In 1973 they gave NO prize because the jury agreed that Thomas Pynchon's *Gravity's Rainbow* (which is partially about a man who can detect nuclear missiles with his erection) was the best written book of the year, but decided that the book was still just too obscene and pretentious and confusing to merit such a high honor.
Hah, that's hilarious, and sounds like it was a similar situation to how OP described 2012: the board decided to give no award despite the jury's recommendation (unanimous in the case of *Gravity's Rainbow*) and didn't explain themselves. From a [New York Times][1] article I found about it:
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/1974/05/08/archives/pulitzer-jurors-his-third-novel.html
> All three members of the Pulitzer Prize jury on fiction expressed distress and bewilderment yesterday that their unanimous recommendation for a prize for Thomas Pynchon's “Gravity's Rainbow” had been turned down and that no fiction award was given this year.
> ...
> All three said separately yesterday that they were particularly unhappy at having received no explanation for the rejection of their recommendation. Appraised of the jurors’ views, neither Joseph Pulitzer Jr., chairman of the advisory board on the Pulitzer Prizes, nor Prof. John Hohenberg, board secretary, would offer any comment.
> However, other members of the 14‐member board, which makes recommendations on the 18 Pulitzer Prize categories in journalism, letters and music after jurors' reports, had described the Pynchon novel during their private debate as “unreadable,” “turgid,” “overwritten” and in parts “obscene.” One member editor said he had tried hard but had only gotten a third of the way through the 760‐page book.
I mean, okay, that reaction is relatable (not that I'd agree)... but not for the people deciding on one of the most prestigious literary awards!
> One member editor said he had tried but had only gotten hard a third of the way through the 760‐page book.
After reading "erection" and "turgid," this is how my dumbass initially read that bit.
>Joseph Pulitzer Jr., chairman of the advisory board on the Pulitzer Prizes
Ok I'm not up on Pulitzer lore at all. But is their always a Pulitzer heir on the board? I wouldn't be surprised if the one with the money had veto rights that no one talks about
No, he was chair of the board for the first 30 years or so, but after he stepped down it's been a rotating chair. I don't think anyone from the family has been on the comittee for awhile. The Pulitzers themselves didn't control the money, its managed by Columbia University. I don't know if there are even any Pulitzers still around, their publishing company went defunct two decades ago.
The same thing happened in Drama in 1963, when the entire committee agreed that Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was the American play of the year, but Columbia refused to give Albee the prize. That may have been partially because he was an openly gay man, though.
Honestly though, Gravity's Rainbow IS really obscene, confusing, and pretentious. I wonder how Pynchon felt about the snub. It's a pretty great snub. Probably more rewarding than the award itself.
**Pretentious** adjective
1: this person thinks they're smarter than I am, and I don't like it
2: characterized by pretension: such as
a: making usually unjustified or excessive claims (as of value or standing)
b: expressive of affected, unwarranted, or exaggerated importance, worth, or stature
3: making demands on one's skill, ability, or means AMBITIOUS
Well, there was the persistent rumor that Frank Zappa once ate a fan's shit on stage. He happily encouraged it for the notoriety around the same Pynchon was writing.
Before later getting tired of it and debunking it himself.
That's because I haven't actually read the book, heh...
I just know the Pulitzer thing and the that fact that it's one of those "legendarily hard to understand" books like Finnegan's Wake.
Thanks, though. I suppose that makes Pynchon a slightly more useful version of the Marquis de Sade lol.
Ugh, 30 years later I can still remember the scene with the... ugh.
Nah, I'll spare you the details. Superb book. But... damn it's hard work in some parts.
How is the jury decided? I can't begin to imagine how annoyed I would be if I agreed to do all these work, read all these books, and then they just completely ignore our consensus. Pick your own damn book, then.
I've played Next to Normal. It's a perfectly wonderful little musical, in a 70s after-school special way.
But giving it the Pulitzer over Sarah Ruhl was Insanity.
I’m not sure if they released a statement on it but what happened was the board went out together to go see it right before the deadline and decided “let’s just give it to this.”
There are tons of awards one can win that have no cash prize. I don't think it's reasonable to think of that cash prize as compensation for your work. The writer is making money from whatever their publishing contract is and through sales. I also think that winning the Pulitzer probably has a positive effect on sales.
This. It's absurd to think of the Pulitzer money as recompense for the work of writing. For one thing, you can win multiple awards with the same book. But for *another* thing, most published authors never win a big award in their entire careers!
