1. Cf. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 51. Samuel M. Crothers/Jefferson B. Fletcher/Bliss Perry, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, New York, April 3, 1923, p. 1. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 61. Cf. Mark Schorer, Sinclair Lewis - An American Life, New York 1961, pp. 334, 374. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 51.

XXVI

In 1924, when the jury consisted of the same members as in the year before (Samuel M. Crothers, Jefferson B. Fletcher and Bliss Perry), the award proposal sent to the administration of Columbia University once again seemed to be lacking in conviction. In the note written by the chairman of the jury to Frank D. Fackenthal, the Secretary of the University, it was stated verbatim that: "The committee on the Pulitzer Prize has arrived at the following decision: first, that in its opinion there is no book outstanding enough to merit a Prize this year, but that, secondly, if it is deemed that a prize should be awarded anyhow, the committee would name Margaret Wilson's The Able McLaughlins. It is understood, of course, that if the Trustees desire the award to be made no public announcement shall be made of the opinion of the committee that no book is worthy."31 The Advisory Board as well as the Trustees, however, had no doubts that The Able McLaughlins should win the Pulitzer Prize and had no problems in giving the honor to Margaret Wilson. 32 Once again this decision was not followed by any further discussion, not to speak of a publically held one. There was once again dissent in 1925, when the jurors (Oscar W. Firkins, Jefferson B. Fletcher and William A. White) stated in their report: "The jury has come to no full agreement. The issue hangs, however, between three novels: Joseph Hergesheimer's Balisand, Edna Ferber's So Big, and Lawrence Stalling's Plumes. Mr. White's first choice is So Big. Professor Firkins's is Balisand. For second choice both Mr. White and Professor Firkins name Plumes. If a positive choice by the Trustees is desired," Chairman Fletcher continued in his report, "I should prefer, myself, Balisand, but my greater preference under the circumstances would be to divide the prize between Balisand and So Big"33 William A. White stressed in a separate vote, "that in the matter of style and technique Balisand was superior to either of the other two novels... I felt, on the other hand, that Miss Ferber's thesis was one badly needed in America and one which was dramatized with much skill... Hence, I stood for So Big..."34 The third juror, O. W. Firkins, raised objections against this point of view, emphasizing: "I wish to register my emphatic protest against the award of the Pulitzer novel prize... exclusively to Miss Ferber's So Big," and he pleaded that the award be split

31 32 33 34

Samuel M. Crothers/Jefferson B. Fletcher/Bliss Perry, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, New York, April 1, 1924, p. 1. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 51. Jefferson B. Fletcher, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, New York, April 3, 1925, p. 1. William A. White, Letter to Frank D. Fackenthal, Secretary of Columbia University, New York, April 7, 1925, p. 1.

XXVII

between Hergesheimer and Ferber.35 The Advisory Board and the Trustees decided against this proposal and declared Edna Ferber sole winner of the Pulitzer Prize 'for best novel'. 36 1926 turned out to be a special year in the history of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. A jury that was made up of three new members (Richard Burton, Edwin Lefevre and Robert M. Lovett) wrote in its report, "that Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis, is the novel best deserving the award... In the opinion of the Committee, several novels are worthy competitors, this be especially true of The Smiths by Janet Fairbanks, and Porgy by DuBose Heyward."37 After Sinclair Lewis had been unsuccessful twice in the preceding years, he was now to be honored by winning the Pulitzer Prize in the novel category. 38 When the decision of the jury in favor of Lewis was reached round the middle of March 1926, Hohenberg reports that, "on March 30, Alfred Harcourt of Harcourt, Brace & Co., Lewis' publisher, wrote to him in Kansas City that he would win the Pulitzer Prize, upon which Lewis fired back a warning that he intended to refuse the award because of what he called the 'Main Street burglary.' The Advisory Board recommended Arrowsmith for the prize on April 22 and Fackenthal wrote Lewis about it in confidence the following day because final action by the Trustees would not be taken until May 3. It gave Lewis all the time he needed to compose his letter of refusal, which he proceeded to do in consultation with Harcourt. Once the prize was announced, the letter was made public."39 "That prize I must refuse," Sinclair Lewis wrote among other things to the Columbia University, "and my refusal would be meaningless unless I explained the reasons. All prizes, like all titles, are dangerous. The seekers for prizes tend to labor not for inherent excellence but for alien rewards... The Pulitzer Prize for Novels is peculiarly objectionable because the terms of it have been constantly and grievously misrepresented... The Pulitzer Prize for Novels... is tending to become a sanctified tradition... If already the Pulitzer Prize is so important, it is not absurd to suggest that in another generation it may, with the actual terms of the award ignored, become the one thing for which any ambitious novelist will strive."40 Hohenberg 35 36 37 38 39 40

Oscar W. Firkins, Letter to the President of the Advisory Board on the Pulitzer Prizes, Minneapolis, April 23, 1925, p. 1. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 51. Richard Burton/Edwin Lefevre/Robert M. Lovett, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, March 15, 1926, p. 1. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 51. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 85. Sinclair Lewis, Letter to the Pulitzer Prize Committee at Columbia University, Kansas City, Mo., May 6, 1926, pp. 1 f.

XXVIII observes with regard to Lewis' letter, that "in the age of ballyhoo, this was a master stroke. It echoed like thunder in the nation's headlines. The literati rallied to Lewis' side... However, the press in general criticized Lewis for his thirst for publicity and questioned the sincerity of his motives. There was a post-mortem at Columbia. Fackenthal wrote to Lewis on May 7, mildly protesting that his publishers should not have nominated Arrowsmith if they had known his attitude... The $ 1,000 check, which Lewis had returned, was put back in the Pulitzer Prize Fund."41 Nevertheless, Sinclair Lewis, is listed as official award-winner of 1926 in the annals of the Pulitzer Prize. 42 Yet Lewis, who a few years later did not refuse to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature , indirectly brought about a change that was effectual for the Pulitzer Prize from 1927 onwards: "President Butler and the Advisory Board," Hohenberg writes, "quietly returned to the original wording of the Fiction award, as Joseph Pulitzer had set it down in his will. The insistence on 'wholesomee' fiction, in theory at least, was dropped in favor of Pulitzer's specification for an American novel that best presented the 'whole atmosphere' of American life and the 'highest standard of American manners and manhood.' Hopefully, in this new dispensation, the jurors (Richard Burton, Jefferson B. Fletcher and Robert M. Lovett) turned to one of the younger and uncontroversial American novelists, Louis Bromfield, and recommended his third novel, Early Autumn, for the 1927 award." 43 In their report, which suggests a unanimous vote, the jurors added the wish "that it is the committee's unanimous opinion that in awarding the Prize in years to come, it would greatly expedite matters if three copies of all the books in competition were sent by the publishers so that a copy of each might be synchronously in the hands of the committee members." 44 Whereas the Advisory Board and the Trustees accepted Louis Bromfield as best novelist 4 5 it is not known whether the jurors' other suggestion detailing how to improve their work was also taken up. The jurors of 1928 (Richard Burton, Jefferson B. Fletcher and Robert M. Lovett) announced in their report "the unanimous nomination of Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey, as the recipient of this year's award. The decision is based on the opinion of the Committee," the report continues, "that this piece of fiction is not only an admirable example of literary 41 42 43 44 45

John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 86. Cf. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 51. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 87. Richard Burton/Jefferson B. Fletcher/Robert M. Lovett, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, Englewood, N.J., March 30, 1927, p. 1. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 51.

XXIX

skill in the art of fiction, but also possesses a philosophic import and a spiritual elevation which greatly increases its literary value."46 It can be inferred from an additional paper by the jurors that the following books were also among the finalists: Islanders, by Helen Hull; A Yankee Passional, by Samuel Ornitz; The Grandmothers, by Glenway Wescott; and Black April, by Julia M. Peterkin.47 "The jury's choice for 1928," Hohenberg underlines "had nothing to do with American life or American manners and manhood, but the Advisory Board quickly accepted it," since "the critics already had hailed a major new talent" in Thornton Niven Wilder, who received the Pulitzer Prize of 1928 48 while still working as preparatory school teacher in Lawrenceville, Kansas. He was awarded the prize for a story that was set in old Peru. "One result of the Fiction Jury's successful recommendation of a story about Peru," Hohenberg writes, "was still another change in the... wording of the terms of the award. The insistence on the 'highest standard of American manners and manhood' was dropped. Instead, in a general revision of the Plan of Award that took effect for the 1929 prize season, the requirement in fiction called for a prize 'for the American novel published during the year, preferably one which shall best present the whole atmosphere of American life.'"49 Now the jurors (Richard Burton, Jefferson B. Fletcher and Robert M. Lovett) had plenty of scope for interpretation, and in 1929 they decided in favor of Victim and Victor by John R. Oliver. "The Committee's choice," as it reads verbatim in the jury-report, "is made on the ground that this novel is of fine quality as a piece of literary work, deals with important elements in the native life, and has most unusual spiritual elevation and significance. It is a sound piece of literature and a noble interpretation of human character. For these reasons it stands out from the rank and file of current fiction, although the year brought forth a few admirable stories, and it may interest... to know that Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin came close in our estimation to the winning book." 50 But this time the Advisory Board and the Trustees did not follow the suggestion of the jury and opted instead for Julia Peterkin and her book Scarlet Sister Mary.51 46 47 48 49 50 51

Richard Burton/Jefferson B. Fletcher/Robert M. Lovett, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, Englewood, N.J., March 6, 1928, p. 1. Robert M. Lovett, Letter to Frank D. Fackenthal, Columbia University, Chicago, March 7, 1928, p. 1. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 87. Ibid., p. 88. Richard Burton/Jefferson B. Fletcher/Robert M. Lovett, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, Englewood, N.J., March 13, 1929, pp. 1 f. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 51.

XXX

As one of the jurors of the previous year, Richard Burton, was suspected of having spilled out the decision of the jury beforehand, 52 he was not reappointed in 1930. The new jury (Jefferson B. Fletcher, Robert M. Lovett and Albert B. Paine), though, had problems in agreeing on a clear favorite for the prize. "Effectively," the jury-report indicates, "the choice of the committee is narrowed down to three books: Laughing Boy, by Oliver La Farge; Look Homeward, Angel, by Thomas Wolfe; and It's a Great War, by Mary Lee." Whereas juror Albert B. Paine chose the book by Thomas Wolfe, Jefferson B. Fletcher favored the novel Laughing Boy, and Robert M. Lovett deemed It's a Great War outstanding. 53 But as Paine and Lovett had given to understand, that they might join Fletcher's vote, it was stated in the report that: "The members of the committee are not quite in accord, but have individually expressed their willingness to compound their differences by voting for Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge." 54 "President Butler was absent... when the Advisory Board met on April 24, 1930," as Hohenberg discovered, adding: "But the... members found no difficulty in agreeing on Laughing Boy, a choice the university Trustees accepted." 55 This is how, in the end, the prize for 'best novel' went to Oliver La Farge. 56 Columbia Secretary Fackenthal wrote to President Butler, as Hohenberg reports, "just before the opening of the judging for the 1931 prize, to suggest still another change in the terms of the award for fiction. Reviewing the patchwork that already had been done and the old argument over whether the novel should be 'wholesomee', he concluded: The (Fiction) jury feels that in its present form the definition makes the Prize almost useless and what they would like would be a redefinition that would place the Novel Prize on the same basis as the Poetry Prize - that is, 'For the best novel published during the year by an American author.'"57 While the Advisory Board was still dealing with this proposal, the jury (Jefferson B. Fletcher, Robert M. Lovett and Albert B. Paine) took up its work and put three books on its short list: The Deepening Stream, by Dorothy Canfield; Years of Grace, by Margaret Ayer Barnes; and The Great Meadow, by Elizabeth Madox Roberts. In the end the jurors ranked Years of Grace first on their list of suggestions, "because of its vivid and interesting presentation of the change in 52 53 54 55 56 57

Cf. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., pp. 88 ff. Jefferson B. Fletcher/Robert M. Lovett/Albert B. Paine, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, New York, March 10, 1930, pp. 1 f. Ibid., p. 1. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 90. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 51. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 91.

XXXI character and mores throughout three generations of an American family."58 The Advisory Board as well as the Trustees endorsed this vote and therefore the Pulitzer Prize in the category 'novel' went to Margaret Ayer Barnes.59 In 1932 when the same jurors as before (Jefferson B. Fletcher, Robert M. Lovett and Albert B. Paine) selected from the submissions on hand, the jury regarded "as its first choice The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. Two other books were favorably considered... Willa Cather's Shadow on the Rock and Robin E. Spencer's The Lady Who Came to Stay... Preference has been given to The Good Earth" the jury explained its choice "for its epic sweep, its distinct and moving characterization, its sustained story-interest, its simple and yet richly colored style... As a minor consideration, the Committee also took into account the fact that Miss Cather has already received the Pulitzer Prize. This fact was, however, not determining."60 As both the Advisory Board and the Trustees were convinced by the jury's argumentation, the award was given to Pearl S. Buck.61 "For the time being," Hohenberg commenting on this decision, "the critical uproar subsided into a continuing grumble. To a bewildered people mired in a terrible economic breakdown, the story of the hardships of Chinese peasants somehow was most appealing. Mrs. Buck's book, therefore, was popularly accepted as 'the best novel published during the year by an American author,' regardless of somewhat muted critical objections."62 The three jurors (Jefferson B. Fletcher, Robert M. Lovett and Albert B. Paine), who had to decide on the award in 1933, explained briefly, when they made it known in their report that there was an "agreement upon The Store by Thomas S. Stribling, as the Pulitzer Prize novel for 1932."63 After further inquiries by Columbia Secretary Fackenthal they elaborated that apart from said book four other novels had also made the jury's short list. Yet The Store, as it was stated verbatim "was selected chiefly because of its sustained interest, and because of the convincing and comprehensive picture it presents of life in an inland Southern community during the middle eighties of the last century. I think," the chairman of the jury continued, "that the fact that the same author, Mr. T. S. Stribling, gave us another good book, 58 Jefferson B. Fletcher/Robert M. Lovett/Albert B. Paine, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, New York, March 26, 1931, p. 1. 59 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 51. 60 Jefferson B. Fletcher/Robert M. Lovett/Albert B. Paine, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, New York, March 14, 1932, p. 1. 61 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 51. 62 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 92. 63 Jefferson B. Fletcher/Robert M. Lovett/Albert B. Paine, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, New York, March 16, 1933, p. 1.

XXXII

THE

GOOD EARTH

XXXIII

The Forge, a few years ago, was a favoring circumstance, but did not definitely influence our decision... Of The Store, may I be permitted to add, that I was in the South... during the time covered by this story, and in Mr. Stribling's work I find the loose chaos of social, moral and business conditions of that day, and of that unhappy hinterland realistically recalled."64 Because, as Hohenberg illustrates, "there was little argument over the 1933 selection, The Store,"65 in the end the Pulitzer Prize for 'best novel' was given to T. S. Stribling.66 In 1934 the jury (Jefferson B. Fletcher, Robert M. Lovett and Albert B. Paine) could not reach unanimity in its votes, and so it suggested "as its majority choice A Watch in the Night, by Helen C. White. The majority of the committee," the report continues, "considered as a close second Lamb in His Bosom, by Caroline Miller, and as a good third No More Sea, by Wilson Follett. A Watch in the Night is an historical novel of accurate background, sharply etched characters, and highly dramatic plot. Interest is sustained to the end from the collision of human motives and passions independent of the special issues historically involved."67 That the decision of the jurors was not unanimous turned out to be a handicap, because the Advisory Board did not join in the vote for the book ranking first on the jury's list, but instead recommended to the Trustees that the Pulitzer Prize be awarded to Caroline Miller's Lamb in His Bosom 6 8 And this is what finally came to pass. 69 "While the argument over the Pulitzers was on its height," as Hohenberg describes the situation, "Butler suggested that a public announcement should be drafted, curbing the authority of the juries. ... Fackenthal had no trouble in persuading the Fiction Jury to continue, even though the majority may not have liked being so rudely reversed. The identity of the minority member who carried the day for Caroline Miller was not revealed."70 When the jurors (Jefferson B. Fletcher, Robert M. Lovett and Albert B. Paine), then working together in that same make-up for years, discussed their favorites for 1935, they could not reach a unanimous vote in that year as well. "It seems impossible for your jury," it reads in their report to Fackenthal, "to agree this year on anything but that there is, in their opinion, 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

Albert B. Paine, Letter to Frank D. Fackenthal, Columbia University, New York, March 19, 1933, pp. 1 f. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 92. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 51. Jefferson B. Fletcher/Robert M. Lovett/Albert B. Paine, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, New York, March 17, 1934, p. 1. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 136. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 51. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 137.

XXXIV no outstanding novel. Although their choice is by no means unanimous, they do, however, between them recommend to the consideration of the Board the following novels: "William W. Haines: Slim...; Ruth Suckow: The Folks...·, Josephine Johnson: Now in November...·, William R. Burnett: Goodbye to the Past...·, Albert Halper: The Foundry...; Robert Cantwell: Land of Plenty...; Louis Dodge: The American...; Stark Young: So red the rose..."11 Hohenberg relates that the Advisory Board "chose Miss Johnson's novel but did not elaborate on the process by which it was selected. However, since Chairman Fletcher devoted more space to this work in his report and since his attitude toward it was more enthusiastic than the rest, it is obvious that he must have had some influence on the final choice. Moreover, it was not unknown for President Butler to consult jury chairmen when there were split verdicts."72 Thus the Pulitzer Prize went to Josephine Johnson for her work Now in November,73 according to Hohenberg "a poetic first novel about a farm family in Middle America during the Depression."74 For the Pulitzer Prize of 1936 the Plan of Award was changed once again, specifying that the award should henceforth go to "a distinguished novel published during the year by an American author, preferably dealing with American life." 75 "After having completed this write-through of the Plan of Award," Hohenberg states, "the Advisory Board awaited fresh and striking results from the Fiction Jury - a recommendation that would divert if not exactly halt the annual salvos of critical shellfire. The board had reason for hope, since 1935 had been a banner year for fiction. Among the 99 books submitted for the 1936 prize were Thomas Wolfe's Of Time and the River, Humphrey Cobb's Paths of Glory, John Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat, and Ellen Glasgow's Vein of Iron. Not one of these, however, was among the first seven books that were recommended in order by the Fiction Jury." 76 For on the jury's list Honey in the Horn, by Harold L. Davis ranked first, followed by This Body the Earth, by Paul Green; Time out of Mind, by Rachel Field; Ollie Miss, by Lowell L. Balcom; Deep Dark River, by Robert Rylee; and Blessed is the Man, by Louis Zara.77 The Board followed the advice of the jury and declared Harold L. Davis winner of the Pulitzer Prize for best 71

Jefferson B. Fletcher/Robert M. Lovett/Albert B. Paine, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, New York, March 18, 1935, pp. 1 f. 72 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cil., p. 138. 73 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52. 74 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 137. 75 Quoted ibid., p. 138. 7d Ihiit. 77 Jefferson B. Fletcher/Robert M. Lovett/Albert B. Paine, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, New York, March 15, 1936, pp. 1 f.

XXXV

novel, 78 all the while, as Hohenberg stresses, being perfectly aware "that criticism of the fiction award would continue. And it did." 79 In 1937 the jurors (Jefferson B. Fletcher, Robert M. Lovett and Albert B. Paine) decided to present a list of suggestions consisting of six titles which read as follows: Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell; The Last Puritan, by George Santayana; Three Bags Full, by Roger Burlingame; Mountain Path, by Harriette Simpson; Yang and Yin, by Alice Tisdale Hobart; and Drums along the Mohawk, by Walter D. Edmond. "No comment on the first two novels seems called for," the jury wrote, adding: "Obviously, the Jury recommends them, not as best sellers but as deservedly best sellers." 80 "The Advisory Board, like the American public," as Hohenberg illuminates the decision-making process, "wasted no time in embracing Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler, the endearing figures in the most popular and enduring of all Civil War romances. As usual, the critical buffeting of Gone With the Wind as a best-selling Pulitzer selection was strong and merciless but this time the hard-pressed Advisory Board was proved right... Whatever the critics may have thought of the book's sentiment and magnolia-scented romance, the public loved it... Gone With the Wind was an eminently defensible choice,"81 earning Margaret Mitchell the Pulitzer Prize

J* jtU-fM^ikp i iL· SiAumU^ fäMäAy (ttiaufc, Margaret Mitchell dedicates her award-winning book to Columbia University 78 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52. 79 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op, cit., p. 139. 80 Jefferson B. Fletcher/Robert M. Lovett/Albert B. Paine, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, New York, March 15, 1937, pp. 1 f. 81 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., pp. 139 f.

XXXVI

h MÄRGÄRET MITCHEIL

XXXVII

for 'best novel.' 82 A few years later the film adaption was also honored by winning several Academy Awards. 83 The jury that went to work in the spring of 1938 (Jefferson B. Fletcher, Joseph W. Krutch and Robert M. Lovett) had one new member and agreed by majority vote "upon the following points: 1. That in its opinion The Late George Apley by John P. Marquand clearly deserves the award. 2. That if, for any reason, this recommendation should be rejected the two novels next most deserving of the honor are The Sound of Running Feet by Josephine Lawrence, and Northwest Passage by Kenneth Roberts. The Late George Apley," as the jury justified its first choice, "is a novel of unusual finish. Ostensibly, it is the 'authorized biography' of a distinguished Bostonian written by a professional compiler of biographies. Actually, Mr. Marquand uses the assumed personality of a biographer in order to picture ironically those traits of the subject's character which a contemporary would have admired but which appear in a different light to a later generation. The book is remarkable not only for the keenness of the satire but, almost equally, for the broad, sympathetic understanding exhibited by the author, who is able to present his personages from their own as well as from his point of view." 84 These arguments also convinced the Advisory Board and therefore the Pulitzer Prize for novel was given to John P. Marquand. 85 The jury of 1939 (Jefferson B. Fletcher, Joseph W. Krutch and Robert M. Lovett) also reached unanimously one clear proposal, after considering these five novels during its final discussion: The Yearling, by Marjorie Rawlings; All This and Heaven Too, by Rachel Field; Black is My True Love's Hair, by Elizabeth Madox Roberts; May Flavin, by Myron Birnig; and Renown, by Frank O. Hough. "The jury is... unanimously agreed," as it reads word for word in the jury-report "that its preference for The Yearling is sufficiently strong to justify it in expressing the hope that that novel will be selected." The novel by Marjorie Rawlings was considered "an interesting and sensitive account of the coming of age of a poor boy in a remote part of Florida. Remarkable both for its psychological insight and as a description of the life of a picturesque people." 86 This reasoning, according to Hohenberg, "won the Board's approval even though the critics grumbled. They 82 83 84 85 86

Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52. Cf. Richard Shale (Ed.), Academy Awards, New York 1978, pp. 334 ff. Jefferson B. Fletcher/Joseph W. Krutch/Robert M. Lovett, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, New York, March 11, 1938, p. 1. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52. Jefferson B. Fletcher/Joseph W. Krutch/Robert M. Lovett, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, New York, March 13, 1939, p. 1.

XXXVIII

wanted something new, raw, and tough. And in 1940, with war flaming in Europe and an apprehensive America sitting weak and divided between its broad oceans, they got it,"87 after Maijorie Kinnan Rawlings had received the Pulitzer Prize the previous year. 88 The jurors of 1940 (Jefferson B. Fletcher, Joseph W. Krutch and Robert M. Lovett) made it perfectly clear in their report: "We are unanimously agreed to recommend as our first choice The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Despite the fact that it is marred by certain artistic blemishes, this novel has, we believe, excellences which make it the most powerful and significant of all the works submitted for our consideration." In addition to this novel the following books were also on the list of finalists: Escape, by Ethel Vance; To the End of the World, by Helen White; Seasoned Timber, by Dorothy Canfield; and Night Riders, by Robert Penn Warren. 89 "When the report was distributed to the Advisory Board," Hohenberg found out, "two of the members were outraged... Both wrote letters to try to influence their colleagues against The Grapes of Wrath in advance of the Advisory Board meeting of May 3, 1940... When the Board met,.... the two objectors were in attendance, as was President Butler and all save one member who had been excused... In the end," Hohenberg continues, the two opponents were "unable to stop Steinbeck any more... When the award was voted by the university Trustees and made public, it was received with universal approval... The Pulitzer Prize served to confirm John Steinbeck's stature as a major American novelist," 90 who more than two decades later was also to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.91 To the jury of 1941 (Dorothy C. Fisher, Jefferson B. Fletcher and Joseph W. Krutch), which partly consisted of new members, sifting through the submissions at hand 1941 seemed "at first like a rather easy and uncontroversial year," since a magazine had beforehand given the impression that the prize would go to Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. Yet, as Hohenberg explains, "the Pulitzer jurors, however, didn't see it that way. They unanimously recommended two coequal fiction prizes for Conrad Richter's novel of American pioneer life, The Trees, and Walter V. Tilburgh Clark's rousing Western, The Ox-Bow Incident. They put down the Heming87 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 140. 88 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52. 89 Jefferson B. Fletcher/Joseph W. Krutch/Robert M. Lovett, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, New York, March 15, 1940, p. 1. 90 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., pp. 142 f. 91 Cf. Werner Martin, Verzeichnis der Nobelpreisträger 1901-1984, München - New York - London Paris 1985, p. 269.

XXXIX

THE

GRAPES ^WRATH • -

XL way... book... as secondary to their first choices." 92 In relation to Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls the jury report merely says: "This best seller is unquestionably vivid, picturesque, and interesting. It is, however, the opinion of the jury that its faults partly outweigh its merits - the faults being romantic sensationalism and a style so mannered and eccentric as to be frequently absurd." 93 Hohenberg discovered that "the report ran into heavy weather almost as soon as the Advisory Board met on May 2... The newspaper members of the Board rose in revolt against the jury's choices and voted for the Hemingway book... But the Board also turned down the jury's report as well, voting to give no prize in fiction for 1941,"94 which was later on to be confirmed by the Trustees as well. 95 The jury of 1942 (Jefferson B. Fletcher, Gilbert Highet and Joseph W. Krutch) admitted in its report that it "found its task made very difficult by the fact that none of the novels brought to its attention seemed of really outstanding merit or equal to many at least of those which have received the prize in the past. Had it not been for the fact that no prize was awarded last year it would probably have recommended that none be given this year. But since it is probably inadvisable to omit the award for two successive years, a list of possibilities is here submitted," consisting of: Windswept, by Mary Ellen Chase; The Great Big Doorstep, by E. P. O'Donnell; Storm, by George Stewart; and Green Centuries, by Caroline Gordon. 96 Faced with the jury's irresolution, Hohenberg relates, "at least two members of the Advisory Board jumped into the breach with alternative suggestions," recommending Upton Sinclair's book Dragon's Teeth as well as Ellen Glasgow's In This Our Life, both of which were not even mentioned in the jury-report and from then on were also seriously discussed together with the other finalists. 97 "The discriminating Advisory Board," Hohenberg remarks, "still smarting over its rebuff the previous year, once again swept aside a jury report and recommended Ellen Glasgow's novel of Southern life for the Fiction Prize. It was, in fact, recognition of a distinguished career... The... jury quietly accepted the rebuff and dissolved itself."98

92 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., pp. 143 f. 93 Dorothy C. Fisher/Jefferson B. Fletcher/Joseph W. Krutch, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, New York, March 14, 1941, p. 1. 94 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., pp. 144 f. 95 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52. 96 Jefferson B. Fletcher/Gilbert Highet/Joseph W. Krutch, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, New York, March 16, 1942, pp. 1 f. 97 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 146. 98 Ibid., p. 147.

XLI After the resignation of the former jurors the Columbia University in 1943 was compelled, as Hohenberg formulates, "to assemble an entirely new team, and with the nation at war and the public utterly disinterested in the annual jousting over American fiction, it wasn't easy. There was, in addition, no assurance now that the Advisory Board would accept with docility any novel that was handed to it by a Butler-appointed jury of experts." 99 The new jurors (John R. Chamberlain, Lewis S. Gannett and Maxwell D. Geismar) reached a unanimous decision saying in their report: "It is the judgment... that the novel most worthy of the Pulitzer Prize is Upton Sinclair's Dragon's Teeth. This book appeared first on the list of two committee members, and was the second choice of the third member." The books The Just and the Unjust, by James Cozzens as well as The Valley of Decision, by Marcia Davenport were also taken into consideration. 100 Yet the Advisory Board as well as the Trustees decided in favor of Upton Sinclair's book, 101 that already had been mentioned as a possible winning entry in the year before, but was eligible only in 1943 because of its year of publishing. 102 With Upton Sinclair, as Hohenberg writes, "the oldest and most formidable critic of the American press" 103 was being honored, whose book The Brass Check is counted among the classic analytical works on journalism. 104 The jurors of 1944 (John R. Chamberlain, Lewis S. Gannett and Maxwell D. Geismar) tried out a special mode of evaluation by giving out points to determine the winner. As a result the following four books appeared on the jury's short list: Indigo, by Christine Weston; A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith; So Little Time, by John P. Marquand; and Journey in the Dark, by Martin Flavin. 105 Based on the jury's criteria of evaluation the book by Martin Flavin got eight points, followed by the novel written by Christine Weston with seven and John Marquand's book with six points. In their report the jurors pointed out that Marquand had already won a Pulitzer Prize six years earlier and thus perhaps was not eligible. With regard to the novel by Christine Weston they noted that its theme was related to India and therefore 99 Ibid. 100 John R. Chamberlain/Lewis S. Gannett/Maxwell D. Geismar, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, Mount Carmel, Ct., March 10, 1943, p. 1. 101 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52. 102 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 146. 103 Ibid., p. 198. 104 Cf. Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check - A Study of American Journalism, Pasadena, Cal., 1 9 2 0 , 4 3 2 105

PPJohn R. Chamberlain/Lewis S. Gannett/Maxwell D. Geismar, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, New York, March 14, 1944, pp. 1 f.

XLII could not necessarily be considered "American literature," whereas Journey in the Dark was, in a way, "American to the bone, it has a reflective, brooding richness. And it deals honestly with an average man's experience that may be typical." 106 "The Board chose the Flavin book," writes Hohenberg, "the rather turgid tale of a millionaire who went to work in a defense plant during the war, and was severely criticized for it." 107 In 1945 the jury (John R. Chamberlain, Maxwell D. Geismar and Orville Prescott) also proceeded with said mode of evaluation. After adding up the points given to those books the jurors found most prizeworthy, the novels ranked in the top three were as follows: Colcorton, by Edith Pope; A Bell for Adano, by John Hersey; and The History of Rome Hanks, by Joseph Pennell. As each of the three jurors had an individual notion about the potential prizewinner, they went into details regarding their reasons, and there seemed to be indication that A Bell for Adano was leading marginally. 108 But John Hersey's book, as discovered John Hohenberg, "ran into difficulty before the Advisory Board. There, one of the members, in an outburst of patriotic wrath, denounced the novel because he didn't like the way Hersey depicted General George S. Patton Jr. Hersey, a war correspondent, had had his own ideas about the blustering general and had put them in his book, but the Board's majority didn't hold that against him. The Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for 1945, accordingly, was voted to A Bell for Adano,"109 and so the prestigious award went to John Hersey in the end after all. 110 In 1946, the first year after World War II, the jury (John R. Chamberlain, Maxwell D. Geismar and Orville Prescott) picked out three finalists without, however, agreeing on a clear favorite. The jurors' opinions differed substantially on Glenway Wescott's Apartment in Athens, Dan Wickenden's The Wayfarers as well as Richard Wright's autobiography Black Boy, which one member of the jury could not acknowledge as a novel. Faced with this situation, Hohenberg writes, "the Advisory Board passed the award for lack of definitive guidance from the jurors," 111 and so once again "no award" was written down in the annals of the Pulitzer Prize. 112 In contrast to this, the jurors of 1947 (John R. Chamberlain, Maxwell D. Geismar and Orville Prescott) presented a unanimous choice, that in the end was to win the 106 107 108 109 110 111 112

Ibid., p. 1. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 198. John R. Chamberlain/Maxwell D. Geismar/Orville Prescott, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury, New York, March 14, 1945, pp. 1 ff. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 198. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 198. Columbia University (Ed ), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52.

XLIII

XLIV Pulitzer Prize: "All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren," Hohenberg relates, "was a welcome change from the uncertainties of the war years. It was the complex story of the rise and fall of an opportunistic country lawyer who became the virtual dictator of a Southern State and came to an untimely end through assassination. To many, the novel seemed to be a fictional retelling of the tragedy of Huey Long, the Louisiana 'Kingfish'... The critics hailed the selection" 113 of Robert Penn Warren's book after it had received the Pulitzer Prize. 114 The year of 1948 represented a turning point in the historic development of the Pulitzer Prize for novel as the description of the award was modified once more, reading from then on: "For distinguished fiction published in book form during the year by an American author, preferably dealing with American life." 115 Based on this new definition of the prize, which for the first time made short stories eligible for the award, the jury (John R. Chamberlain, Maxwell D. Geismar and Orville Prescott) selected the following titles: The Big Sky, by Alfred B. Guthrie Jr.; Knock on any Door, by Willard Motley; The Garretson Chronicle, by Gerald W. Brace; The Stoic, by Theodore Dreiser; and Tales of the South Pacific, by James A. Michener. 116 Although Michener's volume of short stories only ranked fifth, all in all, on the short list of the jury, one of the jurors strongly stood up for it, confessing later: "I and the other judges felt it was a poor year for fiction and here was a wonderful new talent." 117 Then two members of the Advisory Board also pleaded for the unknown newcomer and little by little convinced their colleagues. 118 Thus in the end James Michener was given the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. 119 His Tales of the South Pacific was soon to become the basis for the musical South Pacific, which would also be honored with a Pulitzer Prize two years later. 120 The jury of 1949, consisting completely of new members (David Appel, Frederic Babcock and Joseph H. Jackson), drew up the following list of four literary works it regarded as prizeworthy: Guard of Honor, by James Gould Cozzens; The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer; The Ides of March, by Thornton Wilder; and The Young Lions, by Irwin Shaw. "The... listing is 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120

John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., pp. 198 f. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52. Quoted from John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 201. John R. Chamberlain/Maxwell D. Geismar/Orville Prescott, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, N e w York, March 23, 1948, pp. 1 ff. Quoted from John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 201. Ibid. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52. Ibid., p. 55.

XLV not made in order of preference," the jury-report explains, "but each of the books recommended received the vote of at least two of the three jurors; the first two titles were unanimous choices." 121 Based on these remarks, as Hohenberg interprets the report, "it came down to a great newcomer, Mailer, with a tough and uncompromising war novel that was one of the best for World War II, and the well-established Cozzens, who had been considered by another Fiction Jury... The Board chose Cozzens as the superior novelist that year. It was, on the whole a defensible choice in view of Cozzens' literary reputation and his record of achievement; through hindsight, the selection of Mailer would have given early recognition to a coming leader of American literature," 122 and yet the Board decided in favor of James Gould Cozzens, who was already much better known to the public. 123 The jurors of 1950 (David Appel, Frederic Babcock and Joseph H. Jackson) prepared a list of merely three suggestions which, without any comments, contained the following titles: The Way West, by Alfred B. Guthrie Jr.; The Brave Bulls, by Tom Lea; and Hunter's Horn, by Harrietts Arnow. 124 According to Hohenberg, "there was little argument" in the Board as to this ranking. Thus it was accepted and A. B. Guthrie Jr. was announced winner of the Pulitzer Prize. 125 One year later, in 1951, when a jury of only two (David Appel and Joseph H. Jackson) went to work - as in all other Pulitzer Prize categories -, these two made only one sole proposal, namely John Hersey's The Wall,126 "which dealt with Hitler's extermination of the jews," Hohenberg adds and completes: "The jurors had told the Board that they believed only the Hersey book was worthy of the prize that year. When... asked for alternatives, they proposed Conrad Richter's The Town, Robert Penn Warren's World Enough and Time, and Max Steele's Debbie, but they still insisted on The Wall even though it did not deal with the American scene... The Advisory Board was not impressed. For its own reasons, it voted for The Town,"127 and thus the award went to Conrad

121 122 123 124 125 126 127

David Appel/Frederic Babcock/Joseph H. Jackson, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Philadelphia, Pa., March 14, 1949, p. 1. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 202. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52. David Appel/Frederic Babcock/Joseph H. Jackson, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Philadelphia, Pa., April 5, 1950, p. 1. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52. David Appel/Joseph Η. Jackson, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Philadelpia, Pa., March 23, 1951, p. 1. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., pp. 202 f.

XLVI Richter, 128 while the two jurors, as Hohenberg puts it, "quietly retired from the Fiction jury." 129 The newly appointed jurors for 1952 (Roy W. Cowden and Eric P. Kelly) judged the submitted novels quite differently. Whereas Cowden observed at the beginning of his part of the report, "I do not find among these books... any one that seems to be a really great novel," 130 Kelly declared: "Among the novels published in 1951 there were about 35 books that held my attention as being especially noteworthy."131 Based on these beliefs it cannot come as a surprise that the two jurors could not agree on a joint suggestion. Whereas Cowden favored The Caine Mutiny, by Herman Wouk, Kelly pleaded for Jenkins' Ear, by Odell and Willard Shepard. 132 Regarding another well-known book written by James Jones, that was also on his cojuror's short list, Roy W. Cowden judged: "I should never vote for From Here to Eternity because, quite aside from its lack as a work of art, it is, in my opinion, in very bad taste." 133 On the other hand the same juror wrote of his favorite: "In spite of best-seller lists, The Caine Mutiny, by Herman Wouk is my first choice. This young writer has an amazingly versatile narrative faculty and to my mind he has made convincing use of it in writing the book." 134 The Advisory Board found this vote convincing and gave the Pulitzer Prize to Herman Wouk. 135 As had happened in the previous year, the two jurors of 1953 (Roy W. Cowden and Eric P. Kelly) had completely different notions of prizeworthiness. "I have read the seventy-nine novels sent to me," Cowden wrote in his report, "my choice for first place is Jefferson Selleck, by Carl Jonas. This young man will bear watching. He is an American. All of his ways of thinking arise from the deepest depths of American live." 136 In a ranking of a total of eighteen novels that made his short list, he placed fourteenth that title which the other juror ranked first, Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea.137 "Although short," Kelly praised Hemingway's work, "this book contains all the elements that make a novel excellent... It is well writ128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137

Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 203. Roy W. Cowden, Report, Hanover, N.H., undated, p. 1. Eric P. Kelly, Preliminary Report, Hanover, N.H., March 11, 1952, p. 1. Roy W. Cowden/Eric P. Kelly, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Hanover, N.H., March 10, 1952, p. 1. Roy W. Cowden, Report, op. cit., p. 1. Ibid., p. 2. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52. Roy W. Cowden, Report to the Pulitzer Prize Committee, Ann Arbor, Mi., March 24, 1953, pp. 1, 5. Ibid., p. 15.

XLVII

XLVIII

THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK TO ALL PERSONS T O WHOM THESE PRESENTS MAY COME GREETING BE IT KNOWN THAT

ERNEST HEMINGWAY HAS BEEN AWARDED THE PULITZER PRIZE IN LETTERS FOR "THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA" FOR DISTINGUISHED FICTION PUBLISHED IN BOOK FORM DURING THE YEAR BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROVISIONS OF T H E STATUTES OF THE UNIVERSITY GOVERNING SUCH AWARD IN WITNESS WHEREOF WE HAVE CAUSED THIS CERTIFICATE T O BE SIGNED BY T H E PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY AND OUR CORPORATE SEAL T O BE HERETO AFFIXED IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ON THE FOURTH

DAY OF

MAY

IN T H E YEAR OF

OUR LORD ONE THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-THREE

PlttSIDENT

/

Pulitzer Prize Certificate for the Fiction Winner of 195 3 ten, well planned, and possesses the beauty that only a real work of art can have. What perhaps... is most important in the book is its universality." 138 Carl W. Ackerman, Dean of the School of Journalism at Columbia University, "lobbied for... The Old Man and the Sea" in the Advisory Board, writes Hohenberg, "but he really didn't have to work very hard. There was no other realistic choice for the Board and the honor to Hemingway was long overdue. The 1953 prize to The Old Man and the Sea,139 therefore, was no surprise," 140 and one year later Hemingway even won the Nobel prize for Literature. 141 The member of the jury that in the preceding year had opted against awarding Hemingway the Pulitzer Prize was no longer available for the assignment as juror in 1954. And yet the reconstituted jury (Harris F. Fletcher and Eric P. Kelly) was, according to Hohenberg, "in such a disagreement that neither duplicated the other in any of the first five books each 138 139 140 141

Eric P. Kelly, Choices for the Pulitzer on the Novel, Hanover, N.H., undated (March, 1953), p. 1. Cf. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., pp. 203 f. Cf. Werner Martin, Verzeichnis der Nobelpreisträger 1901-1984, op. cit., p. 259.

XLIX recommended. Kelly liked Ramey by Jack D. Ferris and The Sands of Karakorum by James R. Ullman while Fletcher recommended, as his first two, Myron Brinig's The Street of the Three Friends and Wright Morris' The Deep Sleep. Kelly alone mentioned Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March, " 142 whereas this book was not even mentioned in Harris F. Fletcher's report. "To confuse the issue still further," Hohenberg continues in his description of the process it took to determine the prizewinner, "Kelly sent in a personal memo a week after his formal report, asking to have Ben Lucien Burman's The Four Lives of Mundy Tolliver placed first on his list of five. 143 The Burman book, however, wasn't mentioned in Fletcher's report." 144 Confronted with the diverging opinions of its two jurors as well as with the intricate situation that had developed because of their disagreement, the Advisory Board decided to plead for "no award" and this decision was also supported by the Trustees. 145 1955 not only saw a reconstituted Advisory Board with new ideas, 146 but also a new jury (Carlos Baker and Francis Brown) for the Pulitzer Prize Fiction category. Probably alluding to the dissent between jurors of previous years the report of that year's jury read: "Believe it or not, we both voted for the same book: Milton Lott's The Last Hunt. To us, this seemed a fresh treatment of a significant chapter in the history of America... We were impressed by the author's technical skill as a novelist and by the moving prose with which he tells his story... In second place we would put William Faulkner's A Fable. There are portions of this novel which seemed to us to be close to greatness but... we are agreed that it fails ultimately because of its inability to communicate with the reader. We also have a feeling that Faulkner has done better in the past and that it would be a mistake to give him a Pulitzer award for something less than what he has done before... We... hope you will feel that our selection of The Last Hunt is a worthy one and the right one." 147 The Board, however, was not at all of this opinion and gave the Pulitzer Prize for fiction to William Faulkner, 148 who, six years earlier, had already won the Nobel Prize for Literature. 149

142 143 144 145 146 147

John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 204. Cf. Eric P. Kelly, Letter to Dean Carl W. Ackerman, Hanover, N.H., March 15, 1954, p. 1. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 204. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52. Cf. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., pp. 254 ff. Carlos Baker/Francis Brown, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, New York, February 15, 1955, pp. 1 f. 148 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52. 149 Cf. Werner Martin, Verzeichnis der Nobelpreisträger 1901-1984, op. cit., p. 248.

L The same jurors (Carlos Baker and Francis Brown) were also appointed in 1956 to select in the Fiction category. The previous year, the two members of the jury stated at the beginning of their report "was a far better than average year in American fiction, and the task of making a decision among the eighty novels regarded by their publishers as strong enough to be candidates for the Pulitzer award in fiction would have been far more difficult than it was had not one of them been head and shoulders above all others. That one is MacKinlay Kantor's Andersonville. The jury cannot recommend it too strongly for the Award... MacKinlay Kantor has been a writer for over thirty years, and for more than twenty-five of them he has been a student of the Civil War in all its important phases... His novel goes deep into the sense of what the Civil War ultimately meant to the American people: a test of their powers of union, a test even of their capacity for Christian charity... When compared with Andersonville the runners-up in the field seem far behind. In our opinion these would be: John O'Hara's Ten North Frederick... (and) Robert Penn Warren's Band of Angels."150 In view of the praise for the "veteran novelist", as Hohenberg calls him, 151 and his book Andersonville the Board declared MacKinlay Kantor winner in the Fiction category. 152 In 1957, when the same two jurors as in the preceding years (Carlos Baker and Francis Brown) once again sifted through the submitted material, it was stated in their report that: "The year 1956... was a poor one for the American novel. More than ninety novels were sent to the jury as candidates for the Pulitzer Award in fiction, yet most of them could not be regarded by any stretch of the imagination as serious contenders for that award or for any other... Yet if 1956 was in general a poor year for fiction, ... it was not wholly lacking in novels of distinction and merit. Outstanding among these was Elizabeth Spencer's The Voice at the Back Door. The jury recommends it for the fiction award... Among the novels of 1956, the only possible contender for the award other than The Voice at the Back Door would be in the jury's view The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor. That Mr. O'Connor's novel is a good one is not debated. It too has vitality and narrative sweep and able characterization. In our opinion, nevertheless, it does not stack up with Miss Spencer's work in literary quality. Its prose is less distinguished, its story line is more apparent, and its author lacks the tight control of plot that

150 151 152

Carlos Baker/Francis Brown, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, New York, February 17, I l )S6, pp. 1 f. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 257. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52.

LI is so brilliantly displayed in The Voice at the Back Door."153 Yet the Board, Hohenberg reports, "couldn't work up much enthusiasm for either work after a thorough reading of the report"154 and decided on "no award."155 At the same time a special citation was "awarded to Kenneth Roberts for his historical novels."156 In 1958 a new jury (Robert G. Davis and John K. Hutchens) went to work in the Pulitzer Prize Fiction category. "This has been a good year for the American novel," as it can be read in the jurors' report. "A number of works, such as A Death in the Family by James Agee, The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever, The Assistant by Bernard Malamud, The Town by William Faulkner, The Weather of February by Hollis Summers, The Goblins of Eros by Warren Eyster, The Velvet Horn by Andrew Lytle, all possess kinds of distinction. Some of them, indeed, in particular qualities of style or sensibility or insight into unusual characters have merits which By Love Possessed (by James Gould Cozzens) does not have. As whole novels, however, judged by the major tradition of the novel, they are not equal in relevance, scope, centrality, force, moral seriousness and dramatic power to Cozzens' book. Your committee's recommendation of By Love Possessed," as was the judgment of the jurors "is not without reservations... But they believe it to be superior to its closest challengers for Pulitzer Prize consideration."157 Yet once again the Advisory Board was not entirely convinced and so, as Hohenberg writes, "itself picked James Agee's notable short novel."158 This is how the Pulitzer Prize for fiction was awarded to the already deceased author for his book A Death in the Family, published posthumously.159 The jurors of 1959 (Carlos Baker and John K. Hutchens), after carefully examining the submitted novels, also had a rather clear idea of their favorite: "The committee takes both pride and pleasure in strongly recommending John O'Hara's From the Terrace for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. In a year which was noteworthy for the number of first-rate novels published, this book stands out as a distinguished contribution. It comes, moreover, from a writer, whose work has never received the guerdon of a Pulitzer Prize... We 153 Carlos Baker/Francis Brown, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, New York, February 13, 1957, pp. 1 f. 154 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 258. 155 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52. 156 Ibid., p. 66. 157 Robert G. Davis/John K. Hutchens, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, New York, undated (ca. February 1958), p. 4. 158 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 256. 159 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52.

Llll recommend his book with enthusiasm and without reservation. As its second choice" the jurors named in their report "The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor. Quite possibly no finer novel of the crossing of the plains in 1849 has been written than this story of a rainbow-chasing Kentucky doctor and his Tom Sawyer-ish son, who join the gold rush... For the consideration of the final judges, we would like to record briefly our third choice, William Humphrey's Home from the Hill, an extremely able novel from a young writer of the school of William Faulkner." 160 In the Board, Hohenberg writes, "there was no argument... on O'Hara's merits; the doubt extended only to the book that was recommended, From the Terrace. In the end, the doubts prevailed, O'Hara lost the prize, and Taylor won" 161 for his book The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters.162 When the awards had to be decided on in 1960 the two jurors (John K. Hutchens and Thomas B. Sherman) had a total of four books on their short list. "Of these four," as is made clear in their report, "the most distinguished is Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow... Mr. Bellow is concerned with more than mere narrative, rich as his book is in incident, fantastic comedy, and, in general, imaginative creation... Like Henderson the Rain King James A. Michener's Hawaii departs from accepted narrative patterns... It is a seriously conceived and carefully written work of genuine stature and of more than immediate interest. Dance Back the Buffalo by Milton Lott is recommended because of its lucid, transparent writing... Mr. Lott's meaning is never labored; it permeates his story but is never offered as a deliberately underlined message... Faulkner's latest novel The Mansion... in fact, is a story of striking quality and atmosphere, because of its human tensions and not its social meaning... His sentences are still too long and his parantheses of a hundred or more words often split two words that should be glued together. But that's Faulkner." 163 In spite of all the persuasive reasons brought forward for the presented selection, the Board set aside the jury's report entirely and substituted "its own judgment." 164 Thus Allen Drury's book Advise and Consent was given the Pulitzer Prize, 165 without having even been mentioned in the jury report at all.

160 161 162 163 164 165

Carlos Baker/John K. Hutchens, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, New York, undated (ca. February 1959), pp. 1 f. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 257. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 52. John K. Hutchens/Thomas B. Sherman, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, New York, undated (ca. February 1960), pp. 1 ff. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 257. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53.

LIV Maybe because their suggestions had been completely ignored by the Advisory Board the jurors of the previous year were not available in 1961. The new jury (John Barkham and Irita Van Dören) first of all complained that "certain novelists, whose earlier work had aroused our hopes, published disappointing books during the year. William Styron's long-awaited Set This House on Fire and John Updike's Rabbit, Run both lavished major talents on minor themes... Fortunately, however, the stream of new talent which constantly revitalizes American fiction produced at least two first novels of unusual distinction. The first and more ambitious of these was To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Set in her native Alabama, the book sums up in its seemingly artless tale the pride and shame that are integral to Southern living... This is our choice for the Prize. John Hersey's The Child Buyer is our recommendation for runner-up... We wish to list two additional novels which appear to us worthy of praise: John Knowles's A Separate Peace... and... Henry Beetle Hough's Lament for a City."166 This time the Advisory Board acted upon the advice of the jury and declared To Kill a Mockingbird best novel of the year, 167 thus giving the Pulitzer Prize for fiction to Harper Lee. 168 The jurors of the previous year (John Barkham and Irita Van Dören) were also asked in 1962 to select in the Fiction category. "Viewed as a whole," it says at the beginning of their report, "1961 was a lack-lustre year for fiction. Older novelists of established reputation submitted new works only to disappoint. More regrettably, younger novelists, on whom the future must rely, produced no books of significance or even of real promise... Any year with new novels by writers of the stature of John Steinbeck, John Dos Passos, Robert Penn Warren, Bernard Malamud and Carson McCullers might be accounted a banner year. But none of their books lived up to expectations... The criteria we apply in our consideration are the classic ones: that a novel be well conceived, well constructed, well rounded, and well written. Two such commended themselves to us during the year. The first was William Maxwell's The Chateau, a quiet but sensitively written story of Americans in France... The other was Edwin O'Connor's The Edge of Sadness, which... seemed to us the best all-round novel of the year."169 The Advisory Board voted in favor of "veteran novelist" Edwin O'Connor 166 John Barkham/Irita Van Dören, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, New York, undated (ca. February 1961), pp. 1 ff. 167 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 256. 168 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53. 169 John Barkham/Irita Van Dören, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, New York, undated (ca. February 1962), pp. 1 ff.

LV and his book The Edge of Sadness170 "after his better-known The Last Hurrah failed to take the prize in an earlier year," 171 as Hohenberg comments. The Pulitzer Prize Fiction jury of 1963 (John Barkham and Irita Van Dören) began its report with bitter complaints about "the customary disparity between quality and quantity... It was a year, too, which saw headline novelists give rudimentary fiction form to the always present threat of a nuclear war... These trends aside, the mainstream of American fiction flowed on much as usual. From its broad undercurrent of competence emerged works of promise and performance... The most promising first novel of the year... was Reynolds Price's A Long and Happy Life, a beautifully-crafted Southern love story... As it happened, 1962 was also the year which saw the publication of William Faulkner's The Reivers, his last novel and also one of his most appealing. A genial comedy..., it contains a minimum of the rhetoric and moralizing which characterized Faulkner's later writing... Only one novel published last year rated a higher accolade from us: Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of Fools, published at last after twenty years of intermittent labor, was a literary landmark..., [it] is a novel of quality... We believe it deserves the Pulitzer Prize." 172 The Board, however, decided in favor of Faulkner, who had died the year before and was thus posthumously awarded his second Pulitzer Prize in the Fiction category, 173 for The Reivers after winning his first one eight years before and the Nobel Prize for Literature yet another six years earlier. 174 In 1964 a new jury (Lewis S. Gannett and Maxwell D. Geismar) was set up, that got to the point right at the beginning of its report to the Board: "Your judges... have reluctantly concluded to recommend that no Pulitzer award be made in that field this year. More than ninety novels were nominated by their publishers this past year. Your judges have read most of them... and have carefully considered them all. A few seem to us more original, or more distinguished in other ways, than some of the titles which have in the past received Pulitzer awards, but no one of them imposes itself upon us as demanding recognition as 'distinguished fiction...' Such a negative judgment perhaps requires a word of explanation... Four novels dominated the best-seller lists for many months... and have been widely 170 171 172 173 174

Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 257. John Barkham/Irita Van Dören, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, New York, undated (ca. February 1963), pp. 1 ff. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53. Cf. Werner Martin, Verzeichnis der Nobelpreisträger 1901-1984, op. cit., p. 248.

LVI

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LVII

discussed: Mary McCarthy's The Group..., James Michener's Caravans..., Richard McKenna's The Sand Pebbles..., John O'Hara's Elizabeth Appleton... Among the books the judges most seriously considered were the following: (1) Norman Fruchter's Coat Upon a Stick..., (2) May Sarton's novella Joanna and Ulysses..., (3) Sumner Locke Elliott's Careful, He Might Hear You..., (4) John Killens' And Then We Heard the Thunder... If a prize were to be awarded for a 1963 novel we felt these to be the most serious candidates." 175 As Hohenberg relates, after considerung the jurors' reasoning, "the Board took them at their word" 176 and accepted the proposal of "no award." 177 The two jurors of 1965 (Lewis S. Gannett and Maxwell D. Geismar) were the same as in the previous year and had to judge more than eighty novels. "In our joint judgment the prize should go to Shirley Ann Grau for The Keepers of the House," as it was stated at the end of their joint report, 178 that was nevertheless complemented by two separate statements of the jurors. "The Keepers of the House is Miss Grau's fourth book of fiction," Lewis Gannett emphasized and added: "With it she emerges, it seems to me, as, since the death of William Faulkner, the major Southern writer... No other novel of the year compares with it in the quality of the writing - the impeccable sense for words, the glowing visual imagery - in characterization, or in tension." 179 Maxwell Geismar wrote in his part of the report about Grau's book: "I do not actually consider that this novel is up to the best work of William Faulkner; but then we must also remember that Faulkner did some very poor books, which are inferior to Miss Grau's present novel. That is to say: I think Shirley Ann Grau is a good, solid, responsible and professional novelist rather than a first-rank or major novelist, but I see no harm in giving such a book and such a writer the prize this year, since I consider that the prize has been given to less good books and less good writers in the past." 180 As Hohenberg remarks, "there was no dissent in the Advisory Board," 181 and so the Pulitzer Prize for fiction went to Shirley Ann Grau. 182 175

Lewis S. Gannett/Maxwell D. Geismar, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, New York, January 15, 1964, pp. 1 f. 176 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 258. 177 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53. 178 Lewis S. Gannett/Maxwell D. Geismar, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, N e w York, January 15, 1965, p. 1. 179 Lewis S. Gannett, T o the Advisory Board, New York, January 16, 1965, p . l . 180 Maxwell D. Geismar, Concurring Report with Reservations, Harrison, N.Y., January 19, 1965, p. 1. 181 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 256. 182 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53.

LVIII When the fiftieth anniversary of the Pulitzer Prize system was celebrated in 1966, the two members of the jury (John Barkham and Maxwell D. Geismar) stated bluntly in their report: "It was, on the whole, an undistinguished year for fiction, a complaint we fear is becoming recurrent. The number and variety of offerings were ample enough, but no single work stood out as a discovery or beacon... Many of the year's submissions impressed us as glib, packaged products lacking seriousness of purpose... The year had its compensation, however, chief among them the publication of Katherine Anne Porter's Collected Stories... The event served to remind us of this artist's chaste and controlled style, her subtle sensibilities, and the power of her moments of revelation. Both in manner and matter this book stood out in the year's fiction, and we have no hesitation in recommending that it be awarded the Fiction Prize." 183 Three other works, Marguerite Young's Miss Macintosh, My Darling·, Vardis Fisher's Mountain Man and George P. Elliott's In the World were listed as runner-ups. 184 The Advisory Board accepted the jury's proposal and gave the award to Katherine Anne Porter for her Collected Stories,185 "It was compensation of a kind for the gentle, 75-year-old Miss Porter, whose career as a writer had spanned forty years... But it was also a commentary on the state of the American novel when a book of short stories was selected for the fiction award in the fiftieth year of the Pulitzer Prizes," 186 as Hohenberg assesses the decision. When it was time to select the prizewinners of 1967, for the first time after a break of more than fifteen years three jurors (Maxwell D. Geismar, Elizabeth Janeway and Melvin Maddocks) officiated as members of the Fiction jury. They "voted unanimously to award the prize to Bernard Malamud's The Fixer... Among other elements entering into this judgment, the jury noted the literary skill of the novel, unobtrusive but present, as the story itself achieves the quietly astonishing feat of beginning with despair and working through it to a climax of inward triumph, and even a kind of ironical joy in life. We are aware," the jurors added, "that this novel deals with the Russian rather than the American scene... Among other novels and short stories, there were perhaps a dozen or so seriously considered by the Judges... These included Fertig by Sol Yurick; The Last Gentleman by Walker Percy; The Crying of LOT 49 by Thomas Pynchon; Strangers and Graves by Peter Feibleman; Giles Goatboy by John Barth; and Nothing Ever 183 184 185 186

John Barkham/Maxwell D. Geismar, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, N e w York, December 15, 1965, pp. 1 f. Ibid., pp. 2 f. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., pp. 318 f.

LIX Breaks Except the Heart by Kay Boyle." 187 Despite the fact that the content of the book ranking first, The Fixer, had no direct references to America, the prize was bestowed on Bernard Malamud. 188 "The decision of the Board in favor of Malamud," Hohenberg writes, "failed to kindle any critical bonfires.'1,189 With regrets the jurors of 1968 (Maxwell D. Geismar, John K. Hutchens and Melvin Maddocks) stated right at the beginning of their report that "for the first time in several years the Fiction Jury could not reach a unanimous opinion... Mr. John Hutchens' choice for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction is William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner. We are presenting his report first, and then the restrictions voiced by the two other jurors as to the validity of this choice. We are then presenting the reasons why two of the judges favored Isaac Bashevis Singer's The Manor as their choice for the Pulitzer Prize." 190 After this problem had been made transparent and had been discussed in detail, the jurors drew up an additional vote a few days later in which they added Thornton Wilder's The Eighth Day to their short list. They explained this decision with the following remarks: "The... jurors... submit The Eighth Day as their compromise choice if neither The Confessions of Nat Turner nor The Manor should be given the Prize." 191 Yet the Advisory Board was convinced by Hutchens' positive evaluation of The Confessions of Nat Turner and announced William Styron as prizewinner, 192 which, as Hohenberg puts it, "created no excitement." 193 In 1969 a completely new jury (P. Albert Duhamel, Edmund Fuller and Raymond Walters Jr.) sifted through the submitted material, creating a list of three finalists. "Our first choice," as it reads in its report "is N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn... because of its, in the words of one of the members of the jury, 'eloquence and intensity of feeling, its freshness of vision and subject, its immediacy of theme' and because an award to its author might be considered as a recognition of 'the arrival on the American literary scene of a matured, sophisticated literary artist from the original Americans.' Our second choice is A World of Profit by Louis Auchincloss... 187 188 189 190 191 192 193

Maxwell D. Geismar/Elizabeth Janeway/Melvin Maddocks, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Harrison, N.Y., December 27, 1966, p. 1. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 319. Maxwell D. Geismar/John K. Hutchens/Melvin Maddocks, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, New York, January 7, 1968, p. 1. Maxwell D. Geismar/John K. Hutchens/Melvin Maddocks, Postscript to the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury Report, N e w York, January 15, 1968, p. 1. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 320.

