When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.
It’s true: fiction got fucked in the face by the Pulitzers. The reason I’m bummed is because it’s one of the few opportunities to do something exciting for a writer and the literary community, especially the booksellers. We need these prizes to celebrate our collective industry no matter how political and corrupt it often seems. It sounds like the process must have been grueling. WHat’s worse than coming up empty handed? Having your dick cut off? Okay, here at betsy.com let’s have our own vote. The three finalists are Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King, and Karen Russel’s Swamplandia.
So cast your vote for one of these three writers OR nominate someone else. The winner of the BetsyPulitzerPrize will be invited to have a q&a here, I will make love with the winner, and he or she will get a free copy of THe Forest for the Trees and a free lifetime subscription to the blog.
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Betsy Lerner 
I’m picking DWF, and I want you to install the Betsy cam before you fuck him.
Okay, that’s funny.
This is so ridiculous because it LOOKS to an outsider who can’t be bothered to read the article you linked, like the Pulitzer judges couldn’t find any books that were good enough to win. But actually it means that ALL THREE books were so effing good that they couldn’t decide. SO? Make it a tie. Or put it to a larger vote. Don’t those Pulitzer fuckers realize we only care what they think about books for marketing purposes? Do they really think we care that they couldn’t agree? What a bunch of wankers.
Imagine if the Oscars did this “Sorry, we couldn’t decide so nobody wins”. The producers would go medieval on them. I hope the big publishers (not just the publishers of the nominated books) go to town on the Pulitzer Board.
One year, when I had a film in contention, the Australian Writer’s Guild Awgie Awards decided that they could only find one screenplay in each category (original and adapted) that was worthy of them so there were no nominees. I didn’t expect to win, but I would have liked a nod. But my film, a kids film, was pretty silly, so I wasn’t all that hurt. HOWEVER, the writer of the superb and successful film RABBIT PROOF FENCE was sitting at my table. We all thought she was going to win. Nope. Not even nominated.
Let me tell you, my producer, her producer and the director of the Australian Film Commission were on the phone with the Guild the next day. Jerks.
These awards people need to get some perspective.
I haven’t read any of them yet but I always read the winner. In a blind test, I’d award anything to DFW : gold stars, presidency, the Pulitzer, the Nobel. He was the closest we got to Tolstoy since the man himself.
As for the Board, they should have been locked in the room without cigarettes, alcohol or their phones till they made a decision.
Train Dreams. Denis goes on and off the rails for me with each book, but this one’s got America written all over it. Of course it doesn’t take place in or near NYC — I figure that killed it.
The first 2 and 1/2 pages of Tree of Smoke might be the most memorable opening pages I’ve ever read. I’ll never forget that 18 yr old private and the baby monkey.
I just read those pages, I agree.
Okay, I’ll read Tree of Smoke, but “18 yr. old private” is strike one.
So…okay…I’m really naïve about these things. I sort of leave destiny to the people hired or appointed to do…whatever. This all sounds so familiar considering that today’s leaders in…whatever… just can’t seem to decide or do anything. Oh, sorry I was talking about politics you were talking about books.
Hear, hear!
I can’t vote because I haven’t read them all! But the Poohlitzer judges do not have that excuse. Jeeze, make a decision, dammit.
So. There were three finalists chosen by a judging committee, which hands them off to the board, which has twenty members. How is it that you fail to reach a majority vote out of a field of only three books read by twenty people? I flunked permutations but somebody needs to do some ‘splainin anyway.
I haven’t read any of them and so have no vote.
There is an excellent ‘splanation by Laura Miller at salon.com titled “Pulitzers Snub Fiction”. I will stand up for Ms. Larson as she is a dear friend – and her NPR interview should also leave no doubt to her thoughts on the matter.
Sorry, read the article; I still don’t get it. Twenty judges, three books, no majority. Does that mean most of them abstained from voting? Another thing I don’t get is why Laura Miller, the author of the Salon article, puts the titles of novels in quotation marks.