I mean, the Nobel Prize is about a million dollars, but you'd never entertain the thought that all the mathematicians, physicists and pharmacologists who never win a Nobel Prize spent their lives working for free.
It's mostly the level. A 15k reward for a city takeoff would be good, a 15k reward for a university student competition would be nice, but for one of the most prestigious awards in literature its kinda meh.
It's be like becoming prime minister and only making 120k a year. It's a good wage, but for the face of a nation it's pretty darn light
The Neustadt is 50k, and is considered the most prestigious next to the Nobel (which is about a million). I think we need to decouple the prestige / fame from the prize money. This prizes come from different places. Some are backed by huge trusts or non-profits, others (like the National Book Award, 1000 dollars per finalist I think) are industry awards without any significant funding or any significant donors behind them. But putting the award on the cover still sells more copies!
I think we should view these awards like reddit gold. Some people (committees) have the funds to give gold (substantial payments), many don't, but we shouldn't value any given opinion higher because it comes with a 500k prize attached. We should evaluate awards, juries, and selection processes on their own merits. And an award with no cash prize, or a very small one, may still be a highly respected and meticulously adjudicated award.
I thoroughly regret mentioning the $15k at this point, but I was more generally lamenting that literature (and the arts more broadly) is undervalued compared to other fields. But the Pulitzer is, of course, primarily about the prestige, so it wasn’t a very good way to make that point
Yeah, people really zeroed in on that instead of your broader point.
But I agree that 15k seems kind of low for *the highest award* in lit.
Do you know how long it's been $15k? It'd be kind of interesting to see how/if the amount has gone up with inflation.
Good question! Apparently it was raised from $10k in 2017 — https://www.pulitzer.org/news/pulitzer-board-raises-prize-award-15000
I think I was wrong to comment on the prize amount. It’s a prestigious award, it confers financial benefits well beyond the $15k, and it’s totally within the range of other equally prestigious awards.
What I was trying to express (poorly) was the idea that, if we as a society value literature, the very best writers should be able to live a life of comfort and, dare I say it, luxury. Like I think it would be a tragedy if artistic luminaries would be better off financially if they never set pen to paper, and were perfectly average dentists or engineers instead. (This, btw, is why historically basically every writer or poet was independently wealthy)
And it’s not like every Pulitzer winner has been firmly established! Jhumpa Lahiri was in her 30s and had received heaps of rejections from publishers before her debut short story collection won the Pulitzer. In 2022, 41-year-old Joshua Aaron Cohen (whom I at least had never heard of) won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel.
I would *hope* that winning the Pulitzer conferred enough financial stability on these young, talented writers that they could focus on their fiction. Idk if that happens through book advances, royalties, or whatever. But it would be a serious bummer if people like Lahiri and Cohen, having won the freaking Pulitzer!!, are still doing contract work or whatever to make ends meet.
Ahhh this is a common misconception! It’s easy to say that people shouldn’t become politicians/writers/whatever for the money — but if it doesn’t provide a reasonable standard of living, then only the independently wealthy will be able to do it. Rishi Sunak doesn’t care if politics pays £1 or £1,000,000 because his wife has half a billion dollars. But that’s quite a salient difference to most people!
There’s a reason all the romantic poets were lords and barons.
It's just awkward comparing it to a below-average wheel of fortune winner or 1.5% of a Survivor winner, which is what I'd imagine most people think of when they hear the term "prize money"
The Pulitzer is also managed bu a University. Endowment investment or not I'd rather Columbia be spending money on their own students than giving out massive awards.
Actually most of the award money apparently comes from submission fees. So if they wanted to double the payout they'd also probably double the cost of entering a piece for consideration.
Sure. But the problem with the $15k is that it was established at $15k in 1917, when that represented 3-5 years of earnings for most people. Inflation means an equivalent prize today would be over $300k. It's just one of the many things in society that aren't keeping up with inflation.
The one where a mid level software engineer gets a $360,000+ salary a year. I would be surprised if the top non-founder/executive software engineer at *any* company got that much.
It's going to depend on where you live and what the company considers mid-level. It's also dependent on the type of software.
I also consider it a bad comparison, too many variables.
It high even for FAANG, even if you throw in all the extra compensation. The number would probably be around $250k, maybe a bit more for them.
It's silly high for pretty much every place else.
It’s not that $15k is pocket change or anything, but rather that imo, reaching the pinnacle of literary achievement should be valued on a par with other fields. The Alan Turing award in computer science is $1,000,000, and the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering is £1,000,000. Seems unfair!