LX which... is not uncharacteristic of the work of one of our best novelist of manners. Our third choice is And Other Stories by John O'Hara... which, though the author has never won a Pulitzer, contains at least two stories which reflect the level of artistic achievement that has characterized the author's work." 194 Hohenberg states that "the Board's membership wasn't exactly ecstatic but it went along with House Made of Dawn"195 and gave the Pulitzer Prize to the American Indian author N. Scott Momaday. 196 For 1970 the jury was once again reconstituted and consisted of John Barkham, John Brooks and William G. Rogers. These three jurors made it fundamentally clear at the beginning of their report that: "It cannot be said that fiction in 1969 recovered the ground it has lost to non-fiction in recent years... Of the seventy or so candidates not more than a dozen were marked by originality of subject or treatment, and several of the more promising entries were unable to sustain an opening streak of brilliance... Three books were finally selected as the best fiction of the year. One of the jurors rated John Cheever's Bullet Park, a novel of contemporary suburbia, as outstanding... Two of the entries were collections of short stories written over the past quarter-century by Jean Stafford and Peter Taylor, and both impressed us with their conscious artistry. Taylor's is the lesser achievement in manner and matter, but only when compared with Jean Stafford. Her range in subject, scene and mood is remarkable, and her mastery of the short story form is everywhere manifest. She is wonderfully skilled in digging out drama where others would see only drabness. She builds to strong climaxes with the littlest of steps. In short, a gifted writer, secure in her technique, who prefers the miniature to the mural." 197 "The Board's consultative committee and the full membership as well," according to Hohenberg, 198 voted in favor of Jean Stafford, who therefore received the prize for her Collected Stories.199 The jurors of 1971 (P. Albert Duhamel, Elizabeth Janeway and Lon Tinkle) suggested three candidates for the award, ranking them alphabetically as follows: "Losing Battles by Eudora Welty: though a genre novel and lacking in the freshness of some of her earlier works, it transcends mere fidelity to the culture of the Old South... Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul 194 195 196 197 198 199

P. Albert Duhamel/Edmund Fuller/Raymond Walters Jr., Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Dover, Ma., December 20, 1968, p. 1. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 320. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53. John Barkham/John Brooks/William G. Rogers, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, New York, December 17, 1969, pp. 1 f. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 321. Columbia University (Ed ), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53.

LXI Bellow: at times a compelling, urbane summary of man's twentieth century accomplishments on the planet, it is, also at times, a disturbing portrait of a protagonist who has achieved vision at the cost of generosity and openness, resulting in a recurring condescension which can alienate a reader... The Wheel of Love by Joyce Carol Oates: last year's National Book Award winner plumbs 'ordinariness' to deep roots, feels connections that have emotional value for the here-and-now by means of the sort of sensibility which only the finest writers possess. If you wish," the jurors declared in direction of the Advisory Board, "the Jury will undertake to reduce this list further, but it is not likely that we would be able to decide on a single, unanimous, persuasive choice." 200 As Hohenberg found out, the Board intermi ttingly "seriously discussed recognizing Eudora Welty for her lifelong achievements as a leading American writer,"201 but in the end opted for giving "no award." 202 Summing up the preceding six years Hohenberg comments that during this time "the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction went to two accomplished short story writers, two older novelists for moderately successful works, and one newcomer, and was passed once for lack of a solid jury recommendation. It wasn't a particularly noteworthy assessment of the American novel. For 1972, a Fiction Jury (John Barkham, Maurice Dolbier and Jean Stafford).... also began on a low note in their report." 203 The jurors wrote to the Board that the previous year "was a good if not great year for books. Fiction, however, fared indifferently, and your jury was disappointed that the overall level of the entries submitted was no higher than it was. The omens had been for an exceptional year with new novels by major writers like John Updike, Mary McCarthy, Bernard Malamud, Robert Penn Warren, Joyce Carol Oates, ... and Walker Percy - an impressive constellation of luminaries. But the result was a Barmecide feast... All three jurors," the decision reads, "were unanimous in their recommendation for the Fiction Prize - Wallace Stegner for his Angle of Repose." It "impressed the jury as a solidly conceived, handsomely crafted work of fiction..."204 As Hohenberg reports, "it was enough to convince the Board and give the 1972 fiction award to the 63-year-old Stegner," 205 based on his book Angle of Repose.206 200 P. Albert Duhamel/Elizabeth Janeway/Lon Tinkle, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Dover, Ma., January 8, 1971, p. 1. 201 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 321. 202 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53. 203 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., pp. 321 f. 204 John Barkham/Maurice Dolbier/Jean Stafford, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, New York, December 10, 1971, pp. 1 f. 205 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 322.

LXII In the following year, the group of jurors (Guy Davenport, Edmund Fuller and Herman Kogan), all newly appointed for 1973, was not able to make up a joint report, but offered three individual evaluations instead. Davenport ranked first Chaim Potok's My Name is Asher Lev, followed by Eudora Welty's The Optimist's Daughter and Isaac Bashevis Singer's Enemies,207 Fuller had on the top of his list The Confession of a Child of the Century, by Thomas Rogers, ahead of The Sunlight Dialogues, by John Gardner and The Optimist's Daughter, by Eudora Welty. 208 Member of the jury Kogan, however, placed Eudora Welty's The Optimist's Daughter above Thomas Rogers' The Confession of a Child of the Century and James Park Sloan's The Case History of Comrade V.209 "After considerable telephonic discussion" with his co-jurors, Kogan complemented in his text, "we do agree that if the award were to go to Eudora Welty we would not be unhappy... Ultimately I kept Miss Welty on the top of my list. Not only did I consider The Optimist's Daughter, while slight in size, quite a narrative gem, but I must admit that my steadfastness was influenced by the fact that Miss Welty, surely one of our finest writers, has never received a Pulitzer Prize." 210 As The Optimist's Daughter had therefore, in a way, gained the status of favorite, "the Advisory Board showed no hesitation and this time had no regrets"211 in giving the Pulitzer Prize to Eudora Welty. 2 1 2 In 1974, when three completely new jurors (Benjamin DeMott, Elizabeth Hardwick and Alfred Kazin) took up the task of evaluating the submissions, it was stated in their report that: "The members of the Pulitzer fiction jury wish to report that their first choice... is Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. For second place the jury chose John Cheever's The World of Apples. One juror wished... to record a desire that second place should go to Gore Vidal's Burr. For third place two jurors chose Gore Vidal's Burr, and one chose Isaac Bashevis Singer's A Crown of Feathers... Our first choice was unanimous... At least one (juror)... believes that no work of Fiction in 1973 begins to compare with Mr. Pynchon's book in scale, originality of conception, and sustained literary interest." 213 As Hohenberg reveals, "the Board was again in the unhappy situation of choosing between no award and 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213

Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53. Guy Davenport, Letter to Herman Kogan, Lexington, Ky., December 20, 1972, p. 1. Edmund Fuller, Letter to Herman Kogan, Kent, Ct., December 21, 1972, p. 1. Herman Kogan, Letter to John Hohenberg, Chicago, December 27, 1972, p. 1. Ibid. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 323. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53. Benjamin DeMott/Elizabeth Hardwick/Alfred Kazin, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Amherst, Ma., January 9, 1974, p. 1.

LXIII

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LXIV the Fiction Jury's selection of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, which the Board found to be turgid, confused, and overwritten... The jurors protested the Advisory Board's decision to pass the award in strong terms and stood by their report."214 But all this did not, in the end, prevent the decision that there would be "no award" in the Pulitzer Prize Fiction category. 2 ^ For the Pulitzer Prize Fiction jury of 1975, all members of the previous year were replaced and the new jurors (Carlos Baker, P. Albert Duhamel and Jean Stafford) informed the Advisory Board in their report "that out of the immense welter of indescribably bad fiction we have chosen one novel to which all of us would be happy to see the prize awarded... The novel is The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara... Its subject is... the Battle of Gettysburg, and the narrative is carried forward from the points of view of half a dozen officers, Union and Rebel... The Killer Angels seems to (be) much more than a historical novel: it is a very disciplined imagination of the four days of skirmish and battle, an exploration of the minds and motivations of responsible officers in the midst of the conflict... In our several ways all of us were picked up and borne forward by the force of the narrative. Despite the diversity of points in view, it is a remarkable unit. The book contains no hokum, and the portraits limned are sharp and admirable. So we nominate this one novel and hope very ardently that the Advisory Board on the Pulitzer Prizes will see eye to eye with us in this selection." 216 Because this vote was put forward with utmost conviction the Board bestowed the award on Michael Shaara for his work The Killer Angels.217 The jurors of 1976 (Walter Clemons, Guy Davenport and Eudora Welty) voted by majority for Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift. Furthermore they had on their short list The Dead Father, by Donald Barthelme; The Surface of Earth, by Reynolds Price; Are We There Yet?, by Diane Vreuls as well as Ragtime, by Edgar L. Doctorow. "Our consensus as to Bellow's excellence," as the jury justified its favorite, "came from our feeling that Humboldt's Gift is a triumphant handling of a strong theme with rich understanding, compassion, sharp insight, and a splendidly sane sense of comedy... Artistically the novel is a wonderful return to a style closer to Dickens than to more contemporary, naturalistic, absurdist, and despairing modes. Bellow is satiric without being harsh, warm without being sentimental, humanistic 214 John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 323. 215 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53. 216 Carlos Baker/P. Albert Duhamel/Jean Stafford, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Princeton, N.J., December 16, 1974, pp. 1 f. 217 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53.

LXV without being didactic. The novel has integrity and invention. It projects with masterly imagination a complete world about which the author is convincingly informed, and can thus enlarge and deepen our understanding. As in all his novels, Bellow writes essentially as a critic of society and as a philosopher. His concern is to understand rather than to excuse or condemn. As a master of fluid, witty, busy prose he has few peers, and as a master of tone and effect, fewer still."218 This enumeration of the merits evident in Humboldt's Gift caused the Advisory Board to award the Pulitzer Prize to Saul Bellow, 219 who in the same year was also to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. 220 After selecting the finalists for 1977 the jurors (Maurice Dolbier, Herman Kogan and Jean Stafford) suggested three novels for the prize ranking as follows: "1. A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean: This is the first volume of fiction by a man," it says verbatim in the report, "who... himself calls" (his work) 'a little book' but its qualities are copious... The range of emotions and insights is broad and compelling and its concern with life in all its aspects has, despite the narratives' specific time and place, a sense of the universal... 2. October Light by John Gardner: Well-written, as is true of many of John Gardner's earlier books, but October Light is burdened by, among other things, a 'novel-within-a-novel' and verbal excesses that detract from what is essentially an interesting narrative... 3. The Franchiser by Stanley Elkin: A portrait of a part of the current American scene that has a strong sense of comedy and tragi-comedy, but ultimately sputters to an inconclusive end." 221 In view of these comments the Advisory Board opted for "no award" in the Fiction categoy. 222 At the same time it presented "a special award to Alex Haley for Roots, the story of a black family from its origins in Africa through seven generations to the present day in America." 2 ^ In 1978 a new jury (Carlos Baker, Margaret Manning and Frank D. McConnell) took over the task of sifting through and evaluating the entries in the Fiction category. It nominated, as the jurors explained in their report, "unanimously and enthusiastically" James Alan McPherson's book Elbow 218 Walter Clemons/Guy Davenport/Hudora Welty, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Lexington, Ky., January 11, 1976, p. 1. 219 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53. 220 Cf. Werner Martin, Verzeichnis der Nobelpreisträger 1901-1984, op. cit., p. 292. 221 Maurice Dolbier/Herman Kogan/Jean Stafford, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Chicago, December 13, 1976, pp. 1 f. 222 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53. 223 Ibid., p. 67.

LXVI Room.224 "We also admired," one member of the jury wrote, "Peter Taylor's In the Miro District, Anne Tyler's Earthly Possessions, Paul Horgan's The Thin Mountain Air, William Maxwell's Over by the River, and for various reasons one or two others. In the long run, none of us felt that any of them was as good as McPherson's Elbow Room."225 The jury as a whole passed the following judgment of McPherson's book: "Neither revolutionary nor merely picturesque, his fiction is in the best sense of the word imaginative. His language, his narrative skills, and his characters span a wide range from the most self-consciously cultured to the most folksy and colloquial, but consistently enlivened, at all levels of style and substance, by a firm intelligence and compassion for the things that make us all human beings, and for those aspects of living that fiction, perhaps, can best tell us about." 226 Because of these remarks the Advisory Board had no difficulties in awarding the Pulitzer Prize for fiction to James Alan McPherson for his work Elbow Room 221 For the award in 1979, when the jury (Barbara A. Bannon, Guy Davenport and Maurice Dolbier) had to evaluate 121 books, there was a unanimous favorite: The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever. "There really is no strong agreement among the committee as to nominations beyond the Cheever," the jurors declared, nevertheless supplying two additional titles which to them seemed of be interest: The World According to Garp by John Irving as well as Continental Drift by James Houston. 228 "Our feeling is," it says verbatim of the jury's first choice, "that Cheever's mastery of style, his sharp and compassionate understanding of people, and his rich inventiveness with form place him well ahead of other contenders for literary excellence. He writes with equal insight about all kinds of people and thus pictures life in the USA in all of its variety. His satire is tempered by humor, his strictures by mercy. His portrayal of American life is a just and severe one in which we can discern not only a great writer but an astute moralist as well." 229 The Advisory Board had no reason the contradict this nomination and gave the Pulitzer Prize to John Cheever for his acclaimed collection of stories. 230 224 Carlos Baker/Margaret Manning/Frank D. McConnell, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Princeton, N.J., December 1977, p. 1. 225 Carlos Baker, Letter to Richard T. Baker, Princeton, N.J., December 15, 1977, p. 1. 226 Carlos Baker/Margaret Manning/Frank D. McConnell, Report..., op. cit., p. 1. 227 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53. 228 Barbara A. Bannon/Guy Davenport/Maurice Dolbier, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Lexington, Ky., December 9, 1978, p. 3. 229 Ibitl., p. I. 230 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53.

LXVII

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EXECUTIONER'S

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LXVIII

The jurors of 1980 (Anatole Broyard, Walter Clemons and Frank D. McConnell) selected the following three novels as finalists: The Ghost Writer, by Philip Roth; The Executioner's Song, by Norman Mailer; and Birdy, by William Wharton. 231 Although the jury basically agreed on these three titles, the individual evaluations of the jurors differed considerably, as can be inferred from the jury-report: "Walter Clemons can really not decide whether Mailer or Roth is his first choice, and warmly supports Wharton as a third. Anatole Broyard is very enthusiastic for Roth. He has expressed some concern that Mailer's book may not really be a novel (whatever that means), and is worried that giving the prize to it may raise unpleasant controversy... Broyard at any rate is willing... to list Mailer as a second choice and is willing to see Birdy on the list, though he considers it a much weaker book than Roth's. I think," Frank D. McConnell, writing the report, added, "that The Executioner's Song is clearly the best work of fiction published this year and perhaps for some years." 232 The Advisory Board shared this view and so the Pulitzer Prize for fiction went to Norman Mailer, 233 who, more than a decade earlier, had already won a Pulitzer Prize in the "General Nonfiction" category. 234 In 1981, the consultations of the jury (Joy G. Boyum, Peter S. Prescott and Jonathan Yardley) resulted in a rather unusual suggestion, after presenting the following finalists: 1. A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole. 2. So Long, See You Tomorrow, by William Maxwell. 3. Godric, by Frederick Buechner. 235 "It is the unanimous, enthusiastic and emphatic recommendation of the jury," it was said of Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, "that this extraordinary novel be awarded the 1981 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Written in the 1960s, but not published until more than a decade after the author's death, this novel is, as Walker Percy writes in his Foreword, a 'gargantuan tumultuous human tragicomedy.'... A brief history of the novel's slow progress to publication can be found in Percy's excellent Foreword, which we urge the Board to consider carefully... We hope the author's death will not be a consideration in the Board's final judgment, since the prize presumably is for the book rather than the author... We also feel that a Pulitzer for this novel would recognize Walker Percy's selfless and vital 231 232 233 234 235

Anatole Broyard/Walter Clemons/Frank D. McConnell, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Evanston, II., December 13, 1979, p. 1. Ibid. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53. Cf. Heinz-D. Fischer/Erika J. Fischer, The Pulitzer Prize Archive, Vol. 9: General Nonfiction Awards 1962-1993, München - New Providence - London - Paris 1996, pp. 81 ff. Joy G. Boyum/Peter S. Prescott/Jonathan Yardley, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Washington, D.C., December 13, 1980, p. 1.

LXIX service in bringing to public attention a superb work of fiction that in all likelihood would otherwise have languished unpublished and unknown." 236 The Board was of the same opinion and announced John Kennedy Toole as winner of the Pulitzer Prize posthumously. 237 The jury of 1982 (Margaret Manning, N. Scott Momaday and Julian Moynahan) also suggested three finalists by naming in mutual agreement the following books: (1) A Flag for Sunrise, by Robert Stone; (2) Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson; (3) Rabbit Is Rich, by John Updike. 238 Appraising the literary works separately and in detail the report stated: "A Flag for Sunrise is a fiercely intelligent novel, sad, ironic, dramatic. In addition it is superb reading. It asks questions we try to hide from... Housekeeping... is full of wonderful intensities and subtleties... This is a first novel of unusual quality... Rabbit Is Rich is number three in John Updike's series on Harry Angstrom (Rabbit). Updike, le maestre, has brought Angstrom back, conjoining the eternal and ephemeral, life's continuation and its end. And [he has] done [it] in the most luminous words. No one writing in English today can match his purity of style." 239 Although the jurors pointed out once again at the end of their report that they "strongly recommend Stone," 240 the Advisory Board did not accept this proposal. The committee decided in favor of the candidate ranking third and gave the Pulitzer Prize to John Updike for his work Rabbit Is Rich, "the latest novel in a memorable sequence," 241 as was emphasized specifically as grounds for the award. In 1983, the work of the jurors (Midge Decter, John C. Holmes and Peter S. Prescott) was characterized by a disagreement on who should be the favorite for the prize, and this dissent was also expressed towards the Advisory Board. "Two of the jurors find themselves in complete agreement," as it can be understood from the report, "but the chairman, alas, disagrees, and feels sufficiently strongly about it to mention the fact. We did agree, however, to present... the following books, listed in the order of preference voted by a majority of the jury. Their strongest recommendation appears first; the chairman's strongest recommendation appears third. 1. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker... (is) far superior to any other work of American fiction published this year. We enthusiastically and emphatically re236 237 238 239 240 241

Ibid., pp. 1 f. C o l u m b i a University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53. Margaret Manning/N. Scott Momaday/Julian Moynahari, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Boston, January 8, 1982, p. 1. Ibid. Ibid. C o l u m b i a University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53.

LXX commend that this extraordinary novel be awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction... 2. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, by Anne Tyler... This is a fine family novel for which the metaphor of the title is tellingly apt. 3. Rabbis and Wives, by Chaim Grade..., a collection of three interrelated novellas, is a work that takes its place in that tradition of fiction whose purpose has for nearly two centuries been to create and populate and teach us about a living world of social experience." 242 The Advisory Board could not resolve on endorsing the chairman of the jury in his selection of Grade and declared Alice Walker winner of the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Color Purple 243 A reconstituted jury acting in 1984 (David Bradley, Thomas R. Edwards and William K. Robertson) once again drew up a joint list of suggestions comprising the following works of fiction: The Feud, by Thomas Berger; Cathedral, by Raymond Carver; and Ironweed, by William Kennedy. "Although all are distinguished nominees," as it is made clear in the report, "the jurors unanimously agree that the prize should go to Thomas Berger, who in The Feud and other novels meets especially the award criterion for fiction 'preferably dealing with American life'... Thomas Berger's work is a major accomplishment in American letters. Our second choice is William Kennedy. Ironweed, too, has an American voice... Using a rich mixture of reality and fantasy, Kennedy creates a universe out of a single place and reminds us of the human characteristics we share with those we consider society's outcasts. Raymond Carver is our final nominee. His short-story collection, Cathedral, is a model of economy and precisely observed physical detail. His carefully constructed miniatures reveal more about lives in transit... than writers who attempt to beguile on a more grandiose scale." 244 The Advisory Board was especially taken with Ironweed and therefore the Pulitzer Prize went to William Kennedy. 245 The jurors of 1985 (Walter Clemons, Frank D. McConnell and Anne Tyler) also presented a list of suggestions that included in alphabetical order the following novels: "Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie: This witty comedy takes up what Henry James liked to call 'the international theme' - the impact of European civilization on its American visitors. Ms. Lurie's sharp observation of Americans in love in London is a fresh look at the uneasy love affair 242

Midge Decter/John C. Holmes/Peter S. Prescott, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, New York, undated (ca. January 1983), pp. 1 f. 243 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit.} p. 53. 244 David Bradley/Thomas R. Edwards/William K. Robertson, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Miami, January 31, 1984, pp. 1 f. 245 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53.

LXXI between England and America. I Wish This War Were Over by Diana O'Hehir: Meticulous characterization and an inspired sense of time and place distinguish this novel set in World War II America. The characters are complex and endearing, and the year 1944 is recreated with vivid precision. Leaving the Land by Douglas Unger: This first novel treats a painful contemporary subject, the squeezing out of existence of small farmers, whose way of life is made obsolete during the book's thirty-year span by the takeover of agribusiness. Unger is perceptive and unsentimental about a harsh moment in our history." 246 The Advisory Board voted in favor of the novel Foreign Affairs, and so the Pulitzer Prize for fiction went to Alison Lurie. 247 The list of finalists of 1986, presented by a new jury (Michiko Kakutani, N. Scott Momaday and Philip F. O'Connor) consisted of three suggestions: The Accidental Tourist, by Anne Tyler; Continental Drift, by Russell Banks; and Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry. "The Accidental Tourist," as the jurors described the book on the top of their list, "is a novel of great merit... Anne Tyler has taken as her fictional territory that sprawling American landscape of the Middle Class... This is a novel that involves us completely and speaks to us directly and insistently about the meaning of our lives. Continental Drift is a modern masterpiece. It is the one work upon which the jury agreed at once and without reservation... Continental Drift is a visionary epic about innocence and evil, and it is extremely well written... We feel that this novel is truly distinguished, and we give it our very highest recommendation. Lonesome Dove is an American epic. It is surely one of the most nearly complete western novels ever written... This is a monumental work of action, vision, and irony. It is among other things a magnificent parody of the myths, tales, and stock characters of the so-called 'western.'" 248 Despite the fact that the jury lavished its highest praise on Continental Drive the Advisory Board gave the award to Lonesome Dove and announced Larry McMurtry as winner of the Pulitzer Prize. 249 The jury composing the list of finalists in 1987 (Alison Lurie, Frank D. McConnell and Peter S. Prescott) wrote at the beginning of its report that it "found this a puzzling, even exasperating year. Many of America's best novelists weighed in with books that do not compare favorably with their best past efforts - Robert Stone, Joyce Carol Oates and John Updike among 246 247 248 249

Walter Clemons/Frank D. McConnell/Anne Tyler, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, New York, January 15, 1985, p. 1. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53. Michiko Kakutani/N. Scott Momaday/Philip F. O'Connor, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Tucson, Az., December 13, 1985, pp. 1 f. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53.

LXXII

Author of - TERMS OF ENDEARMENT

LXXIII them. A likely candidate - Norman Rush's Whites - surfaced early. We three agreed at once," the report continues, "that this remarkable book was well worth the prize. But we were charged with finding two more to recommend - and this proved uncommonly difficult. We all found books we liked, but none that we could persuade our co-jurors was worth a Pulitzer Prize... Although we were urged not to weight our recommendations, we must respectfully report that we cannot refrain from so doing. It is our unanimous recommendation that Norman Rush's collection of remarkable stories, Whites, is alone worthy of this year's Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Our other recommendations - Donald Barthelme's Paradise and Peter Taylor's A Summons to Memphis - are listed alphabetically and are offered with the understanding that all three of us found these novels something less than their author's best work, particularly their work in the short story form." 250 In spite of the high praise for the book by Norman Rush the Advisory Board did not endorse the jury's proposal but declared A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. 251 The three finalists that the jurors of 1988 (Alice Adams, Richard Eder and Julian Moynahan) agreed on were: Beloved, by Toni Morrison; Persian Nights, by Diane Johnson; and That Night, by Alice McDermott. "Beloved," the jury stressed in its report, "is a work of assured, immense distinction, destined to become an American classic... The writing in Beloved is dense and rich, its structure brilliantly fragmented, discontinuous, expressive. To a remarkable degree the book captures new ground even while it is in dialogue with great American novels of the past... The publication of Beloved is a reassuring, moving, inspiring event in American Letters. Persian Nights... is a brilliant and sometimes dazzlingly, vividly beautiful portrait of prerevolutionary Iran, visited by a group of American doctors, and wives... That Night...: In a wonderfully balanced yet piercing fashion, McDermott tells us some particular and universal things about the passion and frailty of adolescent illusion and the eroding cycles of the blue/white-collar society in which they are set." 252 The Advisory Board found the jury's praise for Beloved to be the most convincing and therefore decided to bestow the award on Toni Morrison. 253

250 Alison Lurie/Frank D. McConnell/Peter S. Prescott, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, New York, December 23, 1986, p. 1. 251 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53. 252 Alice Adams/Richard Eder/Julian Moynahan, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Princeton, N.J., December 26, 1987, pp. 1 ff. 253 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 53.

LXXIV

The three jurors acting as members of the panel in 1989 (Laurie Colwin, Peter S. Prescott and Jonathan Yardley) complained unanimously at the beginning of their report, "that 1988 was an uncommonly weak year for American fiction. As a result it has been difficult to find any books that are of sufficient merit to deserve the Pulitzer Prize, much less to agree on three that can be submitted to the Board in good conscience. Of the dozens of books that have been nominated, only two have the support of all three judges... They are listed alphabetically, by author: "1. Where I'm Calling From, by Raymond Carver... is the definitive collection of stories by a writer who has been a major influence on American fiction and who died shortly after its publication... He was one of the rare postwar American writers of literary fiction whose principal subject was the lives of ordinary, blue-collar citizens... 2. Breathing Lessons, by Anne Tyler. This writer's eleventh novel is one of her best, though quieter in tone than such deservedly popular books as Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and The Accidental Tourist... Tyler is one of our most serious and accomplished novelists, and here she writes with characteristic humor and insight." 254 The Advisory Board voted in favor of Anne Tyler, 255 who in the preceding years had already been among the finalists twice in the Pulitzer Prize Fiction category. In 1990 the jurors (Joel Conarroe, Diane Johnson and Philip F. O'Connor) made it perfectly clear that "the fiction jury unanimously and enthusiastically regards two (and only two) of this year's eligible titles to be supremely worthy of a Pulitzer Prize... A nearly flawless work by a writer of major stature, E. L. Doctorow's eighth novel opens with one of the most riveting passages in American fiction. Billy Bathgate, like Huckleberry Finn, introduces a narrative voice of exceptional charm and individuality. The novelist, among many other things, succeeds brilliantly in communicating the flavor of American life during an era dominated by Dutch Schultz and his colorful colleagues. Billy Bathgate is Mr. Doctorow's masterpiece. Oscar Hijuelos' second novel, an exuberant depiction of the Cuban American experience in New York during the 1950s," as was said of the second favorite for the prize, "vividly recreates an era in which the rhythms of Latin jazz filled the nighttime air. Gorgeously written, alternately comic and deeply moving, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love joyfully, gently, and innocently celebrates the lives of two appealing brothers as, far from their

254 255

Laurie Colwin/Peter S. Prescott/Jonathan Yardley, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Washington, D.C., undated (ca. January 1989), pp. 1 f. Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 54.

LXXV

LXXVI native soil, they pursue an elusive American dream." 256 The Advisory Board was totally convinced by the high praise enumerating the merits of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love and so the Pulitzer Prize for fiction was given to Oscar Hijuelos. 257 For the award in 1991 the jury (Richard Eder, N. Scott Momaday and Anne Tyler) once again decided to offer "three choices for the prize in fiction: Linda Hogan - Mean Spirits... is an equation of tragedy and truth on the one hand, hope and endurance on the other - that most universal of tensions in literature. Its subject is native and important, its perception profound, and its writing distinguished. Out of the voices of her Native Americans, Hogan has woven a world that is lost not only to those who lived in it but to all Americans. Tim O'Brien - The Things They Carried... are pieces in a mosaic that it has taken O'Brien - 25 years after the Vietnam War - to assemble... John Updike - Rabbit At Rest" was the third title suggested by the jury, which gave the following further explanation in their report: "Aware that the previous Rabbit was given a Pulitzer" nine years ago, "the jury would not recommend this one if it did not feel that it has gone far beyond the others and provided a climactic finish to the four-volume life history of a particular class and generation of Americans. It represents the work of an artist who has arrived at the very peak of his powers. It is not just beautifully written; it is complicated and sad and unsparing, in ways that only the most seasoned writer could have managed." 258 In view of this laudatory comments the Advisory Board had no reason to refrain from honoring yet another Rabbit-book with a Pulitzer Prize, and it therefore declared John Updike winner of the award 259 The jurors of 1992 (Gail Caldwell, Frank D. McConnell and James A. McPherson) also drew up a list of three proposals that was ranked alphabetically and consisted of the following finalists: "Don DeLillo - Mao II. In the great tradition of American writing extending back to Whitman and Melville, Mao II is an attempt at a visionary politics and an attempt to write an anatomy of our discontent... DeLillo creates an affecting story which is also a meditation upon the fate of literature in a computerized, televisionized world that seems to have no room for the lost humanity of the word... David Gates - Jernigan. Staggering under the weight of modern ennui and his own 256 Joel Conarroe/Diane Johnson/Philip F. O'Connor, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, New York, December 16, 1989, p. 1. 257 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 54. 258 Richard Eder/N. Scott Momaday/Anne Tyler, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Los Angeles, December 29, 1990, p. 1. 259 Columbia University (Ed.), The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 54.

LXXVII treacherous past, the narrator of Jernigan is one of the most memorable voices in recent American fiction... With his intellectual savoir-faire and interior ice-storm, Jernigan is the bittersweet anti-hero of pure virtuoso fiction... Jane Smiley - A Thousand Acres. In this book," the jury-report continues, "Jane Smiley brings the enduring resonance of her prose to a profoundly American novel." 260 Afterwards one member of the jury suggested Robert M. Pirsig and his book Lila - An Inquiry into Morals as a possible fourth contestant, 261 but the Advisory Board voted in favor of Jane Smiley, who consequently won the Pulitzer Fiction Prize for her novel A Thousand Acres.262 In 1993 the three members of the jury (Richard Eder, Charles Johnson and Anne Tyler) put the following three novels on their short list of finalists: Black Water, by Joyce Carol Oates; A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, by Robert Olen Butler; and At Weddings and Wakes, by Alice McDermott. 263 "Elegantly written and haunting," the jurors commented, "Black Water is that rarest of novels: a fiction that goes beneath the historical record and newspaper headlines to unearth the truth of the human heart." Among other things it was said of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain·. "We moved into Vietnam and then moved out. With remarkable sensibility, Robert Olen Butler moves Vietnam into us, and it won't move out." Alice McDermott's At Weddings and Wakes was praised especially for its "density of details" as well as "the graceful narrative structure." The Advisory Board regarded A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain as the best novel of the year and pronounced Robert Olen Butler the winner in the Pulitzer Prize Fiction category. 264 The jury of 1994 (Gail Caldwell, Frank D. McConnell and Philip O'Connor) suggested novels by these three authors: Reynolds Price - The Collected Stories', E. Annie Proulx - The Shipping News; and Philip Roth - Operation Shylock, A Confession.265 In the eyes of the Advisory Board The Shipping News was the most accomplished of these books, thus bestowing the Pulitzer Fiction Prize of 1994 on E. Annie Proulx. 266

260 Gail Caldwell/Frank D. McConnell/James A. McPherson, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Santa Barbara, Cal., December 11, 1991, p. 1. 261 James A. McPherson, Memo, Iowa City, la., undated, p. 1. 262 Columbia University (Ed.), The 76th annual Pulitzer Prizes, New York, April 7, 1992, p. 5. 263 Richard Eder/Charles Johnson/Anne Tyler, Report of the Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury, Baltimore, Md., December 22, 1992, p. 1. 264 Columbia University (Ed.), Pulitzer Prizes 1993, New York, April 13, 1993, p. 2. 265 Columbia University (Ed.), The 78th annual Pulitzer Prizes, New York, April 12, 1994, p. 5. 266 Columbia University (Ed.), Pulitzer Prizes 1994, New York, April 12, 1994, p. 2.

LXXVIII

LXXIX Looking back on the history of this special Pulitzer Prize that had the title "Novel" in the first three decades before adopting the designation "Fiction", it is highly evident that the yearly award announcements were accompanied more frequently by critical objections than was the case with most of the other Pulitzer Prize categories. In particular, as Hohenberg writes, "there appeared to be no end to the problems of selecting a distinguished work of American fiction for a Pulitzer Prize. Aside from the basic questions of determining artistic merit and literary values, the sheer volume of books that swamped the fiction judges every year was a complicating factor." 267 Once one of the jurors bluntly addressed this problem by elaborating: "First of all, I'd like to complain... that the publishers in submitting so many entries were acting uncritically, greedily, and stupidly. The large number of entries were put forward on the long chance, so that we had to read through far too much trash to sort out the hopefuls." 268 Faced year after year with the same situation, that is having to judge up to one hundred novels or even more, it seems absolutely possible that important books were overlooked or did not receive the recognition their artistic content would deserve, simply because the jurors were overtaxed by the quantity of submissions. The reason for this is, as J. Douglas Bates once observed, as that "some of the book publishers flood the competition" by entering "every eligible title" 269 they published. And so it was written in a review of the 'Novel' award on occassion of its first forty years of existence: "Some of the Pulitzer Prize books in fiction are reasonably accurate mirrors of our native taste in literature. But if we try to measure the Pulitzer books on an absolute scale of value rather than on the relativistic scale of historical worth, how well has the system worked?... Is it really true that all of our best novelists have received the acclaim of Pulitzer Prizes? Certainly not. Neither Hemingway nor Faulkner had ever won a Pulitzer until 1953 and 1955 respectively. Theodore Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson were eligible but ignored. Dos Passos is not here. Neither is Thomas Wolfe. Fitzgerald, O'Hara, Farrell, Erskine Caldwell, Gertrude Stein, Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, Walter Van Tilburgh Clark, Jean Stafford, and a half dozen other very able and distinguished writers of fictions have never won the prize. How many of them were runners-up in any given year we cannot know. Nor can we say with assurance that each of their works genuinely deserved the distinction of a Pulitzer Award... Where 267 268 269

John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 323. Guy Davenport, Letter to Herman Kogan, Lexington, Ky., December 20, 1972, p. 1. J. Douglas Bates, The Pulitzer Prize. The Inside Story of America's Most Prestigious Award, New York 1991, p. 164.

LXXX

ENTRY FORM FOR A PULITZER PRIZE In Letters,

Drama or Music

( T o be filed before July 1 or N o v e m b e r 1 for Letters) TITLE OF WORK AUTHOR OR COMPOSER HOME ADDRESS PRESENT OCCUPATION AND ORGANIZATION DATE A N D PLACE OF ENTRANT'S BIRTH P U B L I C A T I O N D A T E (for books) P R E M I E R E D A T E A N D L O C A T I O N (for music) P L E A S E E N C L O S E (and check accordingly) E N T R A N T ' S Biography • Photograph S20 Handling Fee • (no f e e f o r D r a m a entries) The following awards will be made annually as Prizes in Letters. Except in the case of Drama, where production rather than publication shall be the criterion, eligibility for these awards be restricted to works first published in America during the year in book form and available for purchase by the general public. (1) F o r distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, Three thousand dollars (S3,000). (2) For a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life, Three thousand dollars ($3,000). (3) F o r a distinguished book upon the history of the United States, Three thousand dollars ($3,000). (4) For a distinguished biography or autobiography by an American author, Three thousand dollars ($3,000).

• Check Box 1 2

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(5) F o r a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author, Three thousand dollars ($3,000). 6 (6) F o r a distinguished book of non-fiction by an American author that is not eligible for consideration in any other category, Three thousand dollars ($3,000). (7) For distinguished musical composition by an American in any of the larger forms including chamber, orchestral, choral, opera, song, dance, or other forms of musical theater, which has had its first performance in the United States during the year, Three thousand dollars ($3,000). Signature of person sponsoring this entrant (may be self) N a m e , title and organization (please print) Address (For July I and November I Letters deadlines, please send books and entry materials to The Pulitzer Prizes. 702 Journalism, Columbia University, New York, N.Y. 10027. Telephone: 212-854-3841(2). For Drama and Music deadlines, the Plan of Award for the Prizes and other rules, see reverse side. Please make checks payable to Columbia University/Pulitzer Prizes.)

ENTRY FORM OF THE MID-1990's

LXXXI

LXXXII so many are excluded from access to our most distinguished literary decorations, what is wrong? ... There are lean years and fat years in American literature," 270 and in the fat years it may happen to be the case that several first-class authors compete against one another and only one of them can be the winner, while in lean years now and then second-rate writers may also have their chance. 271 Although the Pulitzer Prize Board had, for many years, been completely aware of the problems that were caused each year by the high number of books submitted and recognized the difficulties these submissions posed for the process of selecting, Hohenberg writes that "it was reluctant to change the democratic nature of the system of entries in the mid-1970s. It was probable that the judges would have to resort to much stronger action before any different system could be seriously considered. But even if such technical changes eventually did come about, the day would never dawn when critics would be satisfied. For any major award in American fiction, particularly the Pulitzer, was a veritable lightning rod that projected nakedly toward the storm clouds that hovered over the nation's literature in the declining years of the twentieth century." 272 And when one strong opponent of the prize once expressed his feelings that "the art of Pulitzer fiction... is frequently crude, sometimes laughably so," 273 another voice replied: "Prize juries are only human, and they tend to be hidebound in one way or another. I am sure that every critic who sneers at the Pulitzer Prize would be overjoyed to win one. It remains the most famous American literary award." 274

270 271 272 273 274

Carlos Baker, Fiction Awards, op. cit., pp. 31 f. Cf. ihitl.. pp. 32 f. John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 324. W(illiam) J. Stuckey, The Pulitzer Prize Novels. A Critical Backward Look, Norman, Ok., 1966, p. 215. Quoted from John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, op. cit., p. 203.

SELECTIONS FROM AWARD-WINNING ENTRIES

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REMARKS ABOUT THE SELECTIONS CRITERIA

While selecting portions from Pulitzer Prize-winning books in the category NovelV Fiction and preparing them for republication by extract the editors were guided by the following seven principles: * There is a short biography of every prize-winner at the beginning of each chapter, ranging up to the year when the award was bestowed. * The biographical information about the prize-winners is based on the biographical notes attached to the award-winning entries as well as various biographical reference works. * Although the awards were bestowed each time for a particular book of the respective author reasons of size made it unavoidable to present in each single case merely a few selected pages as a sample of the text. * The parts reprinted from these books all are taken from the beginnings of the respective work of literature and encompass each merely the first three pages of the text. * All of the following reprinted passages were taken from the first print edition of the books in question, which also provided the basis for the awarding of the prize. * Precise bibliographical data including indication of pages are given so that the excerpts can be found in the respective first print editions. * Paragraphs and other typographic peculiarities in the original book portions were left unchanged, and also no editing or shortening of the original texts took place.

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1917

AWARD

ABOUT THE WITHHOLD OF THE NOVEL PRIZE BY THE ADVISORY BOARD

Since the members of the 1917 Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury in their report declared themselves unable to single out any book published during the preceding year, the Advisory Board accepted the jury's recommendation to give no award in this category.

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NAMES OF THE BOARD MEMBERS VOTING FOR "NO AWARD"

Nicholas M. Butler

Columbia University

Solomon B. Griffin

Springfield (Mass.) Republican

John L. Heaton

The New York World

George S. Johns

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Victor F. Lawson

Chicago Daily News

St. Clair McKelway

Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Charles R. Miller

The New York Times

Edward P. Mitchell

The New York Sun

Ralph Pulitzer

The New York World

Melville E. Stone

The Associated Press

Charles H. Taylor

Boston Globe

Samuel C. Wells

Philadelphia Press

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1918

AWARD

ABOUT THE MIDDLE-AGED FATHER OF AN OLD NEW YORK FAMILY BY ERNEST POOLE

Ernest Poole (born on January 23, 1880, in Chicago, 111.) attended Princeton University, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree, with honors, in 1902. Following his graduation he went to live in New York City at the University Settlement House, where he began writing fiction. After several unsuccessful short stories, however, Poole turned to journalism. His first article, on Chinatown, won him a job with McClure's Magazine. In 1904, he returned to Chicago to cover the stockyard strike as a correspondent for the Outlook. Poole acted as press agent for the unions, and thus was able to sit in on the meetings of the strike committee. Some ten years later, he translated this experience into the strike scene of his second novel, The Harbor. Poole's next major assignment for the Outlook was to cover the 1905 Russian revolution. The following year he published his first novel, The Voice of the Street, in which he made use of his knowledge of New York's East Side to provide a background to the story of the street boy Jim. During the following years Poole wrote about a dozen plays, but only three of them, None So Blind', A Man's Friends·, and Take Your Medicine (by Poole and Harriet Ford) were produced. During World War I, he returned to journalism briefly as a correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post, covering the scene from Germany and France. The next book, His Family, appeared in 1917, and it won Ernest Poole the Pulitzer Prize for novel which was awarded for the first time in 1918.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: Ernest P o o l e : H i s F a m i l y , N e w Y o r k : T h e M a c m i l l a n C o m p a n y , 1917, pp. 1-3.]

HE was thinking of the town he had known. Not of old New York—he had heard of that from old, old men when he himself had still been young and had smiled at their garrulity. He was thinking of a young New York, the mighty throbbing city to which he had come long ago as a lad from the New Hampshire mountains. A place of turbulent thoroughfares, of shouting drivers, hurrying crowds, the crack of whips and the clatter of wheels; an uproarious, thrilling town of enterprise, adventure, youth; a city of pulsing energies, the center of a boundless land; a port of commerce with all the world, of stately ships with snowy sails; a fascinating pleasure town, with throngs of eager travellers hurrying from the ferry boats and rolling off in hansom cabs to the huge hotels on Madison Square. A city where American faces were still to be seen upon all its streets, a cleaner and a kindlier town, with more courtesy in its life, less of the vulgar scramble. A city of houses, separate homes, of quiet streets with rustling trees, with people on the doorsteps upon warm summer evenings and groups of youngsters singing as they came trooping by in the dark. A place of music and romance. At the old opera house downtown, on those dazzling evenings when as a boy he had ushered there for the sake of hearing the music, how the rich joy of being alive, of being young, of being loved, had shone out of women's eyes. Shimmering satins, dainty gloves and little jewelled slippers, shapely arms and shoulders, vivacious movements, nods and smiles, swift glances, ripples, bursts of laughter, an exciting hum of voices. Then silence,

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sudden darkness—and music, and the curtain. The great wide curtain slowly rising. . . . But all that had passed away. Roger Gale was a rugged heavy maq not quite sixty years of age. His broad, massive features were already deeply furrowed, and there were two big flecks of white in his close-curling, grayish hair. He lived in a narrow red brick house down on the lower west side of the town, in a neighborhood swiftly changing. His wife was dead. He had no sons, but three grown daughters, of whom the oldest, Edith, had been married many years. Laura and Deborah lived at home, but they were both out this evening. It was Friday, Edith's evening, and as was her habit she had come from her apartment uptown to dine with her father and play chess. In the living room, a cheerful place, with its lamp light and its shadows, its oldfashioned high-back chairs, its sofa, its book cases, its low marble mantel with the gilt mirror overhead, they sat at a small oval table in front of a quiet fire of coals. And through the smoke of his cigar Roger watched his daughter. Edith had four children, and was soon to have another. A small demure woman of thirty-five, with light soft hair and clear blue eyes and limbs softly rounded, the contour of her features was full with approaching maternity, but there was a decided firmness in the lines about her little mouth. As he watched her now, her father's eyes, deep set and gray and with signs of long years of suffering in them, displayed a grave whimsical wistfulness. For by the way she was playing the game he saw how old she thought him. Her play was slow and absent-minded, and there came long periods when she did not make a move. Then she would recall herself and look up with a little affectionate smile that showed she looked upon him as too heavy with his age to have noticed her small lapses.

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He was grimly amused at her attitude, for he did not feel old at all. With that whimsical hint of a smile which had grown to be a part of him, he tried various moves on the board to see how far he could go without interrupting her reveries. He checkmated her, re-lit his cigar and waited until she should notice it. And when she did not notice, gravely he moved back his queen and let the game continue. How many hundreds of games, he thought, Edith must have played with him in the long years when his spirit was dead, for her now to take such chances. Nearly every Friday evening for nearly sixteen years. Before that, Judith his wife had been here. It was then that the city had been young, for to Roger it had always seemed as though he were just beginning life. Into its joys and sorrows too he had groped his way as most of us do, and had never penetrated deep. But he had meant to, later on. When in his busy city days distractions had arisen, always he had promised himself that sooner or later he would return to this interest or passion, for the world still lay before him with its enthralling interests, its beauties and its pleasures, its tasks and all its puzzles, intricate and baffling, all some day to be explored. This deep zest in Roger Gale had been bred in his boyhood on a farm up in the New Hampshire mountains. There his family had lived for many generations...

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1919 AWARD ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PATTERNS OF THE GROWTH OF THE NATION BY N . BOOTH TARKINGTON

Newton Booth Tarkington (born on July 29, 1869, in Indianapolis, Ind.) attended Phillips Exeter Academy, Purdue University, and Princeton University, which he left in 1893 without attaining a degree. For the next five years Tarkington tried to become a professional writer. After the publication of his first three novels, The Gentleman from Indiana·, Monsieur Beaucaire; and The Two Vanrevels, he ran for the Indiana legislature on the Republican ticket in 1902. He was elected, and served one term as a member of the Indiana House of Representatives. His 1905 novel, In the Arena, draws on his experiences as a legislator. That same year Tarkington collaborated, for the first time, with Harry Leon Wilson, writing the play The Man From Home, which was produced in Chicago in 1907. Following the publication of In the Arena, Tarkington traveled through Europe with his wife and family for some ten years. During this time he wrote the novels The Conquest of Canaan; The Beautiful Lady, His Own People·, The Guest of Quesnay, and Beasley's Christmas Party. Periodically he returned to the United States to manage productions of his plays. However, his writing career was interrupted for a few years due to drinking problems and it was not until 1912 that he decided to pick up his writing again. In 1914, he began issuing the "Penrod" stories, which describe the adventures of a young boy growing up in late-nineteenth-century America. The stories in the style of Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer were collected in Penrod and its sequel Penrod and Sam. The novel The Magnificent Ambersons was published in 1918. It was the second part in a projected trilogy and won N. Booth Tarkington the Pulitzer Prize for novel in the year after.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: Booth Tarkington: The Magnificent Ambersons, New York: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, 1918, pp. 3-5.]

M

AJOR AMBERSON had "made a fortune" in 1873, when other people were losing fortunes, and the magnificence of the Ambersons began then. Magnificence, like the size of a fortune, is always comparative, as even Magnificent Lorenzo may now perceive, if he has happened to haunt New York in 1916; and the Ambersons were magnificent in their day and place. Their splendour lasted throughout all the years that saw their Midland town spread and darken into a city, but reached its topmost during the period when every prosperous family with children kept a Newfoundland dog. In that town, in those days, all the women who wore silk or velvet knew all the other women who wore silk or velvet, and when there was a new purchase of sealskin, «ick people were got to windows to see it go by. Trotters were out, in the winter afternoons, racing light sleighs on National Avenue and Tennessee Street; everybody recognized both the trotters and the drivers; and again knew them as

11

well on summer evenings, when slim buggies whizzed by in renewals of the snow-time rivalry. For that matter, everybody knew everybody else's family horse-and-carriage, could identify such a silhouette half a mile down the street, and thereby was sure who was going to market, or to a reception, or coming home from office or store to noon dinner or evening supper. During the earlier years of this period, elegance of personal appearance was believed to rest more upon the texture of garments than upon their shaping. A silk dress needed no remodelling when it was a year or so old; it remained distinguished by merely remaining silk. Old men and governors wore broadcloth; "full dress" was broadcloth with "doeskin" trousers; and there were seen men of all ages to whom a hat meant only that rigid, tall silk thing known to impudence as a "stove-pipe." In town and country these men would wear no other hat, and, without self-consciousness, they went rowing in such hats. Shifting fashions of shape replaced aristocracy of texture: dressmakers, shoemakers, hatmakers, and tailors, increasing in cunning and in power, found

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means to make new clothes old. The long contagion of the "Derby" hat arrived: one season the crown of this hat would be a bucket; the next it would be a spoon. Every house still kept its bootjack, but high-topped boots gave way to shoes and "congress gaiters"; and these were played through fashions that shaped them now with toes like box-ends and now with toes like the prows of racing shells. Trousers with a crease were considered plebeian; the crease proved that the garment had lain upon a shelf, and hence was "ready-made"; these betraying trousers were called "hand-me-downs," in allusion to the shelf...

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1920

AWARD

ABOUT THE WITHHOLD OF THE NOVEL PRIZE BY THE ADVISORY BOARD

Since the members of the 1920 Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury in their report declared themselves unable to single out any book published during the preceding year, the Advisory Board accepted the jury's recommendation to give no award in this category.

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NAMES OF THE BOARD MEMBERS VOTING FOR "NO AWARD"

Nicholas M. Butler

Columbia University

Solomon B. Griffin

Springfield (Mass.)

John L. Heaton

The New York World

Arthur M. Howe

Brooklyn Daily Eagle

George S. Johns

St. Louis

Victor F. Lawson

Chicago Daily News

St. Clair McKelway

Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Charles R. Miller

The New York Times

Edward P. Mitchell

The New York Sun

Robert L. O'Brien

The Boston Herald

Ralph Pulitzer

The New York World

Melville E. Stone

The Associated

Charles H. Taylor

Boston Globe

Samuel C. Wells

Philadelphia

Republican

Post-Dispatch

Press

Press

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1921

AWARD

ABOUT THE PICTURE AND ANALYSIS OF A CASTE DURING A PERIOD BY EDITH N .

WHARTON

Edith Newbold Wharton (born on January 24, 1862, in New York, N.Y.) was educated by governesses and tutors at home. During her family's long residences abroad she learned French, German, and Italian. Her first book was The Decoration of Houses, written in collaboration with Ogden Codman Jr. and published in 1897. Two years later, she brought out her first collection of tales, The Greater Inclination. A historical novel followed, The Valley of Decision, set in eighteenth-century Italy. It was with her second novel, The House of Mirth, that Edith Wharton found a wide public and her major subject: the fixed aristocratic American society which is destroyed by its own rigidity. The Custom of the Country picks up this subject as well. In 1907 the Whartons established themselves in Paris. At about the same time Edith Wharton wrote Madame de Treymes and The Reef, two novels treating the contrast of foreign and domestic manners. They were followed by two New England novels, Ethan Frome and Summer. During World War I the authoress founded a committee of aid for French war orphans, was a moving spirit in the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps in France, and associated herself with several war charities. Her war experiences went into Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort and The Marne. Wharton's publications also include collections of short stories, essays, criticism, and verse. Italian Villas and Their Gardens', A Motor-Flight Through France·, and In Morocco number among her non-fictional writings. Edith N. Wharton's The Age of Innocence won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for the best novel published during the preceding year.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER |Source: Hdith W h a r t o n : T h e A g e o f I n n o c e n c e , N e w Y o r k - L o n d o n : D. Appleton and C o m p a n y , 1 9 2 0 , pp. 1-3.]

N a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York. Though there was already talk of the erection, in remote metropolitan distances "above the Forties," of a new Opera House which should compete in costliness and splendour with those of the great European capitals, the world of fashion was still content to reassemble every winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of the sociable old Academy. Conservatives cherished it for being small and inconvenient, and thus keeping out the "new people" whom New York was beginning to dread and yet be drawn to; and the sentimental clung to it for its historic associations, and the musical for its excellent acoustics, always so problematic a quality in halls built for the hearing of music. It was Madame Nilsson's first appearance that winter, and what the daily press had already learned to describe as "an exceptionally brilliant audience" had gathered to hear her, transported through the slippery, snowy streets in private broughams, in the spacious family landau, or in the humbler but more convenient "Brown coupe." To come to the Opera in a Brown coupe was almost as honourable a way of arriving as in one's own carriage; and departure by the same means had the immense advantage of enabling one (with a playful allusion to democratic principles) to scramble into the first Brown conveyance

O

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in the line, instead of waiting till the cold-and-gin congested nose of one's own coachman gleamed under the portico of the Academy. It was one of the great liverystableman's most masterly intuitions to have discovered that Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get to it. When Newland Archer opened the door at the back of the club box the curtain had just gone up on the garden scene. There was no reason why the young man should not have come earlier, for he had dined at seven, alone with his mother and sister, and had lingered afterward over a cigar in the Gothic library with glazed blackwalnut bookcases and finial-topped chairs which was the only room in the house where Mrs. Archer allowed smoking. But, in the first place, New York was a metropolis, and perfectly aware that in metropolises it was "not the thing" to arrive early at the opera; and what was or was not "the thing" played a part as important in Newland Archer's New York as the inscrutable totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his forefathers thousands of years ago. The second reason for his delay was a personal one. He had dawdled over his cigar because he was at heart a dilettante, and thinking over a pleasure to come often gave him a subtler satisfaction than its realisation. This was especially the case when the pleasure was a delicate one, as his pleasures mostly were; and on this occasion the moment he looked forward to was so rare and exquisite in quality that—well, if he had timed his arrival in accord with the prima donna's stage-manager he could not have entered the Academy at a more significant

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moment than just as she was singing: "He loves me—• he loves me not—he loves me!" and sprinkling the falling daisy petals with notes as clear as dew. She sang, of course, "M'ama!" and not "he loves me," since an unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences. This seemed as natural to Newland Archer as all the other conventions on which his life was moulded: such as the duty of using two silver-backed brushes with his monogram in blue enamel to part his hair, and of never appearing in society without a flower (preferably a gardenia) in his buttonhole. "M'ama . . . non m'ama . . the prima donna sang, and "M'ama!", with a final burst of love triumphant, as she pressed the dishevelled daisy to her lips and lifted her large eyes to the sophisticated countenance of the little brown Faust-Capoul, who was vainly trying, in a tight purple velvet doublet and plumed cap, to look as pure and true as his artless victim...

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1922

AWARD

ABOUT THE SYMPATHIC PORTRAIT OF A MIDDLE-CLASS HOME-LIFE BY N . BOOTH TARKINGTON

Newton Booth Tarkington (born on July 29, 1869, in Indianapolis, Ind.) attended Phillips Exeter Academy, Purdue University, and Princeton University, which he left in 1893 without attaining a degree. For the next five years Tarkington tried to become a professional writer. After the publication of his first three novels, The Gentleman from Indiana; Monsieur Beaucaire', and The Two Vanrevels, he ran for the Indiana legislature on the Republican ticket in 1902. He was elected, and served one term as a member of the Indiana House of Representatives. His 1905 novel, In the Arena, draws on his experiences as a legislator. Afterwards, Tarkington traveled through Europe with his wife and family for some ten years. During this time he wrote the novels The Conquest of Canaan; The Beautiful Lady, His Own People", The Guest of Quesnay, and Beasley's Christmas Party, periodically returning to the United States to manage productions of his plays. However, his writing career was interrupted for a few years due to drinking problems and it was not until 1912 that he decided to pick up his writing again. In 1914, he began issuing the "Penrod" stories, which describe the adventures of a young boy growing up in late-nineteenth-century America. The stories in the style of Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer were collected in Penrod and its sequel Penrod and Sam. The novel The Magnificent Ambersons was published in 1918. The second publication in a projected trilogy including The Turmoil (1915) won N. Booth Tarkington the Pulitzer Prize for novel in the year after. In 1922 he won another Pulitzer Prize in this category. The award-winning work was entitled Alice Adams and had been published one year earlier.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: Booth T a r k i n g t o n : Alice A d a m s , N e w Y o r k : G r o s s e t & Dunlap Publishers, 1921, pp. 3-5.]

T H E patient, an old-fashioned man, thought the nurse made a mistake in keeping both of the windows open, and her sprightly disregard of his protests added something to his hatred of her. Every evening he told her that anybody with ordinary gumption ought to realize that night air was bad for the human frame. "The human frame won't stand everything, Miss Perry," he warned her, resentfully. "Even a child, if it had just ordinary gumption, ought to know enough not to let the night air blow on sick people—yes, nor well people, either! 'Keep out of the night air, no matter how well you feel/ That's what my mother used to tell me when I was a boy. 'Keep out of the night air, Virgil,' she'd say. 'Keep out of the night air.'" "I expect probably her mother told her the same thing," the nurse suggested. "Of course she did. My grandmother " "Oh, I guess your grandmother thought so, Mr. Adams! That was when all this flat central country

21

was swampish and hadn't been drained off yet. I guess the truth must been the swamp mosquitoes bit people and gave 'em malaria, especially before they began to put screens in their windows. Well, we got screens in these windows, and no mosquitoes are goin' to bite us; so just you be a good boy and rest your mind and go to sleep like you need to." "Sleep?" he said.

"Likely!"

He thought the night air worst of all in April; he hadn't a doubt it would kill him, he declared. "It's miraculous what the human frame will survive," he admitted on the last evening of that month. "But you and the doctor ought to both be taught it won't stand too dang much! You poison a man and poison and poison him with this April night air " "Can't poison you with much more of it," Miss Perry interrupted him, indulgently. "To-morrow it'll be May night air, and I expect that'll be a lot better for you, don't you? Now let's just sober down and be a good boy and get some nice sound sleep." She gave him his medicine, and, having set the glass upon the center table, returned to her cot» where, after a still interval, she snored faintly. Upon

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this, his expression became that of a man goaded out of overpowering weariness into irony.. "Sleep? Oh, certainly, thank you!" However, he did sleep intermittently, drowsed between times, and even dreamed; but, forgetting his dreams before he opened his eyes, and having some part of him all the while aware of his discomfort, he believed, as usual, that he lay awake the whole night long. He was conscious of the city as of some single great creature resting fitfully in the dark outside his windows. It lay all round about, in the damp cover of its night cloud of smoke, and tried to keep quiet for a few hours after midnight, but was too powerful a growing thing ever to lie altogether still...

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1923

AWARD

ABOUT THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A NEBRASKAN IN WORLD WAR ONE BY WlLLA S. CATHER

Willa Sibert Cather (born on December 7, 1873, in Back Creek Valley, Va.) attended the University of Nebraska. Beginning in her junior year, she supported herself as a reviewer and columnist for the Nebraska State Journal. She obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Nebraska in 1895. After her graduation she continued working as a magazine editor and newspaper writer in Pittsburgh, afterwards she worked as a high school teacher of Latin and English. During these years she published her first book, April Twilights, a collection of verse. In 1905 it was followed by Cather's first collection of stories, The Troll Garden. The next year she became associate editor with McClure's Magazine, advancing to the position of managing editor during the following five years. She left McClure's in 1911 in order to concentrate entirely on her fiction writing. The following year the magazine serialized her novel, Alexander's Bridge, and in 1913 Cather brought out Ο Pioneers!, a story in which she turned to the use of the Nebraska experience of her childhood. Her next novel was The Song of the Lark which appeared in 1915. It was followed by another Nebraska novel, My Antonia. Cather next published a collection of her stories under the title Youth and the Bright Medusa. Inspired by the letters her cousin sent to his mother from the French front during World War I, she wrote One of Ours, which was published in 1922 and made Willa S. Cather the winner of the next year's Pulitzer Prize for novel.