I’m no expert on punctuation – heck, I can’t even figure out how to italized words for these posts – but, what I learned from the article is the capricious focus of these Boards. From being labelled as “hopelessly mainstream” to accusations of not reading more fiction, it seems these Board members may be a bit too removed from the selections they are tasked with reviewing.
On the other hand, the outrage at this lack-of-a-winner tells me that books do indeed matter to the Common Person and Johnson, Wallace and Russel are now linked with Eudora Welty (and that may be better than a Prize!).
Hell, I don’t know, I can’t decide. Just give me the money, I got bills to pay.
Or better yet, take the check for the prize money, put it in an envelope, and duct tape it to a sailing stone in the middle of Death Valley’s Racetrack Playa. Take all the nominees (not just the finalists) and lock ’em up in Scotty’s Castle at the beginning of July so they’re all starting from the same place. Turn ’em loose at sunrise on Independence Day to hike in, find the envelope if one of ’em can, and hike back. They can carry as much water as they can carry, and a Bowie knife. All of ’em are to be wired with video and sound, too, for real-time feed streaming live to ESPN and BBC Sport. The winner, if there is one, gets the money and the Pulitzer. All the surviving contestants will be gathered back at Scotty’s Castle for a special screening of von Stroheim’s GREED.
Do it. Bring some thrills and excitement back to American literature. It’ll be better than bullfighting. Even better than an academic committee spat. No time for losers, fuckin’ A!
Yeah, I’m a sick motherfucker.
But you’re OUR sick motherfucker. 😉
Nominees? I thought there were no nominees; you just send in a book with a fee. If I ever get my F—r finished, that’s what I’m gonna do. It’s tax deductible, yo.
it’s also tax deductible before you finish
Denis and David, genius writers both, call me a feminist bitch, but I’m putting my vote behind Karen Russel’s Swamplandia. It’s awesomesauce. Yep, awesomesauce. And fuck those Pulitzer sons-of-bitches. They should have been forced to stay in that room until they came to an agreement.
Why would Denis and David call you a feminist bitch?
Sorry. Couldn’t resist. Silly of me.
because she’s a Princess?
The Johnson wasn’t a new book. The Wallace wasn’t a finished book. This leaves the remaining nominee, Russell’s Swamplandia, as the default winner. But I wish Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder had been on the shortlist, because it would have won, and should have won.
Train Dreams is awesome, but old. Informal survey at the library today was split on Swamplandia, people either loved it or couldn’t finish it. David Foster Wallace… I don’t know. I just don’t like the DFW worship and it’s kept me from reading his stuff. Someday I’ll get over it.
I will go off the list and pick The Marriage Plot by Mr. Eugenides. It wasn’t flashy or tricky, but very skillful, smart, and funny. I know Eugenides is demographically a typical PP winner and that the goodies should be spread around but I still was surprised it came up in none of the big awards. I haven’t read Swamplandia. I have read the others, but The Pale King isn’t a book in full, and Train Dreams was published as a novella years ago, was it not? I seem to have read it years ago. I feel compelled to say that there were many great short story collections published as well. Yes, it shocked me that there wasn’t a winner. I am a bit Marlon Brando about prizes myself, but I do understand their function, and what world we live in, so there should have been a winner.
Confession time: I haven’t read ANY of the finalists, and only heard of two of them, and every time I check out the blurbs for the two I’ve heard of, which their titles sound interesting, I get turned off, but I forget why. So I’m nominating a book that’s been out for a few years.
Since, in my world, “literature” means books that are outside my comfort zone and stretch my mind in weird, if not literary ways, my vote goes to Shriek: An Afterword, by Jeff VanderMeer, which is creepy and challenging and unputdownable, and besides which the cover was FANTASTIC. (Dead and dying mushrooms melting over an old-timey typewriter.)
The Pulitzer is so far above my pay grade that I shouldn’t comment at all, but I’d say that having your dick cut off is worse than not having a nomination.I admit to gender bias in this case.
Great prize offers, though.
Couldn’t finish any of the three nominated so completely understand the pass by the committee. The Art of Fielding would’ve been my pick.