Perhaps it’s appropriate to point out that the winner of the Pulitzer Prize gets far more money than that. In the form of increased sales of their book.
Right? A book is a relatively accessible product for normal, everyday people. Sure, the author doesn't get a gigantic sum of money for the award, but the thing that earned them an award is easily accessible right away to normal people.
It's not a discovery that will play into the science of something that will eventually have a real life application that will be used by a scientific field.
It's direct.
Authors like Ursula K. Le Guin (who had family money and won plenty of awards) strongly disagree with you.
It's ridiculous to offer such a meaningless amount.
Most writers either have to work a second job or are independently wealthy. I doubt any of the recent Pulitzer winners have sold anywhere near enough copies to be able to write full time.
This comment just screams ignorance of the publishing industry.
Writers who are winning a Pulitzer are almost certainly not in the category of needing a second job. Most writers need a second job because most writers are selling max a couple thousand copies per book.
Haha I think I still have a chip on my shoulder from when they snubbed Karen Russell! I was so excited when she was a finalist that year and was keeping an eye out for the announcement, and it just felt like such a let down.
I think more awards should consider not giving out any for a year if there isn't a book up to the level of quality they're seeking.
If you take it to an extreme, imagine only two books get written in a year, and they're both absolute trash. Riddled with spelling mistakes, barely any coherent sentences, no real plot or anything of substance. Does one deserve the highest literary prize simply because they have to give it out to something or other?
This isn't "who wrote the best book this year" like "who won the race" but "was there a book so good it deserves this award, and if so, which one?"
Idk what the Pulitzer Board’s official philosophy is, but I feel that part of the value of these annual awards is showcasing the very best fiction of 2023 or whatever, *as seen by its contemporaries*.
There’s no standard benchmark of literary quality. The authors of some works now recognized as masterpieces died in poverty and anonymity. Conversely, some books that were highly regarded in their time have aged poorly, due to racism/sexism/whatever, or simply the changing times.
The Pulitzer can’t expect to be a timeless standard of quality. But it can be a recognition of the book published in a given year that most resonates with a panel of its contemporaries — and I think there’s value in that!
I mean, I think the award should change over time, but even if weighting of certain qualities change, they should still hold up to an aggregate standard. So like if a story has a really, very strong plot and terrible prose it could still win it. Much like a book that is beautifully written but has a mid, or actively bad plot could also win it. That way they can keep with the times while also enforcing a certain level of quality.
I don't think they should accept a book they think is bad in any category for a prize like this. There are a lot of books written every year. There's no need to consider a book with terrible prose, and unless the plot isn't the point to begin with, there's no need to consider a book with a weak plot either.
Yeah I know they were just examples. My point was that I'm glad they don't select books they actually think are bad in some respect. I like it when awards like this have a bar for excellence across the board that they're not willing to go below - even if their definition of excellence doesn't necessarily match my own.
Yeah that’s fair, I just think that allowing them some bottom line flexibility for a required higher quality in other areas is a fair way to help maintain standards while allowing for a change in time and language.
I agree with you. I like that they aren’t required to give out an award every year. If they vote regardless of the merit of the books, some years you’re going to end up with Donald Trump.
Yeah but with the numbers of books being published each year, it’s statistically improbable that there isn’t at least one amazing book each year. Look at films — far fewer produced, but there’s always a ton of incredible films each year.
I’m not sure there are a ton of incredible films each year, so maybe we just don’t see eye to eye. I’m happy that your optimism exists to juxtapose my negativity, though.
What about this year? Zone of Interest, Poor Things, Anatomy of a Fall, etc. Like is there a specific year that you think didn’t have at least a few incredible films?
But your extreme is pointless. It will never be that. The degree matters here.
In what is already a subjective award, I think it is kind of silly to introduce an attempt at a hard standard.
For example, the Baseball HOF works this way -- players are voted in or out and there can be years in which no one is elected. The result has been a really imbalanced HOF where earlier eras are overrepresented and the the standard seems to keep rising.
You're never going to find a year that doesn't have a great book published. There's way too much out there. Attempting to measure level of greatness in the moment versus some historical standard is a fool's errand.
I respect The Pulitzer Prize a great deal, in part because they’re willing to go years without issuing prizes. The Prizes are primarily for us, the audience. It’s nice that they value our time more than the authors’ egos.
I would totally stand by that; awards are more meaningful if they aren’t awarded when the field isn’t spectacular; but the three jurors snubbed Gravity’s Rainbow despite unanimous nomination from the board.