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S T Y L E S A M P L E F R O M T H E OPENING

CHAPTER

[Sourcc: W i l l a Caiher: One of Ours, N e w York: Alfred A . Knopf, 1922. pp. 1-3.]

L A U D E W H E E L E R opened his eyes before the sun was up and vigorously shook his younger brother, who lay in the other half of the same bed. "Ralph, Ralph, get awake! Come down and help me wash the car."

C

" W h a t for?" "Why, aren't we going to the circus today?" "Car's all right. Let me alone." The boy turned over and pulled the sheet up to his face, to shut out the light which was beginning to come through the curtainless windows. Claude rose and dressed,— a simple operation which took very little time. He crept down two flights of stairs, feeling his way in the dusk, his red hair standing up in peaks, like a cock's comb. He went through the kitchen into the adjoining washroom, which held two porcelain stands with running water. Everybody had washed before going to bed, apparently, and the bowls were ringed with a dark sediment which the hard, alkaline water had not dissolved. Shutting the door on this disorder, he turned back to the kitchen, took Mahailey's tin basin, doused his face and head in cold water, and began to plaster down his wet hair. Old Mahailey herself came in from the yard, with her apron full of corn-cobs to start a fire in the kitchen stove. She smiled at him in the foolish fond way she often had with him when they were alone. "What air you gittin' up for a-ready, boy?

You goin' to

25

the circus before breakfast?

Don't you make no noise, else

you'll have 'em all down here before I git my fire a-goin'." " A l l right, Mahailey."

Claude caught up his cap and ran

out of doors, down the hillside toward the barn.

T h e sun

popped up over the edge of the prairie like a broad, smiling face;

the

light

poured

across

the

close-cropped

August

pastures and the hilly, timbered windings of Lovely Creek,— a clear little stream with a sand bottom, that curled and twisted playfully about through the south section of the big Wheeler ranch.

It was a fine day to go to the circus at Frankfort,

a fine day to do anything; the sort o f day that must, somehow, turn out well. Claude backed the little Ford car out of its shed, ran it up to the horse-tank, and began to throw water on the mud-crusted wheels and windshield.

While he was at work the two hired

men, Dan and Jerry, came shambling down the hill to feed the stock.

J e r r y was grumbling and swearing about something,

but Claude wrung out his wet rags and, beyond a nod, paid no attention to them.

Somehow his father always managed to

have the roughest and dirtiest hired men in the country working for him.

Claude had a grievance against Jerry just now,

because of his treatment of one of the horses. Molly was a faithful old mare, the mother of many colts; Claude and his younger brother had learned to ride on her. This man Jerry, taking her out to work one morning, let her step on a board with a nail sticking up in it.

He pulled the

nail out of her foot, said nothing to anybody, and drove her to the cultivator all day.

Now she had been standing in her

stall for weeks, patiently suffering, her body wretchedly thin, and her leg swollen until it looked like an elephant's.

She

would have to stand there, the veterinary said, until her hoof

26

came off and she grew a new one, and she would always be stiff. Jerry had not been discharged, and he exhibited the poor animal as if she were a credit to him. Mahailey came out on the hilltop and rang the breakfast bell. After the hired men went up to the house, Claude slipped into the barn to see that Molly had got her share of oats. She was eating quietly, her head hanging, and her scaly, deadlooking foot lifted just a little from the ground. When he stroked her neck and talked to her she stopped grinding and gazed at him mournfully. She knew him, and wrinkled her nose and drew her upper lip back from her worn teeth, to show that she liked being petted. She let him touch her foot and examine her leg. When Claude reached the kitchen, his mother was sitting at one end of the breakfast table, pouring weak coffee, his brother and Dan and Jerry were in their chairs, and Mahailey was baking griddle cakes at the stove...

27

1924 AWARD ABOUT THE FRONTIER LIFE OF THE SCOTTISH PRESBYTERIANS BY MARGARET W .

WILSON

Margaret Wilhelmina Wilson (born on January 16, 1882, in Traer, la.) attended the University of Chicago, from which she received an associate degree in 1903 and a Bachelor of Philosophy degree in 1904. Upon her graduation she enlisted as a missionary in the service of the United Presbyterian Church of North America. Wilson's service was confined to the Punjab region in northern India, where she performed various duties, including being supervisor of and a teacher in the Gujranwala Girl's School and assisting at the Sailkot Hospital. From these experiences, she later drew material for a series of short stories called "Tales of a Polygamous City." Due to illness Margaret Wilson returned to the United States in 1910 and she officially resigned from missionary service in 1916. She entered the divinity school of the University of Chicago in October 1912 as a degree student and remained there for the academic year. During the next five years she taught at West Pullman High School and worked on her short stories. She returned to divinity school in the winter of 1917 but remained for only two quarters. Much of Wilson's time was spent caring for her father, who was in failing health for many years and died in 1923. During this period Wilson's short stories were published in magazines such as the Atlantic Monthly and Asia. Margaret W. Wilson, whose constant themes are the effects of religion on the individual and the repressed position of women in society, published her first novel in 1923: The Able McLaughlins earned her the Pulitzer Prize for novel in the year after.

28

STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: M a r g a r e t W i l s o n : T h e Able M c L a u g h l i n s . N e w York - L o n d o n : H a r p e r & B r o t h e r s P u b l i s h e r s . 1923, pp. 1-3.]

T

H E prairie lay that afternoon as it had lain for centuries of September afternoons, vast as an ocean; motionless as an ocean coaxed into very little ripples by languid breezes; silent as an ocean where only very little waves slip back into their element. One might have walked for hours without hearing anything louder than high white clouds casting shadows over the distances, or the tall slough grass bending lazily into waves. One might have gone on startled only by the falling of scarlet swamp-lily seeds, by sudden goldfinches, or the scratching of young prairie chickens in the shorter grasses. For years now not even a baby buffalo had called to its mother in those stretches, or an old squaw broken ripening wild grapes from the creek thicket. Fifteen years ago one might have gone west for months without hearing a human voice. Even that day a traveler might easily have missed the house where little David and the fatter little Sarah sat playing, for it was less in the vastnesses about it than one short bubble in a wave's crest. Ten years ago the children's father had halted his ox team there, finishing his journey from Ayrshire, and his eight boys and girls alighting upon the summer's crop of wild strawberries,

29

had harvested it with shrieks of delight which broke forever the immediate part of the centuries' silence. A solitary man would have left the last source of human noise sixty miles behind him, where the railroad ended. But this farsighted pioneer had brought with him a strong defense against the hush that maddens. H e had a real house now. The log cabin in which he and his nine, his brother and his ten, his two sisters and their sixteen had all lived that first summer, was now but a mere woodshed adjoining the kitchen. The house was a fine affair, built from lumber hauled but forty miles—so steadily the railroad crept westward—and finished, the one half in wild cherry cut from the creek, and the other half in walnut from the same one source of wood. Since the day of the first McLaughlin alighting there had arrived, altogether, to settle more or less near him, on land bought from the government, his three brothers and four sisters, his wife's two brothers and one sister, bringing with them the promising sum of sixty-nine children, all valiant enemies of quietness and the fleeing rattlesnakes. Some of the little homes they had built for themselves could be seen that afternoon, like distant specks on the ocean. But Sarah and David had no eyes just then for distant specks. They had grown tired of watching the red calf sleep, and Davie was trying to make it get up. Finally in self-defense, it rose, and having found

30

itself refreshed, began gamboling about, trying its length of rope, its tail satisfactorily erect. The two had to retreat suddenly to the doorstep where Hughie sat, so impetuous it grew. Hughie was not, like the others, at home because he was too small to go to school. Indeed, no! Hughie was ten, and at home to-day because he had been chilling, the day before, with the fever that rose from the newly-broken prairie. The three of them sat quiet only a moment...

31

1925 AWARD ABOUT THE EFFORTS MAKING A DEBT-RIDDEN FARM PROSPEROUS BY EDNA FERBER

Edna Ferber (born on August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Mich.) became a cub reporter for the Appleton Daily Crescent at the age of 17. Being impressed by Ferber's coverage of the Wisconsin Federation of Women's Clubs convention, the Milwaukee Journal offered her a post, which she held for three years. Due to overwork she suffered a nervous breakdown in 1909 and returned home, where she began to write fiction. Edna Ferber sold her first story to Everybody's Magazine in 1910, and the following year she brought out her first novel, Dawn O'Hara. In the period from 1911 to 1915 Buttered Side Down·, Roast Beef Medium', Personality Plus; and Emma McChesney and Company, all collections of short stories, were published. With the exception of Buttered Side Down these were all stories on Emma McChesney, a middle-aged divorcee, a character modeled on Ferber's mother. In 1912 Edna Ferber covered the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on a temporary assignment for a national newspaper syndicate, along with William Allen White, to whom she dedicated her second novel, Fanny Herself. The novel was later made into a Hollywood motion picture under the title No Woman Knows. In 1915 Ferber and George V. Hobart dramatized the McChesney stories in a Broadway production, entitled Our Mrs. McChesney. In 1920 she took time to cover the Democratic and Republican national conventions in Chicago and San Francisco. Ferber's next novel, The Girls, appeared in 1921. It was followed by Gigolo, another collection of her short stories, published in 1922. The book So Big won Edna Ferber the Pulitzer Prize of 1925 for the best work in the Novel category published during the preceding year.

32

STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER I S o u r c e : F d n a Ferber: So Big. G a r d e n City, N.Y.: D o u b l e d a y , P a g e & C o m p a n y . 1924, pp. 1-3.]

N T I L he was almost ten the name stuck to him. H e had literally to fight his way free of it. From So Big (of fond and infantile derivation) it had been condensed into Sobig. And Sobig Dejong, in all its consonantal disharmony, he had remained until he was a ten-year-old schoolboy in that incredibly Dutch district southwest of Chicago known first as New Holland and later as High Prairie. At ten, by dint of fists, teeth, copper-toed boots, and temper, he earned the right to be called by his real name, Dirk Dejong. Now and then, of course, the nickname bobbed up and had to be subdued in a brief and bitter skirmish. His mother, with whom the name had originated, was the worst offender. When she lapsed he did not, naturally, use schoolyard tactics on her. But he sulked and glowered portentously and refused to answer, though her tone, when she called him So Big, would have melted the heart of any but that natural savage, a boy of ten. The nickname had sprung from the early and idiotic question invariably put to babies and answered by them with infinite patience, through the years of their infancy. Selina Dejong, darting expertly about her kitchen, from washtub to baking board, from stove to table, or, if at work in the fields of the truck farm, straight-

33

ening the numbed back for a moment's respite from the close-set rows of carrots, turnips, spinach, or beets over which she was labouring, would wipe the sweat beads from nose and forehead with a quick duck of her head in the crook of her bent arm. Those great fine dark eyes of hers would regard the child perched impermanently on a little heap of empty potato sacks, one of which comprised his costume. He was constantly detaching himself from the parent sack heap to dig and burrow in the rich warm black loam of the truck garden. Seiina De Jong had little time for the expression of affection. The work was always hot at her heels. You saw a young woman in a blue calico dress, faded and earth-grimed. Between her eyes was a driven look as of one who walks always a little ahead of herself in her haste. Her dark abundant hair was skewered into a utilitarian knob from which soft loops and strands were constantly escaping, to be pushed back by that same harried ducking gesture of head and bent arm. Her hands, for such use, were usually too crusted and inground with the soil into which she was delving. You saw a child of perhaps two years, dirt-streaked, sunburned, and generally otherwise defaced by those bumps, bites, scratches, and contusions that are the common lot of the farm child of a mother harried by work. Yet, in that moment, as the woman looked at the child there in the warm moist spring of the Illinois prairie land, or in the cluttered kitchen of the farmhouse, there quivered and vibrated between them and all about them

34

an aura, a glow, that imparted to them and their surroundings a mystery, a beauty, a radiance. "How big is baby?" Selina would demand, senselessly. "How big is my man?" The child would momentarily cease to poke plump fingers into the rich black loam. He would smile a gummy though slightly weary smile and stretch wide his arms. She, too, would open her tired arms wide, wide. Then they would say in a duet, his mouth a puckered pink petal, hers quivering with tenderness and a certain amusement, "So-o-o-o big I" with the voice soaring on the prolonged vowel and dropping suddenly with the second word. Part of the game. The child became so habituated to this question that sometimes, if Selina happened to glance round at him suddenly in the midst of her task, he would take his cue without the familiar question being put and would squeal his "So-o-o-o big!" rather absently, in dutiful solo...

35

1926

AWARD

ABOUT THE PHASES IN THE CAREER OF A MEDICAL RESEARCHER BY H . SINCLAIR LEWIS

Harry Sinclair Lewis (born on February 7, 1885, in Sauk Centre, Minn.) earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University in 1908. While in university he had already written for the Literary Magazine, the Courant, the New Haven Journal, and the New Haven Courier. Following his graduation he was a newsman in Iowa, New York and California. Until 1916 he successively held the positions of assistant editor or editor with Transatlantic Tales, the Volta Review, the Frederick A. Stokes Company, Adventure, the Publishers' Newspaper Syndicate, and the George H. Doran Company. Having written short stories since 1910, Lewis published his first novel in 1914 under the title Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man. It was followed by The Trail of the Hawk, which appeared one year later. Beginning in 1915 Lewis earned a living by producing one short story each month. He also worked on his next book: The Job - An American Novel. The Innocents, published in 1917, concerns an elderly couple from New York, who, having failed at several enterprises, become hoboes and wander to Indiana. In 1919 Lewis brought out the novel Free Air, which describes a cross-country excursion to Seattle. Lewis's next book appeared the year after: Main Street deals with the provincial narrowness in a Minnesota village. On a trip through Europe, Lewis completed the draft of Babbitt, the story of a discontented, middle-aged businessman. In 1925 the author published Arrowsmith, a work based on the American myth. The following year H. Sinclair Lewis was offered the Pulitzer Prize in novel for that book, but, angered at past oversights from the Advisory Board, he refused it.

36

S T Y L E SAMPLE F R O M THE OPENING

CHAPTER

[ S o u r c e : Sinclair L e w i s : A r r o w s m i t h , N e w Y o r k : Harcourt. B r a c e and C o m p a n y , 1925. pp. 1-3.]

THE driver of the wagon swaying through forest and swamp of the Ohio wilderness was a ragged girl of fourteen. Her mother they had buried near the Monongahela—the girl herself had heaped with torn sods the grave beside the river of the beauti7 ful name. Her father lay shrinking with fever on the floor of the wagon-box, and about him played her brothers and sisters, dirty brats, tattered brats, hilarious brats. She halted at the fork in the grassy road, and the sick man quavered, "Emmy, ye better turn down towards Cincinnati. If we could find your Uncle Ed, I guess he'd take us in." "Nobody ain't going to take us in," she said. "We're going on jus' long as we can. Going West! They's a whole lot of new things I aim to be seeing I" She cooked the supper, she put the children to bed, and sat by the fire, alone. That was the great-grandmother of Martin Arrowsmith. Cross-legged in the examining-chair in Doc Vickerson's office, a boy was reading "Gray's Anatomy." His name was Martin Arrowsmith, of Elk Mills, in the state of Winnemac. There was a suspicion in Elk Mills—now, in 1897, a dowdy red-brick village, smelling of apples—that this brown-leather adjustable seat which Doc Vickerson used for minor operations, for the infrequent pulling of teeth and for highly frequent naps, had begun life as a barber's chair. There was also a belief that its proprietor must once have been called Doctor Vickerson, but for years he had been only The Doc, and he was scurfier and much less adjustable than the chair. Martin was the son of J. J. Arrowsmith, who conducted the New York Clothing Bazaar. By sheer brass and obstinacy he had, at fourteen, become the unofficial, also decidedly unpaid, assistant to the Doc, and while the Doc was on a country call he took charge—though what there was to take charge of,

37

no one could ever make out. He was a slender boy, not very tall; his hair and restless eyes were black, his skin unusually white, and the contrast gave him an air of passionate variability. The squareness of his head and a reasonable breadth of shoulders saved him from any appearance of effeminacy or of that querulous timidity which artistic young gentlemen call Sensitiveness. When he lifted his head to listen, his right eyebrow, slightly higher than the left, rose and quivered in his characteristic expression of energy, of independence, and a hint that he could fight, a look of impertinent inquiry which had been known to annoy his teachers and the Sunday School superintendent. Martin was, like most inhabitants of Elk Mills before the Slavo-Italian immigration, a Typical Pure-bred Anglo-Saxon American, which means that he was a union of German, French, Scotch, Irish, perhaps a little Spanish, conceivably a little of the strains lumped together as "Jewish," and a great deal of English, which is itself a combination of Primitive Britain, Celt, Phoenician, Roman, German, Dane, and Swede. It is not certain that, in attaching himself to Doc Vickerson, Martin was entirely and edifyingly controlled by a desire to become a Great Healer. He did awe his Gang by bandaging stone-bruises, dissecting squirrels, and explaining the astounding and secret matters to be discovered at the back of the physiology, but he was not completely free from an ambition to command such glory among them as was enjoyed by the son of the Episcopalian minister, who could smoke an entire cigar without becoming sick. Yet this afternoon he read steadily at the section on the lymphatic system, and he muttered the long and perfectly incomprehensible words in a hum which made drowsier the dusty room. It was the central room of the three occupied by Doc Vickerson, facing on Main Street above the New York Clothing Bazaar. On one side of it was the foul waiting-room, on the other, the Doc's bedroom. He was an aged widower; for what he called "female fixings" he cared nothing; and the bedroom with its tottering bureau and its cot of frowsy blankets was cleaned only by Martin, in not very frequent attacks of sanitation.

38

This central room was at once business office, consultationroom, operating-theater, living-room, poker den, and warehouse for guns and fishing-tackle. Against a brown plaster wall was a cabinet of zoological collections and medical curiosities, and beside it the most dreadful and fascinating object known to the boy-world of Elk Mills—a skeleton with one gaunt gold tooth. On evenings when the Doc was away, Martin would acquire prestige among the trembling Gang by leading them into the unutterable darkness and scratching a sulfur match on the skeleton's jaw. On the wall was a home-stuffed pickerel on a home-varnished board. Beside the rusty stove, a sawdust-box cuspidor rested on a slimy oilcloth worn through to the threads. On the senile table was a pile of memoranda of debts which the Doc was always swearing he would "collect from those dead-beats right now," and which he would never, by any chance, at any time, collect from any of them. A year or two—a decade or two—a century or two—they were all the same to the plodding doctor in the bee-murmuring town. The most unsanitary corner was devoted to the cast-iron sink, which was oftener used for washing eggy breakfast plates than for sterilizing instruments. On its ledge were a broken test-tube, a broken fishhook, an unlabeled and forgotten bottle of pills, a nail-bristling heel, a frayed cigar-butt, and a rusty lancet stuck in a potato. The wild raggedness of the room was the soul and symbol of Doc Vickerson; it was more exciting than the flat-faced stack of shoe-boxes in the New York Bazaar: it was the lure to questioning and adventure for Martin Arrowsmith...

39

1927

AWARD

ABOUT THE MARRIAGE OF A WOMAN INTO A WEALTHY FAMILY BY

Louis

BROMFIELD

Louis Bromfield (born on December 27, 1896, in Mansfield, Oh.) entered Cornell University in 1914 to study agriculture. Two years later, however, he transferred to Columbia University, where he majored in journalism. In 1917 he enlisted in the U.S. Army Ambulance Service and went overseas to support the French army. During the war Bromfield was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French government. He took his discharge in France, remaining there until late 1919. Returning to New York, where he received a wartime B.A. from Columbia, he took a series of journalism jobs and began to write fiction. He wrote and destroyed four novels before he eventually published The Green Bay Tree. It was the first in a series of his so-called "panel" novels, stories that were to be interrelated in time, subject matter, characters, setting, and theme. Of the six projected, Bromfield was to complete four before changing focus in succeeding works. Each of the novels has as its principal character a strong, determined woman who attempts to escape outmoded values and family pressures, but ultimately fails because she only attains another kind of enslavement. After Bromfield had moved to France in 1925, the second of the panels appeared under the title Possession. The third of the stories, Early Autumn, was published in 1926 and the following year it earned Louis Bromfield the Pulitzer Prize for novel.

40

STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: L o u i s B r o m f i e l d : Karly A u l u m n - A Story of a Lady, N o w Y o r k : Frederick

A.

Stokes

C o m p a n y . 1926, pp. 1-3 ]

was a ball in the old Pentland house because for the first time in nearly forty years there was a young girl in the family to be introduced to the polite world of Boston and to the elect who had been asked to come on from New York and Philadelphia. So the old house was all bedizened with lanterns and bunches of late spring flowers, and in the bare, white-painted, dignified hallway a negro band, hidden discreetly by flowers, sat making noisy, obscene music. Sybil Pentland was eighteen and lately returned from school in Paris, whither she had been sent against the advice of the conservative members of her own family, which, it might have been said, included in its connections most of Boston. Already her great-aunt, Mrs. Cassandra Struthers, a formidable woman, had gone through the list of eligible young men—the cousins and connections who were presentable and possessed of fortunes worthy of consideration by a family so solidly rich as the Pentlands. It was toward this end that the ball had been launched and the whole countryside invited, young and old, spry and infirm, middle-aged and dowdy—toward this end and with the idea of showing the World that the family had lost none of its prestige for all the lack of young people in its ranks. For this prestige had once been of national proportions, though now it had shrunk until the Pentland name was little known outside New England. Rather, it might have been said that the nation had run away from New England and the Pentland family, leaving it stranded and almost forgotten by the side of the path which THERE

41

marked an unruly, almost barbaric progress away from all that the Pentland family and the old house represented. Sybil's grandfather had seen to it that there was plenty of champagne; and there were tables piled with salads and cold lobster and sandwiches and hot chicken in chafing-dishes. It was as if a family whose whole history had been marked by thrift and caution had suddenly cast to the winds all semblance of restraint in a heroic gesture toward splendor. But in some way, the gesture seemed to be failing. The negro music sounded wild and spirited, but also indiscreet and out of place in a house so old and solemn. A few men and one or two women known for their fondness for drink consumed a great deal of champagne, but only dulness came of it, dulness and a kind of dead despair. The rich, the splendorous, the gorgeous, the barbaric, had no place in rooms where the kind Mr. Longfellow and the immortal Messrs. Emerson and Lowell had once sat and talked of life. In a hallway, beneath the gaze of a row of ancestors remarkable for the grimness of their faces, the music appeared to lose its quality of abandon; it did not belong in this genteel world. On the fringes of the party there was some drunkenness among the undergraduates imported from Cambridge, but there was very little gaiety. The champagne fell upon barren ground. T h e party drooped. Though the affair was given primarily to place Sybil Pentland upon the matrimonial market of this compact world, it served, too, as an introduction for Therese Callendar, who had come to spend the summer at Brook Cottage across the stony meadows on the other side of the river from Pentlands; and as a reintroduction of her mother, a far more vivid and remarkable person. Durham and the countryside thereabouts was familiar enough to her, for she had been born there and passed her childhood within sight of the spire

42

of the Durham town meeting-house. And now, after an absence of twenty years, she had come back out of a world which her own people—the people of her childhood—considered strange and ungenteel. Her world was one filled with queer people, a world remote from the quiet old house at Pentlands and the great brownstone houses of Commonwealth Avenue and Beacon Street. Indeed, it was this woman, Sabine Callendar, who seemed to have stolen all the thunder at the ball; beside her, neither of the young girls, her own daughter nor Sybil Pentland, appeared to attract any great interest. I t was Sabine whom every one noticed, acquaintances of her childhood because they were devoured by curiosity concerning those missing twenty years, and strangers because she was the most picturesque and arresting figure at the ball. It was not that she surrounded herself by adoring young men eager to dance with her. She was, after all, a woman of forty-six, and she had no tolerance for mooning boys whose conversation was limited to bootlegging and college clubs. It was a success of a singular sort, a triumph of indifference...

43

1928

AWARD

ABOUT THE COLLAPSE OF A BRIDGE AND THE FIVE PEOPLE KILLED BY THORNTON N . WILDER

Thornton Niven Wilder (born on April 17, 1897, in Madison, Wis.) studied from 1915 to 1917 at Oberlin College, where he published his first prose pieces in the college's literary magazine. Transferring to Yale University, he contributed short plays, as well as essays, to the Yale Literary Magazine, which in his senior year published serially his first full-length play, The Trumpet Shall Sound. After one year of military service in World War I as a corporal in the Coast Guard artillery, he obtained his B.A. degree from Yale in 1920. After his graduation Wilder went to Rome to study archeology at the American Academy. During his year in Italy, he also began writing his first novel, The Cabala. He completed this work while employed as a member of the faculty of the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, N.J., where he had taught French since 1921. During a two-year leave of absence for writing and study he worked for his Master of Arts degree in French literature, awarded by Princeton University in 1926. The following year his book The Bridge of San Luis Rey was published. It did not only climb on the bestselling list, but also won Thornton N. Wilder the 1928 Pulitzer Prize for novel.

STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: T h o r n t o n W i l d e r : T h e Bridge of San Luis Rey, N e w Y o r k : Albert & C h a r l e s B o n i Inc pp. 15-17.]

O

]9*77

N Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travellers

into the gulf below. This bridge was on the highroad between Lima and Cuzco and hundreds of

persons passed over it every day. It had been woven of osier by the Incas more than a century before and visitors to the city were always led out to see it. It was a mere ladder of thin slats swung out over the gorge, with handrails of dried vine. Horses and coaches and chairs had to go down hundreds of feet below and pass over the narrow torrent on rafts, but no one, not even the Viceroy, not even the Archbishop of Lima, had descended with the baggage rather than cross by the famous bridge of San Luis Rey. St. Louis of France himself protected it, by his name and by the little mud church on the further side. The

45

bridge seemed to be among the things that last forever; it was unthinkable that it should break. The moment a Peruvian heard of the accident he signed himself and made a mental calculation as to how recently he had crossed by it and how soon he had intended crossing by it again. People wandered about in a trance-like state, muttering; they had the hallucination of seeing themselves falling into a gulf. There was a great service in the Cathedral. The bodies of the victims were approximately collected and approximately separated from one another, and there was great searching of hearts in the beautiful city of Lima. Servant girls returned bracelets which they had stolen from their mistresses, and usurers harangued their wives angrily, in defense of usury. Yet it was rather strange that this event should have so impressed the Limeans, for in that country those catastrophes which lawyers shockingly call the "acts of God" were more than usually frequent. Tidal

46

waves were continually washing away cities; earthquakes arrived every week and towers fell upon good men and women all the time. Diseases were forever flitting in and out of the provinces and old age carried away some of the most admirable citizens. That is why it was so surprising that the Peruvians should have been especially touched by the rent in the bridge of San Luis Rey. Everyone was very deeply impressed, but only one person did anything about it, and that was Brother Juniper. By a series of coincidences so extraordinary that one almost suspects the presence of some Intention, this little red-haired Franciscan from Northern Italy happened to be in Peru converting the Indians and happened to witness the accident...

47

1929

AWARD

ABOUT THE LIVES OF BLACKS ON A SOUTH CAROLINA PLANTATION BY JULIA M .

PETERKIN

Julia Mood Peterkin (born on October 31, 1880, in Laurens County, S.C.) earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Converse College in 1896. She subsequently enrolled for graduate studies and, the following year, was awarded the M.A. degree, to which she added a doctorate in Letters in 1927. Upon her graduation she accepted a teaching position in the small Low Country town of Fort Motte, where she met and, in 1903, married William Peterkin. He owned a large plantation, and his wife soon assumed managerial duties. In the course of exercising these responsibilities she gained an intimate understanding of the Gullahs who lived and worked on the plantation, and their lives and folkways became the subject matter of her fiction. Julia Peterkin's first sketches were published in the Reviewer magazine. Her first volume, Green Thursday, was a collection of these sketches strung together to a narrative about a plantation couple and the adopted daughter who comes between them. Green Thursday was published in 1924. Three years later, Black April, Peterkin's second book appeared; the novel deals with the rise and fall of April, the proud foreman of Blue Brook plantation. The life of Mary Pinesett, who is forced to live outside the communion of the Christian congregation because of her sexual indiscretions, is at the center of Peterkin's novel Scarlet Sister Mary. The book made Julia M. Peterkin the winner of the 1929 Pulitzer Prize for the best work in the Novel category published during the preceding year.

48

STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: Julia Peterkin: Scarlet Sister M a r y , Indianapolis: T h e B o b b s - M e r r i l l C o m p a n y , I92X. pp. 11-13.]

Publishers,

THE black people who live in the Quarters at Blue Brook Plantation believe they are far the best black people living on the whole "Neck," as they call that long, narrow, rich strip of land lying between the sea on one side and the river with its swamps and deserted rice-fields on the other. They are no Guinea negroes with thick lips and wide noses and low ways; or Dinkas with squatty skulls and gray-tinged skin betraying their mean blood; they are Gullahs with tall straight bodies, and high heads filled with sense. Since the first days of slavery they have been the best of field workers. They make fine mechanics and body servants for their masters. Their preachers and conjure doctors have always known many things besides how to save men's lives and souls. The old owners of Blue Brook must have been careful to buy slaves that were perfect, for they built up a strain of intelligent, upstanding human beings, just as they bred race-horses and hunting dogs that could not be excelled. The

49

slaves destined to be skilled laborers were sent across the sea to learn their trades from the best workmen in the world, and the house and body servants came into close contact with masters and mistresses who were ladies and gentlemen and not common white trash, or poor buckras. When the war between the states freed them and broke up the old plantation system, the black people lived on in the old plantation Quarters, shifting for themselves and eking out a living as best they could. The lack of roads and bridges afforded them little contact with the outside world, and so, instead of going away to seek new fortunes, new advantages, easier work and more money, they kept faithful to the old life, contented with old ways and beliefs, holding fast to old traditions and superstitions. When their time is out and death takes their souls back to their Maker, their bodies are laid with those others lying so thick in the old graveyard that room can scarcely be found for another resting-place. The world made by the old plantation is drawn to a simple pattern. The loamy red fields are bordered by quiet woodlands. A cluster of ancient cabins near the river is sheltered by a grove

50

of giant moss-hung lire oaks. A great empty Big House, once the proud home of the plantation masters, is now an old crumbling shell with broken chimneys and a rotting roof. Ghosts can be heard at sunset rattling the closed windowblinds up-stairs, as they strive for a glimpse of the shining river that shows between the tall cedars and magnolias. The earth's richness and the sun's warmth make living an easy thing. Years go by without leaving a mark or footprint. Sometimes black years come in determined to break the tranquil monotony. Earthquakes tumble down chimneys, storms break trees and houses, floods wash the earth so bare that its very bones are exposed, droughts burn up crops and weeds with impartial cruelty, but the old plantation is swift to hide every scar made by all this wickedness. New chimneys are quickly built and houses mended; trees thrust up young branches to fill empty spaces; new crops and weeds thrive under gentle rains and hot sunshine...

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1930

AWARD

ABOUT THE RESULTS OF A TRAGIC AMERICAN INDIAN LOVE AFFAIR BY OLIVER H . L A FARGE

Oliver Hazard La Farge (born on December 19, 1901, in New York, N.Y.) entered Harvard University in 1920. During his sophomore year, he went to Arizona as an assistant on an archeological expedition sponsored by the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology. At Harvard he also was editor of the Lampoon and president of the Advocate, the college literary magazine. In the academic year 1923/24 he again went as an assistant on the Peabody Museum's expedition to Arizona, making the Navajo Indians and their culture his special interest. When he received his B.A. degree from Harvard in 1924, La Farge remained there as a Hemmenway fellow at the Peabody Museum, taking part in his third expedition to Arizona, this time as the director. In 1925 he went as assistant, in charge of ethnology and linguistics, on a Tulane University anthropological expedition to Guatemala and southern Mexico, where the team discovered three centers of Mayan culture. Having become an assistant in ethnology at Tulane University in 1926, La Farge returned to Guatemala the following year, when he participated in his second expedition for Tulane. For five months during the academic year 1927/28 he worked on a part-time schedule in order to have more opportunity for writing. Earlier in 1927 he had sold a short story about Indians to the Dial. In 1928 La Farge returned to Harvard to do research on linguistics in the Mayan language and the following year took his M.A. degree. After his graduation Oliver H. La Farge went back to New Orleans to spend his full time finishing his book, Laughing Boy, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for novel in 1930.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [ S o u r c e : O l i v e r L;i F a r g e : L a u g h i n g B o y , C a m b r i d g e : H o u g h t o n M i f f l i n C o m p a n y / T h e R i v e r s i d e Press. 1929, pp. 1-3; reprinted by p e r m i s s i o n o f H o u g h t o n M i f f l i n C o m p a n y . N e w Y o r k , N . Y . ]

H E was riding the hundred miles from T ' o Tlakai to Ts6 Lani to attend a dance, or rather, for the horse-racing that would come afterwards. The sun was hot and his belly was empty, but life moved in rhythm with his pony loping steadily as an engine down the miles. He was lax in the saddle, leaning back, arm swinging the rope's end in time to the horse's lope. His new red headband was a bright colour among the embers of the sunstruck desert, undulating like a moving graph of the pony's lope, or the music of his song — ' Nashdui bik'e dinni, eya-a, eyo-o . . . Wildcat's feet hurt, eya-a, eyo-o . .

Rope's end, shoulders, song, all moved together, and life flowed in one stream. He threw his head back to sing louder, and listened to the echo from the cliffs on his right. He was thinking about a bracelet he should make, with four smooth bars running together, and a turquoise in the middle — if he could get the silver. He wished he could work while riding; everything was so perfect then,

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like the prayers, hozoji nashad, travelling in beauty. His hands, his feet, his head, his insides all were hozoji, all were very much alive. He whooped and struck up the Magpie Song till the empty desert resounded — ' A-a-a-inS, a-a-a-inS, Υα-α-ίηέ-αίηέ, ko-ya-aine . .

He was lean, slender, tall, and handsome, Laughing Boy, with a new cheap headband and a borrowed silver belt to make ragged clothes look fine. At noon, having no money, he begged coffee from a trader at Chinlee and went on, treasuring his hunger because of the feasting to come. Now he began to meet Navajos of all ages, riding to the dance. The young men bunched together — a line of jingling bridles, dark, excited faces, flashing silver, turquoise, velveteen shirts, dirty, ragged overalls, a pair of plaid calico leggins, a pair of turkey-red ones. Some of them were heavy with jewelry; Horse Giver's Son wore over four hundred dollars in silver alone; most of them had more than Laughing Boy. They stopped to look at his bow-guard, which he himself had made. * I am a good jeweller,' he said, elated;' I make silver run like a song.'

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'You should make a song about yourself,' they told him, 'and teach the burros to sing it.' 'Have you had any rain up by T'o Tlakai?' ' No, it is just like last year. It is the devil. The grass is all dried up and the sheep are dying.' 'They had a cloudburst over by T'isya Lani. It washed out the dam/ ' I t washed out the missionary's house, they say. His wife ran out in something thin and got wet, they say.'

Ei-yeiV

l

Tall Hunter and his wife drove past in a brandnew buckboard behind two fast-trotting, grey mules. He owned over five hundred head of horses, and his wife had thick strings of turquoise and coral around her neck...

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1931 AWARD ABOUT THE LIFE OF A WOMAN AND THE AMERICAN SOCIAL SCENE BY MARGARET A .

BARNES

Margaret Ayer Barnes (born on April 8, 1886, in Chicago, 111.) studied at Bryn Mawr College which awarded her the Bachelor of Arts degree in 1907. Active in theater and in various social efforts, in 1920 Margaret Barnes was elected alumnae director of Bryn Mawr and served three years. In this capacity she helped to establish the new Working Woman's College, a twomonth summer program to educate industrial workers. On many occasions, she acted as a platform speaker in urging the causes of higher education for women. In an automobile accident she suffered multiple injuries in 1925. During her convalescence she wrote her first short story, which was immediately accepted by the Pictorial Review. The playwright Edward Sheldon encouraged Barnes to dramatize Edith Wharton's novel The Age of Innocence. Following the play's 1928 New York production, which ran for 209 performances, she collaborated with Sheldon in Jenny, a comedy, and in Dishonored Lady, a melodrama based on the 1857 trial of Madeleine Smith in Britain for the murder of her lover. In 1928 Barnes collected in Prevailing Winds her eight stories originally published in the Pictorial Review, Harper's, and Red Book. Depicting a matron of the upper middle class from the 1890's through the 1930's her book Years of Grace appeared in 1930. In the following year, the M.A. degree was conferred on Margaret A. Barnes by Tufts College, and she won the Pulitzer Novel Prize for her Years of Grace.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING

CHAPTER

I Source: M a r g a r e t A v e r B a r n e s : Y e a r s of G r a c e . B o s t o n - N e w Y o r k : H o u g h t o n M i f f l i n C o m p a n y / T h e R i v e r s i d e P r e s s . 1930, p p . 3 - 5 . ]

Jane Ward sat at her father's left hand at the family breakfast table, her sleek, brown pigtailed head bent discreetly over her plate. She was washing down great mouthfuls of bacon and eggs with gulps of too hot cocoa. She did not have to look at the great black clock, surmounted by the bronze bird, that had stood on the dining-room mantelpiece ever since she could remember, to know that it was twenty minutes after eight. If she hurried with her breakfast she could get off for school before Flora and Muriel called to walk up with her. If she could escape them she could meet Andre, loitering nonchalantly near the Water Works Tower, and walk up with him. She could walk up with him anyway, of course, but, with Flora and Muriel fluttering and giggling at her elbow, it would not be quite the same. Her father was buried behind the far-flung pages of the 'Chicago Tribune.' Her mother sat behind the coffee tray, immaculately clad in a crisp white dressing-sack, her pretty, proud little head held high above the silver urn, her eyes wandering competently over the breakfast table. Her sister, Isabel, was not yet down. Her sister Isabel was nineteen. Grown up. Her school days behind her. A young lady. About to become a debutante. Old enough to loiter, unrebuked, in bed, after a late party, until her father had left for the office and Jane was well on her way to school. LITTLE

'Jane,' said her mother tranquilly, 'don't take such large mouthfuls.' Jane was not grown up. Jane was still fourteen.

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Young enough to be rebuked for almost anything, including table manners. 'What's the hurry, Kid?' said her father cheerfully, lowering the margins of the paper. He was nearly always cheerful. His brown eyes twinkled as they rested on Jane. They usually did. Ί want to get off to school early,' said Jane plausibly. Ί want to meet Agnes.' 'Agnes!' exclaimed her mother with a little fretful shrug. 'Always, Agnes!' That was all, but it was quite enough. Jane knew very well that her mother did not approve of Agnes Johnson. And Jane knew why. With the crystal clarity of fourteen-year-old perception, Jane knew why all too well. It was because Agnes lived west of Lincoln Park and her father was a newspaper reporter and her mother worked in an office. Her mother was somebody's secretary. There was something unforgivable in that. Her mother did approve, now, of Flora Furness and Muriel Lester. She approved of them wholeheartedly. They lived just around the corner, Flora on Rush Street, in a big brown stone house with lilac bushes in the yard, and Muriel on Huron, in a grey stone fortress, built by Richardson, the great Eastern architect. Muriel gave a party every Christmas vacation. A dancing party, with white crash laid down over the parlor carpet and an orchestra, hidden in palms, beneath the stairs. Flora's house was very large and lovely. It had belonged to her grandfather. It had a big ballroom, tucked away under its mansard roof and there was a tiger-skin rug in the front hall and gold furniture in the drawing-room and a conservatory, opening off the library, with hanging Boston

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ferns and a real orange tree and two grey parrots in a gilded cage. Her mother liked Jane to walk to school with Flora and Muriel. She liked her to have them over to play. She had always liked it, from the days of their first paper dolls. There were things that were wrong with Flora and Muriel, too. But they were subtle things that didn't seem to make much difference. Nevertheless they caused comment. Comment, at least, from her mother and Isabel. Jane had sensed them always, without exactly understanding. There was something wrong with Flora's mother, who was perhaps the prettiest, and certainly the most fashionable lady that Jane had ever seen. She was always going out to parties, sweeping out of her front door in rustling draperies, slipping through the crowd of staring children on the sidewalk, wafting a kiss to Flora, and vanishing into the depths of her little blue brougham that waited at the curb...

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1932 AWARD ABOUT THE CHINESE FARMER RISING TO A WEALTHY LANDOWNER BY PEARL S . BUCK

Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (born on June 26, 1892, in Hillsboro, W.Va.) was reared and educated in China. At the age of seventeen she came to the United States to enter Randolph-Macon College in Virginia. After graduation in 1914, she was invited to teach psychology at the college. She remained there for one semester, and then returned to China, where she resumed her teaching career. In 1917 she went to live in a small town in North China. After five years she moved to Nanking, where Pearl Buck taught English literature at the local university. In 1925 she came to the United States and enrolled at Cornell University to work for a Master's degree in English. She received the diploma in 1926, along with the Laura Messenger Prize in history for her essay on the subject "China and the West." On her return to China she began to teach English literature at Southeastern University and at Chung Yang University in Nanking. Having already completed a biography of her mother, Pearl Buck now started to work on a novel. But in 1927 Buck was forced to leave Nanking when it was invaded by Communist revolutionary soldiers. After a year spent in Japan she returned to China. Pearl S. Buck completed her novel East Wind: West Wind in 1929 and the following year it was published in America. Another year later she brought out her book The Good Earth, which received the 1932 Pulitzer Prize as the best novel published during the preceding year.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: Pearl S. Buck: The Good Earth, New York: The John Day Company, 1931, pp. 3-5.]

T WAS W a n g Lung's marriage day. At first, opening his eyes in the blackness of the curtains about his bed, he could not think why the dawn seemed different from any other. T h e house was still except for the faint, gasping cough of his old father, whose room was opposite to his own across the middle room. Every morning the old man's cough was the first sound to be heard. Wang Lung usually lay listening to it and moved only when he heard it approaching nearer and when he heard the door of his father's room squeak upon its wooden hinges. But this morning he did not wait. H e sprang up and pushed aside the curtains of his bed. It was a dark, ruddy dawn, and through a small square hole of a window, where the tattered paper fluttered, a glimpse of bronze sky gleamed. H e went to the hole and tore the paper away. "It is spring and I do not need this," he muttered. H e was ashamed to say aloud that he wished the house to look neat on this day. T h e hole was barely large enough to admit his hand and he thrust it out to feel of the air. A small soft wind blew gently from the east, a wind mild and murmurous and full of rain. It was a good omen. The fields needed rain for fruition. There would be no rain this day, but within a few days, if this wind continued, there would be water. It was good. Yesterday he had said to his father that if this brazen, glittering sunshine con-

I

61

tinued, the wheat could not fill in the car. Now it was as if Heaven had chosen this day to wish him well. Earth would bear fruit. He hurried out into the middle room, drawing on his blue outer trousers as he went, and knotting about the fullness at his waist his girdle of blue cotton cloth. He left his upper body bare until he had heated water to bathe himself. He went into the shed which was the kitchen, leaning against the house, and out of its dusk an ox twisted its head from behind the corner next the door and lowed at him deeply. The kitchen was made of earthen bricks as the house was, great squares of earth dug from their own fields, and thatched with straw from their own wheat. Out of their own earth had his grandfather in his youth fashioned also the oven, baked and black with many years of meal preparing. On top of this earthen structure stood a deep, round, iron cauldron. This cauldron he filled pardy full of water, dipping it with a half gourd from an earthen jar that stood near, but he dipped cautiously, for water was precious. Then, after a hesitation, he suddenly lifted the jar and emptied all the water into the cauldron. This day he would bathe his whole body. Not since he was a child upon his mother's knee had anyone looked upon his body. Today one would, and he would have it clean. He went around the oven to the rear, and selecting a handful of the dry grass and stalks standing in the corner of the kitchen, he arranged it delicately in the mouth of the oven, making the most of every leaf. Then from an old

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flint and iron he caught a flame and thrust it into the straw and there was a blaze. This was the last morning he would have to light the fire. He had lit it every morning since his mother died six years before. He had lit the fire, boiled water, and poured the water into a bowl and taken it into the room where his father sat upon his bed, coughing and fumbling for his shoes upon the floor. Every morning for these six years the old man had waited for his son to bring in hot water to ease him of his morning coughing. Now father and son could rest. There was a woman coming to the house. Never again would Wang Lung have to rise summer and winter at dawn to light the fire. He could lie in his bed and wait, and he also would have a bowl of water brought to him, and if the earth were fruitful there would be tea leaves in the water. Once in some years it was so.. ·

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1933

AWARD

ABOUT THE CRUMBLING OF THE OLD AND THE BIRTH OF A NEW SOUTH BY THOMAS S. STRIBLING

Thomas Sigismund Stribling (born on March 4, 1881, in Clifton, Tenn.) completed his teacher training at the normal college in Florence, Ala., in 1903 and, upon graduation, taught at Tuscaloosa High School. The following year, he entered the School of Law at the University of Alabama and received the LL.B. degree in 1905. He subsequently practiced law, but gave up the legal profession in 1907, when he was offered a job as a clerk at the Taylor-Trotwood Magazine. Traveling intermittently between 1908 and 1916 to Cuba, Europe, and South America, Stribling, between trips, wrote Sunday-school stories and adventure stories that were published in such magazines as American Boy and Everybody's Magazine. During World War I he worked as a newspaper reporter for the Chattanooga News and as a stenographer in the Aviation Bureau in Washington, D.C. In 1917 he published his first novel, The Cruise of the Dry Dock, a melodramatic sea adventure. It was followed by Birthright, a novel with social emphasis. Having toured Venezuela twice, Stribling next wrote three Venezuelan adventure novels: Fombombo\ Red Sand\ and Strange Moon. In 1926 and 1928 he published Teeftallow and Bright Metal, two novels set in middle Tennessee. Two years after the appearance of Teeftallow, Stribling collaborated with David Wallace on Rope, a dramatization of the novel. He next produced a romantic adventure, East Is East, and a collection of mystery stories under the title Clues of the Caribbees. In the early 1930's the author wrote the novels Backwater, The Forge·, and The Store. In 1933 the latter work, in which Thomas S. Stribling treats the post-Reconstruction era, was chosen by the Pulitzer Advisory Board as the best novel of the preceding year.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER I S o u r c e : T . S. Stribling: T h e Store, G a r d e n City, N . Y . : D o u b l e d a y , Doran & C o m p a n y , Inc., 1932, pp.

ι-.vi

to his wife's uncertain inquiry about the political speaking, Colonel Miltiades Vaiden called back from his gate that he did not think there would be any ladies a t the courthouse that evening. By laying stress on the word "think" the Colonel not only forecasted a purely masculine attendance in Courthouse Square that summer evening in Florence, Alabama, but at the same time he subtly expressed his own personal disapproval of women appearing a t political gatherings at any place or time whatsoever. The heavy wife in the doorway hesitated a t the Colonel's implication. She had wanted to go. She felt the gregarious impulse of fleshy persons to foregather with crowds, to laugh and fraternize with the audience, to propel her large body among her lighter fellows with the voluptuous and genial ruthlessness of a fat person. However, on the other hand, her feminine fear of being the only woman in the audience stood in her path. But behind these two antagonistic impulses lay another cause of depression which the ponderous wife knew too well but which she never frankly had admitted even to herself. Tliis was that her husband did not want her to go with him to this or to any other public gathering; it was . . . that he was ashamed of her. This fact wavered in the woman's mind until she expelled it bv* callingΟ out: "Oh, Mr. Milt, there'll be a lot of leading men down there, I expect. Maybe some of 'em will offer you a—a better position. . . ." At this mention of position a disagreeable tickle went I N

RESPONSE

65

through the husband's chest, but he answered in an impassive, corrective tone: "Not likely such a topic will come up at a political meeting, Ponny." "Well . . . if it does . . . you . . . you mustn't repulse 'em, Mr. Milt." "No, I won't, Ponny," he assured her with a solemn face. He let himself into the street and closed the gate after him. As he did this, the looseness of the hinges, the broken palings, the gaunt outline of his rented house here on this back street in Florence, all combined to give him a twist of repulsion when connected with the thought of a "position." Because, as a matter of fact, the Colonel had no position. Ever since the Civil War had lost him his place as an overseer on a cotton plantation, he had desired the post and circumstance of a country gentleman. Only nowadays there were no country gentlemen. Nowadays one reached gentility by other methods, but Colonel Yaiden, somehow, had not succeeded in fitting himself into those other methods. For a long stretch the Colonel's failure had been a kind of standing riddle to persons who had known of his distinguished services during the war and his leadership of the Klan during the Reconstruction. But this riddle gradually lost point with time. So now, as the Colonel glanced back in the twilight and saw in the doorway the bulky outline of his wife, he knew that, besides himself, she was the only human being on earth who believed that upon him, eventually, would fall some great, noble, and extraordinary estate. She was constantly expecting it out of a persistent faith and admiration for her husband's ability. As the Colonel stepped across a gully in the neglected street he rewarded her loyalty by thinking in a kind of annoyed fashion: " I should have asked her to go with me . . . damn it . . . Ponny's a good girl. . . . "

66

Cherry Street, along which Colonel Vaiden moved, was bordered by bare weed-grown lots and an occasional stark frame house with a chicken coop and a privy in the rear. Two or three squares farther on the pedestrian turned westward toward Market Street. Here the neighborhood began to improve: dark masses of magnolias and live oaks screened the houses. Opening on the sidewalks were double gates to admit a horse and carriage, or perhaps a milk cow of mornings and evenings. These were still ordinary middle-class homes, but this evening they stiffened a determination in Miltiades to reach this stage of luxury. Yes, and, by gravy, he would do even better than that! These frame houses with magnolias and live oaks, he would have something better than that . . . he did not know just what that better manage would be, but a quiver of impatience went through him to be at it. Whatever he did he must do quickly; whatever he gained he must gain with speed; . . . he was forty-eight years old...

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1934

AWARD

ABOUT THE EXPERIENCES OF A FAMILY IN THE GEORGIA WILDERNESS BY CAROLINE MILLER

Caroline Miller (bom on August 26, 1903, in Waycross, Ga.) graduated from Waycross High School at the age of seventeen and began writing. Her first efforts were short stories, one of which gave birth to her novel Lamb in His Bosom. In her attempt to find a publisher for the novel, Miller received encouragement from Pulitzer Prize-winner Julia Peterkin, who read the manuscript and forwarded Miller's name to her own agent. In Lamb in His Bosom - as in her fiction in general - Miller seeks to recapture frontier life in pre-Civil War days, the often monotonous rhythms of household activities, the endurance of her pioneer ancestors and the beauty of backcountry Georgia. The novel, which Caroline Miller wrote in the intervals of her days as housewife and mother and which was inspired by tours through the Georgia countryside, was published in 1933 and won her the Pulitzer Prize for novel in the year after.

68 S T Y L E SAMPLE F R O M THE OPENING

CHAPTER

[ S o u r c e : C a r o l i n e M i l l e r : L a m b in His B o s o m , N e w Y o r k - L o n d o n : Harper & B r o t h e r s

Publishers,

1 9 3 3 . pp. 1 - 3 . ]

turned and lifted her hand briefly in farewell as she rode away beside Lonzo in the ox-cart. Her mother and father and Jasper and Lias stood in front of the house, watching her go. The old elder who had married Cean to Lonzo was in the house somewhere, leaving the members of the family to themselves in their leave-taking of Cean. But the youngest of the family, Jake, was not there; he had fled away, his thin face hard with grief. He had laid his deepest curse on Lonzo Smith's head. Now he lay on his face under a budding willow on a sandbank of the river that ran two miles from his father's place. He hoped, with a fiendish hope that was a curse, that hairy, red worms would find out the holes in Lonzo Smith's ears, that they would crawl in and grow horny heads and furry tails, and eat out Lonzo's in'ards. But Cean would hate that; she would brew all kinds of yerb teas for him to drink. There wasn't anything to do. Cean had gone and done it; she had made her bed; now let her lie in it. She wouldn't ever know he cared, neither. She wasn't his sister any more; she was all Lonzo's. Now she would sleep in Lonzo's bed instead of Jake's. At this thought, misery almost suffocated the child; he found it hard to draw his breath out of his lungs. For he could shut his eyes and feel her body warming his body under the covers. She had a way of rounding his head into her shoulder, of catching his legs up against her with her strong, lean hand, and they would sleep so, their bodies fitted one to the other. In the night they might CEAN

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turn, and then his thin body would fit in a protecting curve along her back. He opened his eyes, and there was the white sand against his face, magnified into little hills and valleys before his eyes. There were the budding willow branches above him, rising and falling in lifts of wind that ran down the river. H e blew on a hill of sand close beside his mouth, and it fluttered down. He'd go on back and bring up the calves. They'd think that's where he was. Cean's and Lonzo's bodies jounced gently in the slow motion of the wooden-wheeled cart. T h e way to their new home lay across the woods, close around the edge of the great swamp of cypress, through a little creek, and across a rise where there were huckleberries and rattlesnakes in hot weather. Farther on there were tall timbers and fine grazing; and there, six miles to the west of her mother's home, Lonzo had set up Cean's house with its broad clay-stuck chimney. There was a spring at the side under a smother of elder bushes and sweet bays; a new-set fig bush and Seven Sisters rose cuttings and a bed of pinks were beginning to take root by Cean's back door where her mother had set them. Lonzo had cut down every tree for the house, and Cean's brothers had helped him to notch them and lock them into the sturdy walls, and to line the walls with heavy planks riven from heart-pine. They had split the rails for the cow-pen, and Betsey was there now with her little pied-ed calf close against her. Lonzo would set up a springhouse for Cean, for the milk and butter, when he had his seed in the ground; and in the late summer, Cean's brothers would help him with the crib for the corn that he would raise in the new ground, corn for meal and grits, corn for feed for the ox. Pumpkins, peas, potatoes, melons—they would raise fields full of them; they would fare fine. Cean

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would water and tend such things. Her mother had told her that a woman must see to things like that—fruit, a garden-patch, milk and butter and the children; men must raise and butcher the meat and make and gather in the crops. Cean's new bonnet was hot about her neck. She slipped it back off her head, tied the strings together under her chin, and let it swing free down her back. Her face was brown and full and bright; her mouth was wide and closed firmly over her teeth. Her hair blowsed over her temples from where it was parted in the middle. Her bright brown eyes went shyly about, seeking gentle satisfaction in the soft air, the sunshine, the thick plodding of the hooves of the ox on the slick brown pine-needles and soft sand. Her happy glance slipped shyly to Lonzo's bearded face. His neck, browned by sunlight, was moist in fine beads of sweat. Her glance moved upward to his coarse black hair that came down from under the fine hat he had bargained for last fall on the Coast. She saw the set of his large head, the set of his strong shoulders, then her eyes hurried away, a little frightened by that nearness, by the coarse black hair, the strong male shoulders, the sturdy silence of the man beside her who was her husband...

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1935

AWARD

ABOUT THE LIVING CONDITIONS ON A SMALL MIDWESTERN FARM BY JOSEPHINE W .

JOHNSON

Josephine Winslow Johnson (born on June 20, 1910, in Kirkwood, Mo.) attended private and public schools in Kirkwood, Mo. She studied at Washington University in St. Louis, specializing in English and taking art training. While in university she began publishing short stories and poetry in magazines. She also painted murals in two children's schools in St. Louis and exhibited water color paintings. After several trips throughout the United States and Europe, she left college without taking a degree and started writing and painting. In 1934 Josephine W. Johnson published her first novel under the title Now in November. The following year the book was selected by the Pulitzer Prize Advisory Board as best work in the Novel category.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER I Source·: J o s e p h i n e J o h n s o n : N o w in N o v e m b e r , N e w Y o r k : S i m o n and S c h u s t e r , 1 9 3 4 . pp. 3 - 5 . ]

N O W in November I can see our years as a whole. This autumn is like both an end and a beginning to our lives, and those days which seemed confused with the blur of all things too near and too familiar are clear and strange now. It has been a long year, longer and more full of meaning than all those ten years that went before it. T h e r e were nights when I felt that we were moving toward some awful and hopeless hour, but when that hour came it was broken up and confused because we were too near, and I did not even quite realize that it had come. I can look back now and see the days as one looking down on things past, and they have more shape and meaning than before. But nothing is really finished or left behind forever. T h e years were all alike and blurred into one another, and the mind is a sort of sieve or quicksand, but I remember the day we came and the months afterward well enough. T o o well. T h e roots of our life, struck in back there that March, have a queer resemblance to their branches.

73

The hills were bare then and swept of winter leaves, but the orchards had a living look. They were stained with the red ink of their sap and the bark tight around them as though too small to hold the new life of coming leaves. It was an old place and the land had been owned by Haldmarnes since the Civil War, but when we came no one had been living there for years. Only tenant farmers had stayed awhile and left. T h e land was stony, but with promise, and sheep grew fat in the pastures where rock ledges were worn back, white like stone teeth bared to frost. There were these great orchards planted up and down the hills, and when Mother saw them that first day she thought of having to gather the crop and haul the apples up this steepness, but she only said a good harvest ought to come, and the trees looked strong though old. "No market even if they bear," I remember Father said and then,—"it's mortgaged land." Nobody answered and the wagon went on groaning and squeaking in the ruts. Merle and I watched the jays, blue-flickering through the branches, and heard their screams. T h e elms were thick with buds and brown-webbed across the sky. It was beautiful and barren in the pastures, and the walnuts made a kind of lavender-colored shadow, very clean. Things

74

were strange and unrelated and made no pattern that a person could trace easily. Here was the land and the spring air full of snow melting, and yet the beginning of fear already,—this mortgage, and Father consumed in himself with sour irritation and the future dread. But Mother sat there very quiet. He had not told her the place was mortgaged, and the land at least, she had thought, was unencumbered, and sanctuary though everything else was gone. But even in the moment when she saw that this, too, was uncertain and shifting ground, something she always had— something I didn't know then and may never know —let her take it quietly. A sort of inner well of peace. Faith I guess it was. She stood a great deal and put up with much, but all without doubt or bitterness; and that she was there, believing and not shaken, or not seeming so at least, was all that we needed then to know...

75

1936

AWARD

ABOUT THE MIGRATION FROM THE HOP FIELDS TO EASTERN OREGON BY HAROLD L.

DAVIS

Harold Lenoir Davis (born on October 18, 1894, in Rone's Mill, Or.) graduated from high school in 1912, and for the next few years he worked as deputy county assessor and for a General Land Office survey crew. He was drafted into the army in 1918, and for three months served as a clerk at Fort McDowell, Ca. His first poems were published in the April 1919 issue of the Poetry magazine. After his discharge from the army, Davis returned to his hometown The Dalles, where for the next nine years he worked at various jobs, from bank clerk to laborer on a railroad track gang. In 1927 Davis and the author James Stevens published a pamphlet with the title Status Rerum, that attacked the triviality, intellectual inbreeding, and preciosity of the region's "literary establishment," including the faculty and writing programs at the Universities of Washington and Oregon. By 1928 Davis was turning to fiction. Two stories, "Occidental's Prodigal" and "Oleman Hattie," appeared in Adventure magazine. During the next years more short stories and sketches followed, most of which were published in the American Mercury, Colliers, and Saturday Evening Post. In 1932 Davis received a Guggenheim exchange fellowship to go to Mexico and work on a long epic poem. Instead, once in Mexico, he worked on more short stories and his first novel, Honey in the Horn, published in 1935. The following year the book earned Harold L. Davis the Pulitzer Prize for novel.