The Pull it, Sir prize.
just don’t pull it off, sir. i might need it again someday.
Sorry, I can’t vote today as I haven’t read any of them yet. It’s tough for me to read fiction when I’m writing fiction. Plus, the books I read are often older as I wait for paperback.
Still, I think it’s a shame that no one won the prize. Of course there were worthy novels out there, but people are so busy fussing over Fifty Shades of Crap that the good stuff is lost in oblivion.
Actually, publishing industry, there are other opportunities to do something exciting for fiction writers—publish more.
When I think of the Pulitzer, I think of a work that wraps itself around my center and doesn’t let go until long after I’ve finished reading, or in the case of Rent, experiencing it. I, respectfully, submit the following blog post to be considered for the prestigious BPP award: http://averildean.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/paper-ghosts/
Break out the Betsy cam.
MSB, I agree, and is it any wonder Averil snagged her dream agent first week out of the gate?
Yes! Yes! I know I’m new to the party, but this would be fun!
I second the nomination, wait can I do that, what the fuck, I’m seconding anyway.
Can I get a copy of the Betsy cam disk?
I would have nominated Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder, or Tea Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife. Maybe neither one is “American” enough? Whatevs. Of the three I’d have chosen DFW. Seriously, so many good books — any of them as good as Rabbit is Rich. Argh. I’m still burned they picked it over the best book ever written, ie, Housekeeping.
Amen on Housekeeping!
Any of the three nominated books certainly worthy of the Pulitzer, but I would have chosen Train Dreams for its beauty, edge and visionary prose. I sometimes wonder if Denis Johnson still writes poetry. In the early 1970’s I was an undergraduate at the Univ. of Iowa where he was also a student. At 20, he had already published a poetry chapbook, “A Man Among the Seals.” Once a group of us were in an elevator in the English/Philosophy bldg. Someone pointed him out: the barefoot hippie with tan feet, and said, “See that guy? He’s a genius.”
“This Is Thursday, Your Exam Was Tuesday.”
It is a fine, beautiful
and lovely time of warm dusk,
having perhaps just a touch
too much
enveloping damp;
but nice, with its idle strollers,
of whom I am one,
and it’s true,
their capacity for good
is limitless, you can tell.
And then–ascending
over the roofs, the budded tips
of trees, in the twilight, very whole
and official,
its black
markings like a face
that has loomed in every city
I have known–it arrives,
the gigantic yellow warrant
for my arrest,
one sixth the size
of the world. I’m speaking
of the moon. I would not give
you a fistful of earth for
the entire moon, I might as well tell you.
For across the fuitile and empty
street, in the excruciating
gymnasium, they
are commencing–
degrees are being bestowed
on the deserving,
whereas I’m the incalculable
dullard in the teeshirt here.
Gentleman of the moon:
I don’t even have
my real shoes on. These are some reformed
hoodlum’s shoes, from the Goodwill. Let
me rest, let me rest in the wake
of others steady progress,
closing my eyes,
closing my heart,
shutting the door
in face after face
that has nourished me.
–Denis Johnson
“Inner Weather”
Behind Our House
The cedar mapped with water and hung with rain
has whatever a cedar mighty want,
a sky higher and a soil
deeper than a cedar’s reaching,
but wants nothing.
My neighbor walks crippled, with half a head left,
toward the flag and boxes and machines
of the Post Office, having tried
once to shoot himself, and, having lived,
mails a letter.
Stove
at my back, warm me.
Rain on the harbor, tell me.
Dark on the day, know me.
Dark on the day, see me.
Dark on the day, help me.
-Denis Johnson
Lost Memory of Skin, Russell Banks
Adam Johnson for “The Orphan Master’s Son.”
Anyone else see the NPR News / nixed-Pulitzer bit with Ann Patchett last night?
Oh, and I’ll always vote early and often for Denis Johnson. That mofo has technical brilliance and SOUL.
I’m not seeking awards. I just want to publish my first book.
It would be cathartic.
If you can and/or want to, please help.
Thank You.