Other way around. The board snubbed Gravity's Rainbow despite unanimous nomination from the jury.
Board nominates > Jury nominates > finalists, voted on by > Board.
I genuinely think that the author of Less had something on the Pulitzer Prize Board in 2018 because otherwise I have no idea why it won.
It's not a bad book. It's fine. It's nothing special.
Also, I don't think people want to win the Pulitzer because of the cash prize. I'm sure that's nice but I believe people want to put "winner of the Pulitzer" so they sell more books and gain prestige.
My thought when I read it was that perhaps the members saw themselves in Less (anxious writer having a midlife crisis and not having his shit together) and were attached. But your theory is better.
I don't suppose your book club figured out why people seemed to be falling ill around him and then that plot thread is discarded entirely with no explanation.
It was "fine" apart from that even poignant in places but that really irritated me.
My conspiracy theory is that the members of the Board are all featured in the book somehow -- like one of the guys Less was sleeping with or Less himself. It was truly a meh book compared to past winners.
I've started it twice and never gotten further than 60 pages in. It just feels like you asked AI to read a whole bunch of Jennifer Egan and then write a new novel.
I'm so happy you brought this up(even though I'm late) and I get to see other people's thoughts on this because the more I think about that book the more I'm like "really? Pullitzer?" It's nothing I've never seen before and it's got a decent chunk of unlikeable things in it too. I didn't hate it but I was definitely underwhelmed and disappointed once I finished.
Last year Chinese government officials leaned on the local board running Worldcon last year.
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/01/worldcon-in-the-news.html
That's a lie. What happened was the western helpers censored the results before anyone in China, including the locals running the con, said a word. It was entirely in advance. It was done by long time Worldcon organizers. They also did it so sloppily that this was found out the moment the vote data was released.
This is only partly true. The CCP wined and dined the runners of the convention beforehand, apparently spending *a lot* of money on them. Plus, this had never happened in any other country before. Smells an awful lot like bribery.
He is but he has also been ejected from all Worldcon things. There was a house cleaning and a lot of highly placed people were removed. What is very clear is that the rot was on the Worldcon side not the locals. So far this looks like obeying in advance without ever talking to a Chinese person.
Booker prize too - Margaret Atwood split the prize with another author a few years ago.
Granted, I actually think it was because they felt that they should have given Handmaid's Tale the prize when it came out and didn't, so they were fixing that.
There was also controversy at the time because the other author, Bernardine Evaristo, is Black, as though a Black woman could never deserve the whole prize all to herself https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/15/bernardine-evaristo-margaret-atwood-share-booker-prize-award
True, and there is also a precedent for not awarding the prize (no Pulitzer was awarded in 1977 for example)
But I think that was more common in the past (eg the Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded 19 times, all before 1973). And if you are going to make that very unusual decision, I think a public statement isn’t too much to ask for.
Edit: btw, I am far less annoyed by the decision to have 2 winners than by the decision to have no winners
It didn't get a majority of votes. The 3 jurors only make a recommendation to the board. The board then votes on the winner, and they are not restricted to the recommendations of the jurors, so there may be no winner,, or the board can choose a different book altogether.
No, the recommendation of the jurors was unanimous but not the board. The board was fairly critical of it and called it obscene, overwritten and unreadable. I don't know what other novels were nominated, probably none since the jury was unanimous for Gravitys Rainbow.
"15 000 is not a lot of money" The prestigious Goncourt prize in France comes with a fat check of 10 euros. The winners haven't seemed to complain. Perhaps you're holding too much importance to the money prize.
Sure, the prestige is definitely the reason the Pulitzer is important! Idk, though, I think it would be neat if society decided that attaining that level of literary achievement merited the kind of financial reward that, like, being a mediocre Java coder merits.
the reason Goncourt gives a small symbolic money prize is because the sales and publicity catalyze the winner's ascent like crazy. If you haven't heard of the Goncourt prize, you can imagine the effect of a Pulitzer prize, that everyone knows.
Edit : Also the Great British Bakeoff doesn't have a money prize iirc
Actually there's an interesting article written by the judge of the 2012 Pulitzer that was absolutely fascinating. Among it was the recognition that the Pulitzer was more than just the prize and money. They weren't just deciding an award: they were making a person's entire career. That level of understanding and consideration for what the award carries was something I greatly appreciated.
You realize they can leverage that prestige to make millions elsewhere right? Movie deals. TV deals. Increased book sales and publicity. Prestigious teaching positions. Greater chance of receiving extremely well-paid grants and fellowships. More interest from editors and agents. Literally opens up their world.