76 STYLE

SAMPLE

FROM

THE OPENING

CHAPTER

[Source: H. L. Davis: H o n e y in the H o r n , N e w York - L o n d o n : H a r p e r & B r o t h e r s P u b l i s h e r s , 1935, pp. 1-3.]

was a run-down old tollbridge station in the Shoestring Valley of Southern Oregon where Uncle Preston Shiveley had lived for fifty years, outlasting a wife, two sons, several plagues of grasshoppers, wheat-rust and caterpillars, a couple or three invasions of land-hunting settlers and real-estate speculators, and everybody else except the scattering of old pioneers who had cockleburred themselves onto the country at about the same time he did. The station, having been built in the stampeding days when people believed they were due for great swarms of settlement and travel around them, had a great many more rooms and a whole lot more space than there was any use for; and so had the country behind it. Outside the back fence where the dishcloths were hung to bleach and the green sheeppelts to cure when there was sun was a ten-mile stretch of creekmeadow with wild vetch and redtop and velvet-grass reaching clear to the black-green fir timber of the mountains where huckleberries grew and sheep pastured in summer and young men sometimes hid to keep from being jailed. The creek-meadow in season was full of flowers—wild daisies, lamb-tongues, cat-ears, big patches of camas lilies as blue as the ocean with a cloud shadowing it, and big stands of wild iris and wild lilac and buttercups and St. John's wort. It was well-watered—too blamed well in the muddy season—and around the springs were thickets of whistle-willow and wild crabapple; and there were long swales of alder and sweetbrier and wild blackberry clumped out so rank and heavy that, in all the years the valley had been settled, nobody had ever explored them all. When the natural feed in the mountains snowed under late in the year, deer used to come down and graze the swales and swipe salt from the domestic stock; and blue grouse and topknot-quail boarded in all the brush-piles and thorn-heaps by the hundreds all the year round. THERE

77

It was a master locality for stock-raising, as all good game countries are. Why the old settlers had run stock on it for so many years without getting more out of it than enough to live on would have stumped even a government bulletin to explain. They did get a good living regularly, even in times when stock-raisers elsewhere were wearing patched clothes, shooting home-reloaded cartridges, and making biscuits out of hand-pounded wheat. But in the years when those same localities were banking and blowing in great hunks of money on hardwood-floored houses and coming-out parties for the youngsters and store-bought groceries and candidacies for the Legislature for the voting males, the old people up Shoestring went right on living at their ordinary clip, neither able to put on any extra dog in the good times nor obliged to lank down and live frugal in the bad ones. None of the Shoestring settlers had much of a turn for practical business, probably because living came so easy that they had never needed to develop one. What they had developed, probably unconsciously and certainly without having a speck more use for it, was a mutual oppositeness of characters; and it had changed them from a rather ordinarily-marked pack of restless young Western emigrants with nothing about any of them except youth and land-fever, to an assortment of set-charactered old bucks as distinct from one another in tastes, tempers, habits, and inclinations as the separate suits of a deck of cards. Not that there was anything especially out of line about that. There used to be plenty of communities where old residenters, merely by having looked at one another for years on end, had become as different as hen, weasel, and buzzard. But the fact that the thing was common didn't make it explain any faster, and the Shoestring settlement's case was harder because the men's characters were so entirely different and all their histories so precisely alike. They had all started even, as adventurous young men in an emigrant-train; they had gone through the same experiences getting to Oregon, had spread down to live in the same country, had done the same work, and had collogued with the same set of neighbors over the same line-up of news and business all their lives long.

78 It looked as if they had treated the human range of superficial feelings to the same process of allotment that they had used on the valley itself, whacking it off into homestead enclosures so each man could squat on a patch of his own where the others would be sure not to elbow him. They had, of course, done no such fool thing. It was more likely merely something that had happened to them. Whatever it was, they had all come in for it, and it made both monotony and complications of character among them impossible. As far as personality went, they were each one thing, straight up and down and the same color all the way through. Grandpa Cutlack, who lived on Boone Creek nearest the mouth of the valley, ran entirely to religion, held family prayer with a club handy to keep the youngsters from playing hooky on the services, and read his Scriptures with dogged confidence that he would one day find out from them when the world was going to end. H e was a short, black-eyed man with bow-legs and an awful memory for smutty expressions, which were continually slipping into his conversation in spite of him, and even into his prayers...

79

1937

AWARD

ABOUT THE HUMAN RELATIONS IN THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTERWARDS BY MARGARET M . MITCHELL

Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell (born on November 8, 1900, in Atlanta, Ga.) was a student of Washington Seminary in Atlanta from 1914 to 1918. Subsequently, she enrolled at Smith College and studied there for a year until the death of her mother required her to return home to manage the household of her father and older brother. In 1922 she joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal as a feature writer and reporter. In her four years as a newspaperwoman, she wrote 129 signed articles for the Sunday Journal Magazine, ranging from interviews with murderers, heiresses, and Rudolph Valentino to a series on Georgia's Confederate generals. In 1926 she was forced to resign her position with the Journal as a result of an ankle injury, and she began to write Gone With the Wind. For ten years she worked on that novel, though most of it was completed by 1929. Originally entitled "Tomorrow Is Another Day," Mitchell wrote the last chapter first and other sections out of sequence. When Gone With the Wind was eventually published in June 1936, 50,000 copies were sold in one day. A month later Margaret Mitchell signed a contract with David O. Selznick granting him the film rights for the highest fee Hollywood had ever paid to that date for a novel. In 1937 the epic account of the fall of the traditional Southern society won Margaret M. Mitchell the Pulitzer Novel award.

80

S T Y L E S A M P L E FROM THE OPENING

CHAPTER

I S o u r c e : M a r g a r e t M i t c h e l l : G o n e W i t h the W i n d , N e w Y o r k : T h e M a c m i l l a n C o m p a n y , 1936, pp. 3-5.]

SCARLETT O'HARA was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. H e r eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel, starred with brisdy black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward, cutting

a

startling

oblique

line

in

her

magnclia-white

skin—that

skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns. Seated with Stuart and Brent Tarleton in the cool shade of the porch of Tara, her father's plantation, that bright April afternoon of 1861, she made a pretty

picture.

Her

new

green

flowered-muslin

dress

spread

its

twelve yards of billowing material over her hoops and exactly matched the flat-heeled green morocco slippers her father had recently brought her from Atlanta. T h e dress set off to perfection the seventeen-inch waist, the smallest in three counties, and the tightly fitting basque showed breasts well matured for her sixteen years. But for all the modesty of her spreading skirts, the demureness of hair netted smoothly into a chignon and the quietness of small white hands folded in her lap, her true self was poorly concealed. T h e green eyes in the carefully sweet face were turbulent, willful, lusty with life, distinctly at variance with her decorous demeanor. H e r manners had been imposed upon her by her mother's gentle admonitions and the sterner discipline of her m a m m y ; her eyes were her own. On either side of her, the twins lounged easily in their chairs, squinting at the sunlight through tall mint-garnished glasses as they laughed and talked, their long legs, booted to the knee and thick with saddle muscles, crossed negligently. Nineteen years old, six feet two inches tall, long of bone and hard of muscle, with sunburned faces and deep auburn hair, their eyes merry and arrogant, their bodies clothed in identical blue coats and mustard-colored breeches, they were as much alike as two bolls of cotton.

81

Outside, the late afternoon sun slanted down in the yard, throwing into gleaming brightness the dogwood trees that were solid masses of white blossoms against the background of new green. The twins' horses were hitched in the driveway, big animals, red as their masters' hair; and around the horses' legs quarreled the pack of lean, nervous possum hounds that accompanied Stuart and Brent wherever they went. A little aloof, as became an aristocrat, lay a black-spotted carriage dog, muzzle on paws, patiently waiting for the boys to go home to supper. Between the hounds and the horses and the twins there was a kinship deeper than that of their constant companionship. They were all healthy, thoughtless young animals, sleek, graceful, high spirited, the boys as mettlesome as the horses they rode, mettlesome and dangerous but, withal, sweettempered to those who knew how to handle them. Although born to the ease of plantation life, waited on hand and foot since infancy, the faces of the three on the porch were neither slack nor soft. They had the vigor and alertness of country people who have spent all their lives in the open and troubled their heads very little with dull things in books. Life in the north Georgia county of Clayton was still new and, according to the standards of Augusta, Savannah and Charleston, a little crude. The more sedate and older sections of the South looked down their noses at the up-country Georgians, but here in north Georgia, a lack of the niceties of classical education carried no shame, provided a man was smart in the things that mattered. And raising good cotton, riding well, shooting straight, dancing lighdy, squiring the ladies with elegance and carrying one's liquor like a gentleman were the things that mattered. In these accomplishments the twins excelled, and they were equally outstanding in their notorious inability to learn anything contained between the covers of books. Their family had more money, more horses, more slaves than any one else in the County, but the boys had less grammar than most of their poor Cracker neighbors. It was for this precise reason that Stuart and Brent were idling on the porch of Tara this April afternoon. They had just been expelled from the University of Georgia, the fourth university that had thrown them out in two years; and their older brothers, Tom and Boyd, had come home with them, because they refused to remain at an institution where the twins were not welcome. Stuart and Brent considered their latest expulsion a fine joke,

82 and Scarlett, w h o had not willingly opened a book since leaving the Fayetteville Female Academy the year before, thought it just as amusing as they did. " I k n o w you two don't care about being expelled, or T o m either," she said. " B u t what about Boyd ? He's kind of set on getting an education, and you two have pulled him out of the University of Virginia and Alabama and South Carolina and now Georgia. He'll never get finished at this rate." " O h , he can read law in Judge Parmalee's office over in Fayetteville," answered Brent carelessly. "Besides, it don't matter much. We'd have had to come home before the term was out anyway." "Why?" " T h e war, goose! T h e war's going to start any day, and you don't suppose any of us would stay in college with a war going on, do y o u ? " " Y o u k n o w there isn't going to be any war," said Scarlett, bored. "It's all just talk. W h y , Ashley Wilkes and his father told Pa just last week that our commissioners in Washington would come to—to—an—amicable agreement with M r . Lincoln about the Confederacy. A n d anyway, the Yankees are too scared of us to fight. There won't be any war, and I'm tired of hearing about it." " N o t going to be any w a r ! " cried the twins indignantly, as though they had been d e f r a u d e d . . .

83

1938

AWARD

ABOUT THE PERSONAL PORTRAIT OF AN INFLUENTIAL BOSTONIAN BY JOHN P . MARQUAND

John Phillips Marquand (born on November 10, 1893, in Wilmington, Del.) earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University in 1915. He subsequently joined the staff of the Boston Transcript as assistant magazine editor, a position in which he remained for the following two years. In 1916 he also served with the Massachusetts National Guard at the Mexican border and, the year after, he spent some time as a student in Camp Plattsburg. In 1919 Marquand wrote for the Sunday department of the New York Tribune. Having worked as an advertising copy writer in 1920/21, he eventually decided to become a full-time fiction writer. A contributor of short stories to periodicals he brought out the following book publications: The Unspeakable Gentleman·, Four of a Kind·, The Black Cargo·, Lord Timothy Dexter, Warning Hill·, Haven's End; Ming Yellow, No Hero\ and Thank You, Mr. Moto. John P. Marquand's The Late George Apley won the Pulitzer Prize of 1938 for the best novel published during the preceding year.

84

S T Y L E SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: J o h n P. M a r q u a n d : T h e Late G e o r g e A p l e y - A N o v e l in the F o r m of a M e m o i r . B o s t o n : Little, B r o w n a n d C o m p a n y , 1937, pp. 3-5; reprinted by p e r m i s s i o n of Little, B r o w n and C o m p a n y , B o s t o n . Ma.]

E O R G E W I L L I A M A P L E Y was born in the house of his maternal grandfather, William Leeds Hancock, on the steeper part of Mount Vernon Street, on Beacon Hill, on January 25, 1866. He died in his own house, which overlooks the Charles River Basin and the Esplanade, on the water side of Beacon Street, on December 13, 1933. This was the frame in which his life moved, and the frame which will surround his portrait as a man. H e once said of himself: " I am the sort of man I am, because environment prevented my being anything else." It is now my task, to which I have agreed under somewhat unusual circumstances, to depict the life of this valued friend of mine through his own writings. I can think of no more suitable way of beginning than by resorting to an explanation which is, in a measure, personal. It has been my privilege many times in the past to edit the notes and letters of other prominent Bostonians under the advice of the family. In this case, as is usual in such matters, the advice of the family stands first. In this case, however, the advice is not usual. Shortly after I read the obituary notice of George William Apley at the annual meeting of the Berkley Club, when our departed members for the year are customarily remembered, — a work which was welcome to me because of our friendship, — I was surprised by the following comment from his son, John Apley: —

85

D e a r M r . Willing:— I did not have time to thank you the other night for the appreciation which you read of my father at the Berkley Club. As I might have expected, you did yourself and the old man proud. I only had this one criticism to offer: As I sat back in the dim part of the room watching you stand on the stage beside the secretary with your papers, I could not avoid thinking of all the other lives which I had heard read out from that platform in sonorous, periodic sentences. Perhaps I had had a touch too much of champagne at the dinner downstairs, but if so I think it only sharpened my perceptions, or did it make me see more than double? At any rate, I seemed to see, through the passage of the years, a string of members with their medals and their colored seniority waistcoats rising from the darkness on the floor and possibly stumbling over somebody's glass, as they walked one by one up to the platform with their papers in their hands. I seemed to hear the lives of all our fellow members read out with the usual comments, and those comments were always similar. You made Father seem like all the others, M r . Willing. Y o u shaded over the affair of Attorney O'Reilly and some other things we know. Y o u talked about the Historical Society and about the fight against the electric signs around the Common, but you did not mention his feud with Moore and Fields} you told what he had done for the Art Museum, but you did not tell how the N e w York dealer gypped him on the pre-Han bronzes. You mentioned his graciousness as a host at those Sunday luncheons at Milton and when the Monday Club had its meetings at our place on Beacon Street. Do you remember the gold chairs in the two upper rooms and the creamed oysters and coffee waiting in the dining-room

86

downstairs when the speaker for the evening was finished? You mentioned all these things, but not a word of how Eleanor and I disappointed him and Mother. Perhaps you were right, given the time and place, but I wonder if Father would have liked it? You can answer that better than I can, because you knew him better. Personally, I think he would like the truth for once. I hope so because I was rather fond of him. H e was kind to me when I was a kid j he was swell when we used to go camping and I shall never forget the picnics on the beach, and the days of the Harvard-Yale game. Naturally Father always kept up his facade. Naturally we never quarrelled actively even inside the family, but I remember one thing he said to me once. I t sticks, when so much of his advice eddied into one ear and out the other. H e was angry at the time and bitterly disappointed with me, because I would not go into the firm of Apley and Reid, thus changing it to Apley, Reid, and A p l e y . . .

87

1939

AWARD

A B O U T THE COMING OF AGE OF P O O R B O Y IN A F L O R I D A

A

AREA

BY MARJORIE K. RAWLINGS

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (born on August 8, 1896, in Washington, D.C.) attended the University of Wisconsin, which awarded her the Bachelor of Arts degree in 1918. Upon her graduation she joined the Young Women's Christian Association doing war work publicity at the organization's national headquarters. In 1919 she wrote as an assistant service editor for the Home Sector magazine. From 1919 to 1923 Marjorie Rawlings worked as an advertising and newspaper writer for the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Rochester (N.Y.) Journal. She became a syndicated verse writer with United Features in 1925. Two years later Rawlings quit this position and, starting in 1931, she concentrated on her fiction writing. The authoress of several short stories and contributor to Scribner's magazine was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1938. The books South Moon Under and Golden Apples count among her publications. The Yearling appeared in 1938 and, the year after, this book made Marjorie K. Rawlings the winner of the Pulitzer Prize in the Novel category.

88

STYLE SAMPLE F R O M THE OPENING CHAPTER I S o u r c e : M a r j o r i o K i n n a n K a w l i n g s : T h e Yearling, N e w York: C h a r l e s S c r i b n e r ' s S o n s , 1938, pp. 1 - 3 ]

A COLUMN of smoke rose thin and straight from the cabin chimney. T h e smoke was blue where it left the red of the clay. It trailed into the blue of the April sky and was no longer blue but gray. T h e boy Jody watched it, speculating. The fire on the kitchen hearth was dying down. His mother was hanging up pots and pans after the noon dinner. The day was Friday. She would sweep the floor with a broom of ti-ti and after that, if he were lucky, she would scrub it with the corn shucks scrub. If she scrubbed the floor she would not miss him until he had reached the Glen. H e stood a minute, balancing the hoe on his shoulder. The clearing itself was pleasant if the unweeded rows of young shafts of corn were not before him. The wild bees had found the chinaberry tree by the front gate. They burrowed into the fragile clusters of lavender bloom as greedily as though there were no other flowers in the scrub; as though they had forgotten the yellow jessamine of March; the sweet bay and the magnolias ahead of them in May. It occurred to him that he might follow the swift line of flight of the black and gold bodies, and so find a bee-tree, full of amber honey. The winter's cane syrup was gone and most of the jellies. Finding a bee-tree was nobler work than hoeing, and the corn could wait another day. The afternoon was alive with a soft stirring. It bored into him as the bees bored into the chinaberry blossoms, so that he must be gone across the clearing, through the pines and down the road to the running branch. The bee-tree might be near the water.

89

He stood his hoe against the split-rail fence. H e walked down the cornfield until he was out of sight of the cabin. He swung himself over the fence on his two hands. Old Julia the hound had followed his father in the wagon to Grahamsville, but Rip the bull-dog and Perk the new feice saw the form clear the fence and ran toward him. Rip barked deeply but the voice of the small mongrel was high and shrill. They wagged deprecatory short tails when they recognized him. He sent them back to the yard. They watched after him indifferently. They were a sorry pair, he thought, good for nothing but the chase, the catch and the kill. They had no interest in him except when he brought them their plates of table scraps night and morning. Old Julia was a gentle thing with humans, but her worntoothed devotion was only for his father, Penny Baxter. Jody had tried to make up to Julia, but she would have none of him. "You was pups together," his father told him, "ten year gone, when you was two year old and her a baby. You hurted the leetle thing, not meanin' no harm. She cain't bring herself to trust you. Hounds is often that-a-way." He made a circle around the sheds and corn-crib and cut south through the black-jack. He wished he had a dog like Grandma Hutto's. It was white and curly-haired and did tricks. When Grandma Hutto laughed and shook and could not stop, the dog jumped into her lap and licked her face, wagging its plumed tail as though it laughed with her. He would like anything that was his own; that licked his face and followed him as old Julia followed his father. H e cut into the sand road and began to run east. It was two miles to the Glen, but it seemed to Jody that he could run forever. There was no ache in his legs, as when he hoed the corn. He slowed down to make the road last longer. H e had passed the big pines and left them behind. Where he walked now, the scrub had closed in, walling in the road with dense sand pines, each one so thin it seemed

90

to the boy it might make kindling by itself. T h e road went u p an incline. At the top he stopped. T h e April sky was framed by the tawny sand and the pines. It was as blue as his homespun shirt, dyed with G r a n d m a Hutto's indigo. Small clouds were stationary, like bolls of cotton. As he watched, the sunlight left the sky a moment and the clouds were gray. "There'll come a little old drizzly rain before night-fall," he thought. T h e down grade tempted him to a lope. H e reached the thick-bedded sand of the Silver Glen road. T h e tar-flower was in bloom, and fetter-bush and sparkleberry. H e slowed to a walk, so that he might pass the changing vegetation tree by tree, bush by bush, each one unique and familiar. H e reached the magnolia tree where he had carved the wild-cat's face. T h e growth was a sign that there was water nearby. It seemed a strange thing to him, when earth was earth and rain was rain, that scrawny pines should grow in the scrub, while by every branch and lake and river there grew magnolias. Dogs were the same everywhere, and oxen and mules and horses. But trees were different in different places...

91

1940

ABOUT DUST

AWARD

THE MIGRATION

BOWL

OKIES TO

OF

THE

CALIFORNIA

BY JOHN E. STEINBECK

John Ernst Steinbeck (born on February 27, 1902, in Salinas, Cal.) studied at Stanford University, contributing poems and comic satires to the school's periodicals and taking courses in science and writing. In 1925 he went to New York, where during the next two years he worked intermittently as a reporter and ultimately as a bricklayer. When he returned to California, he took a job as caretaker to a private estate in the High Sierras. There he completed his first novel, Cup of Gold, which was published in 1929. The work was followed by The Pastures of Heaven and To a God Unkown, two novels which appeared in 1932 and 1933. Steinbeck's next book, Tortilla Flat, received the California Commonwealth Club's annual gold medal for the best novel by a California writer, was adapted for the stage, and sold to Hollywood. In 1938 he brought out The Long Valley, a collection of stories. His themes of leadership in The Long Valley were a prelude to In Dubious Battle, a novel about a California working-class strike. In the late 1930's John E. Steinbeck also wrote the two books Of Mice and Men, which was also translated for the theater, and The Grapes of Wrath. The latter work received the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for the best novel published during the preceding year.

92

STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: J o h n S t e i n b e c k : T h e G r a p e s of W r a t h , N e w York: T h e V i k i n g Press, 1939, pp. 3-5.1

T

O T H E red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. The plows crossed and recrossed the rivulet marks. The last rains lifted the corn quickly and scattered weed colonies and grass along the sides of the roads so that the gray country and the dark red country began to disappear under a green cover. In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs for so long in the spring were dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try any more. The weeds grew darker green to protect themselves, and they did not spread any more. The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth became pale, pink in the red country and white in the gray country. In the water-cut gullies the earth dusted down in dry little streams. Gophers and ant lions started small avalanches. And as the sharp sun struck day after day, the leaves of the young corn became less stiff and erect; they bent in a curve at first, and then, as the central ribs of strength grew weak, each leaf tilted downward. Then it was June, and the sun shone more fiercely. The brown lines on the corn leaves widened and moved in on the central ribs. The weeds frayed

93

and edged back toward their roots. The air was thin and the sky more pale; and every day the earth paled. In the roads where the teams moved, where the wheels milled the ground and the hooves of the horses beat the ground, the dirt crust broke and the dust formed. Every moving thing lifted the dust into the air: a walking man lifted a thin layer as high as his waist, and a wagon lifted the dust as high as the fence tops, and an automobile boiled a cloud behind it. The dust was long in settling back again. When June was half gone, the big clouds moved up out of Texas and the Gulf, high heavy clouds, rain-heads. The men in the fields looked up at the clouds and sniffed at them and held wet fingers up to sense the wind. And the horses were nervous while the clouds were up. The rain-heads dropped a little spattering and hurried on to some other country. Behind them the sky was pale again and the sun flared. In the dust there were drop craters where the rain had fallen, and there were clean splashes on the corn, and that was all. A gentle wind followed the rain clouds, driving them on northward, a wind that softly clashed the drying corn. A day went by and the wind increased, steady, unbroken by gusts. The dust from the roads fluffed up and spread out and fell on the weeds beside the fields, and fell into the fields a little way. Now the wind grew strong and hard and it worked at the rain crust in the corn fields. Little by little the sky was darkened by the mixing dust, and the wind felt over the earth, loosened the dust, and carried it away. T h e wind grew stronger. The rain crust broke and the dust lifted up out of the fields and drove gray plumes into the air like slug-

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gish smoke. The corn threshed the wind and made a dry, rushing sound. The finest dust did not settle back to earth now, but disappeared into the darkening sky. The wind grew stronger, whisked under stones, carried up straws and old leaves, and even little clods, marking its course as it sailed across the fields. The air and the sky darkened and through them the sun shone redly, and there was a raw sting in the air. During a night the wind raced faster over the land, dug cunningly among the rootlets of the corn, and the corn fought the wind with its weakened leaves until the roots were freed by the prying wind and then each stalk settled wearily sideways toward the earth and pointed the direction of the wind. The dawn came, but no day. In the gray sky a red sun appeared, a dim red circle that gave a little light, like dusk; and as that day advanced, the dusk slipped back toward darkness, and the wind cried and whimpered over the fallen corn...

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1941

AWARD

ABOUT THE WITHHOLD OF THE NOVEL PRIZE BY THE ADVISORY BOARD

Although the members of the 1941 Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury in their report mentioned several books as finalists to receive the prize for work published during the preceding year, the Advisory Board decided to give no award in this category.

96

NAMES OF THE BOARD MEMBERS VOTING FOR "NO AWARD"

Sevellon Brown

The Providence

Journal-Bulletin

Nicholas M. Butler

Columbia University

Kent Cooper

The Associated

Julian Harris

Atlanta

Walter M. Harrison

The Daily Oklahoman, Oklahoma City

Arthur M. Howe

Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Frank R. Kent

The Baltimore

Arthur Krock

The New York Times

Robert L. O'Brien

The Boston Herald

Stuart H. Perry

The Adrian (Mich.) Telegram

Harold S. Pollard

New York

Joseph Pulitzer (II)

St. Louis

William A. White

Emporia Gazette, Emporia, Kansas

Press

Constitution

Sun

World-Telegram Post-Dispatch

97

1942 AWARD ABOUT THE FAMILY MEMBERS FROM A VIRGINIA TIDEWATER CITY BY ELLEN A . GLASGOW

Ellen Anderson Glasgow (born on April 22, 1874, in Richmond, Va.) received a private education. Ellen Glasgow published her first book, The Descendant, at the age of 23. In 1930 she was awarded a Doctor of Letters degree by the University of North Carolina and in 1938/39 three LL.D. degrees were conferred on her by the University of Richmond, by Duke University, and by the College of William and Mary. The authoress also won the quinquennial Howells medal for "eminence in creative literature as shown in the novel" awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She moreover was the recipient of the Saturday Review of Literature'& special award for distinguished service to American literature in 1940 and of the Southern Authors prize in 1941. Ellen Glasgow was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Society of Authors, Playwrights and Composers, and the Modern Language Association. Among her book publications are works like Phases of an Inferior Planet, The Voice of the People·, The Freeman and Other Poems', The Battle-ground; The Deliverance·, The Wheel of Life", Ancient Law, The Romance of a Plain Man\ The Miller of Old Church; Virginia·, Life and Gabriella; The Builders·, One Man in His Time·, The Shadowy Third', Barren Ground', The Romantic Comedians', They Stooped to Folly, The Sheltered Life', and Vein of Iron. Ellen A. Glasgow's In This Our Life won the 1942 Pulitzer Prize for novel. The work had been published one year earlier.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING

CHAPTER

[Source: Ellen G l a s g o w : In This Our L i f e , N e w Y o r k : Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1941, pp. 3-5.]

T

H

E

street was darkened by a smoky sunset, and light had not yet come on in the lamps near the empty house. Under a troubled sky the old house looked deserted but charged with reality.

I t was a place, Asa Timberlake thought, where everything had happened and nothing would ever happen again. Its life, with so many changing lives, was finished. Already, he saw, the wreckers were at work on the white columns. Nothing would remain in the end, not a brick, not a splinter of wood, not a tree, not a leaf, scarcely a blade of grass; for a new service station, flaunting a row of red pumps in front of a stucco arch, would presently spring up between a Georgian mansion and a Victorian dwelling in lower

Washington

Street. A man in overalls rushed through the open gate, cast a hurried glance at Asa's face, and stopped short in surprise. " Y o u ' r e M r . Timberlake? I thought I knew you. M y name's Maberley." " N o t Jim Maberley?" " T h a t was my father. W e lost him winter before last, but Grandpa's still holding on, as spry as he ever was. H e used to work in your grandfather's old factory. He had a job in the stemming room." " I ' m working there now, and in the stemming room." "You're kidding. N o t in your grandfather's factory? But

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I recollect hearing something about it. Your folks lost out a long time ago—didn't they?—when the works were sold?" "Lost out. That's right." "And you went back to work there. Good Lord! What will the old man say when he hears of it? He used to think the Timberlakes were the top of creation." "Tell him I went in at the bottom. That was forty-seven years ago." "Forty-seven years! You must have been a kid at the start." " I was twelve. I'm now fifty-nine. Many things slip my memory, but I never forget that twelve subtracted from fifty-nine leaves forty-seven." "The house went too, didn't it? I've heard about the auction here after . . . after . . . I mean the time Mr. William Fitzroy bid in the place. But I reckon that was all right. He's some kin to you, ain't he?" " I married his niece, but that was long afterwards." "You lived on here, anyway." "Yes, I lived on here." "Well, I reckon Mr. Fitzroy knows what he's about. It must feel pretty good to stand in his shoes. Some say he's the biggest man in the South." A quizzical gleam flickered in Asa's eyes. "Some do." "And he must be over eighty 1 But you moved uptown, didn't you? It's funny how often I passed by this house without noticing it till we began pulling it down." "I've a little house in the West End. Not like this one. Not built to stand." "They're solid, these old buildings. They don't come down easv."

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"No, they were meant to last. People had long thoughts in those days." "Well, I like to see things come and go. I'm always glad when I get a job clearing away something old. You ought to have been here yesterday when that big sycamore crashed. We had a tough job with those roots." Asa frowned. "That tree had more life than I have, and a stronger hold on it." "I reckon that's so, sir. I bet that old tree could have told us a plenty if it could have talked." "Are you cutting down the willow too?" "You mean that big fellow down yonder by the back wall? No, sir, I tell you that would take some doing. But it ain't in the way yet." "It will be." "Sure it will. Every blessed tree seems to get right plumb in the way of business as soon as a town begins to wake up. But I'm all for progress, I am. I like to see things going fast. We've come a long way since Grandpa used to work ten or twelve hours at a stretch, and then have to walk up every step from river bottom. An old Ford would have looked like a golden chariot to h i m . . . "

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1943

AWARD

ABOUT THE AMERICANS RECOGNIZING THE THREAT FROM GERMANY BY UPTON B . SINCLAIR JR.

Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (born on September 20, 1878, in Baltimore, Md.) entered the College of the City of New York at the age of fourteen and graduated with a B.A. degree in 1897. Sinclair subsequently moved to Quebec, where he wrote his first novel, Springtime and Harvest. In the next few years Prince Hägen; The Journal of Arthur Stirling·, and Manassas followed. Having joined the Socialist party in 1902, Sinclair helped to found the Intercollegiate Socialist Society in 1905, and in the following year he was a Socialist candidate for Congress from New Jersey. Sinclair's next book, The Jungle, was published in 1906. In the same year Sinclair also founded a cooperative community, the Helicon Home Colony, and in 1908 a traveling theater company for social drama. Meanwhile he continued writing: The Industrial Republic, The Metropolis; The Moneychangers·, and Love's Pilgrimage number among the publications of this period. During World War I he edited his own journal, called Upton Sinclair's. Books like The Brass Check; The Profits of Religion·, Mammonarf, and Oil count among his writings of the postwar years. In California Sinclair was a Socialist candidate for Congress in 1920, for the Senate in 1922, and for governor in 1926 and 1930. In 1934 he again ran for governor of California, this time as the candidate of the Democratic party. Sinclair's book publications during the late 1930's include What God Means to Me\ The Gnomobile\ and Little Steel. In 1942 Dragon's Teeth, the third part in the eleven-volume Lanny Budd series was published. The year after, the work on the rise of Nazism in Germany won Upton B. Sinclair Jr. the Pulitzer Prize for novel.

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S T Y L E S A M P L E F R O M THE OPENING

CHAPTER

[Source: Upton Sinclair: Dragon's Teeth, New York: The Viking Press, 1942, pp. 3-5.]

L i A N N Y B U D D was the only occupant of a small-sized reception-room. He was seated in a well-padded armchair, and had every reason to be comfortable, but did not appear so. He fidgeted a good deal, and found occasions for looking at his watch; then he would examine his fingernails, which needed no attention; he would look for specks of lint on his tropical worsted trousers, from which he had removed the last speck some time ago. He would look out of the window, which gave on one of the fashionable avenues of the city of Cannes; but he had already become familiar with the view, and it did not change. He had a popular novel on his knee, and every now and then would find that he could not interest himself in the conversation of a set of smart society people. Now and then one of several white-clad nurses would pass through the room. Lanny had asked them so many questions that he was ashamed to speak again. He knew that all husbands behave irrationally at this time; he had seen a group of them in a stage play, slightly risque but harmless. They all fidgeted and consulted their watches; they all got up and walked about needlessly; they all bored the nurses with futile questions. The nurses had stereotyped replies, which, except for the language, were the same all over the world. "Oui, oui, monsieur. . . . Tout va bien. . . . II faut laisser faire. . . . II faut du tevtps. . . . Cest la nature." Many times Lanny had heard that last statement in the Midi; it was a formula which excused many things. He had heard it more than once that afternoon, but it failed to satisfy him. He was in rebellion against nature and her ways. He hadn't had much suffering in his own life, and didn't want other people to suffer; he thought that if he had been consulted he could have suggested many improvements in the ways of this fantastic universe. The

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business of having people grow old and pass off the scene, and new ones having to be supplied! He knew persons who had carefullytrained and perfected themselves; they were beautiful to look at, or possessed knowledge and skills, yet they had to die before long— and, knowing that fact, must provide a new lot to take their places. Lanny Budd belonged to the leisure classes. You could tell it by a single glance at his smiling unlined face, his tanned skin with signs of well-nourished blood in it, his precise little mustache, his brown hair neatly trimmed and brushed, his suit properly tailored and freshly pressed, his shirt and tie, shoes and socks, harmonizing in color and of costly materials. It had been some time since he had seen any bloodshed or experienced personal discomfort. His life had been arranged to that end, and the same was true of his wife. But now this damnable messy business, this long-drawn-out strain and suffering—good God, what were doctors and scientists for if they couldn't devise something to take the place of this! It was like a volcanic eruption in a well-ordered and peaceful community; not much better because you could foresee the event, going in advance to an immaculate hospice de la maternite and engaging a room at so much per week, an accoucheur at so much for the job. A surgeon! A fellow with a lot of shiny steel instruments, prepared to assist nature in opening a woman up and getting a live and kicking infant out of her! It had seemed incredible to Lanny the first time he had heard about it, a youngster playing with the fisherboys of this Mediterranean coast, helping them pull strange creatures out of the sea and hearing them talk about the "facts of life." It seemed exactly as incredible to him at this moment, when he knew that it was going on in a room not far away, the victim his beautiful young playmate whom he had come to love so deeply. His too vivid imagination was occupied with the bloody details, and he would clench his hands until the knuckles were white. His protest against nature mounted to a clamor. He thought: "Any way but this! Anything that's decent and sensible!" He addressed his ancient mother, asking why she hadn't stuck to the method of the

104

egg, which seemed to work so well with birds and snakes and lizards and fishes? But these so-called "warm-blooded creatures," that had so much blood and spilled it so easily! Lanny knew that Irma didn't share these feelings. Irma was a "sensible woman," not troubled with excess of imagination. She had said many times: " D o n ' t w o r r y . I'll be all right. It doesn't last forever." Everybody agreed that this young Juno was made for motherhood; she had ridden horseback, swum, played tennis, and had a vigorous body. She hadn't turned pale when she crossed the threshold of this hospital, or even when she heard the cries of another woman. Things always went all right with Irma Barnes, and she had told Lannv to go home and play the piano and forget her; but here he sat, and thought about the details which he had read in an encyclopedia article entitled "Obstetrics." From boyhood he had had the habit of looking up things in that dependable work; but, damn it all, the article gave an undue proportion of space to "breech presentations" and other variations from the normal, and Lanny might just as well have been in the delivery-room. H e would have liked to go there, but that would have been considered an extreme variation from the normal in this land of rigid c o n v e n t i o n s . . .

105

1944

AWARD

ABOUT THE PRISON OF LONELINESS OF A VERY SUCCESSFUL MAN BY MARTIN A . FLAVIN

Martin Archer Flavin (born on November 2, 1883, in San Francisco, Cal.) studied at the University of Chicago from 1903 to 1905. He then tried writing short stories while working nights for the Chicago Tribune before becoming an office boy for a wallpaper company in 1906. During the following twenty years he remained in this business and advanced to vice-president of one wallpaper firm and president of another. It was not until 1918 that Ravin returned to writing. With Children of the Moon he had his first Broadway production in 1923. The play ran for over one hundred performances. In 1929 he had three plays on Broadway at once: Broken Dishes·, Cross Roads\ and The Criminal Code. The last mentioned play won the New York Theatre Club Medal as the best play of its season. Subsequently, Flavin worked briefly in Hollywood, where he wrote in collaboration with other authors the two screenplays The Big House and Passion Flower. At about the same time he also taught playwrighting at Stanford University. In 1940 Flavin published Mr. Littlejohn, a novel about a manufacturer of toothpaste, who fakes his own kidnapping and hits the road to explore human life. Flavin's next book was an ironic story dealing with the horrors of war and misguided loyalties. Under the title Corporal Cat: The Story of a German Parachute Soldier it appeared in 1941. His book Journey in the Dark was published two years later. The autobiographical novel made Martin A. Flavin the recipient of the 1944 Pulitzer Novel award.

106

S T Y L E S A M P L E F R O M THE OPENING

CHAPTER

[ S o u r c e : M a r t i n F l a v i n : J o u r n e y in the Dark, N e w Y o r k - L o n d o n : Harper & B r o t h e r s P u b l i s h e r s , 1 9 4 3 ,

pp. 1-3.1

AM BRADEN NEVER TALKED ABOUT HIS FATHER. I F HB SPOKE OF HIS

S

family it was always of his mother, and always with affection and respect. A portrait of her hung in the library at Glencoe across the room from the portrait of his wife. It had been made long years after her death from a daguerreotype taken when she was a bride, and it showed a very lovely face, thoughtful and gentle, with soft dark hair and sober, questioning eyes. The painter had idealized his subject, and yet had captured something from the cracked and faded glass—a sense of quality and honesty. When visitors looked at it— "My mother," Sam would say. "She was a Hathaway—old colonial stock." And this was true. If they asked about his father— "My father was a lawyer," Sam would answer and then would change the subject. And this was only partly true—not true at all in fact. Jim Braden's antecedents were obscure. He had studied law somewhere in New York, and had hung out a shingle in a little upstate town, and had stayed there long enough to marry Sarah Hathaway. And then he had moved on, in search of something else, to some place in Ohio where two children had been born a year or two apart—Madge and Tom. This was in the seventies. But no record of this period exists beyond the fact that they were very poor, and if he practiced law it was probably pure practice—without clients. He was tall and handsome, rough and uncouth, but with a certain dignity. He had something of the air of an adventurer which women find intriguing and which may have stimulated Sarah's fancy. But this was a deception. He was in reality a lazy, shifdess, discontented man— the kind of a man who, if he had been there when the Indians sold Manhattan for a pair of leather boots, and had had a pair of boots which wouldn't have been likely—well, he would not have bought the island. He would have winked his eye and grinned—too shrewd to be taken in

107

by anything so obvious. He would have figured out in his thick handsome head that somewhere up the river in the neighborhood of Nyack would be a better bet. But he would not have purchased even then because he would not have had the boots. He was saved from bad investments all his life by no greater virtue than his indigence. In the early eighties they went on—Jim Braden and his wife, and little Madge and Tom. And they probably went right through Chicago, a busding, growing city, alive with opportunity. But Jim was too smart to be fooled by things like that. He had it figured out that the big lakes had no future; the Mississippi River was the place where things would happen. There may have been some nostalgia in the idea, for he had grown up close to the Hudson. In any case they rode the steamcars on across the state to the bank of the big river. And here there is a record of legend in the matter— Their money was exhausted; two dollars and a half was the total of their resources. But Jim was determined to go on. The town in which they had alighted from the cars was not what he had pictured, and the muddy, swollen river was a bitter disappointment Madge, who was four or five, retained throughout her life a memory of the scene: the yellow river in a drizzling rain, muddy, unpaved streets and unpainted ugly houses; her tall and handsome father and her slender little mother, looking serious and frail, with the baby in her arms; and the baggage piled about them—tied up boxes and valises which contained their few possessions. "I ain't aiming to stay here," Jim Braden said. The baggageman came out of the depot and spat tobacco juice across the platform. He had come from somewhere else and he agreed with Jim that the town was devoid of opportunity—"Deader than a mackerel," as he put it. He pointed down the street to the stack of a steamboat tied up against the levee. "That's the 'Mary Queen'," he said. "She'll be pulling out in a few minutes now. And my advice to you folks is to go on down the river." "Will things be any better down there?" Sarah asked. "They won't be any worse, ma'am," the baggageman assured her. "Humph!" Jim Braden grunted. It was then he had searched his leather pocketbook and spilled out the contents in his hand—two silver dollars and a half.

108

"Is that all we've got left, Jim?" his wife had asked. "That's all." "But we can't go anywhere with that." "We can get out of here," he said. He called a negro boy to help him with the baggage and they hurried down the hill to the levee where the "Mary Queen" was tied—not a big boat to be sure, for the big boats stopped at Memphis, but with two high smokestacks side by side, and a big stern paddle with her name in bright gold letters—the first boat Madge had ever seen. "Where to?" the ticket agent questioned. "As far as this'll go," Jim said and shoved his money underneath the wicket. "You ain't particular," the man grinned, checking the family with his eye. "I ain't particular." "For a dollar more you could go to Burlington." "I'll go where that'll take me." 'Teh, well—Wyattville, I guess, is the closest I can make it." He handed out two tickets and pushed back four silver dimes, one of which Jim gave to the waiting negro boy. And in Wyattville Jim Braden spent the long balance of his lazy, worthless l i f e . . .

109

1945

AWARD

ABOUT THE AMERICANS IN ITALY DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR BY JOHN R . HERSEY

John Richard Hersey (born on June 17, 1914, in Tientsin, China), the son of American missionaries, was brought up and educated in China until he was ten years old. Deciding early that he wanted to be a journalist, he studied at Hotchkiss Preparatory School, then at Yale University, and after his graduation from Yale in 1936, he went to Clare College in Cambridge, England, for postgraduate work. In the summer of 1937 he became private secretary to Sinclair Lewis and in the fall of the same year he joined the staff of Time. In 1939 Hersey was sent to the Orient by Time to report on the Far Eastern situation. The experiences and information he gathered during this assignment went into his first book, Men on Bataan, published in 1942. In July of the same year he was sent to the Pacific area as correspondent for Time and again a book resulted from the impressions he had gained; it was brought out under the title Into the Valley. From May to September 1943 Hersey reported from the Mediterranean, where he accompanied the American invasion forces from Africa to Italy. Upon his return to the United States he began work on a novel. Entitled A Bell for Adano, the book was published in early 1944. That same year it was made into a motion picture and a Broadway play. In 1945 it won John R. Hersey the Pulitzer Prize for novel.

110

S T Y L E SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING

CHAPTER

[Source: John Hersey: A Bell for Adano, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1944, pp. 3-5.]

had come to the town of Adano. An American corporal ran tautly along the dirty Via Favemi and at the corner he threw himself down. He made certain arrangements with his light machine gun and then turned and beckoned to his friends to come forward. In the Via Calabria, in another part of town, a party of three crept forward like cats. An explosion, possibly of a mortar shell, at some distance to the north but apparently inside the town, caused them to fall flat with a splash of dust. They waited on their bellies to see what would happen. An entire platoon ducked from grave to grave in the Capucin Cemetery high on the hill overlooking town. The entire platoon was scared. They were out of touch with their unit. They did not know the situation. They were near their objective, which was the rocky crest not far off, but they wanted to find out what was going on in the town before they moved on. All through the town of Adano, Americans were like this. They were not getting much resistance, but it was their first day of invasion, and they were tight in their muscles. But at one of the sulphur loading jetties at the port a Major with a brief case under his arm stepped from the sliding gangway of LCI No. 9488, and he seemed to be wholly calm. INVASION

111

"Borth," he said to the sergeant who followed him onto the jetty, "this is like coming home, how often I have dreamed this." And he bent over and touched the palm of his hand to the jetty, then dusted his palm off on his woolen pants. This man was Major Victor Joppolo, who had been named senior civil affairs officer of the town of Adano, representing Amgot. He was a man of medium height, with the dark skin of his parents, who were Italians from near Florence. He had a mustache. His face was round and his cheeks seemed cheerful but his eyes were intense and serious. He was about thirty-five. The sergeant with him was Leonard Borth, an M.P., who was to be in charge of matters of security in Adano: he was to help weed out the bad Italians and make use of the good ones. Borth had volunteered to be the first to go into the town with the Major. Borth had no fear; he cared about nothing. He was of Hungarian parentage, and he had lived many places — in Budapest, where he had taken pre-medical studies, in Rome, where he had been a correspondent for Pester Lloyd, in Vienna, where he had worked in a travel agency, in Marseille, where he had been secretary to a rich exporter, in Boston, where he had been a reporter for the Herald, and in San Francisco, where he sold radios. Still he was less than thirty. He was an American citizen and an enlisted man by choice. To him the whole war was a cynical joke, and he considered his job in the war to make people take themselves less seriously. When the Major touched Italian soil, Borth said: "You are too sentimental/' The Major said: "Maybe, but you will be the same when you get to Hungary."

112

"Never, not me." The Major looked toward the town and said: "Do you think it's safe now?" Borth said: "Why not?" "Then how do we go?" Borth unfolded a map case deliberately. He put a freckled finger on the celluloid cover and said: "Here, by the Via Barrino as far as the Via of October Twentyeight, and the Piazza is at the top of the Via of October Twenty-eight." "October Twenty-eight," the Major said, "what is that, October Twenty-eight?" "That's the date of Mussolini's march on Rome, in 1922," Borth said. "It is the day when Mussolini thinks he began to be a big shot." Borth was very good at memory...

113

1946

AWARD

ABOUT THE WITHHOLD OF THE NOVEL PRIZE BY THE ADVISORY BOARD

Since the members of the 1946 Pulitzer Prize Novel Jury in their report could not reach an unanimous decision for any book to receive the prize for work published during the preceding year, the Advisory Board decided to give no award in this category.

114

NAMES OF THE BOARD MEMBERS VOTING FOR "NO AWARD"

Sevellon Brown

The Providence

Journal-Bulletin

Robert Choate

The Boston Herald

Kent Cooper

The Associated Press

Frank D. Fackenthal

Columbia University

Walter M. Harrison

The Daily Oklahoman, Oklahoma City

Arthur M. Howe

Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Frank R. Kent

The Baltimore Sun

John S. Knight

Knight Newspapers Inc.

Arthur Krock

The New York Times

William R. Mathews

The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson

Stuart H. Perry

The Adrian (Mich.) Telegram

Harold S. Pollard

New York World-Telegram

Joseph Pulitzer (II)

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Roy A. Roberts

Kansas City Star

115

1947

AWARD

ABOUT THE TRAGEDY OF THREE FORMER CHILDHOOD FRIENDS BY ROBERT P . WARREN

Robert Penn Warren (born on April 24, 1905, in Guthrie, Ky.) entered Vanderbilt University in 1921. In his junior year he joined the Fugitive Group, an association of poets central to the Southern Literary Renaissance. In 1925 he obtained his B.A. degree from Vanderbilt, graduating summa cum laude, and then enrolled in the University of California at Berkeley, to study for his M.A. degree, which he received in 1927. After taking another year of graduate courses at Yale University, he went to England as a Rhodes Scholar for two years of study at Oxford University, which granted him the B.Litt. degree in 1930. At Oxford, Warren had taken time from his academic work to complete John Brown: The Making of a Martyr, his first published book. On his return from England he taught for a year as assistant professor of English at Southwestern College in Memphis. He then held the rank of acting assistant professor at Vanderbilt University from 1931 to 1934, when he moved on to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where in 1936 he was promoted to associate professor. In 1942 he not only accepted an appointment to a full professorship at the University of Minnesota but also took over the direction of its creative writing program. Warren's book publications include: Understanding Poetry and Understanding Fiction·, Thirtysix Poems', Eleven Poems on the Same Theme·, and Selected Poems, 19231943. Moreover he wrote the novels Night Rider, At Heaven's Gate·, and All the King's Men. The last-mentioned work, a portrayal of a Southern demagogue, earned Robert P. Warren the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for the best novel published during the preceding year.

116

STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: Robert P e n n W a r r e n : All the King's M e n , N e w Y o r k : H a r c o u r t , Brace and C o m p a n y . 1946, pp. 3-5.]

MASON CITY.

T o get there you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new. Or was new, that day we went up it. You look up the highway and it is straight for miles, coming at you, with the black line down the center coming at and at you, black and slick and tarry-shining against the white of the slab, and the heat dazzles up from the white slab so that only the black line is clear, coming at you with the whine of the tires, and if you don't quit staring at that line and don't take a few deep breaths and slap yourself hard on the back of the neck you'll hypnotize yourself and you'll come to just at the moment when the right front wheel hooks over into the black dirt shoulder off the slab, and you'll try to jerk her back on but you can't because the slab is high like a curb, and maybe you'll try to reach to turn off the ignition just as she starts the dive. But you won't make it, of course. T h e n a nigger chopping cotton a mile away, he'll look up and see the little column of black smoke standing up above the vitriolic, arsenical green of the cotton rows, and up against the violent, metallic, throbbing blue of the sky, and he'll say, " L a w d God, hit's a-nudder one done done hit!" And the next nigger down the next row, he'll say, " L a w d God," and the first nigger will giggle, and the hoe will lift again and the blade will flash in the sun like a heliograph. T h e n a few days later the boys from die Highway Department will mark the spot with a little metal square on a metal rod stuck in the black dirt off the shoulder, the metal square painted white and on it in black a skull and crossbones. Later on love vine will climb up it, out of the weeds. But if you wake up in time and don't hook your wheel off the slab, you'll go whipping on into the dazzle and now and then a car will come at you steady out of the dazzle and will pass you with a snatching sound as though God-Almighty had ripped a tin roof loose with his bare hands. Way off ahead of you, at the horizon where the cotton fields are blurred into the light, the slab will glitter and gleam like water, as though the road were flooded. You'll

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go whipping toward it, but it will always be ahead of you, that bright, flooded place, like a mirage. You'll go past the little white metal squares set on metal rods, with the skull and crossbones on them to mark the spot. For this is the country where the age of the internal combustion engine has come into its own. Where every boy is Barney Oldfield, and the girls wear organdy and batiste and eyelet embroidery and no panties on account of the climate and have smooth little faces to break your heart and when the wind of the car's speed lifts up their hair at the temples you see the sweet little beads of perspiration nestling there, and they sit low in the seat with their little spines crooked and their bent knees high toward the dashboard and not too close together for the cool, if you could call it that, from the hood ventilator. Where the smell of gasoline and burning brake bands and red-eye is sweeter than myrrh. Where the eight-cylinder jobs come roaring round the curvcs in the red hills and scatter the gravel like spray, and when they ever get down in the flat country and hit the new slab, God have mercy on the mariner. On up Number 58, and the country breaks. T h e flat country and the big cotton fields are gone now, and the grove of live oaks way off yonder where the big house is, and the whitewashed shacks, all just alike, set in a row by the cotton fields with the cotton growing up to the doorstep, -where the pickaninny sits like a black Billiken and sucks its thumb and watches you go by. That's all left behind now. It is red hills now, not high, with blackberry bushes along the fence rows, and blackjack clumps in the bottoms and now and then a place where the second-growth pines stand close together if they haven't burned over for sheep grass, and if they have burned over, there are the black stubs. T h e cotton patches cling to the hillsides, and the gullies cut across the cotton patches. T h e corn blades hang stiff and are streaked with yellow. There were pine forests here a long time ago but they are gone. T h e bastards got in here and set up the mills and laid the narrowgauge tracks and knocked together the company commissaries and paid a dollar a day and folks swarmed out of the brush for the dollar and folks came from God knows where, riding in wagons with a chest of drawers and a bedstead canted together in the wagon bed, and five kids huddled down together and the old woman hunched on the wagon seat with a poke bonnet on her head and snuff on her gums and a young one hanging on her tit. The saws

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sang soprano and the clerk in the commissary passed out the blackstrap molasses and the sow-belly and wrote in his big book, and the Yankee dollar and Confederate dumbness collaborated to heal the wounds of four years of fratricidal strife, and all was merry as a marriage bell. Till, all of a sudden, there weren't any more pine trees. They stripped the mills. The narrow-gauge tracks got covered with grass. Folks tore down the commissaries for kindling wood. There wasn't any more dollar a day. The big boys were gone, with diamond rings on their fingers and broadcloth on their backs. But a good many of the folks stayed right on, and watched the gullies eat deeper into the red clay. And a good handful of those folks and their heirs and assigns stayed in Mason City, four thousand of them, more or less. You come in on Number 58, and pass the cotton gin and the power station and the fringe of nigger shacks and bump across the railroad track and down a street where there are a lot of little houses painted white one time, with the sad valentine lace of gingerbread work around the eaves of the veranda, and tin roofs, and where the leaves on the trees in the yards hang straight down in the heat, and above the mannerly whisper of your eighty-horsepower valve-in-head (or whatever it is) drifting at forty, you hear the July flies grinding away in the verdure. That was the way it was the last time I saw Mason City, nearly three years ago, back in the summer of 1936...

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1948

AWARD

ABOUT THE SOUTH PACIFIC ISLANDS DURING WORLD WAR TWO BY JAMES A .

MICHENER

James Albert Michener (born on February 3, 1907, in New York, N.Y.) studied on a scholarship at Swarthmore College. Majoring in English, he graduated with a B.A. degree, summa cum laude, in 1929. Subsequently, he taught as a master at the Hill School, a preparatory school in Pottstown, Pa. In 1931 he left teaching for study in Europe on a two-year Lippincott traveling grant. Returning to the U.S. Michener resumed teaching English at the George School in Newtown, Pa. In 1936 he enrolled in the Colorado State College of Education at Greeley to obtain his M.A. degree. Having also joined the faculty at Greeley, he taught there as associate professor. During the academic year of 1940/41 he also filled the post of visiting professor of history at Harvard University's School of Education. In 1941 Michener accepted a position as associate editor in the education department of the Macmillan publishing company in New York City. The following year he enlisted in the Navy, advancing to lieutenant commander and becoming chief Naval historical officer for the area from Australia to French Oceania. After his release from the Navy in 1946, he returned to his old job of editing textbooks. During a slack period in his service Michener had withdrawn to a small Pacific island to write fictional sketches based on his wartime experiences and observations. He offered his manuscript to his employer, Macmillan, which published Tales of the South Pacific in early 1947. His first book earned James A. Michener the Pulitzer Prize for fiction of the following year.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: J a m e s A . M i c h e n e r : T a l e s of the South Pacific, N e w Y o r k : T h e M a c m i l l a n C o m p a n y , 1947, pp. 1-3.1

I WISH I could tell you about the South Pacific. T h e way it actually was. T h e endless ocean. T h e infinite specks of coral we called islands. Coconut palms nodding gracefully toward the ocean. Reefs upon which waves broke into spray, and inner lagoons, lovely beyond description. I wish I could tell you about the sweating jungle, the full moon rising behind the volcanoes, and the waiting. T h e waiting. T h e timeless, repetitive waiting. But whenever I start to talk about the South Pacific, people intervene. I try to tell somebody what the steaming Hebrides were like, and first thing you know I'm telling about the eld Tonkinese woman who used to sell h u m a n heads. As souvenirs. For fifty dollars! Or somebody asks me, " W h a t was Guadalcanal actually like?" A n d before I can describe that godforsaken backwash of the world, I'm rambling on about the Remittance Man, who lived among the Japs and sent us radio news of their movements. T h a t is, he sent the news until one day. T h e people intervene. T h e old savage who wanted more than anything else in the world to j u m p from an airplane and float down to earth in a parachute. "Alia same big fella bird!" he used to shout, ecstatically, until one day we took him up and shoved him out. Ever afterward he walked in silence among the black men, a soul apart, like one who had discovered things best hidden f r o m humanity. Or I get started on the m a d commander who used to get u p at two o'clock in the morning and scuff barefooted over the floors of his new hut. "Carpenter! Carpenter!" he would shout into the jungle night. "There's a rough spot over here!" A n d some drowsy enlisted m a n would shuffle from his sweating b u n k and appear with sanding blocks. "See if you can get those splinters out, son," the commander would say softly. T a k e the other night u p in Detroit. Some of us were waiting for a train. T h e air in the saloon was heavy. For more than an hour a major told us about his experiences with Patton in Africa, in Sicily,

121 and in France. H e used great phrases such as: "vast deployment to the east," "four crushing days into Palermo," "a sweeping thrust toward the open land south of Paris," " a gigantic pincers movement toward the heart of V o n Rundstedt's position." When he had won the war, he turned to me and asked, " W h a t was it like in the Pacific?" I started to reply as honestly as I could. But somehow or other I got mixed up with that kid I knew on a rock out there. Twenty-seven months on one rock. Heat itch all the time. Half a dozen trees. Got involved in the bootlegging scandal. Helped repair a ship bound for the landing at Kuralei. A n d then he got a cablegram from home. " W h y , helll" the major snorted. "Seems all he did was sit on his ass and wait." "That's exactly it!" I cried, happy to find at last someone who knew what I was talking about. "That's a hell of a way to fight a war I" he grunted in disgust, and within the moment we had crossed the Rhine and were coursing the golden tanks down the autobahnen. But our war was waiting. Y o u rotted on N e w Caledonia waiting for Guadalcanal. T h e n you sweated twenty pounds away in Guadal waiting for Bougainville. There were battles, of course. But they were flaming things of the bitter moment. A blinding flash at Tulagi. A day of horror at T a r a w a . A n evening of terror on Kuralei. Then you relaxed and waited. A n d pretty soon you hated the man next to you, and you dreaded the look of a coconut tree. I served in the South Pacific during the bitter days of '41 through '43. I was only a paper-work sailor, traveling from island to island, but 1 did get to know some of the men who actually directed the battles. There was Old Bull Halsey who had the guts to grunt out, when we were taking a pasting, "We'll be in T o k y o by Christmasl" N o n e of us believed him, but we felt better that we were led by men like him. I also knew Admiral McCain in a very minor way. H e was an ugly old aviator. One day he flew over Santo and pointed down at that island wilderness and said, "That's where we'll build our base." A n d the base was built there, and millions of dollars were spent there, and everyone agrees that Santo was the best base the N a v y ever built in the region. I was always mighty proud of McCain, for he was in aviation, too.

122 Then there was little Aubrey Fitch who (ought his planes in all the battles and banged away until the Japs just had to stop coming. I knew him later. I saw Vandegrift, of the Marines, who made the landing at Guadal, and bulldog General Patch who cleaned up that island and then went on to take Southern France. Seeing these men in their dirty clothes after long hours of work knocked out any ideas I had of heroes. None of them was ever a hero to me. It was somewhat like my introduction to Admiral Millard Kester, who led the great strike at Kuralei. I was in the head at Efate, a sort of French pissoir, when I heard a great swearing in one of the improvised booths. Out came a rear admiral with the zipper of his pants caught in his underwear. "Goddamned things. I never wanted to buy them anyway. Sold me a bill of goods." I laughed at his predicament. "Don't stand there gawking. Get someone who can fix these zippers," he snapped, only he had a lot of adjectives before the infuriating zippers. I went into the bar. "Anybody in here fix a zipper?" I asked, and a chief machinist said he thought he could, but he was drunk and all he did was to rip the admiral's underwear, which made me laugh again. And finally my laughing made Admiral Kester so mad that he tore off both his pants and his underwear and ripped the cloth out of the offending zipper and threw it away. Even then the zipper wouldn't work. So there he was in just a khaki shirt, swearing. But finally we got a machinist who wasn't drunk, and the zipper was fixed. Then Admiral Kester put his pants back on and went into the bar. Fortunately for me, he didn't know my name t h e n . . .

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1949 AWARD ABOUT THE DEEPER MEANING OF HUMAN CONFLICT SITUATIONS BY JAMES G . COZZENS

James Gould Cozzens (born on August 19, 1903, in Chicago, 111.) entered Harvard College in 1922. While he was a sophomore there, his first novel, Confusion, was published. Obtaining a leave of absence, in his junior year, to write Michael Scarlett, he spent a year in Cuba's Santa Clara province, where he taught in a sugar company's school for the children of American engineers. Cozzens did not return to college. In the summer of 1926 he departed for Europe, to remain there for a year. His next book, The Cock Pit, a novel dealing with the Cuban sugar industry, appeared in 1928. It was followed by The Sons of Perdition in 1929 and S. S. San Pedro in 1931. Two years later Cozzens became the owner of a farm in Lambertville, N.J., where he continued his writing except for a short period in the thirties, when he served as temporary guest editor on the staff of Fortune. His books The Last Adam, which was adapted for a motion picture, and The Castaway appeared in 1933 and 1934. Men and Brethren, Cozzens' account of two days in the life and work of an Episcopal minister in New York City, came out in 1936. In the early 1940's he wrote the two novels Ask Me Tomorrow and The Just and the Unjust. Cozzens, who volunteered for the Army Air Forces in 1942 and was discharged as a major at the end of 1945, began the writing of his eleventh novel a few days after his release. A 1948 book, Guard of Honor, earned James G. Cozzens in the following year the Pulitzer Prize for the most distinguished fiction published in book form.