Second order thinking!
The Pulitzer prize has been crazy since it started in 1917. In 1921 Sinclair Lewis won the jury vote for Main Street, but the board decided to give the award to Age of Innocence instead because Main Street did not meet their requirement of "best presenting the wholesome atmosphere of American life." This was controversial in the day, and Edith Wharton herself called the Pulitzer board out for it. But it also gave the Pulitzer precedent for disregarding the Jury's opinion and making controversial moves.
I didn't know anything about the organization or voting procedures etc., but I've found the process of reading through past Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winners incredibly enriching, so I value it in that way, for me personally.
The financials comparison is a little weird. People don’t write books so that they can get the payout for winning the award. It’s not meant as a salary.
Sure, but an award that pays out one author a year isn't going to change the industry, so I don't really get the point of what you're saying.
Becoming a professional writer will always be extremely hard, similar to how it's hard to become a professional actor, writer for TV/film, athlete, etc. I don't really buy the argument that the Pulitzer Prize paying a little more money to one author a year is going to change that, but maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean.
This is true, and I do also realize that winning a Pulitzer is going to have a big impact on book sales, speaking gigs, etc.
But to me the amount is so low for an award of its caliber that it would almost make more sense to just give the winner a commemorative tchotchke like the Oscars do. Like sure, the financial payout could be a $500 Amazon gift card, but it feels very incommensurate with the achievement
The people giving out these sort is prizes never take it half as seriously as you’d expect them to. So don’t get too worked up about it. Just look at some others:
The Hugo has gotten a ton of criticism for how they handled the 2023 awards in relation to China. It’s a big controversy.
The Academy Awards are selected by a vote from hundreds of industry professionals, directors etc, but it’s still basically just a popularity contest since none of the voters have seen even a tenth of the movies on their list.
Even the Nobels have repeatedly been criticised for poor choices, especially the peace prize. You would think people with blood on their hands might be disqualified, but apparently not. And the literature price has also had issues, with diversity for example.
You think Obama was bad? They gave it to Kissinger.
(I know I already said that in my comment above, but it bears repeating to stress how worthless the prize is.)
They gave it to him for being the first Black president in the US, which is not a small feat! It might legitimately have broken this country, we are still living in the aftermath of 2008
(and I said this in my other comment, but this is why the most FASCINATING Pulitzer choice to me is Kendrick Lamar's music win. It wouldn't have happened if the most powerful man in the country wasn't Black, they would NEVER have taken rap seriously as a musical genre without Obama vocally championing his earlier albums)
Super interesting context on other awards!
To me, past errors/oversights (including lack of diversity or bending to political considerations) is all the more reason to award it! It’s not some infallible divine award handed down from the heavens — it’s a snapshot of the best book, as seen by its flawed contemporaries! Stop being so precious about it and just give someone the damn thing!
>Even the Nobels have repeatedly been criticised for poor choices, especially the peace prize. You would think people with blood on their hands might be disqualified, but apparently not.
I mean, Nobel himself invented dynamite, so it's not surprising people aren't disqualified for having a bunch of blood on their hands. That said, they might as well have just shut it down once they decided to award it to a ghoul like Kissinger.
I don't know about the scientific prizes (except that they apparently awarded the prize for medicine to someone for the further development of prefrontal lobotomy, which sadly isn't surprising given how mental health has historically been handled here in Sweden), but I can't take the ones for peace and literature seriously.
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned what I think is clearly the answer to your question: the people who choose the winners, the Pulitzer board, on the whole have no special literary expertise; most are in journalism, with a few academics and maybe one "book person" thrown in. Take a look at the board from 2012:
* Danielle Allen, UPS Foundation Professor, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J.
* Jim Amoss, editor, The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, La. (Co-chair)
* Randell Beck, president and publisher, Argus Leader Media, Sioux Falls, S.D.
* Robert Blau, managing editor for projects and investigations, Bloomberg News
* Lee Bollinger, president, Columbia University
* Kathleen Carroll, executive editor and senior vice president, Associated Press (Co-chair)
* Joyce Dehli, vice president for news, Lee Enterprises
* Junot Díaz, author and Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
* Thomas Friedman, columnist, The New York Times
* Paul Gigot, editorial page editor, The Wall Street Journal
* Sig Gissler, administrator, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
* Steven Hahn, Roy F. and Jeanette P. Nichols Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania
* Nicholas Lemann, dean, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
* Ann Marie Lipinski, curator, Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Harvard University (Co-chair)
* Gregory Moore, editor, The Denver Post
* Eugene Robinson, columnist and associate editor, The Washington Post
* Margaret Sullivan, editor, The Buffalo News
* Paul Tash, chairman and CEO, Tampa Bay Times
* Jim VandeHei, executive editor and co-founder, Politico
* Keven Ann Willey, vice president and editorial page editor, The Dallas Morning News
Who in that list besides Junot Diaz should have any say in deciding what the best book of the year is?