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S T Y L E SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING

CHAPTER

[Source: James Gould Cozzens: Guard of Honor, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1948, pp. 3-5.]

late afternoon they flew southeast, going home to Ocanara at about two hundred miles an hour. Inside the spic and span fuselage—the plane was a new twin-engine advanced trainer of the type designated A T - 7 — this speed was not noticeable. Though the engines steadily and powerfully vibrated and time was passing, the shining plane seemed stationary, swaying gently and slightly oscillating, a little higher than the stationary, dull-crimson sphere of the low sun. It hung at perpetual dead center in an immense shallow bowl of summer haze, delicately lavender. T h e bottom of the bowl, six thousand feet below, was colored a soft olive brown; a blending, hardly distinguishable, of the wide, swampy river courses, the overgrown hammocks, the rolling, heat-shaken savannas, the dry, trackless, palmetto flatlands that make up so much of the rank but poor champaign of lower Alabama and northwestern Florida. Within the last few minutes, far off on the right and too gradually to break the illusion of standing still, the dim, irregular edge of an enormous, flat, metallic-gray splotch had begun to appear. It was the Gulf of Mexico. Η ROUGH T H E

T h e original A T - 7 ' s , of which this was one, were delivered to the A r m y Air Forces in the second summer, of the war. Meant for use in navigator training, their cabins were equipped with three navigator's positions—a seat; a plotting table; a drift meter and an aperiodic compass; a radio headset and a hand microphone. On the bulkhead wall behind the pilots' compartment, placed where all three students would be able to see them, were a radio compass azimuth indicator and a simple

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supplementary instrument panel. In the cabin top was the miniature plexiglas dome of a navigation turret with a bracket for the pelorus. On the left wall, under, above, and around three small rectangular fuselage windows were racks for signal flares, oxygen bottles, so-called quick attachable parachutes, a long map case, and a pull-down seat on which the instructor could sit when he was not forward with the pilot. At the back, a little compartment afforded, when the door was closed, the refinement of privacy to a chemical toilet. Though an A T - 7 was designed to carry five people, this one was carrying seven. All of them were military personnel attached to the Army Air Forces Operations and Requirements Analysis Division, known as A F O R A D , which the Air Forces Board had set up at Ocanara, Florida; or to the Ocanara Army Air Base. In the third fuselage window, next to the entrance door, an oblong metal plaque was temporarily attached to the glass by strips of adhesive tape. The plaque was scarlet and bore two white stars, for the plane was piloted by Major General Ira N. Beal, commanding at Ocanara. General Beal had that morning flown up from Ocanara to Sellers Field, Mississippi, accompanied by three of his present passengers. They were Colonel Norman Ross, the Air Inspector on General Beal's Staff; Lieutenant Colonel Benny Carricker, a young fighter pilot who had served with the general overseas; and Master Sergeant Dominic Pellerino, the general's crew chief. The other three were pick-ups—Ocanara personnel who happened to be at Sellers Field for one reason or another and were now being given a ride back to their station. Captain Nathaniel Hicks, of the A F O R A D Special Projects Directorate, had been sent to Sellers Field on a project of that Directorate's Reports Section. Second Lieutenant Amanda Turck, of the Women's Army Corps, had no actual business at

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Sellers Field. She had come in to Sellers that morning on a plane that had given her a lift from Des Moines, Iowa. She had been at Des Moines on seven days temporary duty, taking a course in disciplinary regulations which, now that the Corps was part of the Army, must apply to the five hundred odd officers and enlisted women of the W A C detachment at Ocanara. A young, slender, and shy Negro Technician Fifth Grade belonging to an Ocanara Base Services Unit had been on furlough at his home near Sellers Field. His name, stenciled across the side of a little kit bag he carried, was Mortimer Mclntyre, Junior. These passengers had disposed themselves as well as they could for the three hour trip. Lieutenant Colonel Carricker was in the co-pilot's seat, up front with the general. Colonel Ross sat in the forward student-navigator's position. He had covered the plotting table immediately with piles of papers from his brief case; and he applied himself to thern except when General Beal, turning his head, addressed some remark to him. Captain Hicks sat in the middle navigator's position. He, too, had laid out work from a brief case; but he spent much of the time faced around, talking against the noise of engines to Lieutenant Turck, in the rear navigator's position. He and she knew each other, in the sense and to the extent that Nathaniel Hicks's work often required classified material from the library files which were in Lieutenant Turck's charge at Ocanara...

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1950 AWARD ABOUT THE DREAM OF THE RICH LANDS IN THE AMERICAN WEST BY ALFRED B . GUTHRIE JR.

Alfred Bertram Guthrie Jr. (born on January 13, 1901, in Bedford, Ind.) studied at the University of Washington, before he transferred to Montana State University, where he majored in journalism. While at college he contributed articles to a regional magazine, The Frontier. Graduated with honors in 1923, Guthrie subsequently worked in several jobs: in an electric plant, as a clerk in a chain grocery and in the advertising and selling department of a flour and feed mill. In 1926 the editor of the Lexington Leader engaged him as a reporter, and three years later he was advanced to the post of city editor. In the course of the twenty-one years he was with the Leader he became an editorial writer and finally its executive editor. In 1939 the newspaperman made his first attempt at writing fiction. The book was published in 1943 under the title Murders at Moon Dance. On leave from the Lexington paper in 1944/45, Guthrie attended Harvard University on a Nieman fellowship. At that time he also began writing his novel The Big Sky. From Harvard Guthrie returned to the Kentucky newspaper, where he remained until February 1947, shortly before the publication of The Big Sky. The next book by Alfred B. Guthrie Jr., The Way West, appeared in 1949. The year after, the novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [ S o u r c e : A. B . Guthrie, J r . : T h e W a y W e s t , N e w Y o r k : W i l l i a m S l o a n e A s s o c i a t e s , P u b l i s h e r s ,

1949,

pp. 1 - 3 ]

T H E DAY dawned clear, but it had rained the night before, the sudden squally rain of middle March. Taking a look out the kitchen door, seeing the path lead down to the muddy barnyard and the tracks of his shoepacks splashed in it, L i j e Evans was just as well satisfied that things were wet. It gave him an excuse not to work, even if he could be mending harness or fixing tools. Not that he minded work; it was just that he didn't feel like working today. "Likely I'll go to town, Rebecca," he said, closing the door. " T o talk about Oregon," she said, not quite as if she blamed him. "Why, now," he answered, smiling at her while he lounged over to a stool, " I hadn't give a thought to what I'll talk about. I'll talk about whatever comes up." He knew she saw through him, and he didn't care. She always had seen through him. " I don't know why everyone's gone crazy all of a sudden," she said while she wiped the last of the dishes and hung the towel on its peg. "Everyone talking about Oregon, and it so far away you can't think where." "Not everybody. Not as many as will b e . " "It'll blow over. You wait and see." She got the broom out of the corner. " I declare, that dog does track things up." Evans looked down at Rock, who had let himself fall in the middle of the floor after leaving the marks of his big pads on the worn wood. "Rock's a good dog." At the mention of his name, the dog lifted his head and got up slow and came over and put his chin in Evans' lap. He was getting old, Evans told himself, seeing the muzzle graying and the eyes beginning to shine dim with years. Rock was half

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hound and half no-one-knew-what, but he was a handsome dog, white and blue mixed, and a good one, too. "Reckon it's too much to ask him to wipe his feet before he comes in," Evans said. Rebecca grunted to that while she swept. "You can't go, boy," Evans said while he stroked Rock's head. "You chew u p them town dogs too much. You'll get me in trouble one of these days, that's what you'll do." "I ain't sure but what I'd say no. Of course you ain't goin', though. It's just talk." "How's that, Becky?" "No to Oregon." "Now, Becky," he said, "don't be makin' up your mind independent. What if I should take it into my head to light out with the rest?" She grunted again, and Evans knew it was because the thought of their splitting up was so outlandish. Another man, now, might not think she was much, heavy like she was and extra full-breasted, but she suited him, maybe as much for the way her mind worked as for anything else, maybe because she knew him up and down and inside out and still thought he was all right. A man got so he didn't see what other eyes saw; he got so that what he saw on the outside was what he knew lay underneath. "Reckon Brownie wants to trail along with me?" he asked. "You heard him say he was goin' fishin'. He's diggin' worms now." "Good thing to do." "There's a heap of you in him," she said, looking at him. "You used to like fishin' and such." "And I hate work." "I didn't say that, Lije. It ain't so." Evans had to smile inside. Every time he made little of himself, she said it wasn't so. "Oregon," he said, letting his thoughts

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drift, "it would be a good thing to a man, knowin' he had helped settle the country and so joined it to America." In his mind he went back over his words; they didn't tell what it was he felt. Becky didn't answer. " T h e huntin' and fishin' ought to be good in Oregon. Brownie would like that. A man wouldn't mess with rabbits and coons and possum there. Brownie wants to go." "Last time you talked, it was the soil was so good." "Soil, too. Everything." "How you know?" "It's what they say." "Dick Summers don't think Oregon's so much, not for farmin'." "Dick don't look on it that way, is all. lie thinks about Injuns and furs and such. Farmin' don't come natural to him." "He does all right." "It still don't come natural. You can keep a varmint in a cage, but it don't come natural to him. Not that Dick's like a varmint." "You ought to call round on him, Lije. Mattie looks awful poorly." "Maybe I ought to." She stepped over toward h i m . . .

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1951

AWARD

ABOUT THE AMERICAN PIONEERS ON THE WAY TO CIVILIZATION BY CONRAD M .

RICHTER

Conrad Michael Richter (born on October 13, 1890, in Pine Grove, Pa.) graduated from high school at the age of fifteen. Thereafter, he was employed in a variety of jobs: in a machine shop, a coal breaker, and a bank, among others. In 1909 he joined the staff of the Johnstown (Pa.) Journal as a reporter and he also edited the Weekly Courier at Patton, Pa. In 1910 he became a reporter on the Pittsburgh Dispatch, and later reported for the Johnstown Leader. In April 1914 Richter's first fiction short story, "Brothers of No Kin," appeared in the Forum. Subsequently, he wrote children's stories for John Martin's Book. During World War I he became the publisher of the children's periodical, Junior Magazine Book. Meanwhile his stories were appearing in periodicals such as Ladies' Home Journal, Outlook, Everybody's Magazine, and American Mercury. In 1924 twelve of these stories were reprinted in book form as Brothers of No Kin, and Other Stories. In 1933 Richter began writing a series of stories on frontier life in the old Southwest, nine of them were collected in the book Early Americana, and Other Stories. The Sea of Grass, Richter's first novel, was initially serialized in the Saturday Evening Post and later made into a motion picture. It was followed by Tacey Cromwell·, The Free Men', and Always Young and Fair. The novel The Town is the concluding volume of a trilogy including The Trees and The Fields, which traces pioneer experience on the Ohio frontier. In 1951 The Town won Conrad M. Richter the Pulitzer Prize for the best fictional work published during the previous year.

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S T Y L E SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: Conrad Richter: The T o w n , New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1950, pp. 3-5.]

awoke this day with the feeling that something had happened to her. What it was, she didn't know as yet, or if it was for better or for worse, but inside of her a change had taken place. She wasn't the same as last month or last year. That much she could tell. She lay beside Portius studying this thing out. Twice, she recollected, she had such a feeling before, the first time when she was no more than a stout chit of a girl. She lived in old Pennsylvany then with her mammy, pappy, brother and sisters. She had woke up in the middle of the night with the singular notion that her life was over and done. N o w wasn't that a funny way for a young girl to think? Well, if her time on earth was done, then it was done, she said to herself, and she was much obliged for being told so she could get ready for heaven. It sobered her but she couldn't say that it frightened her any. She reckoned she could get along in the next life, if she tried, as well as in this one. AYWARD

S

That day or the next her pappy came home and told how the squirrels were leaving the country. Before the week was up, her life by the Juniata was over and she was following the trace westward along with Worth and Jary, Genny and Achsa, Wyitt and Sulie, lighting out with all they had on their backs, traipsing for another land, saying goodby to old Pennsylvany, the only state she ever knew up to then and would never lay eyes on again.

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T h e second time she felt such a change inside her was the time she and Portius got married. N o t when she stood up and heard Squire Chew say the lawful words nor during the frolic afterwards. N o , it came deep in the night long after all the folks had gone home, all save her and Portius. They were in the cabin alone. She lay in bed with her new man a sleeping beside her like he did now. But she had no notion to waste this hour in foolish deadness to the world. N o , she wanted to study out what had happened to her tonight. Never before had she known a man or what it was like. Oh, she had heard enough about it. They was some who played it up to the sky, but as far as she was concerned, it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Just the same, as she lay there still as a mouse, she could feel the change in her, something she had never known before, a running along her blood and stirring in all her veins. And if she didn't know it then, she did a couple months afterwards that it was life. N o w this third time she wouldn't be sure. N o t always could you put off Death and she wasn't as young and spry as she used to be. No, she had lived a mighty long time. She was in her late forties and she thought her mam an old woman when she gave up and died at thirty-seven. N o w she lay quiet till daylight came a sifting in the window. Then she got up, making no noise. Outside she stopped a minute on the way to the backhouse to look around. This was the top hour of the day and foolish were them who reckoned it the bottom, for the world like a human rested up at night, and that's why it was never so fresh after the first hour of the morning. The fields looked as if they just came out of the dye kettle. The town lay like it always lay

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there, with two streets already on the river bank and crossway streets at either end reaching out and closing her place in. Just to see it made her feel old for fair. Why, when she came here as a girl, all this was solid woods. N o t a white folks cabin for miles east or west, south to the Forks or north towards the English Lakes. Anywhere you turned, the trees stood so close and thick that Jary had to suck for breath. The first year you hardly saw another white person. These days folks were always stopping off from their old states to settle down at Moonshine Church. When she came back in, the fire looked like it was out, but she knew there would be coals a glowing and winking down under the ash and that the water in the big kettle would still be good and warm. The others could lay abed a while till she washed herself all over, for so busy was she Saturday and Saturday night with ten others to get washed that she had to wait for Sunday morning when it was generally too chilly for these younger ones. She pulled off her old robe and bedgown. Let the girls look down the loft hole at their mam naked if they liked. They would only see how they'd look themselves thirty or forty years hence...

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1952

AWARD

ABOUT THE LIVES OF MEN ON SHIPBOARD AND THEIR PROBLEMS BY HERMAN W O U K

Herman Wouk (born on May 27, 1915, in New York, N.Y.) attended Columbia University, majoring in comparative literature and philosophy. During his college years he edited Columbia's humor magazine and wrote two varsity shows. In 1934 he acquired the Bachelor of Arts degree. After his graduation he was hired as a "gagman" grinding out material for radio comedians. He subsequently turned to script-writing for the radio. With the outbreak of World War II, Wouk went to work for the United States Treasury, writing and producing radio shows to promote the sale of bonds. In 1941 he enlisted in the Navy, serving as an officer. While being on sea duty, he began writing a novel under the title Aurora Dawn. Wouk worked on the book during off-hours, completing it in 1946. His next book, City Boy, describing the coming-of-age of a schoolboy in the Bronx, was published in 1948 and filmed by Columbia Pictures. The same year Wouk wrote another film, Slattery's Hurricane, a story of Navy weather fliers. Wouk also worked as a playwright: his melodrama The Traitor was produced on Broadway in 1949. The Caine Mutiny, a novel set in World War II, appeared in 1951 and in the following year made Herman Wouk the winner of the Pulitzer Prize in the Fiction category.

136

S T Y L E SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING

CHAPTER

[Source: H e r m a n W o u k : T h e C a i n e M u t i n y - A Novel of W o r l d W a r II, G a r d e n City, N . Y . : D o u b l e d a y & C o m p a n y , Inc., 1951, pp. 2-4.]

He was of medium height, somewhat chubby, and good looking, with curly red hair and an innocent, gay face, more remarkable for a humorous air about the eyes and large mouth than for any strength of chin or nobility of nose. He had graduated from Princeton in 1941 with high marks in all subjects except mathematics and sciences. His academic specialty had been comparative literature. But his real career at Princeton had consisted of playing the piano and inventing bright little songs for parties and shows. He kissed his mother good-by on the sidewalk near the corner of Broadway and 116th Street in New York City, on a cold sunny morning in December 1942. The family Cadillac was parked beside them, its motor running, but maintaining a well-bred silence. Around them stood the dingy gray-and-red buildings of Columbia University. "Don't you think," said Mrs. Keith, smiling bravely, "that we might stop in that drugstore first and have a sandwich?" She had driven her son to the midshipmen school from their home in Manhasset, despite Willie's protests. Willie had wanted to take the train. It would have seemed more like departing for the wars; he did not like being escorted to the gates of the Navy by his mother. But Mrs. Keith had prevailed as usual. She was a large, wise, firm woman, as tall as her son, and well endowed with brow and jaw. This morning she was wearing a fur-trimmed brown cloth coat instead of mink, to match the austerity of the event. Beneath her mannish brown hat her hair showed the dominant red strain that had reappeared in her only child. Otherwise there was little resemblance between mother and son. "The Navy'll feed me, Mom. Don't worry." He kissed her for the second time and glanced nervously about, hoping that no military men were observing the overtender scene. Mrs. Keith pressed his shoulder lovingly. "I know you'll do wonderfully, Willie. Just as you always have." "Aye aye, Mother." Willie strode along the brick walk past the School of Journalism, and down a few steps to the entrance of Furnald

137

Hall, formerly a dormitory for law students. A grizzled, pudgy N a v y chief with four red service stripes on his blue coat stood in the doorway. Mimeographed papers in his hand flapped in the breeze. Willie wondered whether to salute, and swiftly decided that the gesture did not go well with a brown raglan coat and green pork-pie hat. He had completely forgotten his mother. "You V-7?" T h e chief's voice was like a shovelful of pebbles dropped on tin. " A y e aye." Willie grinned self-consciously. T h e chief returned the grin and appraised him briefly with, it seemed, an affectionate eye. H e handed Willie four sheets clipped together. "You're starting a new line. Good luck." " T h a n k you, sir." For three weeks Willie was to make the mistake of calling chiefs "sir." T h e chief opened the door invitingly. Willis Seward Keith stepped out of the sunshine across the threshold. It was done as easily and noiselessly as Alice's stepping through the looking glass; and like Alice, Willie Keith passed into a new and exceedingly strange world. At the instant that Mrs. Keith saw Willie swallowed up, she remembered that she had neglected an important transaction. She ran to the entrance of Furnald Hall. T h e chief stopped her as she laid a hand on the doorknob. "Sorry, madam. N o admittance." " T h a t was my son who just went in." "Sorry, madam." " I only want to see him for a moment. I must speak to him. He forgot something." "They're taking physicals in there, madam. There are men walking around with nothing on." Mrs. Keith was not used to being argued with. Her tone sharpened. "Don't be absurd. There he is, just inside the door. I can rap and call him out." She could see her son plainly, his back toward her, grouped with several other young men around an officer who was talking to them. T h e chief glanced dourly through the door. " H e seems to be busy." Mrs. Keith gave him a look appropriate to fresh doormen. She rapped on the glass of the outer door with her diamond ring and cried, "Willie! Willie!" But her son did not hear her call from the other world.

138

"Madam," said the chief, with a note in his rasping voice that was not unkind, "he's in the Navy now." Mrs. Keith suddenly blushed. "I'm sorry." "Okay, okay. You'll see him again soon—maybe Saturday." The mother opened her purse and began to fish in i t "You see, I promised—the fact is, he forgot to take his spending money. He hasn't a cent. Would you be kind enough to give these to him?" "Madam, he won't need money." The chief made an uneasy pretense of leafing through the papers he held. "He'll be getting paid pretty soon." "But meantime—suppose he wants some? I promised him. Please take the money— Pardon me, but I'd be happy to give you something for your trouble." The chiefs gray eyebrows rose. "That won't be necessary." He wagged his head like a dog shaking off flies, and accepted the bills. Up went the eyebrows again. "Madam—this here is a hundred dollars!" He stared at her. Mrs. Keith was struck with an unfamiliar sensation —shame at being better off than most people. "Well," she said defensively, "it isn't every day he goes to fight a war." "I'll take care of it, madam." 'Thank you," said Mrs. Keith, and then, vaguely, "I'm sorry." "Okay." The mother closed with a polite smile, and walked off to her Cadillac. The chief looked after her, then glanced at the two fifties fluttering in his hand. "One thing," he muttered, "we're sure as hell getting a new kind of Navy." He thrust the bills into a pocket...

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1953

AWARD

ABOUT THE OLD FISHERMAN IN THE WORLD OF THE GULF STREAM BY ERNEST M .

HEMINGWAY

Ernest Miller Hemingway (born on July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, 111.) graduated from Oak Park High School in 1917 and was given a junior position on the Kansas City Star. In 1918 he volunteered for war duty with the Red Cross ambulance corps in Italy, but, shortly after, was wounded. Hemingway joined the staff of the Toronto Star in 1920 and the year after he went to Europe as one of the paper's correspondents. There he published in 1924 in our time which was enlarged and re-published in 1925 as In Our Time. It was followed by The Torrents of Spring. Hemingway next wrote a novel based on his years in Europe after the war: The Sun Also Rises. In A Farewell to Arms, published in 1929, he recreated the dramatic birth of his first son. During the 1930's he turned out a collection of stories, Winner Take Nothing·, Green Hills of Africa, an account of his safari adventures, and the novel To Have and Have Not. Hemingway also covered the Spanish Civil War as a reporter for the North American Newspaper Alliance. On behalf of the Loyalist cause in Spain he helped to raise money for medical supplies and ambulances. Out of this experience he wrote a play, The Fifth Column, which was published in 1938 along with The First Forty-nine Stories, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, a novel about an American Spanish instructor who fights with the Loyalist forces. In 1944 Hemingway went to England as a correspondent for Collier's, and attached himself to Allied forces in France, serving as scout, interrogator and journalist. After World War II Ernest M. Hemingway went to Cuba, which also serves as a setting to his book The Old Man and the Sea. The novel won him the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for the best fictional work published during the preceding year.

140

STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man and the Sea, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952, pp. 9-11.]

Η

e was an old man who fished alone in a

skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy's parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat. The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy

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fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert. Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated. "Santiago," the boy said to him as they climbed the bank from where the skiff was hauled up. "I could go with you again. We've made some money." The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him. "No," the old man said. "You're with a lucky boat. Stay with them." "But remember how you went eighty-seven days without fish and then we caught big ones every day for three weeks." "I remember," the old man said. "I know you did not leave me because you doubted." "It was papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him." "I know," the old man said. "It is quite normal." "He hasn't much faith." "No," the old man said. "But we have. Haven't we?"

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"Yes," the boy said. "Can I offer you a beer on the Terrace and then we'll take the stuff home." "Why not?" the old man said. "Between fisher>t

men. They sat on the Terrace and many of the fishermen made fun of the old man and he was not angry. Others, of the older fishermen, looked at him and were sad. But they did not show it and they spoke politely about the current and the depths they had drifted their lines at and the steady good weather and of what they had seen. The successful fishermen of that day were already in and had butchered their marlin out and carried them laid full length across two planks, with two men staggering at the end of each plank, to the fish house where they waited for the ice truck to carry them to the market in Havana...

143

1954 AWARD ABOUT THE WITHHOLD OF THE FICTION PRIZE BY THE ADVISORY BOARD

Since the members of the 1954 Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury in their report could not reach an unanimous decision for any book to receive the prize for work published during the preceding year, the Advisory Board decided to give no award in this category.

144

NAMES OF THE BOARD MEMBERS VOTING FOR "NO AWARD"

Sevellon Brown

The Providence

Journal-Bulletin

Hodding Carter

Delta Democrat-Times,

Green-

ville, Miss. Robert Choate

The Boston Herald

Kent Cooper

The Associated

Gardner Cowles Jr.

The Des Moines Register & Tribune

J. Donald Ferguson

Milwaukee

Grayson Kirk

Columbia University

John S. Knight

Knight Newspapers

Arthur Krock

The New York Times

Benjamin McKelway

The Evening Star, Washington, D.C.

William R. Mathews

The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson

Stuart H. Perry

The Adrian (Mich.) Telegram

Joseph Pulitzer (II)

St. Louis

Press

Journal

Inc.

Post-Dispatch

145

1955

AWARD

ABOUT THE REVOLT OF A FRENCH ARMY UNIT IN WORLD WAR ONE BY WILLIAM FAULKNER

William Faulkner (born on September 25, 1897, in New Albany, Miss.) enrolled at the University of Mississippi, but withdrew after a year without taking a degree. In 1924 Faulkner brought out his first book of poems, The Marble Faun, and his first novel, Soldiers' Pay, was published two years later. It was followed by Sartoris and The Sound and the Fury, the first two of a series of interconnected novels and short stories dealing with the life and people of the fictional Mississippi county of Yaknapatawpha. In the early 1930's Faulkner published the novels As I Lay Dying·, Sanctuary·, Light in August, and Pylon, the collection of short stories, These Thirteen, and A Green Bough, another book of poems. In 1932 Faulkner went to Hollywood for the first time to adapt one of his short stories for the film, Today We Live·, on later visits he helped write the screen play of The Road to Glory and made the adaptations for Slave Ship; To Have and Have Not', and The Big Sleep. With the publication of the novels Absalom, Absalom! and The Onvanquished in 1936 and 1938 he returned to the Yaknapatawpha cycle. The Hamlef, Go Down Moses; and Other Stories·, and Intruder in the Dust count among the books he has written during the 1940's. In December 1950 Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He also received twice the O. Henry Memorial Short Story Award as well as the National Book Award of 1951. William Faulkner's novel A Fable, which appeared in 1954, earned him the Pulitzer Fiction Prize of the following year.

146

f

STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER

ι S o u r c e : W i l l i a m F a u l k n e r : A Fable, N e w Y o r k : R a n d o m H o u s e , 1954, pp. 3-5.]

• Long before the first bugles sounded from the barI racks within the city and the cantonments surroundI ing it, most of the people in the city were already awake. They did not need to rise from the straw mattresses and thin pallet beds of their hive-dense tenements, because few of them save the children had even lain down. Instead, they had huddled all night in one vast tongueless brotherhood of dread and anxiety, about the thin fires of braziers and meagre hearths, until the night wore at last away and a new day of anxiety and dread had begun. T h e original regiment had been raised in this district, raised in person, in fact, by one of those glorious blackguards who later became Napoleon's marshals, who delivered the regiment into the Emperor's own hand, and along with it became one of the fiercest stars in that constellation which filled half the sky with its portent and blasted half the earth with its lightning. And most of its subsequent replacements had been drawn from this same district, so that most of these old men were not only veterans of it in their time, and these male children already dedicated to it when their time should come, but all these people were parents and kin, not only the actual old parents and kin of the doomed men, but fathers and mothers and sisters and wives and sweethearts whose sons and brothers and husbands and fathers and lovers might have

147

been among the doomed men except for sheer blind chance and luck. Even before the bugles' echoes died away, the warrened purlieus were already disgorging them. A French or British or American aviator (or a German either for that matter, if he had had the temerity and the luck) could have watched it best: hovel and tenement voiding into lane and alley and nameless cul-de-sac, and lane and alley and cul-de-sac compounding into streets as the trickles became streams and the streams became rivers, until the whole city seemed to be pouring down the broad boulevards converging like wheel spokes into the Place de Ville, filling the Place and then, pressed on by the weight of its own converging mass, flowing like an unrecoiling wave up to the blank gates of the Hdtel where the three sentries of the three co-embattled nations flanked the three empty flagstaffs awaiting the three concordant flags. They met the first troops here. It was a body of garrison cavalry, drawn up across the mouth of the wide main boulevard leading from the Place to the old gate in what had once been the city's ancient eastern wall, already in position and waiting as though the murmur of the flood's beginning had preceded it, right into the bedroom of the town-major himself. But the crowd paid no attention to the cavalry. It just continued to press on into the Place, slowing and stopping now because of its own massy congested weight, merely stirring and shifting constantly and faintly within its own mass while it stared, mazed and patient in the rising light, at the Hütel door. Then the sunrise gun crashed from the old citadel above the city; the three flags broke simultaneously from nowhere and climbed the three staffs. W h a t they broke and climbed and peaked in was still dawn, hanging motionless for a moment. But when they streamed on the first morning breeze, they streamed into sunlight, flinging into sunlight the three mutual colors—the red for courage and pride, the white for purity and constancy, the blue for honor and

148

truth. T h e n the empty boulevard behind the cavalry filled suddenly with sunlight which flung the tall shadows of the men and the horses outward upon the crowd as though the cavalry were charging it. Only it was the people advancing on the cavalry. T h e mass made no sound. It was almost orderly, merely irresistible in the concord of its frail components like a wave in its drops. For an instant the cavalry—there was an officer present, though a sergeant-major seemed to be in charge—did nothing. Then the sergeant-major shouted. It was not a command, because the troop did not stir. It sounded like nothing whatever, in fact: unintelligible: a thin forlorn cry hanging for a fading instant in the air like one of the faint, sourceless, musical cries of the high invisible larks now filling the sky above the city. His next shout though was a command. But it was already too late; the crowd had already underswept the military, irresistible in that passive and invincible humility, carrying its fragile bones and flesh into the iron orbit of the hooves and sabres with an almost inattentive, a humbly and passively contemptuous disregard, like martyrs entering an arena of lions...

149

1956 AWARD ABOUT THE CONFEDERATE PRISON STOCKADE IN THE CIVIL WAR BY MACKINLAY KANTOR

MacKinlay Kantor (born on February 4, 1904, in Webster City, la.) graduated from Webster City High School in 1923. Already two years earlier he had started to report for the Webster City Daily News. In 1925 he went to Chicago, where he found a job on a city surveying crew. In 1928 he published his first novel. Titled Diversey, it treats with the gang warfare prevalent in Chicago during the 1920's. Following a return to Iowa, where he worked as a columnist for the Cedar Rapids Republican and the Des Moines Tribune, Kantor published two more novels: El Goes South and The Jaybird. Throughout 1933 Kantor worked on his first historical novel, Long Remember, based on the battle of Gettysburg. It was followed by the short novel The Voice of Bugle Ann. Between 1936 and 1940 Kantor wrote six more novels: Arouse and Beware·, The Romance of Rosy Ridge\ The Noise of Their Wings', Here Lies Holly Springs', Valedictory, and Cuba Libre. After trying his hand at a western setting in Gentle Annie, Kantor served as a war correspondent with the British Royal Air Force. During this period he published two books about the war: Happy Land and Glory for Me. The latter book was made into the motion picture The Best Years of Our Lives, which won thirteen Academy Awards. Also at this time Kantor wrote the autobiography of his childhood, But Look, the Morn. From 1949 to 1954 the author brought out eleven books including Wicked Water, The Good Family, One Wild Oaf, Lee and Grant at Appomattox', and God and My Country. The novel Andersonville appeared in 1955, it won MacKinlay Kantor the Pulitzer Prize for fiction of the succeeding year.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: M a c K i n l a y Kantor: Andersonville, Cleveland - New Y o r k : The World Publishing Company, 1 9 5 5 , pp. 7 - 9 . ]

Sometimes there was a compulsion which drew Ira Claffey from his plantation and sent him to walk the forest. It came upon him at eight o'clock on this morning of October twenty-third; he responded, he yielded, he climbed over the snake fence at the boundary of his sweet potato field and went away among the pines. Ira Clafiey had employed no overseer since the first year of the war, and had risen early this morning to direct his hands in the potato patch. Nowadays there were only seven and one-half hands on the place, house and field, out of a total Negro population of twelve souls; the other four were an infant at the breast and three capering children of shirt-tail size. Jem and Coffee he ordered to the digging, and made certain that they were thorough in turning up the harvest and yet gentle in lifting the potatoes. Nothing annoyed Ira Claffey like storing a good thirtyfive bushels in a single mound and then losing half of them through speedy decay. In such a manner, he thought, have some of our best elements and institutions perished. One bruise, one carelessness, and rot begins. Decay is a secret but hastening act in darkness; then one opens up the pine bark and pine straw—or shall we say, the Senate?—and observes a visible wastage and smell, a wet and horrid mouldering of the potatoes. Or shall we say, of the men? In pursuit of his own husbandry on this day, Ira carried a budding knife in his belt. While musing in bed the night before, he had been touched with ambition: he would bud a George the Fourth peach upon a Duane's Purple plum. Veronica was not yet asleep, but reading her Bible by candlelight beside him. He told her about it. But, Ira, does not the Duane's Purple ripen too soon? Aren't those the trees just on the other side of the magnolias? No, no, my dear. Those are Prince's Yellow Gage. The Duane's Purple matures in keeping with the George Fourths. I'd warrant you about the second week of July. Say about the tenth. I should love

151

to see that skin. Such a fine red cheek on the George Fourths, and maybe dotted with that lilac bloom and yellow specks— But she was not hearing him, she was weeping. He turned to watch her; he sighed, he put out one big hand and touched the thick grayyellow braid which weighted on her white-frilled shoulder. It was either Moses or Sutherland whom she considered now. Dully he wondered which one. She said, on receiving the communication of his thought, though he had said nothing— She spoke Suthy's name. Oh, said Ira. I said nothing to make you think— The Prince's Yellow Gage. He fancied them so. When they were still green he'd hide them in the little waist he wore. Many's the time I gave him a beltingShe sobbed a while longer, and he stared into the gloom beyond the bed curtains, and did his best to forget Suthy. Suthy was the eldest. Sixteenth Georgia. It was away up at the North, at a place no one had ever heard of before, a place called Gettysburg. In recent awareness of bereavement had lain the germ of retreat and restlessness, perhaps; but sometimes Ira spirited himself off into the woods when he was fleeing from no sadness or perplexity. He had gone like that since he could first remember. Oh, pines were taller forty-five years ago . . . when he was only three feet tall, the easy nodding grace of their foliage was reared out of all proportion, thirty times his stature. And forests were wilder, forty-five years ago, over in Liberty County, and he went armed with a wooden gun which old Jehu had carved and painted as a Christmas gift for him. It had a real lock, a real flint; it snapped and the sparks flew. Ira Claffey slew brigades of redcoats with this weapon; he went as commander of a force of small blacks; he was their general. Hi, them's British, Mastah Iry. Where? Yonder in them 'simmons! Take them on the flank. Hi, what you say we do, Mastah? He wasn't quite sure what he wanted them to do. Something about the flank. His Uncle Sutherland talked about a flank attack in some wild distant spot known as the Carolinas. . . . Of course this was later on, perhaps only forty years ago, when Ira Claffey was ten. . . .

152 Charge those redcoats! They advanced upon the persimmon brake in full cry and leaping; and once there came terror when a doe soared out of the thicket directly in their faces, and all the little darkies scattered like quail, and Ira came near to legging it after them. In similar shades he had been Francis Marion, and surely his own boys had scuttled here in identical pursuits. It was a good place to be, treading alone on the clay-paved path curving its way to the closest branch of Sweetwater Creek. God walked ahead and behind and with him, near, powerful, silent . . . words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, Ο Lord, my strength, and my redeemer. He had budded the peach upon the plum as he wished to do, though he feared that it was a trifle too late in the season for success. He budded each of the two selected trees five times, and then went back to the potato field. Coffee and Jem were doing well enough, but they were plagued slow; Ira had been emphatic about the tenderness he required of them, and they handled the big sulphur-colored Brimstones as if they were eggs. Well, he thought, I shan't speed them on this. Better forty bushels well-dug and well-stored than eighty bushels bumped and scratched and ready to spoil as soon as they're covered. Keep on with it until I return, and mind about no bruising. I shall look up some pine straw—where it's thickest and easy to scoop—and we'll fetch the cart after the nooning. Yassah...

153

1957

AWARD

ABOUT THE WITHHOLD OF THE FICTION PRIZE BY T H E ADVISORY B O A R D

Although the members of the 1957 Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury in their report mentioned several books as finalists to receive the prize for work published during the preceding year, the Advisory Board decided to give no award in this category.

154

NAMES OF THE BOARD MEMBERS VOTING FOR "NO AWARD"

Barry Bingham Sr.

Louisville Times &

Courier-Journal

Hodding Carter

Delta Democrat-Times,

Green-

ville, Miss. Turner Catledge

The New York Times

Norman Chandler

Los Angeles

Robert Choate

The Boston Herald

Gardner Cowles Jr.

The Des Moines Register & Tribune

J. Donald Ferguson

Milwaukee

Grayson Kirk

Columbia University

John S. Knight

Knight Newspapers

Benjamin McKelway

The Evening Star, Washington, D.C.

Paul Miller

Gannett Newspapers

Joseph Pulitzer Jr.

St. Louis

Post-Dispatch

Louis B. Seltzer

Cleveland

Press

Times

Journal

Inc.

Inc.

155

1958

AWARD

ABOUT THE DEATH IN A CLOSELY KNIT FAMILY FROM TENNESSEE BY JAMES AGEE

James Agee (bom on November 27, 1909, in Knoxville, Tenn.) studied at Phillips Exeter Academy. He then attended Harvard University, from which he was graduated in 1932. During his college years he edited the Advocate, Harvard's literary magazine, and won the Poetry prize. In 1936, James Agee and the photographer Walker Evans accepted a commission from Fortune magazine to write a series of articles on the condition of poor whites in the rural South. They spent about six weeks in Alabama, mostly with three families, Agee making notes and Evans taking pictures. The articles and photographs they produced were rejected by Fortune, but the material was eventually published in book form, under the title Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. In 1939 Agee joined the staff of Time magazine and in 1943 he became a film critic with The Nation, a position in which he remained for the following five years. He was the author of Permit Me Voyage, a collection of poems, and the book The Morning Watch. He also wrote the scripts for the screenplays The Quiet One, The African Queen and Mr. Lincoln. James Agee died on May 16, 1955, in New York City. His work, A Death in the Family, was posthumously published and received the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

156

STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [ S o u r c e : J a m e s A g e e : A Death in the F a m i l y , N e w Y o r k : M c D o w e l l , O b o l e n s k y , 1 9 5 7 , pp. 3 - 5 . ]

We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child. It was a little bit mixed sort of block, fairly solidly lower middle class, with one or two juts apiece on either side of that. The houses corresponded: middlesized gracefully fretted wood houses built in the late nineties and early nineteen hundreds, with small front and side and more spacious back yards, and trees in the yards, and porches. These were softwooded trees, poplars, tulip trees, cottonwoods. There were fences around one or two of the houses, but mainly the yards ran into each other xoith only now and then a low hedge that wasn't doing very well. There were few good friends among the grown people, and they were not poor enough for the other sort of intimate acquaintance, but everyone nodded and spoke, and even might talk short times, trivially, and at the two extremes of the general or the particular, and ordinarily nextdoor neighbors talked quite a bit when they happened to run into each other, and never paid calls. The men were mostly small businessmen, one or two very modestly executives, one or two worked with their hands, most of them clerical, and most of them between thirty and fortyfive. But it is of these evenings, I speak. Supper was at six and was over by half past. There was still daylight, shining softly and with a tarnish, like the lining of a shell; and the carbon lamps lifted at the corners were on in the light, and the locusts were started, and the fire flies were out, and a few frogs were flopping in the dewy grass, by the

157

time the fathers and the children came out. The children ran out first hell bent and yelling those names by which they were known; then the fathers sank out leisurely in crossed suspenders, their collars removed and their necks looking tall and shy. The mothers stayed back in the kitchen washing and drying, putting things away, recrossing their traceless footsteps like the lifetime journeys of bees, measuring out the dry cocoa for breakfast. When they came out they had taken off their aprons and their skirts were dampened and they sat in rockers on their porches quietly. It is not of the games children play in the evening that I want to speak now, it is of a contemporaneous atmosphere that has little to do with them: that of the fathers of families, each in his space of lawn, his shirt fishlike pale in the unnatural light and his face nearly anonymous, hosing their lawns. The hoses were attached at spiggots that stood out of the brick foundations of the houses. The nozzles were variously set but usually so there was a long sweet stream of spray, the nozzle wet in the hand, the water trickling the right forearm and the peeled-back c u f f , and the water whishing out a long loose and low-curved cone, and so gentle a sound. First an insane noise of violence in the nozzle, then the still irregular sound of adjustment, then the smoothing into steadiness and a pitch as accurately tuned to the size and style of stream as any violin. So many qualities of sound out of one hose: so many choral differences out of those several hoses that were in earshot. Out of any one hose, the almost dead silence of the release, and the short still arch of the separate big drops, silent as a held breath, and the only noise the flattering noise on leaves and the slapped grass at the fall of each big drop. That, and the intense hiss with the intense stream; that, and that same intensity not growing less but growing more quiet and delicate with the turn of the nozzle, up to that extreme tender whisper

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when the water was just a wide bell of film. Chiefly, though, the hoses were set much alike, in a compromise between distance and tenderness of spray, (and quite surely a sense of art behind this compromise, and a quiet deep joy, too real to recognize itself), and the sounds therefore were pitched much alike; pointed by the snorting start of a new hose; decorated by some man playful with the nozzle; left empty, like God by the sparrow's fall, when any single one of them desists: and all, though near alike, of various pitch; and in this unison. These sweet pale streamings in the light lift out their pallors and their voices all together, mothers hushing their children, the hushing unnaturally prolonged, the men gentle and silent and each snail-like withdrawn into the quietude of what he singly is doing, the urination of huge children stood loosely military against an invisible wall, and gentle happy and peaceful, tasting the mean goodness of their living like the last of their suppers in their mouths; while the locusts carry on this noise of hoses on their much higher and sharper key...

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1959

AWARD

ABOUT THE JOURNEY OF A FATHER AND HIS SON TO CALIFORNIA BY ROBERT L . TAYLOR

Robert Lewis Taylor (born on September 24, 1912, in Carbondale, 111.) enrolled at Southern Illinois University in 1929, and transferred to the University of Illinois the following year. After his graduation with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1933, Taylor left for a bicycle tour through Europe. He returned to the United States in 1934 and was hired as the editor of a Carbondale weekly newspaper. During 1935 Taylor lived in various places in Polynesia, supporting himself by writing articles for the American Boy magazine. On his return to the U.S. he joined the staff of the St. Louis PostDispatch and worked for the newspaper during the next three years. In 1939 Taylor was hired by the New Yorker as a "Profile" writer. Joining the United States Navy in 1942, he served on active duty until 1946, when he was discharged with the rank of lieutenant commander. The same year he returned to his full-time writing career. He wrote several short stories in addition to his magazine articles and finished Adrift in a Boneyard, a fantasy novel about six people who survive a world catastrophe. In 1948 Doubleday published Doctor, Lawyer, Merchant, Chief, a collection of Taylor's magazine pieces. It was followed by books like W. C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes', Professor Fodorskv, and The Running Pianist. Taylor's book publications of the 1950's include the biography Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness, the fictional work The Bright Sands, and Center Ring: The People of the Circus. In 1959 Robert L. Taylor won the Pulitzer Fiction award for The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters\ the adventure novel had been published one year earlier.

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CHAPTER

[Source: Robert L e w i s T a y l o r : T h e T r a v e l s of J a i m i e M c P h e e l e r s , G a r d e n City, N . Y . : D o u b l e d a y & C o m p a n y , Inc., 1958, pp. 9-1 l.]

O n the day when I first learned of my father's journey, I had come back with two companions from a satisfactory afternoon in the weeds near Kay's Bell Foundry, shooting a slingshot at the new bells, which were lying out in the yard and strung up on rafters. Struck with rocks, they made a beautiful sound, although it seemed to upset Mr. William Kay, the proprietor. His sign, "Maker of Church, Steamboat, Tavern and other Bells," hung over the doorway of his barnlike shop and had a row of little brass bells swinging beneath, squat and burnished, but these were hard to hit, and if you missed them, you were apt to hit one of the men working inside, and this was what seemed to upset Mr. William Kay most of all. So toward the end of the afternoon he pranced out with a double-barreled shotgun loaded with pepper and blistered Herbert Swann's seat as he zigzagged to safety through the high grass. It was late—after suppertime—and I thought it wise to sneak up the kitchen stairs and avoid the genteel tongue-lashing and straightaway-to-bed that my mother favored for tardiness. But my baby sister Mary spied me from her pen in the back yard and set up a noisy clatter. Aunt Kitty, her darky nurse, was with her, scolding. In one leathery hand she held a leafy willow branch with which she Was discouraging the early spring bugs. Bugs tormented her almost to distraction: gnats, deer flies, mosquitoes, midges, no-see-ems, things along that line. This Aunt Kitty was so old she said she had come over from Africa, and she remembered how, as a girl in the slave ship, she had seen the urine run in green rivers over the between-decks planks where the rows of blacks were lashed to long poles. Once a week a man in a mask appeared with hand pump and hose and washed

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down the floor; otherwise there was no arrangement except two pails which were passed from one person to the next and were soon filled to overflowing. My sister Mary wanted out of the pen, and Aunt Kitty wanted her in. "I talking to old mister snake up in the bushes," she told her through the wire. "Snake say if you didn't hesh, he fixing to come down and bite. Said he wasn't aiming to bite me, say he going to bite you, though." My sister made a squalling sound and shook the wire in her fists. She now had her eye on my billygoat, Sam, who was tethered to a tree near the woodshed. Aunt Kitty put her face, all wrinkled like a monkey's, up close to the mesh and said, "Goat butt, baby go 'Yah-yah.' " I asked, "Is Clara in the kitchen, Aunty?" Clara was the cook. "Clara washed up and gone visiting to Miz Whitman's free Thelma." "I was thinking I ought to have something to eat because I'm tired out from being late helping a sick man that got run over by a horse." "People miss supper, they generly stays hongry till breakfast." "Well," I said, turning away, "it's no more than I expected. That's what I get for trying to be upright and help other people. The more you do, the less other people care whether that person lives or dies." As I walked through the twilight toward the kitchen, brooding on life's injustices, she called out, "Might be I put by a plate of chicken along with grits and cornbread and salat in the warming oven—for the cat." Hurrying, I heard her jeweled African chuckle rise softly above Mary's pleas to the goat. I got the food out of the oven and crept upstairs and ate it, sitting on the side of my bed. I enjoyed the cornbread and the grits and the

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chicken, both the wishbone and thigh, and wrapped up the salad greens in a paper and burned them in the fireplace. Then I lay down on the floor on my stomach and opened the register, which was merely an iron grating fitted into the wood to let the heated air up from below and was connected to nothing at all. Downstairs, in the family sitting room next to the parlor, my father and mother were having a discussion. I could see them, framed in the grating like birds in a pie, my mother sitting prim and stiff in her black taffeta dress with the white collar, and my father now standing over her, now pacing back and forth, with his string tie undone and his face shiny and earnest. "I tell you, Melissa," he was saying, "this is the only way. I've gone into it painstakingly"—here my mother gave a little ladylike sniff of disbelief—"and I pledge you my solemn promise there's nothing more to it than picking up arrowheads out by the Indian Mounds—less, if it comes to that. After all, Indians were sprinkled around Louisville in limited numbers whereas nature in her blessed bounty has seen fit to strew gold over the Calif " "How does one convey oneself to these Elysian fields?" asked my mother in her dry, practical way...

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1960

AWARD

ABOUT THE SMOKE-FILLED COMMITTEE ROOMS OF THE U. S. SENATE BY ALLEN S . DRURY

Allen Stuart Drury (born on September 2, 1918, in Houston, Tex.) attended Stanford University, which awarded him the Bachelor of Arts degree in 1939. Upon his graduation he became editor with the Tulare (Ca.) Bee. In 1941 he joined the staff of the Bakersfield Californian as county editor. During 1942/43 Drury served with the United States Army. He subsequently became a member of the Senate staff of United Press in Washington, D.C. In 1946 he worked as a free-lance correspondent, before the Pathfinder magazine hired him as nation editor the following year. He remained in this position until 1953, when he joined the national staff of the Washington Evening Star. From 1954 to 1959 Drury was on the Congressional staff of the New York Times. He then was engaged by the Reader's Digest as its Washington correspondent. Allen S. Drury's first book, Advise and Consent, was published the same year and made him the winner of the 1960 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: Allen Drury: Advise and Consent, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1959, pp. 13-15.]

When Bob Munson awoke in his apartment at the Sheraton-Park Hotel at seven thirty-one in the morning he had the feeling it would be a bad day. The impression was confirmed as soon as he got out of bed and brought in the Washington Post And Times Herald. PRESIDENT NAMES LEFFINGWELL SECRETARY OF STATE, the headline said. What Bob Munson said, in a tired tone of voice, was, "Oh, God damn." "As if I didn't have enough troubles," he added with growing vehemence to himself as he went in the bathroom and started getting dressed. "As if I didn't have enough to do, running his errands and steering his program. And he didn't even tell me." That was what hurt. "He didn't even tell me." Thinking back to the White House conference of legislative leaders yesterday morning, Robert Durham Munson, who was senior United States Senator from the state of Michigan and Majority Leader of the United States Senate, couldn't remember so much as a single hint about Bob Leffingwell. In fact, hadn't there even been a denial that any appointment would be made just yet? Not a flat denial, of course, not an open denial, but an impression left, an idea conveyed, laced with smiles and ribboned with wisecracks. Something about, "Well have to see about that, Bob. What's your hurry?" followed by a hearty reference to losing money at the races and a joke about Seab Cooley, who often did. Seab Cooley. That old coot. The senior Senator from Michigan thought, and bis thoughts were not loving, of the senior Senator from South Carolina. Seab Cooley was going to raise hell about Bob Leffingwell. Because of Seab Cooley the Administration was going to have a hard time. Because of Bob Leffingwell, the Administration was going to have a hard time. Why couldn't he have picked any one of ten thousand other outstanding Americans? Why the one most likely to cause trouble? Pondering the mysterious ways of Presidents, with which he had had considerable contact in twenty-three years in the Senate, Bob Munson completed dressing and went to the telephone. In a moment the confident voice came over. "He—Mo, Bobl You got me out of bed, you son of a gun!" "Mmmhmm," Bob Munson said. "That's a hell of an appointment."

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"What's that?" the voice asked, losing a trace of its good cheer. "You know what I mean. Bob Leffingwell." "Oh, Leffingwell," the voice said. "Yes," said Bob Munson, "Leffingwell. Mr. President, why in hell—" "Now, wait," the voice said. "Now, wait, Bob. Take it easy. You don't deny he's the best administrator we've got in government, do you?" "No, b u t — " "And you don't deny his general brains, character, and ability?" "Oh, he's perfect," Senator Munson said. "But he isn't going to get through without a fight." The voice dismissed that. "Oh well." "Oh well, nothing," Bob Munson said. "You don't have to worry. You won't be up there on the Hill sweating it out." "I'll be down here sweating it out," the voice retorted with some vigor. "It's my appointment. I'll take the rap for it." "You take your rap when you announce the appointment. You don't have to take the day-by-day rap the way I do." "You know, Bob," the voice said, "you sound awfully sorry for yourself. You break my heart, Senator. Please stop it." "Just the same, I think you ought to give these things more thought." "I've been thinking about Bob Leffingwell for that job for six months," the voice said. "Oh, have you? It might have helped me lay a little groundwork if you'd told me about it." "What do you need groundwork for? You know your opposition. Seab Cooley. We've had that problem before, haven't we?" "Yes," Bob Munson said, "and it's licked us oftener than we've licked it." The voice got its happy lilt, the one that went with the toss of the head. "I'd say honors are about even." "Not this time. A lot of people don't like Leffingwell·" The voice chuckled. "A lot of people don't like me, either, and look where I am." In spite of himself Bob Munson laughed. "Damn it," he said, "you could charm the rattles off a snake. But you can't charm them off Seab Cooley." The voice became slightly rueful. "No," it admitted. "I found that out a long time ago. But I'm not worried as long as the matter is in your competent hands." "Yeah," Senator Munson said.

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"Now look, Bob," the voice said, getting the hard-boiled tone it acquired when the talk got down to the business of practical politics, "what's the situation up there, seriously?" "The situation is," Bob Munson said, "that I'd never have let you make the appointment if you'd asked me first. I'd have raised helL" The voice gave a triumphant little laugh. "That's exactly why I didn't tell you, Bob," it said. "I knew you'd object, I knew you'd have a dozen excellent reasons why I shouldn't do it. I knew I'd better get myself committed first and ask questions afterwards. But seriously, in addition to Seab, who else have we got to worry about? What will they do on the other side of the aisle?" A series of names and faces flashed across Bob Munson's mind—the Minority, good men and true, good friends and good enemies, and brothers in the bond. "Well," he said, "they're split ten ways from Sunday, just like us." "Just like us," the voice agreed with a laugh. "Then it's wide open and every man for himself, isn't it?" "That's it," Bob Munson said. "And devil take Bob Leffingwell." "Well, let me know what I can do from here. I want that nomination to go through." "Oh, it will," Senator Munson said. "But it's going to take a little doing." "I want it to go through," the voice said firmly. "Well see," Bob Munson said. "Have a good time," the voice encouraged him. "You know," Senator Munson said, "you're damned lucky to have me doing your dirty work." "Oh, and vice versa," the voice said cheerfully. "And vice versa. Let me know how it goes." "Right," Bob Munson said...

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1961

AWARD

ABOUT THE YEARS OF DEPRESSION IN A SMALL ALABAMA TOWN BY N . HARPER LEE

Νeile Harper Lee (born on April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Ala.) attended the University of Alabama for the study of law. After spending a year in England as an exchange student at Oxford University, she returned to the University of Alabama, but left in 1950 before completing the requirements for the law degree. She moved to New York and worked as an airline reservation clerk, first with Eastern Air Lines and later with the British Overseas Airways Corporation. Harper Lee had already begun to develop an interest in writing at the age of seven. After she came to New York, she approached a literary agent with manuscripts of two essays and three short stories. Encouraged by the agent's approval of one of the stories, she followed his suggestion that she expand it into a novel. In order to concentrate on her writing, Harper Lee gave up her position with the airline. In 1957 she submitted the manuscript of her novel to the J. B. Lippincott Company, but was urged to rewrite it. For the next two-and-a-half years she reworked the manuscript with the help of her editor, Tay Hohoff, and it was not until 1960 that To Kill a Mockingbird was finally published. The following year N. Harper Lee's book was chosen by the Pulitzer Advisory Board as best fictional work.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING

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[Source: H a r p e r L e e : T o Kill a M o c k i n g b i r d , P h i l a d e l p h i a - N e w Y o r k : J. B. L i p p i n c o t t C o m p a n y , I 9 6 0 , pp. 9-1 I.]

he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem's fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh. He couldn't have cared less, so long as he could pass and punt. When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. H e said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out. I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew Jackson. If General Jackson hadn't run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch would never have paddled up the Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn't? We were far too old to settle an argument with a fist-fight, so we consulted Atticus. Our father said we were both right. Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings. All we had was Simon Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceeded only by his stinginess. In England, Simon was irritated by the persecution of those who called themselves Methodists at the hands of their more liberal brethren, and as Simon called himself a Methodist, he worked his way across the Atlantic to Philadelphia, thence to Jamaica, thence

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to Mobile, and up the Saint Stephens. Mindful of John Wesley's strictures on the use of many words in buying and selling, Simon made a pile practicing medicine, but in this pursuit he was unhappy lest he be tempted into doing what he knew was not for the glory of God, as the putting on of gold and cosdy apparel. So Simon, having forgotten his teacher's dictum on the possession of human chattels, bought three slaves and with their aid established a homestead on the banks of the Alabama River some forty miles above Saint Stephens. He returned to Saint Stephens only once, to find a wife, and with her established a line that ran high to daughters. Simon lived to an impressive age and died rich. It was customary for the men in the family to remain on Simon's homestead, Finch's Landing, and make their living from cotton. The place was self-sufficient: modest in comparison with the empires around it, the Landing nevertheless produced everything required to sustain life except ice, wheat flour, and articles of clothing, supplied by river-boats from Mobile. Simon would have regarded with impotent fury the disturbance between the North and the South, as it left his descendants stripped of everything but their land, yet the tradition of living on the land remained unbroken until well into the twentieth century, when my father, Atticus Finch, went to Montgomery to read law, and his younger brother went to Boston to study medicine. Their sister Alexandra was the Finch who remained at the Landing: she married a taciturn man who spent most of his time lyiftg in a hammock by the river wondering if his trot-lines were full. When my father was admitted to the bar, he returned to Maycomb and began his practice. Maycomb, some twenty miles east of Finch's Landing, was the county seat of Maycomb County. Atticus's office in the courthouse contained little more than a hat rack, a spittoon, a checkerboard and an unsullied Code of Alabama. His first two clients were the last two persons hanged in the Maycomb County jail. Atticus had urged them to accept the state's generosity

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in allowing them to plead Guilty to second-degree murder and escape with their lives, but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous with jackass. T h e Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb's leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that thesonof-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for anybody. They persisted in pleading Not Guilty to first-degree murder, so there was nothing much Atticus could do for his clients except be present at their departure, an occasion that was probably the beginning of my father's profound distaste for the practice of criminal law. During his first five years in Maycomb, Atticus practiced economy more than anything; for several years thereafter he invested his earnings in his brother's education. John Hale Finch was ten years younger than my father, and chose to study medicine at a time when cotton was not worth growing; but after getting Uncle Jack started, Atticus derived a reasonable income from the law. H e liked Maycomb, he was Maycomb County born and bred; he knew his people, they knew him, and because of Simon Finch's industry, Atticus was related by blood or marriage to nearly every family in the town

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1962

AWARD

ABOUT THE PORTRAIT OF A PRIEST AND IRISH-AMERICAN LIFE BY EDWIN G .

O'CONNOR

Edwin Greene O'Connor (born on July 29, 1918, in Providence, R.I.) attended the University of Notre Dame, majoring in English literature. Upon his graduation in 1939 he became a radio announcer and worked in Providence, Palm Beach, Buffalo, and Hartford. During World War II, O'Connor was stationed in Boston as an information officer with the United States Coast Guard. Returning to civilian life in 1945, he worked for a year as writer and producer of radio shows for the Yankee Network. Then, relying on an offer to write a daily television column for a Boston newspaper, he decided to become a free-lance author. His first published works were articles about radio and television for the Atlantic Monthly. In 1951 O'Connor published his first novel, The Oracle, a satire which deals with a comic crisis in the life of a self-inflated radio broadcaster. It was followed by The Last Hurrah, which won the Atlantic Prize and the Golden Book Award of the Catholic Writers Guild and was chosen by the Book-of-theMonth Club. O'Connor next wrote Benjy: A Ferocious Fairy Tale, and The Edge of Sadness appeared in 1961. Edwin G. O'Connor's novel won the Pulitzer Fiction Prize in the year after.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [ S c u r . e · E d w i n O ' C o n n o r : T h e E d g e of S a d n e s s , B o s t o n - T o r o n t o : Little, B r o w n and C o m p a n y , 1961, pp. 3-5, reprinted by p e r m i s s i o n of Little, B r o w n and C o m p a n y , Boston, M a . ]

T

HIS STORY at no point becomes my own. I am in it — good heavens, I'm in it to the point of almost never being out of it! — but the story belongs, all of it, to the Carmodys, and my own part, while substantial enough, was never really of any great significance at all. I don't think this is modesty; it seems to me a simple fact. Because now that it's all over, and I can look back on all those weeks and months — not with detachment, of course, but with a somewhat colder eye than before, I have the feeling that whatever happened would have happened whether I had been on hand or not, whether I had spoken or been still, whether I had known the Carmodys all the days of my life or had met them for the first time one sunlit afternoon in the middle of last week. Still, there is this: I was at least there. The friend of the family, the invited intruder, the small necessary neutral cushion against which all belligerents might bank their shots in turn — I was there, as I say, and there I stayed. I stayed with the Carmodys and their story from the first — from that Sunday in June when old Charlie Carmody, saluting the one day of the year which could be counted on to move him deeply, gave himself a birthday party. . . .