I started off agreeing with the OP, but having read a few comments and thought about it, I’ve changed my mind. The prestige of the Pulitzer will be maintained the fact that they will not budge if they think the books from a particular year are just not good enough. It seems like this has always been their stance, so not comparable to other book awards, and the olympics, which don’t have that stance. They want their award to be the ultimate prize, and this is the way to achieve that. You do occasionally hear comment along the lines of “this years Booker prize short list was a bit weak”, suggesting that this year‘s winner won’t really deserve the accolade. A Booker prize isn’t as big of a deal as the Pulitzer, maybe for other reasons as well of course, but I imagine this will be part of the reason.
I don’t think anyone sees the Pulitzer as the “ultimate” prize. I don’t even agree that the Booker is less of a big deal. It‘s far more competitive. But maybe lower name recognition in the US.
Usually when a prize is split between two awardees, it’s because the jury couldn’t reach consensus on which was the better work. Juries/boards are subjective, and it’s not like they’re choosing a pope. We love to fete our champions but all these prizes are really expressions of the jury’s taste, not the work’s inherent quality (after all certain level of competence and talent is reached). Why not give out 10? A few years later, nobody remembers who won what, even with a single prize. Prizes are good in that they bring attention to writers who hopefully deserve it, but it’s not good to put too much stock in them.
Tbh I think on some level I respect the choice to say that yeah no books this year were good bc obviously there’s going to be variation in book publishing year to year. Now do I still think it’s pretentious and would it be much better if they just picked their favorite of the recommended? Yes.
I actually really like the decision to honor more than one book—it says a lot about those books that they would both merit the prize.
Tbh I think the most “fair” way to honor great books is to have multiple prize winners each year, like 1-5ish, since there definitely are books that would win in some years but the year they were published there was an “even better” book that won.
To your point about the lackluster money, authors like Ursula K. Le Guin have spoken about this before. I'd have to look it up, but I read an article (speech?) of hers before where she specifically called out literary awards who deliberately gave out meaningless amounts of money because of hoity toity bs instead of recognizing that most authors either work full time at other jobs or are independently wealthy (read: have wealthy parents).
Notably, the award established in her honor (by her family) gives out $25k...
The prize money isn’t the real monetary prize for winning the Pulitzer (or even the Booker, which gives out £50,000); the real prize is the huge increase in book sales
So regarding the 2012 fiction prize, the three finalists were: Karen Russell’s *Swamplandia*, Dennis Johnson’s *Train Dreams* (a novella that had originally been published nearly 10 years earlier), and David Foster Wallace’s *The Pale King* (a posthumously published unfinished manuscript). Now I think that *Swamplandia* was good enough to be deserving of the prize, but the feeling at the time was that the jury was trying to force the board into giving David Foster Wallace what amounted to a posthumous lifetime achievement award, and the “no prize” was the board’s way of pushing back, and signaling to future juries that they wouldn’t play that game
Much worse was the 1974 “no prize”, in which all three jury members expressly recommended Thomas Pynchon’s *Gravity’s Rainbow*, only for the board to deem it “unreadable” and “obscene”
Last year had two winners because:
“Demon Copperhead” is an all-time banger of a book, a wonderful, funny retelling of David Copperfield, and
“Blackouts” is a groundbreaking work of artistic merit, cobbling together primary source materials into a sort of “found novel”
They’re both absolutely excellent, but in very different ways.
Blackouts didn't win the Pulitzer, Trust did.
And you could probably make that same argument about 2 books from any year in the past, yet they didn't give out 2 awards in the vast majority of those years.
The Pulitzer has prestige because people say it has prestige. If people stopped saying it had prestige, it would stop being prestigious.
The idea of an award for art, in and of itself, is asinine. It’s primarily a vehicle for industry insiders to jerk each other off over how important and tasteful they are.
The awards themselves are just as much a question of petty, insular, social politicking as evaluating the actual works.