The story begins, really, some days before that Sunday: it begins with an early morning telephone call. Even now, months later, I can recall that morning with a special vividness, for it was the first such morning in a long time. There had been a

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heat wave, a severe one and the first of the summer, and on this morning I woke to find that it had broken at last. The wind was sweeping in from the sea, and even here — here, in this old rectory, set in this soiled and airless slum — it was possible to smell and feel the morning, the sunlight and salt air. It was the start of one of the great dazzling days that sometimes break unannounced over this city, cool and shining and full of light, and I knew that if I got up and walked to the rectory roof and looked out through the scoured and cloudless morning I could see for miles and miles to the muted bluish outlines of the hills far to the north. . . . Which, I should say at once, I did not intend to do. I was in bed and fully awake: I had awakened shortly after six o'clock. In recent months I've been saying the seven o'clock Mass, and I wake at this same hour each morning, usually without the alarm. Which is fine, but is only half the battle, for to wake up is one thing, and to get up quite another. And this, for me, is one of the old, long-standing problems; I can remember, years ago in the seminary, speaking of it to old Father Condon. Overscrupulous, to be sure, but there it was and there he was, my spiritual counselor: a marvelously serene old man with the face of a happy rabbit and almost no voice at all. It was said that he had worn it out, giving advice. "Oh my goodness," he whispered, his upper lip twitching away at some invisible carrot. "Oh my goodness me. Why, that is a very slight problem, my dear boy. It is almost not a problem at all. It is a mountain made out of a molehill: perhaps you know the expression? A little discipline, a little self-sacrifice, a little remembering each day of just what it is we get up for. W e are doing God's work, are we not, and Satan does not sleep till noon. That is a good thought, my dear boy: Satan does not

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sleep till noon. No no no. Keep that uppermost in your mind before retiring each night and you will find that in a surprisingly short time you will be bounding out of bed in the morning. Rising will become, not a chore, but a positive joy. Oh yes yes yes. I have lived a very long time and I have seen it happen again and again. Why, I recall that once, many many years ago now, of course, I. . . And then his voice, as it had a habit of doing, faded off entirely, and he, poor simple kindly old man, all unconscious of this, kept on talking for some time, smiling all the while, his lips moving rhythmically, his long old hands feathering the air, presumably pointing up inaudible anecdotes. I stayed for the pantomime — young seminarians are not encouraged to walk out on the performances of their superiors — and considered the advice. I found that I had listened dutifully but had not believed. Seminaries are peppered with occasional doubts, but mine were secular rather than theological: I could not believe in the joyous morning bound. It was disbelief well-founded: thirty-five years between then and now, and while I rise punctually I do so grudgingly; each morning brings its own renewal of the battle...

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1963 AWARD ABOUT THE JOURNEY OF THREE MISSISSIPPI BOYS TO MEMPHIS BY WILLIAM FAULKNER

William Faulkner (born on September 25, 1897, in New Albany, Miss.) enrolled at the University of Mississippi, but withdrew after a year without taking a degree. In 1924 Faulkner brought out his first book of poems, The Marble Faun, and his first novel, Soldiers' Pay, was published two years later. It was followed by Sartoris and The Sound and the Fury, the first two of a series of interconnected novels and short stories dealing with the life and people of the fictional Mississippi county of Yaknapatawpha. In the early 1930's Faulkner published the novels As I Lay Dying·, Sanctuary·, Light in August·, and Pylon, the collection of short stories, These Thirteen, and A Green Bough, another book of poems. In 1932 Faulkner went to Hollywood for the first time to adapt one of his short stories for the film, Today We Live; on later visits he helped write the screen play of The Road to Glory and made the adaptations for Slave Ship; To Have and Have Not; and The Big Sleep. With the publication of the novels Absalom, Absalom! and The Unvanquished in 1936 and 1938 he returned to the Yaknapatawpha cycle. The Hamlef, Go Down Moses, and Other Stories', and Intruder in the Dust count among the books he has written during the 1940's. In December 1950 Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He also received twice the O. Henry Memorial Short Story Award as well as the National Book Award of 1951. The volumes Big Woods and The Mansion were published in 1955 and 1959. William Faulkner's novel A Fable earned him the Pulitzer Fiction Prize of 1955, and in 1963 he got his second Pulitzer award for The Reivers which had been published one year earlier.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: W i l l i a m F a u l k n e r : T h e R e i v e r s - A R e m i n i s c e n c e , N e w Y o r k : R a n d o m H o u s e , 1962, pp. 3-5.]

GRANDFATHER SAID:

This is the kind of a man Boon Hogganbeck was. Hung on the wall, it could have been his epitaph, like a Bertillon chart or a police poster; any cop in north Mississippi would have arrested him out o£ any crowd after merely reading the date. It was Saturday morning, about ten oclock. We—your great-grandfather and I—were in the office, Father sitting at the desk totting up the money from the canvas sack and matching it against the list of freight bills which I had just collected around the Square; and I sitting in the chair against the wall waiting for noon when I would be paid my Saturday's (week's) wage of ten cents and we would go home and eat dinner and I would be free at last to overtake (it was May) the baseball game which had been running since breakfast without me: the idea (not mine: your great-grandfather's) being that even at eleven a man should already have behind him one year of paying for, assuming responsibility for, the space he occupied, the room he took up, in the worlds (Jefferson, Mississippi's, anyway) economy. I would leave home with Father immediately after breakfast each Saturday morning, when all the other boys on the street were merely arming themselves with balls and bats and gloves —not to mention my three brothers, who, being younger and therefore smaller than I, were more fortunate, as-

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suming this was Father's logic or premise: that since any adult man worth his salt could balance or stand off four children in economic occupancy, any one of the children, the largest certainly, would suffice to carry the burden of the requisite economic motions: in this case, making the rounds each Saturday morning with the bills for the boxes and cases of freight which our Negro drivers had picked up at the depot during the week and delivered to the back doors of the grocery and hardware and farmers' supply stores, and bring the canvas sack back to the livery stable for Father to count and balance it, then sit in the office for the rest of the morning ostensibly to answer the telephone—this for the sum of ten cents a week, which it was assumed I would live inside of. That's what we were doing when Boon came jumping through the door. That's right. Jumping. It was not really a high step up from the hallway, even for a boy of eleven (though John Powell, the head hostler, had had Son Thomas, the youngest driver, find, borrow, take— anyway, snaffle—from somewhere a wooden block as an intermediate step for me), and Boon could have taken it as he always did in his own six-foot-four stride. But not this time: jumping into the room. In its normal state his face never looked especially gentle or composed; at this moment it looked like it was about to explode right out from between his shoulders with excitement, urgency, whatever it was, jumping on across the office toward the desk and already hollering at Father: "Look out, Mr Maury, get out of the way," reaching, lunging across Father toward the lower drawer where the livery-stable

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pistol lived; I couldn't tell whether it was Boon lunging for the drawer who knocked the chair (it was a swivel chair on casters) back or whether it was Father who flung the chair back to make himself room to kick at Boon's reaching hand, the neat stacks of coins scattering in all directions across the desk and Father hollering too now, still stomping either at the drawer or Boon's hand or maybe both: "God damn it, stop itl" "I'm going to shoot LudusI" Boon hollered. "He's probably clean across the Square by nowl Look out, Mr Maury!" "No!" Father said. "Get away!" "You wont let me have it?" Boon said. "No, God damn it," Father said. "All right," Boon said, already jumping again, back toward the door and out of it...

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1964

AWARD

ABOUT THE WITHHOLD OF THE FICTION PRIZE BY THE ADVISORY BOARD

Since the members of the 1964 Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury in their report declared themselves unable to single out any book published during the preceding year, the Advisory Board decided to give no award in this category·

180

NAMES OF THE BOARD MEMBERS VOTING FOR "NO AWARD"

Barry Bingham Sr.

Louisville Times &

Courier-Journal

Sevellon Brown 3rd

The Providence

Erwin D. Canham

Christian Science

Turner Catledge

The New York Times

Norman Chandler

Los Angeles

Grayson Kirk

Columbia University

Kenneth MacDonald

The Des Moines Register ά Tribune

William D. Maxwell

Chicago

Paul Miller

Gannett Newspapers

Newbold Noyes Jr.

Washington

Joseph Pulitzer Jr.

St. Louis

Post-Dispatch

Louis B. Seltzer

Cleveland

Press

Journal-Bulletin Monitor

Times

Tribune Inc.

Star-News

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1965

AWARD

ABOUT THE LIVES OF BLACKS AND WHITES AT THE GULF COAST BY SHIRLEY A . GRAU

Shirley Ann Grau (born on July 8, 1929, in New Orleans, La.) studied at Newcomb College in New Orleans. After receiving her B.A. degree in 1950 with honors in English, she spent a year in graduate work at Tulane University of Louisiana, doing research in English literature of the Renaissance and seventeenth century. In 1955, Alfred A. Knopf published her first book, The Black Prince, and other Stories. Only three of the stories had previously appeared in print: one in New World Writing, another in the New Mexico Quarterly, and the other in the New Yorker. Her first novel, The Hard Blue Sky, was published in 1958 and describes the life of a community of presentday French-Spanish descendants of Louisiana pioneers on a tiny island. The book was followed by The House on Coliseum Street in 1961 and The Keepers of the House. The latter work won Shirley A. Grau the 1965 Pulitzer Prize for the best fictional work published during the preceding year.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: Shirley Ann Grau: The Keepers of the House, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964, pp. 3-5.]

N

ovember evenings are quiet and still and dry. The froststripped trees and the bleached grasses glisten and shine in the small light. In the winter-emptied fields granite outcroppings gleam white and stark. The bones of the earth, old people call them. In the deepest fold of the land—to the southwest where the sun went down solid and red not long ago—the Providence River reflects a little grey light. The river is small this time of year, drought-shrunken. It turns back the sky, dully, like an old mirror. November evenings are so quiet, so final. This one now. It is mistfree; you see for miles in all directions. East and north, up the rising ridges, each tree is sharp and clear. There isn't even a trace of smoke up there, though earlier, in October, there were ugly smears of drifting ashes from forest fires in the Smokies. And there is no trace of fog along the fold that holds the Providence River. Everything is crisp and clear. There is only the quiet steadily fading light. Last month there were two whippoorwills crying all night around the house. I did not think I would miss their shrieking, but I do. Now. Behind me the house is quiet as my children get ready for supper—an early supper because only the two youngest are here. My oldest girls have gone to school in New Orleans. The county does not know of that yet, but they will, they always know everything. "Just like a Howland," they will say. "Always doing crazy things, high and mighty, the way they are. Broke their neck last time, though, broke it clean. . .

183

I have the illusion that I am sitting here, dead. That I am like the granite outcroppings, the bones of the earth, fleshless and eternal. I turn on the porch light. Since I have come out to water the geraniums, I do just that. With the great tin watering can in my hand I sprinkle the dense line of sprawling red-and-white flowers. I was taught that a geranium will stand the cold of the night better if the roots are wet. These now, growing under the porch roof and back against the warm house wall, last until the very worst of the winter. I pour carelessly and the water splashes across the porch boards. I am looking out at the yard, at the front yard. Even in this dim light you can see that the turf has been broken and torn. It looks a bit like a choppy sea. The paling fence is completely gone; all you see is the gentle fountain-like rise of the branches of the cherokee rose that grew on it once. I shall not replace that fence. I want to remember. As I stand there in the immaculate evening I do not find it strange to be fighting an entire town, a whole county. I am alone, yes, of course I am, but I am not particularly afraid. The house was empty and lonely before—I just did not realize it—it's no worse now. I know that I shall hurt as much as I have been hurt. I shall destroy as much as I have lost. It's a way to live, you know. It's a way to keep your heart ticking under the sheltering arches of your ribs. And that's enough for now. There are some big white moths fluttering around the porch light; and a few fat-bellied beetles flip over on their backs and squirm helplessly on the boards. I wonder how they have survived the frost. They must have hatched under the house, in the warmth there, or between the clapboards. A screech owl pumps silently past the corner of the porch, avoiding the light.

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I wrap my sweater tighter around me, I lean on the porch rail and watch the night come. Not from any particular quarter—it's not that sort of night—it creeps in from all over, like stain up a sponge. There is no wind yet; it will rise later on. It always does. I hear the brief scream of a rabbit; the owl has found supper. I stand on the porch of the house my great-great-great-greatgrandfather built, and through the open door I hear my children clatter along the hall to their supper. Marge, the baby, is laughing as Johnny teases her: "You are, you are, you are!" The words carry on the quiet motionless air until a door cuts them short. I was a child in this house once too, rushing through those halls and up and down those stairs. It was not as nice as it is now—that was before the war, before my grandfather made his money—but it was the same house. For them, for me. I feel the pressure of generations behind me, pushing me along the recurring cycles of birth and death. I was once the child going to bed upstairs, whispering to reassure myself against the creatures of the night. My mother slept in the great tester bed in the south bedroom. And my grandfather stood, where I am standing, this same spot...

185

1966

AWARD

ABOUT THE ASSEMBLED TALES AND STORIES ON VARIOUS TOPICS BY KATHERINE A . PORTER

Katherine Anne Porter (born on May 15, 1890, in Indian Creek, Tex.) was educated in convents and private schools for girls in Texas and Louisiana. In 1918/19 she worked as a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. Having lived for some time in Mexico, she arranged in 1922 for the first exhibition of Mexican-Indian folk art in the United States. Porter's early stories appeared in Century, transition, Second American Caravan, New Masses, and Hound and Horn; they were collected in 1930 in Flowering Judas. In 1931 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship, which enabled her to make her first trip to Europe. For several years she lived in Paris, where she translated French songs, which were published with music and explanatory notes in Katherine Anne Porter's French Song-Book in 1933. Also in Paris, she wrote a long short story, Hacienda: A Story of Mexico. After her return to the United States, Porter published in 1939 a short novel, Noon Wine. It was reprinted in Pale Horse, Pale Rider, which contains two other short novels, the title story and Old Mortality. Nine stories were collected in Porter's next book, The Leaning Tower, which was followed by The Days Before, a collection of essays, critical articles, and book reviews. On several occasions she worked as a script writer in Hollywood and during the 1950's she taught at the University of Liege, Belgium, at the University of Virginia and at Washington and Lee University. In 1962 her first full-length novel, Ship of Fools, appeared after twenty years of writing and researching. In 1966 Katherine A. Porter received the Pulitzer Fiction award for her volume The Collected Stories, which had been published one year earlier.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING

CHAPTER

(Source: K a t h e r i n e A n n e Porter: T h e C o l l e c t e d Stories, N e w Y o r k : H a r c o u r t , B r a c e & W o r l d , Inc., 1965, pp. 3-5.]

Maria Concepcion walked carefully, keeping to the middle of the white dusty road, where the maguey thorns and the treacherous curved spines of organ cactus had not gathered so profusely. She would have enjoyed resting for a moment in the dark shade by the roadside, but she had no time to waste drawing cactus needles from her feet. Juan and his chief would be waiting for their food in the damp trenches of the buried city. She carried about a dozen living fowls slung over her right shoulder, their feet fastened together. Half of them fell upon the flat of her back, the balance dangled uneasily over her breast. They wriggled their benumbed and swollen legs against her neck, they twisted their stupefied eyes and peered into her face inquiringly. She did not see them or think of them. Her left arm was tired with the weight of the food basket, and she was hungry after her long morning's work. Her straight back outlined itself strongly under her clean bright blue cotton rebozo. Instinctive serenity softened her black eyes, shaped like almonds, set far apart, and tilted a bit endwise. She walked with the free, natural, guarded ease of the primitive woman carrying an unborn child. The shape of her body was easy, the swelling life was not a distortion, but the right inevitable proportions of a woman. She was entirely contented. Her husband was at work and she was on her way to market to sell her fowls. Her small house sat half-way up a shallow hill, under a clump of pepper-trees, a wall of organ cactus enclosing it on the side nearest to the road. Now she came down into the valley, divided by the narrow spring, and crossed a bridge of loose stones near the hut where Maria Rosa the beekeeper lived with her old godmother, Lupe the medicine woman. Maria Concepciön had no faith in the charred owl bones, the singed rabbit fur, the cat en-

187

trails, the messes and ointments sold by Lupe to the ailing of the village. She was a good Christian, and drank simple herb teas for headache and stomachache, or bought her remedies bottled, with printed directions that she could not read, at the drugstore near the city market, where she went almost daily. But she often bought a jar of honey from young Maria Rosa, a pretty, shy child only fifteen years old. Maria Concepciön and her husband, Juan Villegas, were each a little past their eighteenth year. She had a good reputation with the neighbors as an energetic religious woman who could drive a bargain to the end. It was commonly known that if she wished to buy a new rebozo for herself or a shirt for Juan, she could bring out a sack of hard silver coins for the purpose. She had paid for the license, nearly a year ago, the potent bit of stamped paper which permits people to be married in the church. She had given money to the priest before she and Juan walked together up to the altar the Monday after Holy Week. It had been the adventure of the villagers to go, three Sundays one after another, to hear the banns called by the priest for Juan de Dios Villegas and Maria Concepciön Manriquez, who were actually getting married in the church, instead of behind it, which was the usual custom, less expensive, and as binding as any other ceremony. But Maria Concepciön was always as proud as if she owned a hacienda. She paused on the bridge and dabbled her feet in the water, her eyes resting themselves from the sun-rays in a fixed gaze to the far-off mountains, deeply blue under their hanging drift of clouds. It came to her that she would like a fresh crust of honey. The delicious aroma of bees, their slow thrilling hum, awakened a pleasant desire for a flake of sweetness in her mouth. "If I do not eat it now, I shall mark my child," she thought, peering through the crevices in the thick hedge of cactus that sheered up nakedly, like bared knife blades set protectingly around the small clearing. The place was so silent she doubted if Maria Rosa and Lupe were at home.

188

The leaning jacal of dried rush-withes and corn sheaves, bound to tall saplings thrust into the earth, roofed with yellowed maguey leaves flattened and overlapping like shingles, hunched drowsy and fragrant in the warmth of noonday. The hives, similarly made, were scattered towards the back of the clearing, like small mounds of clean vegetable refuse. Over each mound there hung a dusty golden shimmer of bees. A light gay scream of laughter rose from behind the hut; a man's short laugh joined in. "Ah, hahahaha!" went the voices together high and low, like a song. "So Maria Rosa has a man!" Maria Concepcion stopped short, smiling, shifted her burden slightly, and bent forward shading her eyes to see more clearly through the spaces of the hedge. Maria Rosa ran, dodging between beehives, parting two stunted jasmine bushes as she came, lifting her knees in swift leaps, looking over her shoulder and laughing in a quivering, excited way. A heavy jar, swung to her wrist by the handle, knocked against her thighs as she ran. Her toes pushed up sudden spurts of dust, her half-raveled braids showered around her shoulders in long crinkled wisps...

189

1967

AWARD

ABOUT THE TRANSFORMATION FROM A LITTLE MAN INTO A BIG ONE BY BERNARD MALAMUD

Bernard. Malamud (bom on April 26, 1914, in Brooklyn, N.Y.) attended the College of the City of New York. After graduating with a B.A. degree in 1936, he worked in various jobs, writing fiction in his spare time. As a graduate student at Columbia University, Malamud began, in 1940, to teach classes in English at Erasmus Hall Evening High School while devoting his days to writing. He was awarded the M.A. degree in 1942. In 1949, after a year as a teacher at Harlem Evening High School, Malamud joined the faculty of Oregon State College as an instructor of English. He remained there until 1961, eventually becoming an associate professor. Meanwhile his first short stories were published in Harper's Bazaar, Commentary, and Partisan Review. Malamud's first novel, The Natural, which chronicles the rise and downfall of a talented baseball player, appeared in 1952. Having obtained a Partisan Review Fiction Fellowship, Malamud took a leave of absence from the college in 1956/57 and spent a year in Europe. About the same time his next novel, The Assistant, was published. Thirteen of Malamud's short stories were collected in 1958 under the title The Magic Barrel. The collection won him the 1959 National Book Award. Malamud subsequently held a two-year fellowship in the Ford Foundation's humanities and arts program. In 1961 Malamud moved to Vermont, where he began teaching in the division of language and literature at Bennington College. That same year he also brought out his third novel, A New Life. It was followed by Idiots First, a collection of eleven short stories. Bernard Malamud's novel, The Fixer, was published in 1966. The following year the story won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: B e r n a r d M a l a m u d : T h e Fixer, N e w Y o r k : Farrar, Straus and G i r o u x , 1966, pp. 3 - 5 ; reprinted by p e r m i s s i o n of Farrar. S t r a u s & G i r o u x , Inc., N e w Y o r k , N.Y.]

From the small crossed window of his room above the stable in the brickyard, Yakov Bok saw people in their long overcoats running somewhere early that morning, everybody in the same direction. Vey iz mir, he thought uneasily, something bad has happened. The Russians, coming from streets around the cemetery, were hurrying, singly or in groups, in the spring snow in the direction of the caves in the ravine, some running in the middle of the slushy cobblestone streets. Yakov hastily hid the small tin can in which he saved silver rubles, then rushed down to the yard to find out what the excitement was about. He asked Proshko, the foreman, loitering near the smoky brickkilns, but Proshko spat and said nothing. Outside the yard a black-shawled, bony-faced peasant woman, thickly dressed, told him the dead body of a child had been found nearby. "Where?" Yakov asked. "How old a child?" but she said she didn't know and hurried away. The next day the Kievlyanin reported that in a damp cave in a ravine not more than a verst and a half from the brickworks, the body of a murdered Russian boy, Zhenia Golov, twelve years old, had been found by two older boys, both fifteen, Kazimir Selivanov and Ivan Shestinsky. Zhenia, dead more than a week, was covered with stab wounds, his body bled white. After the funeral in the cemetery close by the brick factory, Richter, one of the drivers, brought in a handful of

191

leaflets accusing the Jews of the murder. They had been printed, Yakov saw when he examined one, by the Black Hundreds organizations. Their emblem, the Imperial double-headed eagle, was imprinted on the cover, and under it: SAVE RUSSIA FROM THE JEWS. In his room that night, Yakov, in fascination, read that the boy had been bled to death for religious purposes so that the Jews could collect his blood and deliver it to the synagogue for the making of Passover matzos. Though this was ridiculous he was frightened. He got up, sat down, and got up again. He went to the window, then returned hastily and continued to read the newspaper. He was worried because the brick factory where he worked was in the Lukianovsky District, one in which Jews were forbidden to live. He had been living there for months under an assumed name and without a residence certificate. And he was frightened of the pogrom threatened in the newspaper. His own father had been killed in an incident not more than a year after Yakov's birth—something less than a pogrom, and less than useless: two drunken soldiers shot the first three Jews in their path, his father had been the second. But the son had lived through a pogrom when he was a schoolboy, a three-day Cossack raid. On the third morning when the houses were still smoldering and he was led, with a half dozen other children, out of a cellar where they had been hiding he saw a black-bearded Jew with a white sausage stuffed into his mouth, lying in the road on a pile of bloody feathers, a peasant's pig devouring his arm.

192

Five months ago, on a mild Friday in early November, before the first snow had snowed on the shtetl, Yakov's father-in-law, a skinny worried man in clothes about to fall apart, who looked as though he had been assembled out of sticks and whipped air, drove up with his skeletal horse and rickety wagon. They sat in the thin cold house —gone to seed two months after Raisl, the faithless wife, had fled—and drank a last glass of tea together. Shmuel, long since sixty, with tousled gray beard, rheumy eyes, and deeply creased forehead—dug into his caftan pocket for half a yellow sugar lump and offered it to Yakov who shook his head. T h e peddler—he was his daughter's dowry, had had nothing to give so he gave favors, service if possible—sucked tea through sugar but his son-in-law drank his unsweetened. It tasted bitter and he blamed existence. T h e old man from time to time commented on life without accusing anyone, or asked harmless questions, but Yakov was silent or short with answers...

193

1968 AWARD ABOUT THE REVOLT LED BY AN OUTSTANDING BLACK PREACHER BY WILLIAM C . STYRON JR.

William Clark Styron Jr. (born on June 11, 1925, in Newport News, Va.) attended Duke University as a Marine officer candidate. Mobilized as a lieutenant, Styron reached Okinawa just as the war was ending. Upon his discharge he returned to Duke, where he received his B.A. degree in 1947. Moving to New York City, he obtained a job as an editor at Whittlesey House, in which he remained for six months. He subsequently took a writing class at the New School for Social Research and began writing his first novel, Lie Down in Darkness, about a Newport News family torn by alcoholism and insanity. Styron worked on the novel for the next three years, submitting the manuscript to Bobbs-Merrill Publishers just as he was recalled to military duty in 1951. Having lost his enthusiasm for the Marines, Styron pleaded an eye defect and secured an honorable discharge in the autumn of 1951. With the money from his first book, he went to Paris, where, in a six-week period during the summer of 1952, he wrote The Long March, a novella based on a forced march he had undergone while in Marine retraining at Camp Lejeune. The book was published in 1955. His next novel, Set This House on Fire, appeared five years later. Another seven years of research and writing went into The Confessions of Nat Turner. The story made William C. Styron Jr. the recipient of the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for the best fictional work published during the previous year.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER I S o u r c e : W i l l i a m S t y r o n : T h e C o n f e s s i o n s of Nat T u r n e r , N e w Y o r k : R a n d o m H o u s e . 1967, pp. 3-5.]

ABOVE

THE

BARREN,

SANDY

CAPE

WHERE

the river joins the sea, there is a promontory or cliff rising straight up hundreds of feet to form the last outpost of land. One must try to visualize a river estuary below this cliff, wide and muddy and shallow, and a confusion of choppy waves where the river merges with the sea and the current meets the ocean tide. It is afternoon. The day is clear, sparkling, and the sun seems to cast no shadow anywhere. It may be the commencement of spring or perhaps the end of summer; it matters less what the season is than that the air is almost seasonless—benign and neutral, windless, devoid of heat or cold. As always, I seem to be approaching this place alone in some sort of boat (it is a small boat, a skiff or maybe a canoe, and I am reclining in it comfortably; at least I have no sense of discomfort nor even of exertion, for I do not row— the boat is moving obediently to the river's sluggish seaward wallow), floating calmly toward the cape past which, beyond and far, deep blue, stretches the boundless sea. The shores of the river are unpeopled, silent; no deer run through the forests, nor do any gulls rise up from the deserted, sandy beaches. There is an effect of great silence and of an even greater solitude, as if life here had not so much perished as simply disappeared, leaving all—river shore and estuary and rolling sea—to exist forever unchanged like this beneath the light of a motionless afternoon sun. Now as I drift near the cape I raise my eyes to the promontory facing out upon the sea. There again I see what I know I will see, as always. In the sunlight the building stands white—stark white and serene against a blue and cloudless

195

sky. It is square and formed of marble, like a temple, and is simply designed, possessing no columns or windows but rather, in place of them, recesses whose purpose I cannot imagine, flowing in a series of arches around its two visible sides. The building has no door, at least there is no door that I can see. Likewise, just as this building possesses neither doors nor windows, it seems to have no purpose, resembling, as I say, a temple—yet a temple in which no one worships, or a sarcophagus in which no one lies buried, or a monument to something mysterious, ineffable, and without name. But as is my custom whenever I have this dream or vision, I don't dwell upon the meaning of the strange building standing so lonely and remote upon its ocean promontory, for it seems by its very purposelessness to be endowed with a profound mystery which to explore would yield only a profusion of darker and perhaps more troubling mysteries, as in a maze. And so again it comes to me, this vision, in the same haunting and recurrent way it has for many years. Again I am in the little boat, floating in the estuary of a silent river toward the sea. And again beyond and ahead of me, faintly booming and imminent yet without menace, is the sweep of sunlit ocean. Then the cape, then the lofty promontory, and finally the stark white temple high and serene above all, inspiring in me neither fear nor peace nor awe, but only the contemplation of a great mystery, as I moved out toward the sea . . . Never, from the time I was a child until the present—and I am just past thirty—was I able to discover the meaning behind this dream (or vision; for though it occurred mainly as I awoke from sleep, there would be random waking moments when, working in the fields or out trapping rabbits in the woods, or while I was at some odd task or other, the whole scene would flash against my mind with the silence and clearness and fixity of absolute reality, like a picture in the Bible,

196

and in an instant's dumb daydream all would be re-created before my eyes, river and temple and promontory and sea, to dissolve almost as swiftly as it had come), nor was I ever able to understand the emotion it caused me—this emotion of a tranquil and abiding mystery. I have no doubt, however, that it was all connected with my childhood, when I would hear white people talk of Norfolk and of "going to the seaside." For Norfolk was only forty miles eastward from Southampton and the ocean only a few miles past Norfolk, where some of the white people would go to trade. Indeed, I had even known a few Negroes from Southampton who had gone to Norfolk with their masters and then seen the ocean, and the picture they recalled—that of an infinite vastness of blue water stretching out to the limit of the eye, and past that, as if to the uttermost boundaries of the earth—inflamed my imagination in such a way that my desire to see this sight became a kind of fierce, inward, almost physical hunger, and there were days when my mind seemed filled with nothing but fantasies of the waves and the distant horizon and the groaning seas, the free blue air like an empire above arching eastward to Africa—as if by one single glimpse of this scene I might comprehend all the earth's ancient, oceanic, preposterous splendor...

197

1969

AWARD

ABOUT THE ROOTS AND THE SOUL OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN BY N . SCOTT MOM AD A Υ

Navarre Scott Momaday (born on February 27, 1934, in Lawton, Okla.) attended the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque. As a student he took prizes in public speaking and creative writing and obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1958. Momaday taught school on the Jicarilla Apache reservation for a year before entering Stanford University as a graduate student in literature. There he won the university's Creative Fellowship in Poetry, the John Hay Whitney Fellowship, and the Stanford Wilson Dissertation Fellowship. He obtained his M.A. degree in 1960, and he received his Ph.D. in 1963. His doctoral dissertation was published in 1965 as The Complete Poems of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman. Already two years earlier he had joined the faculty of the University of California at Santa Barbara as an assistant professor of English. Having held a Guggenheim Fellowship at Harvard University during the 1966/67 academic year, he returned to Santa Barbara and two years later was named professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley. A specialist in nineteenth-century American literature and in Indian folklore, Momaday published The Way to Rainy Mountain, a collection of stories and legends of the Kiowa Indians. His novel House Made of Dawn, which was published in 1968, made N. Scott Momaday in the following year the first American Indian to win the Pulitzer Prize in fiction.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: N. Scott M o m a d a y : H o u s e M a d e of D a w n , N e w York - E v a n s t o n : Harper & R o w , P u b l i s h e r s , 1968, pp. 5-7.]

C, The river lies in a valley of hills and fields. The north end of the valley is narrow, and the river runs down from the mountains through a canyon. The sun strikes the canyon floor only a few hours each day, and in winter the snow remains for a long time in the crevices of the walls. There is a town in the valley, and there are ruins of other towns in the canyon. In three directions from the town there are cultivated fields. Most of them lie to the west, across the river, on the slope of the plain. Now and then in winter, great angles of geese fly through the valley, and then the sky and the geese are the same color and the air is hard and damp and smoke rises from the houses of the town. The seasons lie hard upon the land. In summer the valley is hot, and birds come to the tamarack on the river. The feathers of blue and yellow birds are prized by the townsmen. The fields are small and irregular, and from the west mesa they seem an intricate patchwork of arbors and gardens, too numerous for the town. The townsmen work all summer in the fields. When the moon is full, they work at night with ancient, handmade plows and hoes, and if the weather is good and the water plentiful they take a good harvest from the fields. They grow the things that can be preserved easily: corn and chilies and alfalfa. On the town side of the river there are a few orchards and patches of melons and grapes and squash. Every six or seven years there is a great harvest of pinones far

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to the east of the town. That harvest, like the deer in the mountains, is the gift of God. It is hot in the end of July. The old man Francisco drove a team of roan mares near the place where the river bends around a cottonwood. The sun shone on the sand and the river and the leaves of the tree, and waves of heat shimmered from the stones. The colored stones on the bank of the river were small and smooth, and they rubbed together and cracked under the wagon wheels. Once in a while one of the roan mares tossed its head, and the commotion of its dark mane sent a swarm of flies into the air. Downstream the brush grew thick on a bar in the river, and there the old man saw the reed. He turned the mares into the water and stepped down on the sand. A sparrow hung from the reed. It was upside down and its wings were partly open and the feathers at the back of its head lay spread in a tiny ruff. The eyes were neither open nor closed. Francisco was disappointed, for he had wished for a male mountain bluebird, breast feathers the pale color of April skies or of turquoise, lake water. Or a summer tanager: a prayer plume ought to be beautiful. He drew the reed from the sand and cut loose the horsehair from the sparrow's feet. The bird fell into the water and was carried away in the current. He turned the reed in his hands; it was smooth and nearly translucent, like the spine of an eagle feather, and it was not yet burned and made brittle by the sun and wind. He had cut the hair too short, and he pulled another from the tail of the near roan and set the snare again. W h e n the reed was curved and strung like a bow, he replaced it carefully in the sand. He laid his forefinger lightly on top of the reed and the reed sprang and the looped end of the hair snapped across his finger and

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made a white line above the nail. "Si, bien hecho," he said aloud, and without removing the reed from the sand he cocked it again. The sun rose higher and the old man urged the mares away from the river. Then he was on the old road to San Ysidro. At times he sang and talked to himself above the noise of the wagon: "Yo heyana oh . . . heyana oh . . . heyana oh . . . Abelito . . . tarda mucho en venir. . . The rnares pulled easily, with their heads low. He held a vague tension on the lines and settled into the ride by force of habit. A lizard ran across the road in front of the mares and crouched on a large flat rock, its tail curved over the edge. Far away a whirlwind moved toward the river, but it soon spun itself out and the air was again perfectly still...

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1970

AWARD

ABOUT THE THIRTY STORIES FROM AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN AREAS BY JEAN STAFFORD

Jean Stafford (born on July 1, 1915, in Covina, Cal.) attended the State Preparatory School at Boulder, and later the University of Colorado. After taking her Master of Arts degree at the university in 1936 she put in a year's study at Heidelberg, Germany. Upon her return to the United States, she taught first at Stephens College in Columbia, Mo., and later in Massachusetts. She subsequently spent a year in Louisiana at the Southern Review, one year in New York City, and another year in Tennessee. Stafford's first novel, Boston Adventure, was published in 1944. The book earned for its author the Merit Award for outstanding achievement in 1944, made by the magazine Mademoiselle. Early in the following year Stafford received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her next book, The Mountain Lion, appeared in 1947. The novels The Catherine Wheel and Children are Bored on Sunday as well as the juvenile books Elephi; The Cat With the High I. Q.; and The Lion and the Carpenter also count among her book publications. A fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies of Wesleyan University and an adjunct professor at Columbia University, Jean Stafford also wrote short stories for Harper's Bazaar, Kenyon Review, Partisan Review, the New Yorker, Mademoiselle, Vogue and other magazines. Jean Stafford's volume The Collected Stories received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for the best book in the Fiction category published during the preceding year.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: Jean Stafford: The Collected Stories, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969, pp. 3-5; reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., New York, N.Y.]

There was a hole so neat that it looked tailored in the dead center of the large round beige velours mat that had been thrown on the grass in the shade of the venerable sycamore, and through it protruded a clump of mint, so chic in its air of casualness, so piquant in its fragrance in the heat of mid-July, that Mme Floquet, a brisk Greek in middle life, suggested, speaking in French with a commandingly eccentric accent, that her host, Karl von Bubnoff, M. le Baron, had contrived it all with shears and a trowel before his Sunday guests arrived at his manorial house, Magnamont, in Chantilly. It was quite too accidental to be accidental, she declared; it was quite too Surrealist to be a happenstance. Mme Floquet had the look and the deportment of a dark wasp; her thin, sharp fingers, crimson-tipped, fiddled with her bracelets, made of rare old coins ("Oh, Byzantine, I daresay, or something of the sort," she had said carelessly to someone who had admired them; one knew that she knew perfectly well the pedigree and the value of each of them), and through smoked glasses of a rosy cast she gave her lightning-paced regard to a compact that had cunningly been made from a tiger cowrie shell and given by M. le Baron to Mrs. Preston, whose birthday it was today. Mrs. Preston, a Russian, was as Amazonian and fair as Mme Floquet was elfin and swart, and she was the beneficiary of so large a fortune, left to her by an American husband (he had manufactured pills), that in certain quarters she was adored. (Mme Floquet, who was dependent for her livelihood on the largess of a moody Danish lover, had been heard to remark, "I can't say that Tanya carries her money as well as she might, but that sort of thing—money, I mean—can't be ignored. J'd not refuse the ofler of the Koh-i-noor, even though it wouldn't be my style." Because of this forbearance on the part of Mme Floquet, she and Mrs. Preston were the best of friends,

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and the little Greek had frequently accepted presents o£ slightly worn sables and the use of second-best motorcars.) It was Mrae Floquet's chaffing tone that was immediately adopted by the whole party. T h e conceit of their host's rising before the dew was dry and arranging this neat tatter and its rural adornment amused them, and, to his delight, they ragged him; someone proposed that he had really done it the night before by moonlight and had recited incantations that would endow this particular herb with magic properties—black or benign, the speaker would not care to guess. Rejoicing in his witty nature, they recalled the Baron's fete champetre of the summer before, when there had actually been jousting and tilting, the knights being jockeys from Longchamp in papier-mache armor executed by Christian Dior. Someone else, returning to the present joke, said, "If this were Tennessee, we could have mint juleps." But Mme Floquet, who tended to be tutorial, replied to this, "Those, I believe, are made with Bourbon whiskey, and the taste of that, I assure you, is insupportable. I had some one day in America by mistake." She shuddered and her bracelets sang. Maggie Meriwether, who was from Nashville and was the only American present, and who was abroad for the first time in her young life, blushed at this mention of her native state and country as if someone had cast an aspersion on her secret lover; she was gravely, cruelly homesick. Her French, acquired easily and then polished painstakingly at Sweet Briar, had forsaken her absolutely the very moment the Channel boat docked in Calais, and while, to her regret and often to her bitter abasement, she had understood almost everything she had heard since she had been in France, she had not been able to utter a word. Not so much as "Merci" and certainly not so much as "Merci beaucoup." She had been sure that if she did, she would be greeted with rude laughter (not loud but penetrating), cool looks of disdain, or simply incomprehension, as if she were speaking a Finnish dialect. Her parents, who had had to be cajoled for a year into letting her go to Europe alone, had imagined innumerable dreadful disasters

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—the theft of her passport or purse, ravishment on the Orient Express, amoebic dysentery, abduction into East Berlin—but it had never occurred to them that their high-spirited, self-confident, happy daughter would be bamboozled into muteness by the language of France. Her itinerary provided for two weeks in Paris, and she had suffered through one week of it when, like an angel from heaven, an Englishman called T i p p y Akenside showed u p at her hotel at the very moment when she was about to dissolve in tears and book passage home. She had met Tippy in London at a dinner party—the English ate awful food and drank awful drinks, but they surely did speak a nice language—and had liked him, and she would have been pleased to see him again anywhere; seeing him in Paris at the crucial moment had almost caused her to fall in love with him, though young men with wavy black hair and bad teeth had never appealed to her. H e had been wonderfully understanding of her dilemma (he had had a similar experience in Germany when he had gone there for a holiday from Eton), and the evening before, which had begun at Maxim's and ended at Le Grand Seigneur with rivers of champagne, he had proposed this day in the country as a cheerful relaxation...

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1971 AWARD ABOUT THE WITHHOLD OF THE FICTION PRIZE BY T H E ADVISORY BOARD

Since the member of the 1971 Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury in their report declared themselves unable to single out any book published during the preceding year, the Advisory Board decided to give no award in this category·

206

NAMES OF THE BOARD MEMBERS VOTING FOR "NO AWARD"

Benjamin C. Bradlee

The Washington

Wallace Carroll

Winston-Salem

Post (N.C.) Journal-

Sentinel John Cowles Jr.

The Minneapolis Star & Tribune

Price Day

The Baltimore Sun

William B. Dickinson

The Philadelphia

Robert J. Donovan

Los Angeles

Lee Hills

Knight Newspapers

William J. McGill

Columbia University

Sylvan Meyer

Miami News

Newbold Noyes Jr.

Washington

Joseph Pulitzer Jr.

St. Louis

James Reston

The New York Times

Vermont C. Royster

Wall Street Journal

Bulletin

Times Inc.

Star-News Post-Dispatch

207

1972 AWARD ABOUT THE LIVES OF FOUR GENERATIONS OF AN AMERICAN FAMILY BY WALLACE E . STEGNER

Wallace Earle Stegner (born on February 18, 1909, in Lake Mills, la.) graduated from the University of Utah with a B.A. degree in 1930. He subsequently enrolled at the University of Iowa, where he obtained his M.A. degree in 1932 and his Ph.D. degree in 1935. Before completing the doctoral program, he had studied for a year at the University of California at Berkeley and briefly taught at Augustana College in Rock Island, 111. In 1934 he had accepted an appointment as an instructor in English at the University of Utah, where he remained until 1937, when he left to join the faculty of the University of Wisconsin. Following two years there, Stegner served as Briggs-Copeland instructor of composition at Harvard University, from 1939 to 1945. Returning to the West, he became a professor of English at Stanford University and, in 1946, director of its creative writing program, a position he held until his retirement. During his last two years at Stanford he also held the position of Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of the Humanities. In 1937, right at the beginning of his writing career, Stegner won the Little, Brown novelette contest with his Remembering Laughter. It was followed by the novellas The Potter's House and Fire and Ice. His first novel, The Big Rock Candy Mountain, appeared in 1943. The author's book publications also include the story collections The Women on the Wall and The City of the Living, the novels Second Growth", A Shooting Star, and All the Little Live Things as well as the non-fiction works Mormon Country, The Preacher and the Slave·, and The Sound of Mountain Water. Wallace E. Stegner was awarded the 1972 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his Angle of Repose, which had been published one year earlier.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: Wallace Stegner: Angle of Repose, Garden City, N . Y . : Doubleday & C o m p a n y , Inc., 1 9 7 1 , pp.

15-17.]

Now I believe they will leave me alone. Obviously Rodman came up hoping to find evidence of my incompetence—though how an incompetent could have got this place renovated, moved his library up, and got himself transported to it without arousing the suspicion of his watchful children, ought to be a hard one for Rodman to answer. I take some pride in the way I managed all that. And he went away this afternoon without a scrap of what he would call data. So tonight I can sit here with the tape recorder whirring no more noisily than electrified time, and say into the microphone the place and date of a sort of beginning and a sort of return: Zodiac Cottage, Grass Valley, California, April 12, 1970. Right there, I might say to Rodman, who doesn't believe in time, notice something: I started to establish the present and the present moved on. What I established is already buried under layers of tape. Before I can say I am, I was. Heraclitus and I, prophets of flux, know that the flux is composed of parts that imitate and repeat each other. Am or was, I am cumulative, too. I am everything I ever was, whatever you and Leah may think. I am much of what my parents and especially my grandparents were—inherited stature, coloring, brains, bones (that part unfortunate), plus transmitted prejudices, culture, scruples, likings, moralities, and moral errors that I defend as if they were personal and not familial. Even places, especially this house whose air is thick with the past. My antecedents support me here as the old wistaria at the corner supports the house. Looking at its cables wrapped two or three times around the cottage, you would swear, and you could be right, that if they were cut the place would fall down. Rodman, like most sociologists and most of his generation, was born without the sense of history. T o him it is only an aborted social science. The world has changed, Pop, he tells me. T h e past isn't go-

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ing to teach us anything about what we've got ahead of us. Maybe it did once, or seemed to. It doesn't any more. Probably he thinks the blood vessels of my brain are as hardened as my cervical spine. They probably discuss me in bed. Out of his mind, going up there by himself . . . How can we, unless . . . helpless . . . roll his -wheelchair off the porch who'd rescue him? Set himself afire lighting a cigar, who'd put him out? . . . Damned old independent mule-headed . . . worse than a hahy. Never consider the trouble he makes for the people who have to look after him . . . House I grew up in, he says. Papers, he says, thing I've always wanted to do . . . All of Grandmother's papers, hooks, reminiscences, pictures, those hundreds of letters that came back from Augusta Hudson's daughter after Augusta died . . . A lot of Grandfather's relics, some of Father's, some of my own . . . Hundred year chronicle of the family. All right, fine. Why not give that stuff to the Historical Society and get a fat tax deduction? He could still work on it. Why box it all up, and himself too, in that old crooked house in the middle of twelve acres of land we could all make a good thing out of if he'd consent to sell? Why go off and play cobwebs like a character in a Southern novel, out where nobody can keep an eye on him? They keep thinking of my good, in their terms. I don't blame them, I only resist them. Rodman will have to report to Leah that I have rigged the place to fit my needs and am getting along well. I have had Ed shut off the whole upstairs except for my bedroom and bath and this study. Downstairs we use only the kitchen and library and the veranda. Everything tidy and shipshape and orderly. N o data. So I may anticipate regular visits of inspection and solicitude while they wait for me to get a belly full of independence. They will look sharp for signs of senility and increasing pain—will they perhaps even hope for them? Meantime they will walk softly, speak quietly, rattle the oatbag gently, murmuring and moving closer until the arm can slide the rope over the stiff old neck and I can be led away to the old folks' pasture down in Menlo Park where the care is so good and there is so much to keep the inmates busy and happy. If I remain stubborn, the decision may eventually have to be made for me, perhaps by computer. W h o could argue with a computer? Rodman will punch all his data

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onto cards and feed them into his machine and it will tell us all it is time. I would have thein understand that I am not just killing time during my slow petrifaction. I am neither dead nor inert. My head still works. Many things are unclear to me, including myself, and I want to sit and think. W h o ever had a better opportunity? W h a t if I can't turn my head? I can look in any direction by turning my wheelchair, and I choose to look back. Rodman to the contrary notwithstanding, that is the only direction we can learn from. Increasingly, after my amputation and during the long time when I lay around feeling sorry for myself, I came to feel like the contour bird. I wanted to fly around the Sierra foothills backward, just looking. If there was no longer any sense in pretending to be interested in where I was going, I could consult where I've been. And I don't mean the Ellen business. I honestly believe this isn't that personal. T h e Lyman Ward who married Ellen Hammond and begot Rodman Ward and taught history and wrote certain books and monographs about the Western frontier, and suffered certain personal catastrophes and perhaps deserved them and survives them after a fashion and now sits talking to himself into a microphone—he doesn't matter that much any more. I would like to put him in a frame of reference and comparison

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1973

AWARD

ABOUT THE MEMORIES OF GROWING UP IN A MISSISSIPPI TOWN BY EUDORA WELTY

Eudora Welty (born on April 13, 1909, in Jackson, Miss.) studied first at the Mississippi State College for Women, before she enrolled in the University of Wisconsin, which awarded her the B.A. degree in 1929. She subsequently attended Columbia University's Graduate School of Business to prepare for a career in advertising, but left the university without taking a degree. She returned to Mississippi as a writer for a local radio station and as a contributor of society news to the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Then, a full-time job as a publicity agent for the state office of the Works Progress Administration gave Welty the opportunity to travel throughout Mississippi. In 1936 the Manuscript magazine published Welty's first short story and in 1941 her first collection of short stories, A Curtain of Green, and Other Stories appeared. The same year she won the first of her six O. Henry Memorial Contest awards. Welty's first novel, The Robber Bridegroom, was published in 1942 and later adapted for the musical stage. It was followed by The Wide Net, and Other Stories; Delta Wedding·, and The Golden Apples. The Ponder Heart and the story collection The Bride of the Innisfalien appeared in 1953 and 1955. For almost fifteen years, from the mid-1950's to the late 1960's, Eudora Welty published little, except for a few short stories, some literary criticism, and a children's book, The Shoe Bird. Her books Losing Battles and The Optimist's Daughter were brought out in 1970 and 1972. The latter novel made Eudora Welty the winner of the Pulitzer Fiction award in the year after its publication.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: Eudora Welty: The Optimist's Daughter, New York: Random House, 1972, pp. 3-5.]

A NURSE held the door open for them. Judge McKelva going first, then his daughter Laurel, then his wife Fay, they walked into the windowless room where the doctor would make his examination. Judge McKelva was a tall, heavy man of seventy-one who customarily wore his glasses on a ribbon. Holding them in his hand now, he sat on the raised, thronelike chair above the doctor's stool, flanked by Laurel on one side and Fay on the other. Laurel McKelva Hand was a slender, quiet-faced woman in her middle forties, her hair still dark. She wore clothes of an interesting cut and texture, although her suit was wintry for New Orleans and had a wrinkle down the skirt. Her dark blue eyes looked sleepless. Fay, small and pale in her dress with the gold buttons, was tapping her sandaled foot. It was a Monday morning of early March. New Orleans was out-of-town for all of them. Dr. Courtland, on the dot, crossed the room in long steps and shook hands with Judge McKelva and Lau-

213

rel. He had to be introduced to Fay, who had been married to Judge McKelva for only a year and a half. Then the doctor was on the stool, with his heels hung over the rung. He lifted his face in appreciative attention: as though it were he who had waited in New Orleans for Judge McKelva—in order to give the Judge a present, or for the Judge to bring him one. "Nate," Laurel's father was saying, "the trouble may be I'm not as young as I used to be. But I'm ready to believe it's something wrong with my eyes." As though he had all the time in the world, Dr. Courtland, the well-known eye specialist, folded his big country hands with the fingers that had always looked, to Laurel, as if their mere touch on the crystal of a watch would convey to their skin exactly what time it was. "I date this little disturbance from George Washington's Birthday," Judge McKelva said. Dr. Courtland nodded, as though that were a good day for it. "Tell me about the little disturbance," he said. "I'd come in. I'd done a little rose pruning—I've retired, you know. And I stood at the end of my front porch there, with an eye on the street—Fay had slipped out somewhere," said Judge McKelva, and bent on her

214

his benign smile that looked so much like a scowl. "I was only uptown in the beauty parlor, letting Myrtis roll up my hair," said Fay. "And I saw the fig tree," said Judge McKelva. "The fig tree! Giving off flashes from those old bird-frighteners Becky saw fit to tie on it years back!" Both men smiled. They were of two generations but the same place. Becky was Laurel's mother. Those little homemade reflectors, rounds of tin, did not halfway keep the birds from the figs in July...

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1974

AWARD

ABOUT THE WITHHOLD OF THE FICTION PRIZE BY T H E ADVISORY BOARD

Although the members of the 1974 Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury in their report mentioned one specific book to receive the prize for work published during the preceding year, the Advisory Board did not accept the proposal and decided to give no award in this category.

216

NAMES OF THE BOARD MEMBERS VOTING FOR "NO AWARD"

Benjamin C. Bradlee

The Washington

Post

John Cowles Jr.

The Minneapolis Star & Tribune

Price Day

The Baltimore

Robert J. Donovan

Los Angeles

Lee Hills

Knight Newspapers

William J. McGill

Columbia University

Sylvan Meyer

Miami News

Newbold Noyes Jr.

Washington

Eugene C. Patterson

The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times

Joseph Pulitzer Jr.

St. Louis

James Reston

The New York Times

Vermont C. Royster

Wall Street Journal

Thomas Winship

Boston Globe

Sun Times Inc.

Star-News

Post-Dispatch

217

1975

AWARD

ABOUT THE MOST CRUCIAL BATTLE DURING THE CIVIL WAR TIME BY MICHAEL J. SHAARA JR.

Michael Joseph Shaara Jr. (born on June 23, 1929, in Jersey City, N.J.) served with the United States Army as a paratrooper, rising to the rank of sergeant. During 1948/49 he worked as a merchant seaman. Upon his discharge from the army he enrolled in Rutgers University, which awarded him the Bachelor's degree in 1951. As a graduate student he attended Columbia University and the University of Vermont. In 1954 he became a Florida police officer with the St. Petersburg Police Department. From 1961 to 1973 he held the position of associate professor of English at the Florida State University in Tallahassee and taught at several other universities as a guest lecturer. Concurrently, he worked from 1961 to 1965 as a writer, producer, and performer of educational television courses. In 1966 Shaara received the award for excellence in medical journalism by the American Medical Association and, the following year, he won the Coyle Moore Award for classroom excellence. The educator and author also contributed short stories and articles to American and foreign magazines including the Saturday Evening Post, Playboy, Galaxy, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Dude, Mississippi Review, and McCall's. Shaara's first novel appeared in 1968: The Broken Place deals with a Korean War veteran who returns home but who is unable to come to terms with his new life. The book The Killer Angels won Michael J. Shaara's Jr. the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for the best fiction book published during the preceding year.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [ S o u r c e : M i c h a e l S h a a r a : T h e Killer A n g e l s - A N o v e l , N e w York: D a v i d M c K a y C o m p a n y , Inc., 1974, pp. 3-5.]

Η

J L J L e rode into the dark of the woods and dismounted. He crawled upward on his belly over cool rocks out into the sunlight, and suddenly he was in the open and he could see for miles, and there was the whole vast army below him, filling the valley like a smoking river. It came out of a blue rainstorm in the east and overflowed the narrow valley road, coiling along a stream, narrowing and choking at a white bridge, fading out into the yellowish dust of June but still visible on the farther road beyond the blue hills, spiked with flags and guidons like a great chopped bristly snake, the snake ending headless in a blue wall of summer rain. The spy tucked himself behind a boulder and began counting flags. Must be twenty thousand men, visible all at once. Two whole Union Corps. He could make out the familiar black hats of the Iron Brigade, troops belonging to John Reynold's First Corps. He looked at his watch, noted the time. They were coming very fast. The Army of the Potomac had never moved this fast. The day was murderously hot and there was no wind and the dust hung above the army like a yellow veil. He thought: there'll be some of them die of the heat today. But they are coming faster than they ever came before. He slipped back down into the cool dark and rode slowly downhill toward the silent empty country to the north. With luck he could make the Southern line before nightfall. After

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nightfall it would be dangerous. But he must not seem to hurry. The horse was already tired. And yet there was the pressure of that great blue army behind him, building like water behind a cracking dam. He rode out into the open, into the land between the armies. There were fat Dutch barns, prim German orchards. But there were no cattle in the fields and no horses, and houses everywhere were empty and dark. He was alone in the heat and the silence, and then it began to rain and he rode head down into monstrous lightning. All his life he had been afraid of lightning but he kept riding. He did not know where the Southern headquarters was but he knew it had to be somewhere near Chambersburg. He had smelled out the shape of Lee's army in all the rumors and bar talk and newspapers and hysteria he had drifted through all over eastern Pennsylvania, and on that day he was perhaps the only man alive who knew the positions of both armies. He carried the knowledge with a hot and lovely pride. Lee would be near Chambersburg, and wherever Lee was Longstreet would not be far away. So finding the headquarters was not the problem. The problem was riding through a picket line in the dark. The rain grew worse. He could not even move in under a tree because of the lightning. He had to take care not to get lost. He rode quoting Shakespeare from memory, thinking of the picket line ahead somewhere in the dark. The sky opened and poured down on him and he rode on: it will be rain tonight: let it come down. That was a speech of murderers. He had been an actor once. He had no stature and a small voice and there were no big parts for him until the war came, and now he was the only one who knew how good he was. If only they could see him work, old cold Longstreet and the

220

rest. But everyone hated spies. I come a single spy. Wet single spy. But they come in whole battalions. The rain began to ease off and he spurred the horse to a trot. My kingdom for a horse. Jolly good line. He went on, reciting Henry the Fifth aloud: "Once more into the breech . . Late that afternoon he came to a crossroad and the sign of much cavalry having passed this way a few hours ago. His own way led north to Chambersburg, but he knew that Longstreet would have to know who these people were so close to his line. He debated a moment at the crossroads, knowing there was no time. A delay would cost him daylight. Yet he was a man of pride and the tracks drew him. Perhaps it was only Jeb Stuart. The spy thought hopefully, wistfully: if it's Stuart I can ask for an armed escort all the way home. He turned and followed the tracks...

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1976 AWARD ABOUT THE TRIALS AND TEMPTATIONS OF THE AMERICAN ARTIST BY SAUL BELLOW

Saul Bellow (born on June 10, 1915, in Lachine, Quebec) entered the University of Chicago in 1933. Two years later, he transferred to Northwestern University, and in 1937 he graduated with a B.S. degree. Following his graduation he worked briefly for the federal WPA Writers' Project. Then, after teaching from 1938 to 1942 at Pestalozzi-Froebel Teachers College in Chicago, he became a member of the editorial department of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. While serving with the merchant marine during World War II, Bellow completed his first novel, Dangling Man. He followed it with another novel, The Victim. From 1946 to 1949 Bellow taught English at the University of Minnesota, and he was also awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, which enabled him to travel to Europe. From 1950 to 1952 he was a visiting lecturer at New York University, and he also taught at Princeton University and at Bard College. Since 1954 - when he won the National Book Award for the novel The Adventures of Augie March - to 1959 he taught at the University of Minnesota. The same year he published the novel Henderson the Rain King. In 1961 Bellow was a visiting professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico. He subsequently moved to Chicago and became a professor on the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. The novel Herzog appeared in 1964 and won Bellow another National Book Award and the Prix International de Litterature. After release of his collection of short stories, Mosby's Memoirs and Other Stories, he published his seventh novel, Mr. Sammler's Planet, in 1970. Five years later, Saul Bellow brought out the book Humboldt's Gift, which earned him the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [ S o u r c e : Saul B e l l o w : H u m b o l d t ' s G i f t , N e w Y o r k : T h e V i k i n g Press, 1975. pp. 1-3.]

T h e book of ballads published by Von Humboldt Fleisher in the Thirties was an immediate hit. Humboldt was just what everyone had been waiting for. Out in the Midwest I had certainly been waiting eagerly, I can tell you that. An avant-garde writer, the first of a new generation, he was handsome, fair, large, serious, witty, he was learned. T h e guy had it all. All the papers reviewed his book. His picture appeared in Time without insult and in Newsweek with praise. I read Harlequin Ballads enthusiastically. I was a student at the University of Wisconsin and thought about nothing but literature day and night. Humboldt revealed to me new ways of doing things. I was ecstatic. I envied his luck, his talent, and his fame, and I went east in May to have a look at him—perhaps to get next to him. The Grey hound bus, taking the Scranton route, made the trip in about fifty hours. That didn't matter. T h e bus windows were open. I had never seen real mountains before. Trees were budding. It was like Beethoven's Pastorale. I felt showered by the green, within. Manhattan was fine, too. I took a room for three bucks a week and found a job selling Fuller Brushes door to door. And I was wildly excited about everything. Having written Humboldt a long fan letter, I was invited to Greenwich Village to discuss literature and ideas. He lived on Bedford Street, near Chumley's. First he gave me black coffee, and then poured gin in the same cup. "Well, you're a nice-looking enough fellow, Charlie," he said to me. "Aren't you a bit sly, maybe? I think you're headed for early baldness. And such large emotional handsome eyes. But you certainly do love literature and that's the main thing. You have

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sensibility," he said. He was a pioneer in the use of this word. Sensibility later made it big. Humboldt was very kind. He introduced me to people in the Village and got me books to review. I always loved him. Humboldt's success lasted about ten years. In the late Forties he started to sink. In the early Fifties I myself became famous. I even made a pile of money. Ah, money, the money! Humboldt held the money against me. In the last years of his life when he wasn't too depressed to talk, wasn't locked up in a loony bin, he went about New York saying bitter things about me and my "million dollars." "Take the case of Charlie Citrine. He arrived from Madison, Wisconsin, and knocked on my door. Now he's got a million bucks. What kind of writer or intellectual makes that kind of dough—a Keynes? Okay. Keynes, a world figure. A genius in economics, a prince in Bloomsbury," said Humboldt. "Married to a Russian ballerina. T h e money follows. But who the hell is Citrine to become so rich? We used to be close friends," Humboldt accurately said. "But there's something perverse with that guy. After making this dough why does he bury himself in the sticks? What's he in Chicago for? He's afraid to be found out." Whenever his mind was sufficiently clear he used his gifts to knock me. He did a great job. And money wasn't what I had in mind. Oh God, no, what I wanted was to do good. I was dying to do something good. And this feeling for good went back to my early and peculiar sense of existence—sunk in the glassy depths of life and groping, thrillingly and desperately, for sense, a person keenly aware of painted veils, of Maya, of domes of many-colored glass staining the white radiance of eternity, quivering in the intense inane and so on. I was quite a nut about surh things. Humboldt knew this, really, but toward the end he could not afford to give me any sympathy. Sick and sore, he wouldn't let up on me. He only stressed the

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contradiction between the painted veils and the big money. But such sums as I made, made themselves. Capitalism made them for dark comical reasons of its own. T h e world did it. Yesterday I read in The Wall Street Journal about the melancholy of affluence, "Not in all the five millennia of man's recorded history have so many been so affluent." Minds formed by five millennia of scarcity are distorted. T h e heart can't take this sort of change. Sometimes it just refuses to accept it. In the Twenties kids in Chicago hunted for treasure in the March thaw. Dirty snow hillocks formed along the curbs and when they melted, water ran braided and brilliant in the gutters and you could find marvelous loot—bottle tops, machine gears, Indian-head pennies. And last spring, almost an elderly fellow now, I found that I had left the sidewalk and that I was following the curb and looking. For what? What was I doing? Suppose I found a dime? Suppose I found a fifty-cent piece? What then? I don't know how the child's soul had gotten back, but it was back. Everything was melting. Ice, discretion, maturity. W h a t would Humboldt have said to this?...