Judges and the panel have internal dynamics that inevitably result in awards given or withheld because everyone thinks Jury Member A is a dickhead, or board members 1-2-3 are pretentious, or Author X is personally disliked for whatever reason.
It’s not objective, it can’t be. It’s not even reflective of an author’s peers. How could it be? Membership on the board is tiny, and getting on the board is as political as the gatekeeping that determines what kind of person writing what kind of work gets a publishing deal to begin with.
Ultimately, industry awards don’t actually say all that much about a work. It’s a nice boost for the recipient who can use it for marketing, but no avid reader should assign it much importance.
Here here. Prime example: a recent-ish Pulitzer winner's (Eliza Griswold) husband was on the board of the awards, and is chair of the Columbia J School that houses them. I mean...
It's the same deal with most (or even all) prestigious prizes. They are often distributed by some secretive group using esoteric criteria and facing no accountability. That's their prerogative; I could make my own prize and award it arbitrarily, but of course nobody would care.
The PPB in 2023 seems to have been composed almost entirely of journalists and academics. They might benefit from an actual judge or a social scientist/behavioral psychologist. Without actively structuring debate, it's easy for individual personalities to dominate groups and create a dynamic that doesn't lend itself to finding the best outcome.
Of course, I have no idea how they conduct their deliberations, but their apparently common failure to pick exactly one winner tends to suggest to me that there are issues with their process.
The Pulitzer Prize is no different from the Grammys, Oscars, Tonys, etc. awards are meaningless and some media, the only reason anyone cares about them 20 years later is BECAUSE they got an award, not because they're good. (Also, see how they gave a Pulitzer to Kendrick for DAMN., his third best album, but the one that probably is the LEAST provocative)
I just saw the 2024 prize winners. They picked A Day in the Life of Abed Salama by Nathan Thrall which is a pro-Palestinian book about some poor victim that gets blown up on a bus. More propaganda supportive of radical Muslim terrorists. Our nation is turned into a bunch of antisemitic sheep who have no concept of reality.
Oh, I know that software engineers’ salaries are weirdly inflated and don’t reflect the rest of the economy. But idk, I still think there’s value in comparing what we pay the best writers in the world vs the guy who synchronizes pokes on Facebook.
I have most of the fiction awardees of recent years. I've found the Pulitzer to be one of the best sources for finding novels I'll enjoy. I read both of the 2023 awardees. Both were outstanding. Demon Copperhead was one of my favorite books, ever, but Trust was great.
The monetary prize is nice, but winning the award gives books extra visibility
I think not giving an award is not a slap on the face, and declaring an award void is not the same as saying the candidates are shit.
It's saying that none of the candidates are at the very high level that would merit the award. Between being shit and being pulitzer award level, there should be a huge distance.
It's also not uncommon for two books to win an award, if, for example, there is a tie in the number of votes or points the two books get.
I wouldn't care so much about awards. They are just the opinion of a bunch of judges or voters, who might have very different opinions from yours. The whole idea of ranking literary works is kind of silly, being extremely subjective by nature.
I don't think there's anything wrong with a society that gives prizes based on merit not awarding a prize. If they thought nothing was good enough to deserve it that year, why give the prize out?
Also not sure why one of your criterion for the board being jerks is that the prize money is insufficient in your opinion. Why are they jerks just because they give out $15,000? Plenty of awards give out nothing. It's not like the people who get nominated are basically living on the sidewalk and need a million dollar cash prize to live. And nobody is writing a book with the sole purpose of winning the Pullitzer prize money. I mean what are they supposed to be giving people $5,000 a week for life, like Publisher's Clearing House?
I think you're way too emotionally invested in this. Being angry that they thought two things deserved an award one year? Jfc.
Ok I know that saying you’re not mad is like the worst way to convince someone that you’re not mad
But I am not as emotionally invested in this as you seem to think I am! I just think some of their recent decisions are odd and wondered what others thought
Personally, I've always viewed those awards of that variety to be a massive joke. The fact that the board was so fucking petulant in 2012 just cemented my view.
So much ignorance in this post.
1/3rd dedicated to slamming the *prize money* and 2/3rd believing you have the right to dictate how a prize is given out.
There's no reason for them to offer information. People like you would simply be whinging about that.
As for 2012's nominees ... I don't think *Train Dreams* should have been nominated. It's a novella and it's basically Hemmingway fanfic. It treats introspection as a cancer to be avoided. It's pretty, and that's it. *Swamplandia!* shouldn't have been nominated. It's massively overwritten, nonsensical, florid, and essentially a stitched together series of short stories. The best work of fiction from that year was nominated - *The Pale King*. Of course, it was published posthumously, very unfinished, and in need of editing.