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1977

AWARD

ABOUT THE WITHHOLD OF THE FICTION PRIZE BY T H E ADVISORY BOARD

Although the members of the 1977 Pulitzer Prize Fiction Jury in their report mentioned three books as finalists to receive the prize for work published during the preceding year, the Advisory Board decided to give no award in this category; at the same time a special award was given to Alex Haley for his novel Roots.

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NAMES OF THE BOARD MEMBERS VOTING FOR "NO AWARD"

Elie Abel

Columbia University

Benjamin C. Bradlee

The Washington

Post

John Cowles Jr.

The Minneapolis

Star & Tribune

Howard H. Hays Jr.

Riverside Press-Enterprise,

Lee Hills

Knight Newspapers

Inc.

R.John Hughes

Christian Science

Monitor

Clayton Kirkpatrick

Chicago

Richard H. Leonard

Milwaukee

William J. McGill

Columbia University

Eugene C. Patterson

The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times

Warren H. Phillips

Dow Jones & Co.

Joseph Pulitzer Jr.

St. Louis

James Reston

The New York Times

Thomas Winship

Boston Globe

Cal.

Tribune Journal

Post-Dispatch

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1978

AWARD

ABOUT THE LIFE AT THE BORDERLINE OF BLACK AND WHITE AMERICA BY JAMES A .

MCPHERSON

James Alan McPherson (born on September 16, 1943, in Savannah, Ga.) received a National Defense Student Loan and was enrolled at Morris Brown College in Atlanta, from 1961 to 1963. After studying during 1963 and 1964 at Morgan State College in Baltimore, he returned to Morris Brown and graduating in 1965 with a B.A. degree. That same year he was recruited by the Harvard Law School, and for his short story "Gold Coast" he was awarded the Atlantic Monthly "Firsts" Award. McPherson earned an LL.B. degree from the Harvard Law School in 1968. Following his graduation he studied and taught in Iowa City. He earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa and served as a writing instructor in its Law School. In 1969 McPherson became a contributing editor of the Atlantic Monthly and he published his first collection of short stories under the title Hue and Cry. That same year he also joined the faculty of the University of California at Santa Cruz as assistant professor of literature. He remained in this position until 1976, when he became associate professor of English at the University of Virginia. In 1976 he also published the non-fictional work Railroad: Trains and Train People in American Culture, which was followed by Elbow Room. The collection of twelve stories, in which James A. McPherson explores the complexity of individuals, received the Pulitzer Prize of 1978 for the best work in the Fiction category published during the preceding year.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: James Alan McPherson: Elbow Room, Boston - Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1977, pp. 3-5; reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Ma.]

No one will believe that I like country music. Even my wife scoffs when told such a possibility exists. "Go on!" Gloria tells me. "I can see blues, bebop, maybe even a little buckdancing. But not bluegrass." Gloria says, "Hillbilly stuff is not just music. It's like the New York Stock Exchange. The minute you see a sharp rise in it, you better watch out." I tend to argue the point, but quietly, and mostly to myself. Gloria was born and raised in New York; she has come to believe in the stock exchange as the only index of economic health. My perceptions were shaped in South Carolina; and long ago I learned there, as a waiter in private clubs, to gauge economic flux by the tips people gave. We tend to disagree on other matters too, but the thing that gives me most frustration is trying to make her understand why I like country music. Perhaps it is because she hates the South and has capitulated emotionally to the horror stories told by refugees from down home. Perhaps it is because Gloria is third generation Northern-born. I do not know. What I do know is that, while the two of us are black, the distance between us is sometimes as great as that between Ibo and Yoruba. And I do know that, despite her protestations, I like country music. "You are crazy," Gloria tells me. I tend to argue the point, but quietly, and mostly to myself. Of course I do not like all country stuff; just pieces that make the right connections. I like banjo because sometimes I hear ancestors in the strumming. I like the fiddlelike refrain in "Dixie" for the very same reason. But most of all I like square dancing — the interplay between fiddle and caller, the stomp-

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ing, the swishing of dresses, the strutting, the proud turnings, the laughter. Most of all I like the laughter. In recent months I have wondered why I like this music and this dance. I have drawn no general conclusions, but from time to time I suspect it is because the square dance is the only dance form I ever mastered. "I wouldn't say that in public," Gloria warns me. I agree with her, but still affirm the truth of it, although quietly, and mostly to myself. Dear Gloria: This is the truth of how it was: In my youth in that distant country, while others learned to strut, I grew stiff as a winter cornstalk. When my playmates harmonized their rhythms, I stood on the sidelines in atonic detachment. While they shimmied, I merely jerked in lackluster imitation. I relate these facts here, not in remorse or selfcastigation, but as a true confession of my circumstances. In those days, down in our small corner of South Carolina, proficiency in dance was a form of storytelling. A boy could say, "I traveled here and there, saw this and fought that, conquered him and made love to her, lied to them, told a few others the truth, just so I could come back here and let you know what things out there are really like." He could communicate all this with smooth, graceful jiggles of his round bottom, synchronized with intricately coordinated sweeps of his arms and small, unexcited movements of his legs. Little girls could communicate much more. But sadly, I could do none of it. Development of these skills depended on the ministrations of family and neighbors. My family did not dance; our closest neighbor was a true-believing Seventh Day Adventist. Moreover, most new dances came from up North, brought to town usually by people returning to riff on the good life said to exist in those far Northern places. They prowled our dirt streets in rented Cadillacs; paraded our

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brick sidewalks exhibiting styles abstracted from the fullness of life in Harlem, South Philadelphia, Roxbury, Baltimore and the South Side of Chicago. They confronted our provincial clothes merchants with the arrogant reminder, " B u t people ain't wearin' this in New Yokkk!" Each of their movements, as well as their world-weary smoothness, told us locals meaningful tales of what was missing in our lives. Unfortunately, those of us under strict parental supervision, or those of us without Northern connections, could only stand at a distance and worship these envoys of culture. We stood on the sidelines — styleless, gestureless, danceless, doing nothing more than an improvised one-butt shuffle — hoping for one of them to touch our lives. It was my good fortune, during my tenth year on the sidelines, to have one of these Northerners introduce me to the square d a n c e . . .

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1979

AWARD

ABOUT THE SIXTY-ONE STORIES DEALING WITH A LONG-LOST WORLD BY JOHN CHEEVER

John Cheever (born on May 27, 1912, in Quincy, Mass.) was educated at Thayer Academy, a prep school in South Braintree, Mass. During the 1930's Cheever, who had begun writing at the age of ten, lived mostly in New York City, publishing stories in the New Republic, Collier's, Story, the Atlantic and, above all, in the New Yorker. In addition he taught advanced composition at Barnard College. Cheever's first collection of stories, The Way Some People Live, appeared in 1943, while he was completing a four-year stint of army duty during World War II. Upon his discharge he wrote television scripts, but his primary interest continued to be the writing of short stories. In 1951 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and two years later he published fourteen of his New Yorker pieces in The Enormous Radio and Other Stories. The year after, Cheever received the Benjamin Franklin Short Story Award for "The Five-Forty Eight," and in 1956 he was honored with the O. Henry Award for "The Country Husband." In the latter year he also won a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award. In 1957 Cheever published his first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, the sequel of which appeared under the title The Wapshot Scandal. In 1958 the author brought out his third collection of stories, The Housebreaker of Shady Hill. He next wrote Some People, Places and Things That Will Not Appear in My Next Novel, a collection of eight stories and an essay. It was followed by another short story collection, The Brigadier and the Golf Widow, and Cheever's third novel, Bullet Park. In the 1970's he published The World of Apples', Falconer, and The Stories of John Cheever. The last-named work came out in 1978 and won John Cheever the Pulitzer Prize for fiction of the succeeding year.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: John Cheever: The Stories, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978, pp. 3-5 ]

Τ TE ARE a family that has always been very close in spirit. O u r father was drowned in a sailing accident w h e n we were young, and our mother has always stressed the fact that our familial relationships have a kind of permanence that we will never meet with again. I don't think about the family m u c h , but w h e n I remember its members and the coast where they lived and the sea salt that I think is in our blood, I am happy to recall that I am a Pommeroy—that I have the nose, the coloring, and the promise of longevity—and that while we are not a distinguished family, we enjoy the illusion, w h e n w e are together, that the Pommeroys are unique. I don't say any of this because I'm interested in family history or because this sense of uniqueness is deep or important to me but in order to advance the point that we are loyal to one another in spite of our differences, and that any rupture in this loyalty is a source of confusion and pain. W e are four children; there is my sister Diana and the three men— C h a d d y , Lawrence, and myself. Like most families in which the children are out of their twenties, we have been separated by business, marriage, a n d war. Helen and I live on Long Island now, with our four children. I teach in a secondary school, and I am past the age where I expect to be made headmaster—or principal, as we say—but I respect the work. C h a d d y , who has done better than the rest of us, lives in Manhattan, with Odette and their children. M o t h e r lives in Philadelphia, and Diana, since her divorce, has been living in France, but she comes back to the States in the s u m m e r to spend a m o n t h at Laud's Head. Laud's H e a d is a summer place on the shore of one of the Massachusetts islands. W e used to have a cottage there, and in the twenties our father built the big house. It stands on a cliff above the sea and, excepting St. T r o p e z and some of the A p e n n i n e villages, it is my favorite place in the world. W e each have an equity in the place and we contribute some money to help keep it going.

233 O u r youngest brother, Lawrence, who is a lawyer, got a job with a Cleveland firm after the war, and none of us saw him for four years. W h e n he decided to leave Cleveland and go to work for a firm in Albany, he wrote Mother that he would, between jobs, spend ten days a* Laud's Head, with his wife and their two children. T h i s was when I had planned to take my vacation—I had been teaching summer school —and Helen and Chaddy and Odette and Diana were all going to be there, so the family would be together. Lawrence is the member of the family with whom the rest of us have least in common. W e have never seen a great deal of him, and I suppose that's why we still call him Tifty—a nickname he was given when he was a child, because when he came down the hall toward the dining room for breakfast, his slippers made a noise that sounded like " T i f t y , tifty, tifty." That's what Father called him, and so did everyone else. W h e n he grew older, Diana sometimes used to call him Little Jesus, and Mother often called him the Croaker. W e had disliked Lawrence, but we looked forward to his return with a mixture of apprehension and loyalty, and with some of the joy and delight of reclaiming a brother.

LAWRENCE crossed over from the mainland on the four-o'clock boat one afternoon late in the summer, and Chaddy and I went down to meet him. T h e arrivals and departures of the summer ferry have all the outward signs that suggest a voyage—whistles, bells, hand trucks, reunions, and the smell of brine—but it is a voyage of no import, and when I watched the boat come into the blue harbor that afternoon and thought that it was completing a voyage of no import, I realized that I had hit on exactly the kind of observation that Lawrence would have made. W e looked for his face behind the windshields as the cars drove off the boat, and we had no trouble in recognizing him. And we ran over and shook his hand and clumsily kissed his wife and the children. "Tifty!" Chaddy shouted. "Tifty!" It is difficult to judge changes in the appearance of a brother, but both Chaddy and I agreed, as we drove back to Laud's Head, that Lawrence still looked very young. H e got to the house first, and we took the suitcases out of his car. W h e n I came in, he was standing in the living room, talking with Mother and Diana. T h e y were in their best clothes and all their jewelry, and they were

234 welcoming him extravagantly, but even then, when everyone was endeavoring to seem most affectionate and at a time when these endeavors come easiest, I was aware of a faint tension in the room. Thinking about this as I carried Lawrence's heavy suitcases up the stairs, I realized that our dislikes are as deeply ingrained as our better passions, and I remembered that once, twenty-five years ago, when I had hit Lawrence on the head with a rock, he had picked himself up and gone directly to our father to complain. I carried the suitcases up to the third floor, where Ruth, Lawrence's wife, had begun to settle her family. S h e is a thin girl, and she seemed very tired from the journey, but when I asked her if she didn't want me to bring a drink upstairs to her, she said she didn't think she did. W h e n I got downstairs, Lawrence wasn't around, but the others were all ready for cocktails, and we decided to go ahead. Lawrence is the only member of the family who has never enjoyed drinking. W e took our cocktails onto the terrace, so that we could see the bluffs and the sea and the islands in the east, and the return of Lawrence and his wife, their presence in the house, seemed to refresh our responses to the familiar view; it was as if the pleasure they would take in the sweep and the color of that coast, after such a long absence, had been imparted to us. While we were there, Lawrence came up the path from the b e a c h . . .

235

1980

AWARD

ABOUT THE CRIME AND PUNISHMENT OF A CONVICTED MURDERER BY NORMAN MAILER

Norman Mailer (born on January 31, 1923, in Long Branch, N.J.) attended Harvard University and was graduated B.S. in 1943. Subsequently he served with the U.S. Army in the Philippines and later in Japan. Discharged from the army in 1946, Mailer began writing a novel on his war experience: The Naked and the Dead. In 1951 it was followed by Barbary Shore, another novel. That same year he moved to Greenwich Village in New York City, where he helped to found the Village Voice, a weekly newspaper. Mailer's 1955 novel The Deer Park later was also made by him into an off-Broadway stage version. His first collection of occasional pieces appeared in 1959 and was entitled Advertisements for Myself . In the early 1960's he wrote monthly columns for Esquire magazine, they were collected in The Presidential Papers. Mailer's verse was gathered in Deaths for the Ladies, and Other Disasters and in the book Cannibals and Christians. The novels An American Dream and Why Are We in Vietnam? were followed by Miami and the Siege of Chicago, which was published in 1968. The Armies of the Night, a book on the 1967 march on the Pentagon by anti-Vietnam demonstrators, earned Norman Mailer the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction of 1969. During the 1970's Mailer's publications included Of A Fire On The Moon\ The Prisoner of Sex\ St. George and the Godfather, Marilyn·, Some Honorable Men\ Genius and Lust·, and A Transit to Narcissus. For the novel The Executioner's Song Norman Mailer received another Pulitzer Prize in 1980 for the best work in the Fiction category published during the preceding year.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: Norman Mailer: The Executioner's Song, Boston - Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1979, pp. 5-7; reprinted by permission of the author, New York, N.Y.]

Brenda was six when she fell out of the apple tree. She climbed to the top and the limb with the good apples broke off. Gary caught her as the branch came scraping down. They were scared. The apple trees were their grandmother's best crop and it was forbidden to climb in the orchard. She helped him drag away the tree limb and they hoped no one would notice. That was Brenda's earliest recollection of Gary. She was six and he was seven and she thought he was swell. He might be rough with the other kids but never with her. When the family used to come out to Grandpa Brown's farm on Decoration Day or Thanksgiving, Brenda would only play with the boys. Later, she remembered those parties as peaceful and warm. There were no raised voices, no cussing, just a good family get-together. She remembered liking Gary so well she would not bother to see who else was there — Hi, Grandma, can I have a cookie? — come on, Gary, let's go. Right outside the door was a lot of open space. Beyond the backyard were orchards and fields and then the mountains. A dirt road went past the house and up the slope of the valley into the canyon. Gary was kind of quiet. There was one reason they got along. Brenda was always gabbing and he was a good listener. They had a lot of fun. Even at that age he was real polite. If you got into trouble, he'd come back and help you out. Then he moved away. Gary and his brother Frank Jr., who was a year older, and his mother, Bessie, went to join Frank Sr., in Seattle. Brenda didn't see any more of him for a long time. Her next memory of Gary was not until she was thirteen. Then her mother, Ida, told

237

her that Aunt Bessie had called from Portland, and was in a very blue mood. Gary had been put in Reform School. So Brenda wrote him a letter, and Gary sent an answer all the way back from Oregon, and said he felt bad putting his family through what he did. On the other hand, he sure didn't like it in Reform School. His dream when he came out, he wrote, was to be a mobster and push people around. He also said Gary Cooper was his favorite movie star. Now Gary was the kind of boy who would not send a second letter until he received your reply. Years could go by but he wasn't going to write if you hadn't answered his last. Since Brenda, before long, was married — she was sixteen and thought she couldn't live without a certain guy — her correspondence lapsed. She might mail a letter from time to time, but Gary didn't really get back into Brenda's life until a couple of years ago when Aunt Bessie called again. She was still upset about Gary. He had been sent from Oregon State Penitentiary to Marion, Illinois, and that, Bessie informed Ida, was the place they built to replace Alcatraz. She was not accustomed to thinking of her son as a dangerous criminal who could be kept only in a Maximum Security prison. It made Brenda begin to think of Bessie. In the Brown family with its seven sisters and two brothers, Bessie must have been the one who was talked about the most. Bessie had green eyes and black hair and was one of the prettiest girls around. She had an artistic temperament and hated to work in the field because she didn't want the sun to make her tough and tanned and leathery. Her skin was very white. She wanted to keep that look. Even if they were Mormons farming in the desert, she liked pretty clothes and finery, and would wear white dresses with wide Chinese sleeves and white gloves she'd made herself. She and a girl friend would get all dressed up and hitchhike to Salt Lake City. Now she was old and arthritic. Brenda started writing to Gary once more. Before long, they were into quite a correspondence. Gary's intelligence was really coming

238

through. He hadn't reached high school before they put him in the Reformatory, so he must have done a lot of reading in prison to get this much education together. He certainly knew how to use big words. Brenda couldn't pronounce a few of the longer ones, let alone be sure of their meaning. Sometimes, Gary would delight her by adding little drawings in the margin; they were damn good. She spoke of trying to do some artwork herself, and mailed a sample of her stuff. He corrected her drawing in order to show the mistakes she was making. Good enough to tutor at long distance. Once in a while Gary would remark that having been in prison so long he felt more like the victim than the man who did the deed. Of course, he did not deny having committed a crime or two. He was always letting Brenda know he was not Charley Good Guy. Yet after they had been sending letters for a year or more, Brenda noticed a change. Gary no longer seemed to feel he would never get out of jail. His correspondence became more hopeful. Brenda said to her husband, Johnny, one day, Well, I really think Gary's ready. She had gotten into the habit of reading his letters to Johnny, and to her mother and father and sister. Sometimes after discussing those letters, her parents, Vern and Ida, would discuss what Brenda ought to answer, and they would feel full of concern for Gary. Her sister, Toni, often spoke of how much his drawings impressed her. There was so much sorrow in those pictures. Children with great big sad e y e s . . .

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1981 AWARD ABOUT THE RENDERING OF REAL LIFE IN DOWNTOWN NEW ORLEANS BY JOHN K . TOOLE

John Kennedy Toole (born on December 7, 1937, in New Orleans, La.) entered Tulane University at the age of sixteen, having already written his first, but unpublished, novel with the title "Neon Bible." Toole graduated from Tulane in 1958, and went to New York where he earned his master's degree in English at Columbia University the next year. He then spent twelve months teaching at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. Toole began writing A Confederacy of Dunces in 1962 while doing a stint in the army in Puerto Rico. Upon completing the novel in 1963, he began negotiating with the publishing house of Simon and Schuster for its publication. But after several revisions of the manuscript, the novel was finally rejected in 1966. Following his army discharge, Toole returned to New Orleans, where he lived with his parents while teaching at Saint Mary's Dominican College and working toward his Ph.D. degree at Tulane University. In December 1968 he resigned from his job and left New Orleans. For several months he traveled around the country, before, on March 26, 1969, he was found dead in his car in Biloxi, Miss., the victim of self-induced carbon-monoxide poisoning. After Toole's death, his mother, Thelma Toole, took it upon herself to get her son's novel published. Written almost twenty years before, A Confederacy of Dunces came out in May 1980. The following year the Pulitzer Prize for fiction was posthumously awarded to John K. Toole.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: John

Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy o f Dunces, Baton Rouge - London: Louisiana State

University Press, 1 9 8 0 , pp. 1 - 3 . ]

A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled with disapproval and potato chip crumbs. In the shadow under the green visor of the cap Ignatius J. Reilly's supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D. H . Holmes department store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress. Several of the outfits, Ignatius noticed, were new enough and expensive enough to be properly considered offenses against taste and decency. Possession of anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and g e o m e t r y ; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul. Ignatius himself was dressed comfortably and sensibly. The hunting cap prevented head colds. The voluminous tweed trousers were durable and permitted unusually free locomotion. Their pleats and nooks contained pockets of warm, stale air that soothed Ignatius. The plaid flannel shirt made a jacket unnecessary while the muffler guarded exposed Reilly skin between earflap and collar. T h e outfit was acceptable by any theological and geometrical standards, however abstruse, and suggested a rich inner life. Shifting from one hip to the other in his lumbering, elephantine fashion, Ignatius sent waves of flesh rippling beneath the tweed and flannel, waves that broke upon buttons and seams. Thus rearranged, he contemplated the long while that he had been waiting for his mother. Principally he considered the discomfort he was beginning to feel. It seemed as if his whole being was ready to burst from his swollen suede desert boots, and, as if to verify this, Ignatius turned his singular eyes toward his feet. T h e feet did indeed look swollen. He was prepared to offer the sight of those bulging boots to his m o t h e r as evidence of her

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thoughtlessness. Looking up, he saw the sun beginning to descend over the Mississippi at the foot of Canal Street. The Holmes clock said almost five. Already he was polishing a few carefully worded accusations designed to reduce his mother to repentance or, at least, confusion. He often had to keep her in her place. She had driven him downtown in the old Plymouth, and while she was at the doctor's seeing about her arthritis, Ignatius had bought some sheet music at Werlein's for his trumpet and a new string for his lute. Then he had wandered into the Penny Arcade on Royal Street to see whether any new games had been installed. He had been disappointed to find the miniature mechanical baseball game gone. Perhaps it was only being repaired. The last time that he had played it the batter would not work and, after some argument, the management had returned his nickel, even though the Penny Arcade people had been base enough to suggest that Ignatius had himself broken the baseball machine by kicking it. Concentrating upon the fate of the miniature baseball machine, Ignatius detached his being from the physical reality of Canal Street and the people around him and therefore did not notice the two eyes that were hungrily watching him from behind one of D. H. Holmes' pillars, two sad eyes shining with hope and desire. Was it possible to repair the machine in New Orleans? Probably so. However, it might have to be sent to some place like Milwaukee or Chicago or some other city whose name Ignatius associated with efficient repair shops and permanently smoking factories. Ignatius hoped that the baseball game was being carefully handled in shipment, that none of its little players was being chipped or maimed by brutal railroad employees determined to ruin the railroad forever with damage claims from shippers, railroad employees who would subsequently go on strike and destroy the Illinois Central. As Ignatius was considering the delight which the little baseball game afforded humanity, the two sad and covetous eyes moved toward him through the crowd like torpedoes zeroing in on a great woolly tanker. The policeman plucked at Ignatius' bag of sheet music. "You got any identification, mister?" the policeman asked in a voice that hoped that Ignatius was officially unidentified.

242 " W h a t ? " Ignatius looked down upon the badge on the blue cap. " W h o are y o u ? " " L e t me see your driver's license." " I don't drive. Will you kindly go away? I am waiting for m y mother." " W h a t ' s this hanging out your bag?" " W h a t do you think it is, stupid? It's a string for m y l u t e . " " W h a t ' s t h a t ? " The policeman drew back a little. " A r e you local?" " I s it the part of the police department to harass me when this city is a flagrant vice capital of the civilized world?" Ignatius bellowed over the crowd in front of the store. " T h i s city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by graft. If you have a moment, I shall endeavor to discuss the crime problem with you, but don't make the mistake of bothering m e . " The policeman grabbed Ignatius by the arm and was struck on his cap with the sheet music. The dangling lute string whipped him on the ear. " H e y , " the policeman said. " T a k e t h a t ! " Ignatius cried, noticing that a circle of interested shoppers was beginning to f o r m . . .

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1982

AWARD

ABOUT THE CHIEF SALES REPRESENTATIVE OF A MOTOR COMPANY BY JOHN H . UPDIKE

John Hoyer Updike (born on March 18, 1932, in Shillington, Pa.) attended Harvard College majoring in English. In 1954 he received his A.B. degree, summa cum laude, and a one-year fellowship to study at Oxford University. After a year spent abroad, he returned to the U.S. in 1955 and accepted a position with the New Yorker. Still contributing on a freelance basis to the magazine, in 1957 Updike moved to Ipswich, a small Massachusetts town, in order to concentrate on his fiction writing. Updike's first volume, The Carpentered Hen and Other Tame Creatures, a collection of fifty-five poems, appeared in 1958. It was followed by a short story collection, The Same Door, and his first novel, The Poorhouse Fair. In the 1960's he published Telephone Poles and Other Poems', Pigeon Feathers, a collection of nineteen short stories, and the novels Of the Farm and Couples. In 1970 Updike brought out another short story collection, Bech: A Book, the sequel of which, Bech is Back, came out twelve years later. Other collections of his short stories are The Music School·, Museums and Women·, and Problems and Other Stories. A Month of Sundays and Marry Me: A Romance, two novels treating adultery as a subject, appeared in 1975 and 1976. Inspired by his earlier Fulbright lectureship in Africa, Updike wrote The Coup, the story of the black leader of an African nation. The author has also written essays, book reviews, sketches, and speeches, many of which were reprinted in Assorted Prose and Picked-Up Pieces. In 1981 John Updike published Rabbit Is Rich, the third volume of his Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom cycle including the novels Rabbit, Run and Rabbit Redux. The following year Rabbit Is Rich earned John H. Updike the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

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S T Y L E S A M P L E F R O M T H E OPENING C H A P T E R [ S o u r c e : J o h n U p d i k e : R a b b i t Is R i c h , N e w Y o r k : Alfred A. K n o p f , 1 9 8 1 , pp. 3 - 5 . ]

R

U N N I N G out of gas, Rabbit Angstrom thinks as he L stands behind the summer-dusty windows of the Springer Motors display room watching the traffic go by on Route 111, traffic somehow thin and scared compared to what it used to be. The fucking world is running out of gas. But they won't catch him, not yet, because there isn't a piece of junk on the road gets better mileage than his Toyotas, with lower service costs. Read Consumer Reports, April issue. That's all he has to tell the people when they come in. And come in they do, the people out there are getting frantic, they know the great American ride is ending. Gas lines at ninety-nine point nine cents a gallon and ninety per cent of the stations to be closed for the weekend. The governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania calling for five-dollar minimum sales to stop the panicky topping-up. And truckers who can't get diesel shooting at their own trucks, there was an incident right in Diamond County, along the Pottsville Pike. People are going wild, their dollars arc going rotten, they shell out like there's no tomorrow. He tells them, when they buy a Toyota, they're turning their dollars into yen. And they believe them. A hundred twelve units new and used moved in the first five months of 1979, with eight Corollas, five Coronas including a Luxury Edition Wagon, and that Celica that Charlie said looked like a Pimpmobile unloaded in these first three weeks of June already, at an average gross mark-up of eight hundred dollars per sale. Rabbit is rich. He owns Springer Motors, one of the two Toyota agencies in the Brewer area. Or rather he co-owns a half-interest with

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his wife Janice, her mother Bessie sitting on the other half inherited when old man Springer died five years back. But Rabbit feels as though he owns it all, showing up at the showroom day after day, riding herd on the paperwork and the payroll, swinging in his clean suit in and out of Service and Parts where the men work filmed with oil and look up whiteeyed from the bulb-lit engines as in a kind of underworld while he makes contact with the public, the community, the star and spearpoint of all these two dozen employees and hundred thousand square feet of working space, which seem a wide shadow behind him as he stands there up front. The wall of imitation boards, really sheets of random-grooved Masonite, around the door into his office is hung with framed old clippings and team portraits, including two all-county tens, from his days as a basketball hero twenty years ago—no, more than twenty years now. Even under glass, the clippings keep yellowing, something in the chemistry of the paper apart from the air, something like the deepening taint of sin people used to try to scare you with. ANGSTROM HITS FOR 42. "Rabbit" Leads Mt. Judge Into SemiFinals. Resurrected from the attic where his dead parents had long kept them, in scrapbooks whose mucilage had dried so they came loose like snakeskins, these clippings thus displayed were Fred Springer's idea, along with that phrase about an agency's reputation being the shadow of the man up front. Knowing he was dying long before he did, Fred was getting Harry ready to be the man up front. When you think of the dead, you got to be grateful. Ten years ago when Rabbit got laid off as a Linotyper and reconciled with Janice, her father took him on as salesman and when the time was ripe five years later had the kindness to die. Who would have thought such a little tense busy bird of a man could get it up for a massive coronary? Hypertense: his diastolic had been up around one-twenty for years. Loved salt. Loved to

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talk Republican, too, and when Nixon left him nothing to say he had kind of burst. Actually, he had lasted a year into Ford, but the skin of his face was getting tighter and the red spots where the cheek and jaw bones pressed from underneath redder. When Harry looked down at him rouged in the coffin he saw it had been coming, Fred hadn't much changed. From the way Janice and her mother carried on you would have thought a mixture of Prince Valiant and Moses had bit the dust. Maybe having already buried both his own parents made Harry hard. He looked down, noticed that Fred's hair had been parted wrong, and felt nothing. T h e great thing about the dead, they make space...

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1983

AWARD

ABOUT THE HEROIC LIVES OF TWO SEPARATED AMERICAN SISTERS BY ALICE M .

WALKER

Alice Malsenior Walker (born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Ga.) attended a black women's college in Atlanta, where she soon became involved in the civil rights movement. In her sophomore year she enrolled in Sarah Lawrence College, which awarded her the Bachelor of Arts degree in 1965. While in college Walker wrote Once, her first volume of poetry. In 1967 her first published essay, "The Civil Rights Movement: What Good Was It?," appeared in the American Scholar. The same year Alice Walker moved to Jackson, Mississippi. There she served briefly as a black-history consultant to Friends of the Children of Mississippi and as a writer-in-residence at Jackson State College in 1968/69 and at Tougaloo College in 1970/71. Her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, was published in 1970. In 1972/73 she lectured at both Wellesley College and the University of Massachusetts. The latter year also saw the publication of three more books by her: Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems', In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women·, and the juvenial book Langston Hughes: American Poet. In 1974 Walker accepted a position as contributing editor for Ms. magazine in New York City, completed work on her second novel, Meridian, and published her third book of poems, Goodnight, Willie Lee, I'll See You in the Morning. Her next publication was another collection of short fiction, You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down. It was followed by The Color Purple, a story focusing on the cruel domination of black men over black women. The novel won Alice M. Walker the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for the best work in the Fiction category published during the preceding year.

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S T Y L E S A M P L E F R O M T H E OPENING C H A P T E R [ S o u r c e : A l i c e W a l k e r : T h e C o l o r Purple - A N o v e l , N e w Y o r k - L o n d o n : Harcourt B r a c e J o v a n o v i c h . P u b l i s h e r s , 1 9 8 2 , pp. 3 - 6 . ]

You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy.

Dear God, I am fourteen years old. 4-amI have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me. Last spring after little Lucious come I heard them fussing. He was pulling on her arm. She say It too soon, Fonso, I ain't well. Finally he leave her alone. A week go by, he pulling on her arm again. She say Naw, I ain't gonna. Can't you see I'm already half dead, an all of these chilren. She went to visit her sister doctor over Macon. Left me to see after the others. He never had a kine word to say to me. Just say You gonna do what your mammy wouldn't. First he put his thing up gainst my hip and sort of wiggle it around. Then he grab hold my titties. Then he push his thing inside my pussy. When that hurt, I cry. He start to choke me, saying You better shut up and git used to it. But I don't never git used to it. And now I feels sick every time I be the one to cook. My mama she fuss at me an look at me. She happy, cause he good to her now. But too sick to last long. Dear God, My mama dead. She die screaming and cussing. She scream at me. She cuss at me. I'm big. I can't move fast enough. By time

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I git back from the well, the water be warm. By time I git the tray ready the food be cold. By time I git all the children ready for school it be dinner time. He don't say nothing. He set there by the bed holding her hand an cryin, talking bout don't leave me, don't go. She ast me bout the first one Whose it is? I say God's. I don't know no other man or what else to say. When I start to hurt and then my stomach start moving and then that little baby come out my pussy chewing on it fist you could have knock me over with a feather. Don't nobody come see us. She got sicker an sicker. Finally she ast Where it is? I say God took it. He took it. He took it while I was sleeping. Kilt it out there in the woods. Kill this one too, if he can. Dear God, He act like he can't stand me no more. Say I'm evil an always up to no good. He took my other little baby, a boy this time. But I don't think he kilt it. I think he sold it to a man an his wife over Monticello. I got breasts full of milk running down myself. He say Why don't you look decent? Put on something. But what I'm sposed to put on? I don't have nothing. I keep hoping he fine somebody to marry. I see him looking at my little sister. She scared. But I say I'll take care of you. With God help. Dear God, He come home with a girl from round Gray. She be my age but they married. He be on her all the time. She walk round like she don't know what hit her. I think she thought she love him. But he got so many of us. All needing somethin.

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My little sister Nettie is got a boyfriend in the same shape almost as Pa. His wife died. She was kilt by her boyfriend coming home from church. He got only three children though. He seen Nettie in church and now every Sunday evening here come Mr. I tell Nettie to keep at her books. It be more then a notion taking care of children ain't even yourn. And look what happen to M a . . .

251

1984 AWARD ABOUT THE RETURN OF A FORMER BASEBALL PLAYER TO ALBANY BY WILLIAM J . KENNEDY

William Joseph Kennedy (born on January 16, 1928, in Albany, N.Y.) studied at Siena College in Loudonville, N.Y. After taking his bachelor's degree in 1949 he went to work as a sportswriter for the Glens Falls PostStar. Following his term of service in the United States Army he joined the staff of the Albany Times-Union as a general assignment reporter. In 1956 he accepted an offer to go to San Juan as assistant managing editor and columnist for a new English-language newspaper, the Puerto Rico World Journal. Within months, that paper folded and, after a short stint spent in reporting for the Miami Herald, Kennedy became a Puerto Rico correspondent for the Knight newspapers and Time-Life publications. In 1959 he helped found the San Juan Star, of which he became managing editor. Kennedy returned to Albany and from 1963 to 1970 he was a part-time feature writer for the Albany Times-Union. A strike at the Times-Union inspired Kennedy's first novel, The Ink Truck, which was published in 1969. From 1974 to 1982 Kennedy was a part-time lecturer at the State University in Albany and then became a professor of English there. Several years of research and writing went into Legs, the fictionalized account of the Prohibition-era gangster Jack Diamond, which appeared in 1975. The basis for his next novel, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game, was the kidnapping of John O'Connell Jr. in the early thirties. The novel Ironweed was published in 1983 as third volume in the "Albany trilogy," which also included the author's two previous novels. The following year William J. Kennedy's Ironweed was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction.

252

STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: W i l l i a m K e n n e d y : I r o n w e e d - A N o v e l , N e w Y o r k : T h e V i k i n g Press, 1983, pp. 1-3.]

Riding up the winding road of Saint Agnes Cemetery in the back of the rattling old truck, Francis Phelan became aware that the dead, even more than the living, settled down in neighborhoods. T h e truck was suddenly surrounded by fields of m o n u m e n t s and cenotaphs of kindred design and striking size, all guarding the privileged dead. But the truck moved on and the limits of mere privilege became visible, for here now came the acres of truly prestigious death: illustrious men and women, captains of life without their diamonds, furs, carriages, and limousines, but buried in p o m p and glory, vaulted in great tombs built like heavenly safe deposit boxes, or parts of the Acropolis. And ah yes, here too, inevitably, came the flowing masses, row upon row of them under simple headstones and simpler crosses. Here was the neighborhood of the Phelans. Francis's mother twitched nervously in her grave as the truck carried him nearer to her; and Francis's father lit his pipe, smiled at his wife's discomfort, and looked out from his own bit of sod to catch a glimpse of how much his son had changed since the train accident. Francis's father smoked roots of grass that died in the periodic droughts afflicting the cemetery. He stored the root essence in his pockets until it was brittle to the touch, then pulverized it between his fingers and packed his pipe. Francis's mother wove crosses from the dead dandelions and other deep-rooted weeds; careful to preserve their

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fullest length, she wove them while they were still in the green stage of death, then ate them with an insatiable revulsion. "Look at that tomb," Francis said to his companion. "Ain't that somethin'? That's Arthur T. Grogan. I saw him around Albany when I was a kid. He owned all the electricity in town." "He ain't got much of it now," Rudy said. "Don't bet on it," Francis said. " T h e m kind of guys hang on to a good thing." The advancing dust of Arthur T. Grogan, restless in its simulated Parthenon, grew luminous from Francis's memory of a vital day long gone. The truck rolled on up the hill. FARRELL, said one roadside gravestone. K E N N E D Y , said another, DAUGHERTY, MCILHENNY, BRUNELLE, MCDONALD, MALONE, D W Y E R , and WALSH, said others, PHELAN, said two small ones. Francis saw the pair of Phelan stones and turned his eyes elsewhere, fearful that his infant son, Gerald, might be under one of them. He had not confronted Gerald directly since the day he let the child slip out of its diaper. He would not confront him now. He avoided the Phelan headstones on the presumptive grounds that they belonged to another family entirely. And he was correct. These graves held two brawny young Phelan brothers, canalers both, and both skewered by the same whiskey bottle in 1884, dumped into the Erie Canal in front of The Black Rag Saloon in Watervliet, and then pushed under and drowned with a long stick. The brothers looked at Francis's clothes, his ragged brown twill suit jacket, black

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baggy pants, and filthy fireman's blue shirt, and felt a kinship with him that owed nothing to blood ties. His shoes were as worn as the brogans they both had been wearing on the last day o f their lives. T h e brothers read also in Francis's face the familiar scars o f alcoholic desolation, which both had developed in their graves. F o r both had been deeply drunk and vulnerable when the cutthroat Muggins killed them in tandem and took all their m o n e y : forty-eight cents. We died for pennies, the brothers said in their silent, dead-drunken way to Francis, who bounced past them in the back o f the truck, staring at the e m boldening white clouds that clotted the sky so richly at midmorning. F r o m the heat o f the sun Francis felt a flow o f juices in his body, which he interpreted as a gift o f strength from the s k y . . .

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1985

AWARD

A B O U T THE CROSSING OF THE OF TWO AMERICAN

PATHS

ACADEMICS

BY ALISON LURIE

Alison Lurie (born on September 3, 1926, in Chicago, 111.) attended Radcliffe College, where she earned her B.A. degree in 1947. Having written poems, stories, and reviews throughout her youth, she continued to write after her graduation, while filling a full-time position as an editorial assistant for the Oxford University Press branch in New York City. In 1959 she decided to record her memories of a friend, the poet, playwright, and actress V. R. Lang. The biography V. R. Lang: A Memoir was privately printed and later appeared as the introduction to V. R. Lang's Poems and Plays. Alison Lurie's first novel was published in 1962 under the title Love and Friendship. Having received Yaddo Foundation fellowships for 1963, 1964, and 1966, Lurie wrote The Nowhere City and Imaginary Friends in part at the retreat for writers, artists, and composers in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Her residences there also inspired her next novel, Real People. In 1969 she began teaching creative writing, folklore and children's literature at Cornell University and became professor of English seven years later. During the 1970's Lurie brought out The War Between the Tates and Only Children. She also published three collections of retold stories for children: The Heavenly Zoo: Legends and Tales of the Stars', Clever Gretchen, and Other Forgotten Folktales', and Fabulous Beasts. A professor of English and a specialist in children's literature is the heroine of Lurie's Foreign Affairs. The novel, which deals with marital infidelity and the entanglement of appearance and reality, recurrent themes in Alison Lurie's work on the whole, earned the authoress the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for the best fictional work published during the preceding year.

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S T Y L E S A M P L E F R O M THE OPENING

CHAPTER

I S o u r c c : A l i s o n Lurie: F o r e i g n A f f a i r s , N e w Y o r k : R a n d o m House, 1 9 8 4 , pp. 3 - 5 . ]

Ν a cold blowy February day a woman is boarding the ten A.M. flight to London, followed by an invisible dog. T h e woman's name is Virginia Miner: she is fifty-four years old, small, plain, and unmarried—the sort of person that no one ever notices, though she is an Ivy League college professor who has published several books and has a well-established reputation in the expanding field of children's literature. T h e dog that is trailing Vinnie, visible only to her imagination, is her familiar demon or demon familiar, known to her privately as Fido and representing self-pity. She visualizes him as a mediumsized dirty-white long-haired mutt, mainly Welsh terrier: sometimes trailing her silently, at other times whining and panting and nipping at her heels; when bolder, dashing round in circles trying to trip her up, or at least get her to stoop down so that he may rush at her, knock her to the ground, and cover her with sloppy kisses. Vinnie knows very well that Fido wants to get onto the plane with her, but she hopes to leave him behind, as she has successfully done on other trips abroad. Recent events, however, and the projected length of her stay, make this unlikely. Vinnie is leaving today for six months in England on a foundation grant. There, under her professional name of V . A. Miner, she will continue her study of the folk-rhymes of schoolchildren. She has made this journey a number of times, and through a process of trial and error reduced its expense and discomfort to a minimum. She always chooses a daytime charter flight, preferring those on which no films are shown. If she could afford it, she would pay the regular fare so as to avoid boarding delays (she has

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already stood in various lines for nearly an hour); but that would be foolishly extravagant. Her grant is small, and she will have to watch expenses carefully as it is. Though patience is held to be a virtue most appropriate to women, especially aging women, Vinnie has always particularly disliked waiting for anything, and never does so if it can be avoided. Now, for instance, she elbows her way deftly past less experienced passengers who are searching for their seat numbers or are encumbered with excess luggage or with children, excusing herself in a thin pleasant voice. By crossing through the galley to the far aisle and back again between two rows of seats, she outflanks a massed confusion of obvious rubes with carry-on bags labeled SUN TOURS. In less time than it takes to read this paragraph she has made her way to a window seat near an exit in the nonsmoking section, pausing only to extract the London Times and British Vogue from a magazine rack. (Once the plane is airborne, the stewardess will distribute periodicals to all the passengers, but those Vinnie prefers may vanish before they reach her.) Following her usual procedure, Vinnie slides into her place and unzips her boots. In stocking feet she climbs onto the seat and opens the overhead locker; since she is barely over five feet tall, this is the only way she can reach it. She removes two pillows and a loose-woven blue blanket, which she drops onto the center seat beside her handbag and her British periodicals, thus tacitly claiming this space if—as is likely in midweek and mid-February—it hasn't been assigned to anyone. Then she arranges her worn wool-lined raincoat, her floppy beige felt hat, and her amber-andbeige Liberty-print wool shawl in the locker, in such a way that only the rudest of fellow passengers will attempt to encroach upon them. She slams the locker shut with some difficulty, and sits

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down. She stows her boots under her own seat along with a carton of duty-free Bristol Cream sherry, and puts on a pair of folding slippers. She arranges one pillow beside her head and wedges the other between her hip and the arm of the chair. Finally she smooths her crisply cut graying hair, leans back, and with a sigh fastens the seatbelt across her tan wool sweater and skirt. A disinterested observer, Vinnie is quite aware, might well consider these maneuvers and condemn her as self-concerned and grasping. In this culture, where energy and egotism are rewarded in the young and good-looking, plain aging women are supposed to be self-effacing, uncomplaining—to take up as little space and breathe as little air as possible. All very well, she thinks, if you travel with someone dear to you or at least familiar: someone who will help you stow away your coat, tuck a pillow behind your head, find you a newspaper—or if you choose, converse with you. But what of those who travel a l o n e ? . . .

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1986

AWARD

ABOUT THE CATTLE DRIVE OPERATIONS FROM TEXAS TO MONTANA BY LARRY J . M C M U R T R Y

Larry Jeff McMurtry (born on June 3, 1936, in Wichita Falls, Tex.) enrolled in North Texas State University to major in English. There he wrote verse, stories, and essays for the student literary magazine, Avesta. Having earned his B.A. degree in 1958, he attended Rice University and divided his time between studying English and writing his first two novels: Horseman, Pass By and Leaving Cheyenne. As Hud and Lovin' Molly both books were made into Hollywood movies. In 1960 Rice University granted him an M.A. degree and Stanford University a fellowship in fiction for 1960 and 1961. Following his two years of graduate work in California he pursued an intermittent teaching career at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth in 1961/ 62 and Rice University in 1963/64 and from 1965 for another four years. He published the book The Last Picture Show in 1966. When it was translated into film, McMurtry collaborated with the director Peter Bogdanovich on the script. McMurtry since that time worked on scripts, scenarios, and drafts of film stories. After giving a few courses in creative writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and at American University, in 1971 he abandoned teaching to spend his time on writing and helping to operate a bookstore that he opened in Washington's Georgetown. During the 1970's he published a trilogy of the urban Southwest including Moving On', All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers', and Terms of Endearment. It was followed by Cadillac Jack', The Desert Rose', and Lonesome Dove. The latter work won Larry J. McMurtry the Pulitzer Prize of 1986 for the best book in the Fiction category published during the previous year.

260 S T Y L E SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING

CHAPTER

[Source: Larrv McMurtry: Lonesome Dove - A Novel, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985, pp. 1315.]

WHEN AUGUSTUS CAME OUT on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake—not a very big one. It had probably just been crawling around looking for shade when it ran into the pigs. They were having a fine tug-of-war with it, and its rattling days were over. T h e sow had it by the neck, and the shoat had the tail. "You pigs git," Augustus said, kicking the shoat. "Head on down to the creek if you want to eat that snake." It was the porch he begrudged them, not the snake. Pigs on the porch just made things hotter, and things were already hot enough. He stepped down into the dusty yard and walked around to the springhouse to get his jug. T h e sun was still high, sulled in the sky like a mule, but Augustus had a keen eye for sun, and to his eye the long light from the west had taken on an encouraging slant. Evening took a long time getting to Lonesome Dove, but when it came it was a comfort. For most of the hours of the day—and most of the months of the year—the sun had the town trapped deep in dust, far out in the chaparral flats, a heaven for snakes and horned toads, roadrunners and stinging lizards, but a hell for pigs and Tennesseans. There was not even a respectable shade tree within twenty or thirty miles; in fact, the actual location of the nearest decent shade was a matter of vigorous debate in the offices—if you wanted to call a roofless barn and a couple of patched-up corrals offices—of the Hat Creek Cattle Company, half of which Augustus owned. His stubborn partner, Captain W . F. Call, maintained that there was excellent shade as close as Pickles Gap, only twelve miles away, but Augustus wouldn't allow it. Pickles Gap was if anything a more worthless community than Lonesome Dove. It had only sprung up because a fool from north Georgia named Wesley Pickles had gotten himself and his family lost in the mesquites for about ten days. W h e n he finally found a clearing, he wouldn't leave it, and Pickles Gap came into being, mainly attracting travelers like its founder, which is

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to say people too weak-willed to be able to negotiate a few hundred miles of mesquite thicket without losing their nerve. The springhouse was a little lumpy adobe building, so cool on the inside that Augustus would have been tempted to live in it had it not been for its popularity with black widows, yellow jackets and centipedes. W h e n he opened the door he didn't immediately see any centipedes but he did immediately hear the nervous buzz of a rattlesnake that was evidently smarter than the one the pigs were eating. Augustus could just make out the snake, coiled in a corner, but decided not to shoot it; on a quiet spring evening in Lonesome Dove, a shot could cause complications. Everybody in town would hear it and conclude either that the Comanches were down from the plains or the Mexicans up from the river. If any of the customers of the Dry Bean, the town's one saloon, happened to be drunk or unhappy—which was very likely—they would probably run out into the street and shoot a Mexican or two, just to be on the safe side. At the very least, Call would come stomping up from the lots, only to be annoyed to discover it had just been a snake. Call had no respect whatsoever for snakes, or for anyone who stood aside for snakes. He treated rattlers like gnats, disposing of them with one stroke of whatever tool he had in hand. "A man that slows down for snakes might as well walk," he often said, a statement that made about as much sense to an educated man as most of the things Call said. Augustus held to a more leisurely philosophy. He believed in giving creatures a little time to think, so he stood in the sun a few minutes until the rattler calmed down and crawled out a hole. Then he reached in and lifted his jug out of the mud. It had been a dry year, even by the standards of Lonesome Dove, and the spring was just springing enough to make a nice mud puddle. The pigs spent half their time rooting around the springhouse, hoping to get into the mud, but so far none of the holes in the adobe was big enough to admit a pig. The damp burlap the jug was wrapped in naturally appealed to the centipedes, so Augustus made sure none had sneaked under the wrapping before he uncorked the jug and took a modest swig. The one white barber in Lonesome Dove, a fellow Tennessean named Dillard Brawley, had to do his barbering on one leg because he had not been

262 cautious enough about centipedes. Two of the vicious red-legged variety had crawled into his pants one night and Dillard had got up in a hurry and had neglected to shake out the pants. T h e leg hadn't totally rotted off, but it had rotted sufficiently that the family got nervous about blood poisoning and persuaded he and Call to saw it off. For a year or two Lonesome Dove had had a real doctor, but the young man had lacked good sense. A vaquero with a loose manner that everybody was getting ready to hang at the first excuse anyway passed out from drink one night and let a blister bug crawl in his ear. T h e bug couldn't find its way out, but it could move around enough to upset the vaquero, who persuaded the young doctor to try and flush it. T h e young man was doing his best with some warm salt water, but the vaquero lost his temper and shot him. It was a fatal mistake on the vaquero's part: someone blasted his horse out from under him as he was racing away, and the incensed citizenry, most of whom were nearby at the Dry Bean, passing the time, hung him immediately...

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1987

AWARD

ABOUT THE PRIVILEGED SOCIETY OF WELLBORN TENNESSEAN PEOPLE BY PETER H . TAYLOR

Peter Hillsman Taylor (born on January 8, 1917, in Trenton, Tenn.) enrolled at Vanderbilt University to study literature. In 1937 he transferred to Southwestern College in Memphis and the following year to Kenyon College, where he took his B.A. degree in 1940. Taylor subsequently did graduate work at Louisiana State University. During that year three of his short stories were published in the Southern Review. After World War II Taylor joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina, where he taught for more than twenty years. In the meantime he contributed stories to various magazines including Harper's Bazaar, McCall's, and the New Yorker. Taylor's first collection of short stories was published in 1948 under the title A Long Fourth and Other Stories. It was followed by the novella A Woman of Means. The one-act play Death of a Kinsman and nine short stories were collected in The Widows of Thornton. Taylor's next collection, Happy Families Are All Alike, appeared in 1959. In 1963 the publication Miss Leonora When Last Seen and Fifteen Other Stories came out. After resigning his post as professor of English literature at the University of North Carolina in 1967, Taylor directed the creative writing program at the University of Virginia. Seven of Taylor's dramatic pieces, including A Father and a Son and Missing Person, were collected in Presences. Taylor also experimented with free-verse narratives and as a result he published In the Miro District and Other Stories. In 1985 he brought out another collection named The Old Forest and Other Stories. The novel A Summons to Memphis made Peter H. Taylor the winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The book had been published one year earlier.

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S T Y L E SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING

CHAPTER

[Source: Peter Taylor: A S u m m o n s to M e m p h i s , New York: Alfred A. K n o p f . 1986, pp. 3 - 5 ; reprinted by permission of Russel & Volkening, Inc., New Y o r k , N . Y . ]

T H E COURTSHIP and remarriage of an old widower is always made more difficult when middle-aged children are involved—especially when there are unmarried daughters. This seemed particularly true in the landlocked, backwater city of Memphis some forty-odd years ago. At least it is a certainty that remarriage was more difficult for old widowers in Memphis than it was over in Nashville, say, or in Knoxville—or even in Chattanooga, for that matter. One needs to know those other cities only slightly to be absolutely sure of this. Yet one cannot say with equal certainty just why the difficulty was so peculiar to Memphis, unless it is that Memphis, unlike the other Tennessee cities, remains to this day a "land-oriented" place. Nearly everybody there who is anybody is apt still to own some land. He owns it in Arkansas or in West Tennessee or in the Mississippi Delta. And it may be that whenever or wherever land gets involved, any family matter is bound to become more complex, less reasonable, more desperate. At any rate, during the time when I was in my teens and had recently been removed from Nashville to Memphis, one was always hearing of some old widower or other whose watchful, middle-aged children had set out to save him from an ill-considered second marriage. The would-be bride-to-be in those cases was frequently vilified by the family to all who would listen. If matters got sufficiently out of hand, the question of the old widower's sanity was often raised. The middle-

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aged children themselves were either pitied or were held up to ridicule—for the simple reason that they now of course would not likely come into an inheritance. T o my family, so recently arrived in Memphis from Nashville, this seemed a vulgar and utterly ridiculous human situation. W e were not accustomed to people's airing their personal problems so publicly. My father had not as a matter of fact wished to move us to Memphis at all. He would not have done so had he not been deceived and nearly ruined financially by his closest friend and principal legal client back in Nashville, one Mr. Lewis Shackleford. But the fact was, Father did not wish to continue living in the same city with a man so faithless and dishonest as Lewis Shackleford. Father was, himself, a lawyer of the highest standing and knew that his reputation would precede him to Memphis. And so he quietly removed his wife and his four children to the banks of the Mississippi, where we his family would be expected to cope with the peculiar institutions of the place—the institutions, that is to say, which one associates with the cotton and river culture of the Deep South. This removal and readjustment required a tremendous effort for us all and was a strain one way or another on everybody. And yet on the whole the move was made quietly and without fanfare, in the best Upper South manner. There was nothing Deep South about our family—an important distinction in our minds. Father made no public denunciation of the man who had betrayed him and who had made the move necessary. Instead, that man's name simply became a name that was not allowed to be spoken aloud in our new Memphis household.

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Almost immediately upon arrival in Memphis, this Nashville family of ours heard the news of a rich old widower in our very neighborhood who had taken a notion to remarry and who was being denounced and persecuted by his own middle-aged children. T h e image of that old man was for me one that I would carry sempiternally in my head even until the present time, as some kind of symbol, I suppose, of Memphis itself—a rich old Memphis father, that is, the provisions of his will already well known, deciding suddenly to take unto himself a second wife and thus changing the prospects of everybody concerned, an utterly selfish act on the old man's part with no care for past family tradition and no thought of how his descendants would regard him. T o complete this picture in my head of this symbolic Memphis situation there were, of course, the inevitable middle-aged children coming forward in force—and possibly some of the grown-up grandchildren—coming forward, that is, to assert that they would not countenance such a step on the part of their rich and selfish old widower-father, who cared more for his own gratification and comfort than for the name and honor of the family. Alas, it was a picture we would see depicted all too frequently during the early years of our life there on the banks of the Mississippi River...

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1988

AWARD

ABOUT THE LIFE OF A FORMER SLAVE IN POST-CIVIL WAR OHIO BY TONI MORRISON

Toni Morrison (born on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Oh.) attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., which awarded her a B.A. degree in 1953. She went on to Cornell University for graduate work in English and obtained her Master's degree in 1955. After two years of teaching English at Texas Southern University, she joined the faculty of Howard University as an instructor in English, a post she held until 1964. Morrison subsequently moved to Syracuse, N.Y., where she took a job as a textbook editor for a subsidiary of the Random House publishing firm. As a senior editor she was transferred to the Random House's New York headquarters in 1967. Having begun writing fiction in the early 1960's, her first novel was published in 1969: The Bluest Eye. Sula, Morrison's second novel, appeared in 1973. The book was published in condensed form in the January 1974 issue of Redbook, and was nominated for the 1975 National Book Award in the fiction category. In 1976 Toni Morrison became a visiting lecturer at Yale University teaching courses in creative writing and in the works of black women writers. Song of Solomon, the authoress' third novel, received the National Book Critics' Circle Award as the best work of fiction in 1977 and was chosen as a full selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. Due to the success of this novel, Morrison cut down her editorial work at Random House to spend more time writing. She next brought out Tar Baby, a love story. The novel Beloved, published in 1987, won Toni Morrison the Pulitzer Fiction award of the following year; half a decade later she received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [ S o u r c e : T o n i M o r r i s o n : B e l o v e d - A N o v e l . N e w Y o r k : A l f r e d A. K n o p f , 1987, pp. 3-5.]

1 2 4 WAS S P I T E F U L . Full of a baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1 8 7 3 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims. The grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old—as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it (that was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in the cake (that was it for Howard). Neither boy waited to see more; another kettleful of chickpeas smoking in a heap on the floor; soda crackers crumbled and strewn in a line next to the doorsill. N o r did they wait for one of the relief periods: the weeks, months even, when nothing was disturbed. N o . Each one fled at once—the moment the house committed what was for him the one insult not to be borne or witnessed a second time. Within two months, in the dead of winter, leaving their grandmother, Baby Suggs; Sethe, their mother; and their little sister, Denver, all by themselves in the gray and white house on Bluestone Road. It didn't have a number then, because Cincinnati didn't stretch that far. In fact, Ohio had been calling itself a state only seventy years when first one brother and then the next stuffed quilt packing into his hat, snatched up his shoes, and crept away from the lively spite the house felt for them. Baby Suggs didn't even raise her head. From her sickbed she heard them go but that wasn't the reason she lay still. It was a wonder to her that her grandsons had taken so long to realize that every house wasn't like the one on Bluestone Road. Suspended between the nastiness of life and the meanness of the dead, she couldn't get interested in leaving life or living it, let alone the fright of two creeping-off boys. Her past had been like her present—intolerable—and since she

269 knew death was anything but forgetfulness, she used the little energy left her for pondering color. "Bring a little lavender in, if you got any. Pink, if you don't." And Sethe would oblige her with anything from fabric to her own tongue. Winter in Ohio was especially rough if you had έη appetite for color. Sky provided the only drama, and counting on a Cincinnati horizon for life's principal joy was reckless indeed. So Sethe and the girl Denver did what they could, and what the house permitted, for her. Together they waged a perfunctory battle against the outrageous behavior of that place; against turned-over slop jars, smacks on the behind, and gusts of sour air. For they understood the source of the outrage as well as they knew the source of light. Baby Suggs died shortly after the brothers left, with no interest whatsoever in their leave-taking or hers, and right afterward Sethe and Denver decided to end the persecution by calling forth the ghost that tried them so. Perhaps a conversation, they thought, an exchange of views or something would help. So they held hands and said, " C o m e on. Come on. Y o u may as well just come o n . " The sideboard took a step forward but nothing else did. " G r a n d m a Baby must be stopping it," said Denver. She was ten and still mad at Baby Suggs for dying. Sethe opened her eyes. " I doubt that," she said. "Then why don't it come?" " Y o u forgetting how little it is," said her mother. "She wasn't even two years old when she died. T o o little to understand. T o o little to talk much even." " M a y b e she don't want to understand," said Denver. " M a y b e . But if she'd only come, I could make it clear to her." Sethe released her daughter's hand and together they pushed the sideboard back against the wall. Outside a driver whipped his horse into the gallop local people felt necessary when they passed 1 2 4 . " F o r a baby she throws a powerful spell," said Denver. " N o more powerful than the way I loved her," Sethe answered and there it was again. The welcoming cool of unchiseled headstones;

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the one she selected to lean against on tiptoe, her knees wide open as any grave. Pink as a fingernail it was, and sprinkled with glittering chips. Ten minutes, he said. You got ten minutes I'll do it for free. Ten minutes for seven letters. With another ten could she have gotten "Dearly" too? She had not thought to ask him and it bothered her still that it might have been possible—that for twenty minutes, a half hour, say, she could have had the whole thing, every word she heard the preacher say at the funeral (and all there was to say, surely) engraved on her baby's headstone: Dearly Beloved. But what she got, settled for, was the one word that mattered. She thought it would be enough, rutting among the headstones with the engraver, his young son looking on, the anger in his face so old; the appetite in it quite new. That should certainly be enough. Enough to answer one more preacher, one more abolitionist and a town full of disgust. Counting on the stillness of her own soul, she had forgotten the other one: the soul of her baby girl. Who would have thought that a little old baby could harbor so much rage? Rutting among the stones under the eyes of the engraver's son was not enough. Not only did she have to live out her years in a house palsied by the baby's fury at having its throat cut, but those ten minutes she spent pressed up against dawn-colored stone studded with star chips, her knees wide open as the grave, were longer than life, more alive, more pulsating than the baby blood that soaked her fingers like o i l . . .

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1989

AWARD

ABOUT THE RETROSPECT ON AN ENTIRE LIFE OF A MARRIAGE BY ANNE TYLER

Anne Tyler (born on October 25, 1941, in Minneapolis, Minn.) attended Duke University. Although she twice won an award for creative writing, she majored in Russian and received her B.A. degree in 1961. During a year of graduate study in Russian at Columbia University, Tyler wrote her first novel entitled If Morning Ever Comes, followed by another one called The Tin Can Tree. In 1963 she returned to Duke University to serve as its library's Russian bibliographer for one year. During 1964/65 she was assistant to the librarian at the law library of McGill University in Montreal. She abandoned library work in favor of a full-time writing career in 1967. But taking care for her two infant daughters, Tyler did not publish her third novel, A Slipping-Down Life, until 1970. Two years later she brought out The Clock Winder and in 1974 the novel Celestial Navigation. Searching for Caleb, the story of four generations of the Peck family of Baltimore, appeared in 1976. For Earthly Possessions Anne Tyler was awarded a citation by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Morgan's Passing, published in 1980, earned a nomination for the National Book Critics' Circle Award and won another award bestowed by the University of Rochester. During the 1980's the two novels Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and The Accidental Tourist were published. A contributor of short stories to magazines such as the New Yorker, the Saturday Evening Post, and Redbook, Anne Tyler won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for Breathing Lessons, a book which had been published one year earlier.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER | S o u r c e : A n n e Tyler: B r e a t h i n g L e s s o n s , N e w York: A l f r e d A . K n o p f , 1988, pp. 3-5.]

Maggie and Ira Moran had to go to a funeral in Deer Lick, Pennsylvania. Maggie's girlhood friend had lost her husband. Deer Lick lay on a narrow country road some ninety miles north of Baltimore, and the funeral was scheduled for ten-thirty Saturday morning; so Ira figured they should start around eight. This made him grumpy. (He was not an early-morning kind of man.) Also Saturday was his busiest day at work, and he had no one to cover for him. Also their car was in the body shop. It had needed extensive repairs and Saturday morning at opening time, eight o'clock exactly, was the soonest they could get it back. Ira said maybe they'd just better not go, but Maggie said they had to. She and Serena had been friends forever. Or nearly forever: forty-two years, beginning with Miss Kimmel's first grade. They planned to wake up at seven, but Maggie must have set the alarm wrong and so they overslept. They had to dress in a hurry and rush through breakfast, making do with faucet coffee and cold cereal. Then Ira headed off for the store on foot to leave a note for his customers, and Maggie walked to the body shop. She was wearing her best dress—blue and white sprigged, with cape sleeves—and crisp black pumps, on account of the funeral. The pumps were only medium-heeled but slowed her down some anyway; she was more used to crepe soles. Another problem was that the crotch of her panty hose had somehow slipped to about the middle of her thighs, so she had

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to take shortened, unnaturally level steps like a chunky little wind-up toy wheeling along the sidewalk. Luckily, the body shop was only a few blocks away. (In this part of town things were intermingled—small frame houses like theirs sitting among portrait photographers' studios, one-woman beauty parlors, driving schools, and podiatry clinics.) And the weather was perfect—a warm, sunny day in September, with just enough breeze to cool her face. She patted down her bangs where they tended to frizz out like a forelock. She hugged her dress-up purse under her arm. She turned left at the corner and there was Harbor Body and Fender, with the peeling green garage doors already hoisted up and the cavernous interior smelling of some sharp-scented paint that made her think of nail polish. She had her check all ready and the manager said the keys were in the car, so in no time she was free to go. The car was parked toward the rear of the shop, an elderly gray-blue Dodge. It looked better than it had in years. They had straightened the rear bumper, replaced the mangled trunk lid, ironed out a halfdozen crimps here and there, and covered over the dapples of rust on the doors. Ira was right: no need to buy a new car after all. She slid behind the wheel. When she turned the ignition key, the radio came on—Mel Spruce's AM Baltimore, a callin talk show. She let it run, for the moment. She adjusted the seat, which had been moved back for someone taller, and she tilted the rearview mirror downward. Her own face flashed toward her, round and slightly shiny, her blue eyes quirked at the inner corners as if she were worried about something when in fact she was only straining to see in the gloom. She shifted gears and sailed smoothly toward the front of the shop, where the

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manager stood frowning at a clipboard just outside his office door. Today's question on AM Baltimore

was: "What Makes an

Ideal Marriage?" A woman was phoning in to say it was common interests. "Like if you both watch the same kind of programs on T V , " she explained. Maggie couldn't care less what made an ideal marriage. (She'd been married twenty-eight years.) She rolled down her window and called, "Bye now!" and the manager glanced up from his clipboard. She glided past him—a woman in charge of herself, for once, lipsticked and mediumheeled and driving an undented car. A soft voice on the radio said, "Well, I'm about to remarry? T h e first time was purely for love? It was genuine, true love and it didn't work at all. Next Saturday I'm marrying for security.'.'.

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1990

AWARD

ABOUT THE VARIOUS SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF AN ERA IN MUSIC BY OSCAR HIJUELOS

Oscar Hijuelos (born on August 24, 1951, in New York, N.Y.) attended the City College of the City University of New York. In 1975 the son of Cuban parents was awarded his B.A. degree, to which he added a Master's degree the following year. He subsequently joint the staff of Transportation Display, Inc., as an advertising media traffic manager. In 1978 Hijuelos received a citation from Pushcart Press as an "outstanding writer" for the story "Columbus Discovering America," and, that same year, also an Oscar Cintas fiction writing grant. It was followed by fiction writing grants from the Creative Artists Programs Service in 1982 and from the Ingram Merrill Foundation in 1983. Oscar Hijuelos' first novel was also published in 1983: Our House in the Last World traces the lives of a Cuban family who comes to the United States in the 1940's and follows them to the death of the father and the near collapse of the family. The book won Hijuelos a fellowship for Creative Writers award from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an American Academy in Rome Fellowship in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1984 Hijuelos decided to become a full-time fiction writer and quit his job with Transportation Display, Inc. His next work appeared in 1989 under the title The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. In the following year the book made Oscar Hijuelos the first Latino novelist to receive the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

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STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: Oscar Hijuelos: The M a m b o Kings Play Songs of Love, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989, pp. 3-5; reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., New York, N.Y.]

I T

W A S A S A T U R D A Y AFTERNOON

on La Salle Street, years and years ago when I was a little kid, and around three o'clock Mrs. Shannon, the heavy Irish woman in her perpetually soup-stained dress, opened her back window and shouted out into the courtyard, " H e y , Cesar, yoo-hoo, I think you're on television, I swear it's you!" When I heard the opening strains of the I Love Lucy show I got excited because I knew she was referring to an item of eternity, that episode in which my dead father and my Uncle Cesar had appeared, playing Ricky Ricardo's singing cousins fresh off the farm in Oriente Province, Cuba, and north in N e w York for an engagement at Ricky's nightclub, the Tropicana. This was close enough to the truth about their real lives —they were musicians and songwriters who had left Havana for N e w York in 1949, the year they formed the Mambo Kings, an orchestra that packed clubs, dance halls, and theaters around the East Coast—and, excitement of excitements, they even made a fabled journey in a flamingo-pink bus out to Sweet's Ballroom in San Francisco, playing on an all-star mambo night, a beautiful night of glory, beyond death, beyond pain, beyond all stillness. Desi Arnaz had caught their act one night in a supper club on the West Side, and because they had perhaps already known each other from Havana or Oriente Province, where Arnaz, like the brothers, was born, it was natural that he ask them to sing on his show. He liked one of their songs in particular, a romantic bolero written by them, "Beautiful Maria of My Soul." Some months later (I don't know how many, I wasn't five years old yet) they began to rehearse for the immortal appearance of my father on this show. For me, my father's gentle rapping on

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Ricky Ricardo's door has always been a call from the beyond, as in Dracula films, or films of the walking dead, in which spirits ooze out from behind tombstones and through the cracked windows and rotted floors of gloomy antique halls: Lucille Ball, the lovely redheaded actress and comedienne who played Ricky's wife, was housecleaning when she heard the rapping of my father's knuckles against that door. " I ' m commmmmming," in her singsong voice. Standing in her entrance, two men in white silk suits and butterfly-looking lace bow ties, black instrument cases by their side and black-brimmed white hats in their hands—my father, Nestor Castillo, thin and broad-shouldered, and Uncle Cesar, thickset and immense. My uncle: "Mrs. Ricardo? My name is Alfonso and this is my brother Manny . . ." And her face lights up and she says, " O h , yes, the fellows from Cuba. Ricky told me all about you." T h e n , just like that, they're sitting on the couch when Ricky Ricardo walks in and says something like "Manny, Alfonso! Gee, it's really swell that you fellas could make it up here from Havana for the show." That's when my father smiled. T h e first time I saw a rerun of this, I could remember other things about him—his lifting me up, his smell of cologne, his patting my head, his handing me a dime, his touching my face, his whistling, his taking me and my little sister, Leticia, for a walk in the park, and so many other moments happening in my thoughts simultaneously that it was like watching something momentous, say the Resurrection, as if Christ had stepped out of his sepulcher, flooding the world with light—what we were taught in the local church with the big red doors—because my father was now newly alive and could take off his hat and sit down on the couch in Ricky's living room, resting his black instrument case on his lap. H e could play the trumpet, move his head, blink his eyes, nod, walk across the room, and say

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" T h a n k you" when offered a cup of coffee. For me, the room was suddenly bursting with a silvery radiance. And now I knew that we could see it again. Mrs. Shannon had called out into the courtyard alerting my uncle: I was already in his apartment. With my heart racing, I turned on the big black-and-white television set in his living room and tried to wake him. My uncle had fallen asleep in the kitchen—having worked really late the night before, some job in a Bronx social club, singing and playing the horn with a pickup group of musicians. He was snoring, his shirt was open, a few buttons had popped out on his belly. Between the delicate-looking index and forefingers of his right hand, a Chesterfield cigarette burning down to the filter, that hand still holding a half glass of rye whiskey, which he used to drink like crazy because in recent years he had been suffering from bad dreams, saw apparitions, felt cursed, and, despite all the women he took to bed, found his life of bachelorhood solitary and wearisome. But I didn't know this at the time, I thought he was sleeping because he had worked so hard the night before, singing and playing the trumpet for seven or eight hours...

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1991

AWARD

ABOUT THE LOOKING FOR REASONS TO LIVE AT LATE MIDDLE AGE BY JOHN H . UPDIKE

John Hoyer Updike (born on March 18, 1932, in Shillington, Pa.) attended Harvard College majoring in English. In 1954 he received his A.B. degree, summa cum laude, and a one-year fellowship to study at Oxford University. He accepted a position with the New Yorker in 1955. Two years later Updike decided to concentrate on his career in fiction writing. Updike's first volume, The Carpentered Hen and Other Tame Creatures, a collection of fifty-five poems, appeared in 1958. It was followed by a short story collection, The Same Door, and his first novel, The Poorhouse Fair. In the 1960's he published Telephone Poles and Other Poems', Pigeon Feathers, a collection of nineteen short stories, and the novels Of the Farm and Couples. In 1970 Updike brought out another short story collection, Bech: A Book, the sequel of which, Bech is Back, came out twelve years later. A Month of Sundays and Marry Me: A Romance, two novels treating adultery as a subject, appeared in 1975 and 1976. Inspired by his earlier Fulbright lectureship in Africa, Updike wrote The Coup, the story of the black leader of an African nation. The author has also written essays, book reviews, sketches, and speeches, many of which were reprinted in Assorted Prose and Picked-Up Pieces. Hugging the Shore', The Witches of Eastwick', Facing Nature', and S. count among the books Updike published during the 1980's. In 1981 John Updike published Rabbit Is Rich, the third volume of his Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom cycle including the novels Rabbit, Run and Rabbit Redux. The following year Rabbit Is Rich earned John H. Updike the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Nine years later he was awarded another Pulitzer Prize in this category for the sequel Rabbit At Rest, which had been published in 1990.

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S T Y L E S A M P L E F R O M T H E OPENING

CHAPTER

[Source: John Updike: Rabbit At Rest, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990, pp.3-5.]

S

T A N D I N G amid the tan, excited post-Christmas crowd at the Southwest Florida Regional Airport, Rabbit Angstrom has a funny sudden feeling that what he has come to meet, what's floating in unseen about to land, is not his son Nelson and daughter-in-law Pru and their two children but something more ominous and intimately his: his own death, shaped vaguely like an airplane. T h e sensation chills him, above and beyond the terminal air-conditioning. But, then, facing Nelson has made him feel uneasy for thirty years. T h e airport is relatively new. You drive to it off Exit 21 of Interstate 75 down three miles of divided highway that for all the skinny palms in rows and groomed too-green Bermuda grass at its sides seems to lead nowhere. T h e r e are no billboards or self-advertising roadside enterprises or those low houses with cooling white-tile roofs that are built by the acre down here. You think you've made a mistake. An anxious red Camaro convertible is pushing in the rearview mirror. "Harry, there's no need to speed. W e ' r e early if anything." Janice, Rabbit's wife, said this to him on the way in. W h a t rankled was the tolerant, careful tone she has lately adopted, as if he's prematurely senile. H e looked over and watched her tuck back a stubborn fluttering wisp of half-gray hair from her suntoughened little brown nut of a face. " H o n e y , I'm being tailgated," he explained, and eased back into the right lane and let the speedometer needle quiver back below sixty-five. T h e Camaro convertible passed in a rush, a cocoa-brown black chick in a gray felt stewardess's cap at the wheel, her chin and lips

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pushing forward, not giving him so much as a sideways glance. This rankled, too. From the back, the way they've designed the trunk and bumper, a Camaro seems to have a mouth, two fat metal lips parted as if to hiss. So maybe Harry's being spooked began then. T h e terminal when it shows up at last is a long low white building like a bigger version of the sunstruck clinics—dental, chiropractic, arthritic, cardiac, legal, legal-medical—that line the boulevards of this state dedicated to the old. You park at a lot only a few steps away from the door of sliding brown glass: the whole state babies you. Inside, upstairs, where the planes are met, the spaces are long and low and lined in tasteful felt gray like that cocky stewardess's cap and filled with the kind of music you become aware of only when the elevator stops or when the dentist stops drilling. Plucked strings, no vocals, music that's used to being ignored, a kind of carpet in the air, to cover up a silence that might remind you of death. These long low tasteful spaces, as little cluttered by advertisements as the highway, remind Rabbit of something. Air-conditioning ducts, he thinks at first, and then crypts. These are futuristic spaces like those square tunnels in movies that a trick of the camera accelerates into spacewarp to show we're going from one star to the next. 2001, will he be alive? He touches Janice at his side, the sweated white cotton of her tennis dress at the waist, to relieve his sudden sense of doom. Her waist is thicker, has less of a dip, as she grows into that barrel body of women in late middle age, their legs getting skinny, their arms getting loose like cooked chicken coming off the bone. She wears over the sweaty tennis dress an open-weave yellow cardigan hung unbuttoned over her shoulders against the chill of airport air-conditioning. He is innocently proud that she looks, in her dress and tan, even to the rings of pallor that sunglasses have left around her eyes, like these

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other American grandmothers who can afford to be here in this land of constant sunshine and eternal youth. " G a t e A 5 , " Janice says, as if his touch had been a technical question. " F r o m Cleveland by way of Newark," she says, with that businesswoman efficiency she has taken on in middle age, especially since her mother died seven years ago, leaving her the lot, Springer Motors and its assets, one of only two T o y o t a agencies in the Brewer, Pennsylvania, area: the family all still speak of it as "the lot," since it began as a used-car lot owned and run by Fred Springer, dead Fred Springer, who is reincarnated, his widow Bessie and daughter Janice have the fantasy, in Nelson, both being wiry shrimps with something shifty about them. W h i c h is why H a r r y and Janice spend half the year in Florida—so Nelson can have free run of the l o t . . .

283

1992

AWARD

ABOUT THE VERY SPECIAL WORLD OF A THRIVING FARM IN IOWA BY JANE G . SMILEY

Jane Graves Smiley (born on September 26, 1949, in Los Angeles, Cal.) attended Vassar College majoring in English. She was awarded her B.A. degree in 1971. Following her graduation she spent a year in Europe. On her return to the U.S., she began a program of graduate study at the University of Iowa, to earn an M.A. degree in 1975 and a Ph.D. degree three years later. She is also a graduate of the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop and has a M.F.A. degree, awarded in 1976. In 1980 Jane Smiley published her first novel, Barn Blind, a story about the life of a family on a horse farm in Illinois. Beginning a career in teaching, she became an assistant professor of English at Iowa State University in 1981. That same year she also published her second novel, At Paradise Gate. It was followed by Duplicate Keys, a mystery-suspense novel. In 1984 Smiley was advanced to associate professor. The Age of Grief, Jane Smiley's collection of five short stories and a novella, came out in 1987. Since a Fulbright-Hays Full Grant for Study Abroad had enabled her to do part of her research for her doctoral dissertation in Old Norse literature in Iceland, she was fascinated by the tales about Greenland. She wrote the story of The Greenlanders, which was published in 1988. In the two complementary novellas Ordinary Love and Good Will, Jane Smiley again ventured onto the terrain of modern family life. In 1989 she became a full professor at Iowa State University, teaching creative writing and world literature. Jane G. Smiley's novel A Thousand Acres won the Pulitzer Prize of 1992 for the best work in the Fiction category published during the preceding year.

284

STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: Jane Smiley: A Thousand Acres, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991, pp. 3-5.]

you could pass o u r farm in a minute, o n C o u n t y Road 686, w h i c h ran due n o r t h into the Τ intersection at C a b o t Street Road. C a b o t Street Road was really j u s t another c o u n t r y blacktop, except that five miles west it ran into and out of the t o w n of C a b o t . O n the western edge of C a b o t , it became Z e b u l o n C o u n t y Scenic H i g h w a y , and ran for three miles along the curve o f the Z e b u l o n River, before the river turned south and the Scenic continued west into Pike. T h e Τ intersection of C R 686 perched on a little rise, a rise nearly as imperceptible as the b u m p in the center of an inexpensive plate. A T S I X T Y M I L E S PER H O U R ,

F r o m that b u m p , the earth was unquestionably flat, the sky u n questionably d o m e d , and it seemed to m e w h e n I was a child in school, learning about C o l u m b u s , that in spite of w h a t m y teacher said, ancient cultures m i g h t have been o n t o something. N o globe or m a p fully convinced m c that Z e b u l o n C o u n t y was not the center of the universe. Certainly, Z e b u l o n C o u n t y , w h e r e the earth was flat, was one spot w h e r e a sphere (a seed, a rubber ball, a ballbearing) m u s t c o m e to perfect rest and once at rest m u s t send a t a p r o o t d o w n w a r d into the tcn-foot-thick topsoil. Because the intersection was on this tiny rise, you could see o u r buildings, a mile distant, at the southern edge of the f a r m . A mile to the east, y o u could see three silos that m a r k e d the northeastern corner, and if you raked y o u r gaze f r o m the silos to the house and barn, then back again, you w o u l d take in the i m m e n s i t y of the piece of land m y father o w n e d , six h u n d r e d forty acres, a w h o l e section, paid for, n o encumbrances, as flat and fertile, black, friable, and exposed as any piece of land on the face of the earth. If y o u looked west f r o m the intersection, y o u saw n o sign of anything r e m o t e l y scenic in the distance. T h a t w a s because the Z e b -

285 ulon River had cut d o w n through topsoil and limestone, and made its pretty course a valley below the level of the surrounding farmlands. Nor, except at night, did you see any sign of Cabot. Y o u saw only this, two sets of farm buildings surrounded by fields. In the nearer set lived the Ericsons, w h o had daughters the ages of m y sister Rose and myself, and in the farther set lived the Clarks, whose sons, Loren and Jess, were in grammar school when w e were in junior high. Harold Clark was my father's best friend. He had five hundred acres and no mortgage. The Ericsons had three hundred seventy acres and a mortgage. Acreage and financing were facts as basic as name and gender in Zebulon County. Harold Clark and m y father used to argue at our kitchen table about w h o should get the Ericson land when they finally lost their mortgage. I was aware of this whenever I played with Ruthie Ericson, whenever my mother, my sister Rose, and I went over to help can garden produce, whenever Mrs. Ericson brought over some pies or doughnuts, whenever m y father loaned Mr. Ericson a tool, whenever w e ate Sunday dinner in the Ericsons' kitchen. I recognized the justice of Harold Clark's opinion that the Ericson land was on his side of the road, but even so, I thought it should be us. For one thing, Dinah Ericson's bedroom had a window scat in the closet that I coveted. For another, I thought it appropriate and desirable that the great circle of the flat earth spreading out from the Τ intersection of County Road 686 and Cabot Street Road be ours. A thousand acres. It was that simple. It was 1951 and I was eight when I saw the farm and the future in this way. That was the year my father bought his first car, a Buick sedan with prickly gray velvet seats, so rounded and slick that it was easy to slide off the backseat into the footwell when we went over a stiff bump or around a sharp corner. That was also the year my sister Caroline was born, which was undoubtedly the reason my father bought the car. The Ericson children and the Clark children continued to ride in the back of the farm pickup, but the C o o k children kicked their toes against a front seat and stared out the back

286

windows, nicely protected from the dust. The car was the exact measure of six hundred forty acres compared to three hundred or five hundred. In spite of the price of gasoline, we took a lot of rides that year, something farmers rarely do, and my father never again did after Caroline was born. For me, it was a pleasure like a secret hoard of coins—Rose, whom I adored, sitting against me in the hot musty velvet luxury of the car's interior, the click of the gravel on its undercarriage, the sensation of the car swimming in the rutted road, the farms passing every minute, reduced from vastness to insignificance by our speed; the unaccustomed sense of leisure; most important, though, the reassuring note of my father's and mother's voices commenting on what they saw—he on the progress of the yearly work and the condition of the animals in the pastures, she on the look and size of the house and garden, the colors of the buildings. Their tones of voice were unhurried and self-confident, complacent with the knowledge that the work at our place was farther along, the buildings at our place more imposing and better cared for. When I think of them now, I think how they had probably seen nearly as little of the world as I had by that time. But when I listened to their duet then, I nestled into the certainty of the way, through the repeated comparisons, our farm and our lives seemed secure and g o o d . . .

287

1993

AWARD

ABOUT THE MANY VIETNAMESE EXPATRIATES LIVING IN AMERICA BY ROBERT O . BUTLER JR.

Robert Olen Butler Jr. (born on January 20, 1945, in Granite City, 111.) majored in theater at Northwestern University, which awarded him the Bachelor's degree in 1967. He subsequently enrolled for graduate study at the University of Iowa and, two years later, earned there his M.A. degree in playwrighting. Butler enlisted in the army and was sent to a language school in Washington, D.C., where he studied Vietnamese for a full year. He then went to Vietnam and served as an interpreter for the U.S. adviser to the mayor of Saigon. Upon his discharge from military service he joined the staff of Electronic News as an editor and reporter. In 1975 he accepted a position as editor in chief with the Energy User News in New York City. Butler's first novel, which was written during the author's daily commutes to work on a train, was published in 1981: The Alleys of Eden is the story of an American Army deserter who falls in love with a Vietnamese prostitute and lives with her in Saigon before they escape to the United States. Sun Dogs, the second installment in a projected Vietnam trilogy, centers on the protagonist's attempts to come to grips with his Vietnam experience. Butler's succeeding novel, Countrymen of Bones, appeared in 1983 and was followed by another novel carrying the title On Distant Ground. The books Wabash and The Deuce came out in 1987 and 1989. The professor of fiction writing at McNeese State University also contributed short stories to periodicals such as Cosmopolitan and Redbook. Robert O. Butler Jr. received the 1993 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. The collection of stories had been published one year earlier.

288

STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: Robert Olen Butler: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1992, pp. 1-3.]

I have no hatred in me. I'm almost certain of that. I fought for my country long enough to lose my wife to another man, a cripple. This was because even though I was alive, I was dead to her, being far away. Perhaps it bothers me a little that his deformity was something he was born with and not earned in the war. But even that doesn't matter. In the end, my country itself was lost and I am no longer there and the two of them are surely suffering, from what I read in the papers about life in a unified Vietnam. They mean nothing to me, really. It seems strange even to mention them like this, and it is stranger still to speak o f them before I speak of the man who suffered the most complicated feeling I could imagine. It is he who makes me feel sometimes that I am sitting with my legs crossed in an attitude of peace and with an acceptance o f all that I've been taught about the suffering that comes from desire. There are others I could hate. But I feel sorry for my enemies and the enemies of my country. I live on South Mary Poppins Drive in Gretna, Louisiana, and since I speak perfect English, I am influential with the others who live here, the Westbank Vietnamese. W e are all of us from South Vietnam. If you go across the bridge and into New Orleans and you take the interstate north and then turn on a highway named after a chef, you will come to the place called Versailles. There you will find the Vietnamese who are originally from the North. They are Catholics in Versailles. I am a Buddhist. But what I know now about things, I learned from a communist one dark evening in the province of Phutöc Tuy in the Republic of South Vietnam.

289

I was working as an interpreter for the Australians in their base camp near Nui -Dat. The Australians were different from the Americans when they made a camp. The Americans cleared the land, cut it and plowed it and leveled it and strung their barbed wire and put up their tin hootches. The Australians put up tents. They lived under canvas with wooden floors and they didn't cut down the trees. They raised their tents under the trees and you could hear the birds above you when you woke in the morning, and I could think of home that way. My village was far away, up-country, near Pleiku, but my wife was still my wife at that time. I could lie in a tent under the trees and think of her and that would last until I was in the mess hall and I was faced with eggs and curried sausages and beans for breakfast. The Australians made a good camp, but I could not understand their food, especially at the start of the day. The morning I met -D$ng Van Th§p, I first saw him across the mess hall staring at a tray full of this food. He had the commanding officer at one elbow and the executive officer at his other, so I knew he was important, and 1 looked at Th§p closely. His skin was dark, basic peasant blood like me, and he wore a sport shirt of green and blue plaid. He could be anybody on a motor scooter in Saigon or hustling for xich-ΐφ fares in Vüng Täu. But I knew there was something special about him right away. His hair was wildly fanned on his head, the product of VC fieldbarbering, but there was something else about him that gave him away. He sat between these two Australian officers who were nearly a head taller, and he was hunched forward a little bit. But he seemed enormous, somehow. The people in our village believe in ghosts. Many people in Vietnam have this belief. And sometimes a ghost will appear in human form and then vanish. When that happens and you

290 think back on the encounter, you realize that all along you felt like you were near something enormous, like if you came upon a mountain in the dark and could not see it but knew it was there. I had something of that feeling as I looked at Th|p for the first time. Not that I believed he was a ghost. But I knew he was much bigger than the body he was in as he stared at the curried sausages. Then there was a stir to my left, someone sitting down, but I didn't look right away because Th$p held me. "You'll have your chance with him, mate," a voice said in a loud whisper, very near my ear. I turned and it was Captain Townsend, the intelligence officer. His mustache, waxed and twirled to two sharp points, twitched as it usually did when he and I were in the midst of an interrogation and he was getting especially interested in what he heard...

291

1 9 9 4 AWARD

ABOUT THE CRACKED-UP CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FAMILY LIFE BY E . ANNIE PROULX

Edna Annie Proulx (born on August 22, 1935, in Norwich, Conn.) studied history at the University of Vermont in Burlington and earned her B.A. degree in 1969. She then went on to graduate school in Montreal at Sir George Williams University, took her M.A. degree in 1973 and passed her doctoral orals in 1975. Facing the lack of teaching jobs in her field, she abandoned her doctoral thesis and began working as a free-lance journalist. She contributed articles to periodicals like African Arts, Equinox, New York Times, National Wildlife, Country Journal, Outside, Chicago Tribune, Walking, and Horticulture. While raising three sons, Annie Proulx struggled to support her family, and therefore she also wrote several on-assignment "how-to" books on various subjects: e.g. Plan and Make Your Own Fences and Gates, Walkways, Walls and Drives·, and The Fine Art of Salad Gardening. In 1984 she founded the rural Vermont newspaper Behind the Times, which she edited until 1986. Proulx also managed to set aside some time for writing short stories, which appeared in periodicals such as Ploughshares, Esquire, and Harrowsmith. They were later compiled into the volume Heart Songs and Other Stories, which was published in 1988. Each chapter of Proulx's first novel, Postcards, begins with a postcard connected in some way to the family portrayed in that 1992 book. It was followed by the novel The Shipping News which made E. Annie Proulx the winner of the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for the best fictional work published during the preceding year.

292

STYLE SAMPLE FROM THE OPENING CHAPTER [Source: E. Annie Proulx: The Shipping News, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons/Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan Canada, 1993, pp. 1-3.]

HERE is an account of a few years in the life of Quoyle, born in Brooklyn and raised in a shuffle of dreary upstate towns. Hive-spangled, gut roaring with gas and cramp, he survived childhood; at the state university, hand clapped over his chin, he camouflaged torment with smiles and silence. Stumbled through his twenties and into his thirties learning to separate his feelings from his life, counting on nothing. He ate prodigiously, liked a ham knuckle, buttered spuds. His jobs: distributor of vending machine candy, all-night clerk in a convenience store, a third-rate newspaperman. At thirty-six, bereft, brimming with grief and thwarted love, Quoyle steered away to Newfoundland, the rock that had generated his ancestors, a place he had never been nor thought to go. A watery place. And Quoyle feared water, could not swim. Again and again the father had broken his clenched grip and thrown him into pools, brooks, lakes and surf. Quoyle knew the flavor of brack and waterweed. From this youngest son's failure to dog-paddle the father saw other failures multiply like an explosion of virulent cells—failure to speak clearly; failure to sit up straight; failure to get up in the morning; failure in attitude; failure in ambition and ability; indeed, in everything. His own failure. Quoyle shambled, a head taller than any child around him, was soft. He knew it. "Ah, you lout," said the father. But no pygmy himself. And brother Dick, the father's favorite, pretended to throw up when Quoyle came into a room, hissed "Lardass, Snotface, Ugly Pig, Warthog, Stupid, Stinkbomb, Fart-tub, Greasebag," pum-

293

meled and kicked until Quoyle curled, hands over head, sniveling, on the linoleum. A l l stemmed from Quoyle's chief failure, a failure of normal appearance. A great damp loaf of a body. A t six he weighed eighty pounds. A t sixteen he was buried under a casement of flesh. Head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair ruched back. Features as bunched as kissed fingertips. Eyes the color of plastic. T h e monstrous chin, a freakish shelf jutting from the lower face. Some anomalous gene had fired up at the moment of his begetting as a single spark sometimes leaps from banked coals, had given him a giant's chin. A s a child he invented stratagems to deflect stares; a smile, downcast gaze, the right hand darting up to cover the chin. His earliest sense of self was as a distant figure: there in the foreground was his family; here, at the limit of the far view, was he. Until he was fourteen he cherished the idea that he had been given to the wrong family, that somewhere his real people, saddled with the changeling of the Quoyles, longed for him. Then, foraging in a box of excursion momentoes, he found photographs of his father beside brothers and sisters at a ship's rail. A girl, somewhat apart from the others, looked toward the sea, eyes squinted, as though she could see the port of destination a thousand miles south. Quoyle recognized himself in their hair, their legs and arms. T h a t sly-looking lump in the shrunken sweater, hand at his crotch, his father. O n the back, scribbled in blue pencil, "Leaving Home, 1946." A t the university he took courses he couldn't understand, humped back and forth without speaking to anyone, went home for weekends of excoriation. A t last he dropped out of school and looked for a job, kept his hand over his chin. Nothing was clear to lonesome Quoyle. His thoughts churned like the amorphous thing that ancient sailors, drifting into arctic

294

half-light, called the Sea Lung; a heaving sludge of ice under fog where air blurred into water, where liquid was solid, where solids dissolved, where the sky froze and light and dark muddled. He fell into newspapering by dawdling over greasy saucisson and a piece of bread. The bread was good, made without yeast, risen on its own fermenting flesh and baked in Partridge's outdoor oven. Partridge's yard smelled of burnt cornmeal, grass clippings, bread steam. The saucisson, the bread, the wine, Partridge's talk. For these things he missed a chance at a job that might have put his mouth to bureaucracy's taut breast. His father, self-hauled to the pinnacle of produce manager for a supermarket chain, preached a sermon illustrated with his own history—"I had to wheel barrows of sand for the stonemason when I came here." And so forth. The father admired the mysteries of business—men signing papers shielded by their left arms, meetings behind opaque glass, locked briefcases...

295 WINNERS OF THE NOVEL /FICTION AWARD, 1995 - 2005* - Space for Notes -

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1997 Winner(s) Name(s) Book Title Publisher

1998 Winner(s): Name(s) Book Title Publisher

1999 Winner(s): Name(s) Book Title Publisher * The listings of the annual Pulitzer Prize-winners as well as further background information about the awards will be available in the New York Times, New York, N.Y., during April of each year.

296 2000 Winner(s): Name(s) Book Title Publisher

2001 Winner(s): Name(s) Book Title Publisher

2002 Winner(s): Name(s) Book Title Publisher

2003 Winner(s): Name(s) Book Title Publisher 2004 Winner(s): Name(s) Book Title Publisher

2005 Winner(s): Name(s) Book Title Publisher

297

INDEX

Abel, Elie, 226 Abrahamson, Tony, VI Ackerman, Carl W„ XLVIII Adams, Alice, LXXIII Agee, James, LI, 155, 156 Anderson, Sherwood, XXI, LXXIX Appel, David, XLIV, XLV Amaz, Desi, 276 Arnow, Harriette, XLV Auchincloss, Louis, LIX Babcock, Frederic, XLIV, XLV Baker, Carlos, XIX, XLIX, L, LI, LXIV, LXV Balcom, Lowell L„ XXXIV Ball, Lucille, 277 Banks, Russell, LXXI Bannon, Barbara Α., LXVI Barkham, John, LIV, LV, LVIII, LX, LXI Bames, Margaret Α., XXX, XXXI, 55, 56 Barth, John, LVIII Barthelme, Donald, LXIV, LXXIII Bates, J. Douglas, V, LXXIX Beethoven, Ludwig van, 222 Bellamy, Edward, XXII Bellow, Saul, XLDC, LIII, LX, LXI, LXIV, LXV, 221,222 Berger, Thomas, LXX Berkelie-Hinze, Gitte Α., VI Bingham, Barry Sr., 154, 180 Birnig, Myron, XXXVII Boccardi, Louis D„ LXXXI, 304 Boehnk, Daniel, VI Bogdanovich, Peter, 259 Bok, Sissela, LXXXI, 304 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 146 Boyle, Kay, LIX Boyum, Joy G., LXVffl Brace, Gerald W„ XLIV Bradlee, Benjamin C., 206, 216, 226 Bradley, David, LXX Brennan, Elizabeth, VI Brinig, Myron, XLIX Bromfield, Louis, XXVIII, 39,40 Brooks, John, LX Brown, Alice, XXI, XXII Brown, Carroll, VI Brown, Francis, XLIX, L Brown, James, 207 Brown, Morris, 227 Brown, Sevellon, 96, 114, 144, 180 Broyard, Anatole, LXVIII

Buck, Pearl S., XXXI, 59, 60 Buechner, Frederick, LXVIII Burlingame, Roger, XXXV Burman, Ben L., XLIX Burnett, William R„ XXXIV Burton, Richard, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX Buswell, Teresa, VI Butler, Nicholas Μ., XX, XXII, XXIII, XXVIII, XXX, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXVIII, XLI, 4, 14, 96 Butler, Robert O. Jr., LXXVII, 287, 288 Caldwell, Erskine, LXXIX Caldwell, Gail, LXXVI, LXXVII Canfield, Dorothy, XXX, XXXVIII Canham, Erwin D., 180 Cantwell, Robert, XXXIV Carroll, John S„ LXXXI, 304 Carroll, Wallace, 206 Carter, Hodding, 144, 154 Carver, Raymond, LXX, LXXIV Cather, Willa S., XXV, XXXI, 23, 24 Catledge, Turner, 154, 180 Chamberlain, John R„ XLI, XLII, XLIV Chandler, Norman, 154, 180 Chase, Mary E., XL Chaudhry, Mac, VI Cheever, John, LI, LX, LXII, LXVI, 231, 232 Choate, Robert, 114, 144, 154 Churchill, Winston S„ 159 Cintas, Oscar, 275 Clark, Walter Van Tilburgh, XXXVIII, LXXIX Clemons, Walter, LXIV, LXVIII, LXX Cobb, Humphrey, XXXIV Codman, Ogden Jr., 15 Cohen, Mady, VI Columbus, Christopher, 284 Colwin, Laurie, LXXIV Conarroe, Joel, LXXIV Cooper, Kent, 96, 114, 144 Cornell, Ezra, 59, 39, 255, 267 Cowden, Roy W„ XLVI Cowles, Gardner Jr., 144, 154 Cowles, John Jr., 206, 216, 226 Cozzens, James G„ XLI, XLIV, XLV, LI, 123, 124 Crothers, Samuel Μ., XXV, XXVI Davenport, Guy, LXII, LXIV, LXVI Davenport, Marcia, XLI Davis, Harold L„ XXXIV, 75, 76

298 Davis, Robert G„ LI Day, Price, 206, 216 Decter, Midge, LXIX Delcour, Jonathan, VI DeLillo, Don, LXXVI DeMott, Benjamin, LXII Dickens, Charles J„ LXIV Dickhut, Ingrid, VI Dickinson, William B., 206 Dior, Christian, 203 Doctorow, Edgar L„ LXIV, LXXIV Dodge, Louis, XXXIV Dolbier, Maurice, LXI, LXV, LXVI Donovan, Robert J., 206, 216 Doran, George H., 35 Dos Passos, John, LIV, LXXIX Dotson, John L. Jr., LXXXI, 304 Dreiser, Theodore, XLIV, LXXIX Drury, Allen S., LIII, 163, 164 Duhamel, P. Albert, LIX, LX, LXIV Eder, Richard, LXXIII, LXXVI, LXXVII Edmond, Walter D„ XXXV Edwards, Thomas R., LXX Elkin, Stanley, LXV Elliott, George P., LVIII Elliott, Sumner L., LVII Erlinghagen, Friederike, VI Evans, Walker, 155 Eyster, Warren, LI Fackenthai, Frank D„ XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXX, XXXI, XXXIII, 114 Fairbanks, Janet, XXVII Farrell, James T., LXXIX Faulkner, William, XVIII, XLIX, LI, LIII, LV, LVII, LXXIX, 145, 146, 175, 176 Feibleman, Peter, LVIII Ferber, Edna, XXVI, XXVII, 31, 32 Ferguson, J. Donald, 144, 154 Ferris, Jack D„ XLIX Field, Rachel, XXXIV, XXXVII Firkins, Oscar W„ XXVI Fisher, Dorothy C., XXXVIII Fisher, Vardis, LVIII Fitch, Aubrey, 122 Fitzgerald, Francis S., LXXIX Flavin, Martin Α., XLI, XLII, 105, 106 Fletcher, Harris F., XLVIII, XLIX Fletcher, Jefferson Β., XXV, XXVI, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX, XXXI, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV, XXXVII, XXXVin, XL Follett, Wilson, ΧΧΧΠΙ Ford, Gerald R„ 246 Ford, Harriet, 5 Ford, Henry, 189 Franklin, Benjamin, 231 Froebel, Friedrich W„ 221

Frachter, Norman, LVII Fuller, Edmund, LIX, LXII Fuller, Jack, LXXXI, 304 Furey, Karen, VI Gannett, Lewis S., XLI, LV, LVII Gardner, John, LXII, LXV Garland, Hamlin, XXIII Gates, David, LXXVI Geismar, Maxwell D„ XLI, XLII, XLIV, LV, LVII, LVIII, LIX Giesbert, Jürgen Η., VI Glasgow, Ellen Α., XXI, XXXIV, XL, 97, 98 Gordon, Caroline, XL Graage, Eric, VI Grade, Chaim, LXX Grant, Robert, XX, XXI, XXII Grau, Shirley Α., LVII, 181, 182 Green, Paul, XXXIV Griffin, Solomon B., 4, 14 Guggenheim, Daniel, 75, 185, 197, 201, 221, 231 Guthrie, Alfred B. Jr., XLIV, XLV, 127, 128 Haines, William W„ XXXIV Haley, Alex, LXV, 225 Halper, Albert, XXXIV Halsey, William F., 121 Harcourt, Alfred, XXVII Hardwick, Elizabeth, LXII Harper, J. Henry, 55, 201, 263 Harris, Julian, 96 Harrison, Walter M„ 96, 114 Hays, Howard H. Jr., 226 Heaton, John L., 4, 14 Heinzerling, Larry, VI Hemingway, Ernest Μ., XXXVIII, XL, XLVI, XLVIII, LXXIX, 139, 140 Hemperly, Becky, VI Hergesheimer, Joseph, XXIII, XXVI, XXVII Hersey, John R„ XLII, XLV, LIV, 109, 110 Hey ward, DuBose, XXVII Highet, Gilbert, XL Hijuelos, Oscar, LXXIV, LXXVI, 275, 276 Hills, Lee, 206,216, 226 Hitler, Adolf, XLV Hobart, Alice Τ., XXXV Hobart, George V., 31 Hogan, Linda, LXXVI Hohenberg, John, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXV, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX, XXXI, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV, XXXVII, XXXVIII, XL, XLI, XLII, XLIV, XLV, XLVI, XLVIII, XLIX, L, LI, LIII, LV, LVII, LVIII, LIX, LX, LXI, LXII, LXXIX, LXXXII Hohoff, Tay, 167 Holmes, John C„ LXIX

299 Horgan, Paul, LXVI Hough, Frank Ο., XXXVII Hough, Henry B.,LIV Houston, James, LXVI Howe, Arthur M„ 14, 96, 114 Howells, William D„ XXI Hughes, R. John, 226 Hull, Helen, XXIX Humphrey, William, LIII Hutchens, John K„ LI, LIII, LIX Irving, John, LXVI Jackson, Andrew, 168 Jackson, Joseph H„ XLIV, XLV James, Brigitte, VI James, Henry, LXX Janeway, Elizabeth, LVIII, LX Johns, George S., 4, 14 Johnson, Charles, LXXVII Johnson, Diane, LXXIII, LXXIV Johnson, Josephine W„ XXXIV, 71, 72 Jonas, Carl, XLVI Jones, James, XLVI Jubin, Olaf, VI Kakutani, Michiko, LXXI Kann, Peter R„ LXXXI, 304 Kantor, MacKinlay, L, 149, 150 Kazin, Alfred, LXII Kelly, Eric P., XLVI, XLVIII, XLIX Kennedy, William J., LXX, 251, 252 Kent, Frank R„ 96, 114 Kester, Millard, 122 Ketter, William B„ LXXXI, 304 Killens, John, LVII Kirk, Grayson, 144, 154, 180 Kirkpatrick, Clayton, 226 Kliment, Edward Μ., V Knight, John S„ 114, 144, 154 Knopf, Alfred Α., 181 Knowles, John, LIV Kogan, Herman, LXII, LXV Konner, Joan, LXXXI, 304 Krock, Arthur, 96, 114, 144 Krutch, Joseph W„ XXXVII, XXXVIII, XL La Farge, Oliver Η., XXX, 51, 52 Lang, Violet R., 255 Lawrence, Josephine, XXXVII Lawrence, Sarah, 247 Lawson, Victor F., 4, 14 Lea, Tom, XLV Lee, Mary, XXX Lee, N. Harper, LIV, 167, 168 Lee, Robert E„ 219 Lefevre, Edwin, XXVII Leonard, Richard H., 226

Lewis, Anne, VI Lewis, H. Sinclair, XXIII, XXV, XXVII, XXVIII, 35,36, 109 Lincoln, Abraham, 82 Lippincott, J. Bertram, 167 Little, Charles, 207 London, Jack, XXII Long, Huey, XLIV Longstreet, James, 219, 220 Lott, Milton, XLIX, LIII Lovett, Robert Μ., XXIII, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX, XXXI, XXXIII, XXXV, XXXVII, XXXVIII Lurie, Alison, LXX, LXXI, 255, 256 Lytle, Andrew, LI MacDonald, Kenneth, 180 Maclean, Norman, LXV Maddocks, Melvin, LVIII, LIX Mailer, Norman, VI, XLIV, XLV, LXVIII, 235, 236 Malamud, Bernard, LI, LIV, LVIII, LIX, LXI, 189, 190 Manning, Margaret, LXV, LXIX Mardock, Lori, VI Marquand, John P., XXXVII, XLI, 83, 84 Mason, George, 259 Mathews, William R„ 114, 144 Mawr, Bryn, 55 Maxwell, William D„ LIV, LXVI, LXVIII, 180 McCain, JohnS., 121 McCarthy, Mary, LVII, LXI McClure, Samuel S., 5, 23 McConnell, Frank D„ LXV, LXVIII, LXX, LXXI, LXXVI, LXXVII McCormack, Robert, VI McCullers, Carson, LIV McDermott, Alice, LXXIII, LXXVII McGill, William J., 206, 216, 226 McKelway, Benjamin, 144, 154 McKelway, St. Clair, 4, 14 McKenna, Richard, LVII McMurtry, Larry J., LXXI, 259, 260 McPherson, James Α., LXV, LXVI, LXXVI, 227, 228 Melville, Herman, LXXVI Merrill, Ingram, 275 Meyer, Sylvan, 206, 216 Michener, James Α., XLIV, LIII, LVII, 119, 120 Miller, Caroline, XXXIII, 67, 68 Miller, Charles R„ 4, 14 Miller, Paul, 154, 180 Mitchell, Edward P., 4, 14 Mitchell, Margaret Μ., XXXV, 79, 80 Momaday, N. Scott, LIX, LX, LXIX, LXXI, LXXVI, 197, 198 Moore, Coyle, 217 Morris, Wright, XLIX

300 Morrison, Toni, LXXIII, 267, 268 Motley, Willard, XLIV Moynahan, Julian, LXIX, LXXIII Mussolini, Benito, 112 Nixon, Richard M , 246 Nobel, Alfred Β., XXVIII, XXXVIII, XLVIII, XLIX, LV, LXV, 145, 175, 267 Noyes, Newbold Jr., 180, 206, 216 Oates, Joyce C„ LXI, LXXI, LXXVII O'Brien, Robert L., 14, 96 O'Brien, Tim, LXXVI O'Connell, John Jr., 251 O'Connor, Edwin G„ L, LIV, 171, 172 O'Connor, Philip F., LXXI, LXXIV, LXXVII O'Donnell, Edwin P., XL O'Hara, John, L, LI, LIII, LVII, LX, LXXIX O'Hehir, Diana, LXXI Oldfield, Barney, 117 Oliver, John R„ XXIX Oppenberg, Dietrich, V Ornitz, Samuel, XXIX Overholser, Geneva, LXXXI, 304 Paine, Albert Β., XXX, XXXI, XXXIII, XXXV Patch, Alexander M., 122 Patterson, Eugene C„ 216, 226 Patton, George S. Jr., XLII, 120 Payne, William Μ., XX, XXI, XXII Pederson, Rena, LXXXI, 304 Pennell, Joseph, XLII Percy, Walker, LVIII, LXI, LXVIII Peny, Bliss, XXV, XXVI Peny, Stuart H„ 96, 114, 144 Pestalozzi, Johann Η., 221 Peterkin, Julia Μ., XXIX, 47,48, 67 Peterkin, William G., 47 Phelps, William L„ XX, XXI, XXII Phillips, Warren H„ 226 Pilgrim, Jonathan W., VI Pirsig, Robert M„ LXXVII Plotkin, Stephen, VI Pollard, Harold S„ 96, 114 Poole, Ernest, XXI, XXII, 5 , 6 Pope, Edith, XLII Porter, Katherine Α., LV, LVIII, LXXIX, 185, 186 Potok, Chaim, LXII Prescott, Orville, XLII, XLIV Prescott, Peter S„ LXVIII, LXIX, LXXI, LXXIV Price, Reynolds, LV, LXIV, LXXVII Proulx, E. Annie, LXXVII, 291, 292 Pulitzer, Joseph, V, VI, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, XXIX, XXXI, XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV, XXXVII, XXXVIII, XLI, XLII, XLIV,

XLV, XLVI, XLVIII, XLIX, L, LI, LIII, LIV, LV, LVII, LVIII, LIX, LX, LXI, LXII, LXIV, LXV, LXVI, LXVIII, LXIX, LXX, LXXI, LXXIII, LXXIV, LXXVI, LXXVII, LXXIX, LXXXI, LXXXII, 3, 5, 9, 13, 15, 19, 23, 27, 31, 35, 39, 43, 47, 51, 55, 59, 63, 67, 71, 75, 79, 83, 87, 91, 95, 97, 101, 105, 109, 113, 115, 119, 123, 127, 131, 135, 139, 143, 145, 149, 153, 155, 159, 163, 167, 171, 175, 179, 181, 185, 189, 193, 197, 201, 205, 207, 211, 215, 217, 221, 225, 227, 231, 235, 239, 243, 247, 251, 255, 259, 263, 267, 271, 275, 279, 283, 287, 291 Pulitzer, Joseph (II), 96, 114, 144 Pulitzer, Joseph Jr., 154, 180, 206, 216, 226 Pulitzer, Ralph, 4, 14 Pynchon, Thomas, LVIII, LXII, LXIV Rawlings, Maijorie Κ., XXXVII, XXXVIII, 87, 88 Reston, James, 206, 216, 226 Reynold, John, 218 Reynolds, Jackson E., 207 Richter, Conrad Μ., XXXVIII, XLV, XLVI, 131, 132 Risser, James V., LXXXI, 304 Roberts, Elizabeth Μ., XXX, XXXVII Roberts, Kenneth, XXXVII, LI Roberts, Roy Α., 114 Robertson, William K., LXX Robinson, Marilynne, LXIX Rogers, Thomas, LXII Rogers, William G., LX Roth, Philip, LXVIII, LXXVII Rowe, Sandra M„ LXXXI, 304 Royster, Vermont C., 206, 216 Rugaber, Walter, LXXXI, 304 Rundstedt, Gerd von, 121 Rupp, George, LXXXI, 304 Rush, Norman, LXXIII Rylee, Robert, XXXIV Safire, William, LXXXI, 304 Santayana, George, XXXV Sarton, May, LVII Schneider, Franz, V Schultz, Dutch, LXXIV Schuster, Max L., 239 Scribner, Charles, 87 Seaton, Edward, LXXXI, 304 Seidman, Erika, VI Seltzer, Louis B., 154, 180 Selznick, David O., 79 Shaara, Michael J. Jr., LXIV, 217, 218 Shaw, Irwin, XLIV Sheldon, Edward, 55 Shepard, Odell, XLVI Shepard, Willard, XLVI

301 Sherman, Stuart P., XXII, XXIII, XXV Sherman, Thomas B., LIII Simon, Richard L., 239 Simpson, Harriette, XXXV Sinclair, Upton B. Jr., XL, XLI, 101, 102 Singer, Isaac B„ LIX, LXII Sloan, James P., LXII Smiley, Jane G„ LXXVII, 283, 284 Smith, Betty, XLI Smith, Madeleine, 55 Spencer, Elizabeth, L Spencer, Robin Ε., XXXI Stafford, Jean, LX, LXI, LXIV, LXV, LXXIX, 201,202 Stalling, Lawrence, XXVI Steele, Max, XLV Stegner, Wallace E„ LXI, 207, 208 Stein, Gertrude, LXXIX Steinbeck, John Ε., XXXIV, XXXVIII, LIV, 91, 92 Stevens, James, 75 Stewart, George, XL St. Louis of France (= Louix IX), 44 Stokes, Frederick Α., 35 Stone, Melville E„ 4, 14 Stone, Robert, LXIX, LXXI Stribling, Thomas S„ XXXI, XXXIII, 63, 64 Stuart, James E. (Jeb), 220 Styron, William C. Jr., LIV, LIX, 193, 194 Suckow, Ruth, XXXIV Summers, Hollis, LI Tarkington, N. Booth, XXII, XXV, 9, 10, 19, 20 Taylor, Charles H., 4, 14 Taylor, Peter H„ LX, LXVI, LXXIII, 263, 264 Taylor, Robert L„ LIII, 159, 160 Tinkle, Lon, LX Toole, John K„ LXVIII, LXIX, 239, 240 Toole, Thelma, 239 Topping, Seymour, V, LXXXI, 304 Tuckerman, Frederick G., 197 Twain, Mark, 9, 19 Tyler, Anne, LXVI, LXX, LXXI, LXXIV, LXXVI, LXXVII, 271, 272 Ullman, James R., XLIX Unger, Douglas, LXXI

Updike, John H„ LIV, LXI, LXIX, LXXI, LXXVI, 243, 244, 279, 280 Valentino, Rudolph, 79 Vance, Ethel, XXXVIII Vandegrift, Alexander Α., 122 Van Dören, Irita, LIV, LV Vendler, Helen, LXXXI, 304 Vidal, Gore, LXII Vreuls, Diane, LXIV Walker, Alice M„ LXIX, LXX, 247, 248 Wallace, David, 63 Walters, Raymond Jr., LIX Wanen, Robert P., XXXVIII, XLIV, XLV, L, LIV, LXI, 115, 116 Washington, George, 213 Wells, Samuel C., 4, 14 Welty, Eudora, LX, LXI, LXII, LXIV, LXXIX, 211,212

Wescott, Glenway, XXIX, XLII Weston, Christine, XLI Wharton, Edith Ν., XXIII, 15, 16, 55 Wharton, William, LXVIII White, Helen C„ XXXIII, XXXVIII White, William Α., XXVI, 31, 96 Whitman, Walt, LXXVI Whitney, John H„ 197 Wickenden, Dan, XLII Wilder, Thornton Ν., XXVIII, XXIX, XLIV, LIX, 43, 44 Williams, George, 291 Wilson, Harry L., 9 Wilson, Margaret W„ XXVI, 27, 28 Wilson, Stanford, 197 Winship, Thomas, 216, 226 Wolfe, Thomas, XXX, XXXIV, LXXIX Wouk, Herman, XLVI, 135, 136 Wright, Richard, XLII Yarbrough, Marilyn, LXXXI, 304 Yardley, Jonathan, LXVIII, LXXIV Yildiz, Mücahit, VI Young, Marguerite, LVIII Young, Stark, XXXIV Yurick, Sol, LVIII Zara, Louis, XXXIV

302

The Pulitzer Prize Archive A History and Anthology of Award-winning Materials in Journalism, Letters, and Arts Series Editor: Heinz-Dietrich Fischer 1987 onwards. 16 volumes. Bound

Part A:

Reportage Journalism

Vol. 1

INTERNATIONAL REPORTING AWARDS 1928 - 1985 From the Activities of the League of Nations to present-day Global Problems 1987, LXXXVI, 352 pages

Vol.2

NATIONAL REPORTING AWARDS 1941 - 1986 From Labor Conflicts to the Challenger Disaster 1988, LXII, 388 pages

Vol.3

LOCAL REPORTING AWARDS 1947- 1987 From a County Vote Fraud to a Corrupt City Council 1989, Lll, 388 pages

Part B:

Opinion Journalism

Vol.4

POLITICAL EDITORIAL AWARDS 1916-1988 From War-related Conflicts to Metropolitan Disputes 1990, LXXIV, 376 pages

Vol.5

SOCIAL COMMENTARY AWARDS 1969- 1989 From University Troubles to a California Earthquake 1991, XLVI, 400 pages

Vol.6

CULTURAL CRITICISM AWARDS 1969- 1990 From Architectural Damages to Press Imperfections 1992, Lll, 420 pages

Part C:

Nonfiction Literature

Vol.7

AMERICAN HISTORY AWARDS 1917-1991 From Colonial Settlements to the Civil Rights Movement 1994, LXVIII, 366 pages

303 Vol. 8

BIOGRAPHY / AUTOBIOGRAPHY AWARDS 1917-1992 From the lucky Discoverer of America to an unfortunate Vietnam Veteran 1995, LXX, 406 pages

Vol.9

GENERAL NONFICTION AWARDS 1962- 1993 From the Election of John F. Kennedy to a Retrospect of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address 1996, Lll, 362 pages

Part D:

Belles Lettres

Vol. 10

NOVEL / FICTION AWARDS 1917-1994 From Pearl S. Buck and Margaret Mitchell to Ernest Hemingway and John Updike 1997, LXXXII, 304 pages

Future Volume Vol. 11

POETRY / VERSE AWARDS 1918 -1995 will be published in 1998

304

Columbia ©ntoeraitp mtl)fCitpof]irtngork T H E P U L I T Z E R P R I Z E S IN L E T T E R S DRAMA AND

MUSIC

Excerpt from the Plan ofAward The following provisions govern the award of the Pulitzer Prizes and Fellowships — . M M H in Columbia University by the will of the first Joseph Pulitzer. 1. The prizes and fellowships are awarded by Columbia University on fK» w w ^ p w u ^ j i ^ q£ f h e Pulitzer Prize Board. T h e prizes are announced during the Spring. 1 Entries must be submitted in writing and addressed to the Administrator of The Pulitzer Prize Board. (See reverse side for address.) Entries for letters awards must be submitted on or before July 1 of the year of publication in the case of b o o b published between January 1 and June 30 and on or before November 1 in the case o f books published between July l a n d December 31. Competition for prizes is limited to work done during the calendar year ending December 31, except in drama and music. F o r the drama prize, works produced during the twelve months from March 2 through March 1 are considered. For the music award, works given their American premiere during the twelve months from March 2 through March 1 are considered. 3. For the prizes in letters, four copies of each book published before June 30 shall be sent to the Administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes by July 1. Books published between July 1 and December 31 shall be submitted by November 1. (Books scheduled for publication in November and December must be submitted no later than November 1 in galley proof.) For the prize in drama, entries shall be made while the work is being performed together with up to six published or manuscript copies of each work, where requested, and an agreement from the producer to permit the purchase of tickets by the Administrator of the Pulitzer Board for those concerned in judging, not to exceed two each. For the prize in music, entries similarly shall be arrompanied by an agreement from performing organizations to submit scores and recordings or, when necessary, to make arrangements for the judging in the manner as the drama prize. All entries should include biographies and pictures of entrants and each entry in letters and music must be accompanied by a Imnfling fee of $20 payable to Columbia Univenity/Pulitzer Prizes.

The Pulitzer Prize Board George Rupp, President Columbia University Join Konner, Dean Graduate School of Journalism Louis D. Boccardi President and Chief Executive Officer Associated Press Sissela Bok, Writer and Philosopher John S. Carroll Editor and Senior Vice President The Baltimore SIM John L. Dotson, Jr., President and Publisher Akron Beacon Journal Jack Fuller, President and Chief Executive Officer. Chicago Tribune Peter R. Kann, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Dow Jones 6c Co., Inc. William B. Kecter Editor and Vice President The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, Mass. Geneva Overholser, Ombudsman The Washington Pott

Rena Pederson Vice President/Editorial Page Editor The DalLu Morning Newt James V. Risser, Director John S. Knight Fellowships, Stanford University Sandra Mims Rowe, Editor Hie Oregonisn Walter Rugaber, President and Publisher Roanoke ^a.) Tun* & Worid-Nevt William S afire. Columnist The New York Timet Edward Season, Editor in Chief The Manhattan (Kan.) Mtrotry Helen Vendler, Porter University Professor Harvard University Marilyn Yarbrough, Associate Provost and Professor of Law University of North Carolina Seymour Topping, Administrator Graduate School of Journalism May, 199&