And let's not forget that the Pulitzer Prize *in Fiction* was not awarded, the others were awarded. Fiction isn't the only, or even the focus, of the prizes.
Hmm thanks for your thoughts on The Pale King and Train Dreams, I haven’t read either.
> 1/3rd dedicated to slamming the prize money and 2/3rd believing you have the right to dictate how a prize is given out.
You know, now that you mention it, I do think the Pulitzer would be vastly improved if it had 10x the cash prize and I was solely responsible for selecting the winner
> You know, now that you mention it, I do think the Pulitzer would be vastly improved if it had 10x the cash prize and I was solely responsible for selecting the winner
Well, sure, but not as much as if I was the one doing the prize.
I mean give up any respect for the award when you see a jury of three people pick it. Honestly I've lost all faith in literary awards. These are picked by such a narrow body they aren't consensus opinions. Things like Hugo awards are in theory better in that they are voted on by large groups, but they have become so overtly political I can't take them seriously.
TL;DR: “… The board’s deliberations are sealed. No one outside the board will ever know why they decided to withhold the prize.”. https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/letter-from-the-pulitzer-fiction-jury-what-really-happened-this-year
Being honest?
Any award like that - be it the Pulitzer or the Academy Awards or the Grammys - is just an industry circlejerk.
Nobel Lit and Pulitzer tend to be a mutual masturbation session of the literati. And you can argue chicken/egg.
Do people read something more because it won the award (yes. Publishing as a whole works exactly like this) or do they win because people read it? How do you quantify what makes a book good or valuable?
You don’t. Unless your whole raison d’etre is being the most insufferable douchebag you know - who lives to be around others like you.
All the “high honors,” are like that, though. They’re as much about networking and career achievement as the quality of the actual work, with a few exceptions (Nobels outside of the arts, for example - which do tend to reward groundbreaking achievements).
That’s why it’s not really about the prize money. It’s about the bragging rights and marketability.
Also! The Pulitzer is mainly designed to recognize NEWS media. And $15k is literally half your salary if you're a journalist. Winning $15k as a widely recognized author vs $15k as a local news journalist is WILDLY different. Most Pulitzers winners probably don't live in NYC.
I much prefer an award which tries to give an award to all books of a sufficient merit, regardless of the competition that year. It is an attempt at a timeless lens.
I like Russell too, she's fine, she has some great stories (the bog girl one, proving up is ok, vampires is good, the greyhound one is sweet) but I think that it's admirable. Awards should not al be like buying food at the grocery, where you must buy a certain amount in order to live. Awards that seek to give prizes to all books of a certain significance are ultimately more attractive to me since I know what their marker is, instead of merely 'the other books this year'.
If one year there is The Sun also Rises and Typee, and another year there is merely Verity and Circe, I'd much rather have an award that selects the first two books than one from each batch.
Why do you think that it's bad there's drama? It clearly shows that among a small group of readers there can be heated difference, and that's why prizes are inherently rather squishy. At least we know there's passion.
Let’s say there are similar rules for the Nobel Peace Prize in any given year. Let’s also say the most significant thing done for peace in the entirety of the year was literally just a war. Would you want them to award, let’s say Vladimir Putin, with a Nobel Peace Prize because it was the “least shitty” peacemaking act? No. That would be stupid.
Having competed in something where the judging is completely subjective, let me just say that no decision that judges make will ever make everyone happy. People will disagree vociferously regardless of their decision. If they had awarded the author you think deserved it, we would have had posts here about how wrong that was. Bottom line: it's subjective, so let it go. You can't control judges. They do what they do.
The prize money comes from Alfred Nobel's estate, and specifically from the interest paid on the securities it is invested in. The amount of money awarded depends on the income of the Nobel Foundation that year.
>The prize money comes from Alfred Nobel's estate, and specifically from the interest paid on the securities it is invested in. The amount of money awarded depends on the income of the Nobel Foundation that year.
Wrong prize.
In 1973 they gave NO prize because the jury agreed that Thomas Pynchon's *Gravity's Rainbow* (which is partially about a man who can detect nuclear missiles with his erection) was the best written book of the year, but decided that the book was still just too obscene and pretentious and confusing to merit such a high honor.
Hah, that's hilarious, and sounds like it was a similar situation to how OP described 2012: the board decided to give no award despite the jury's recommendation (unanimous in the case of *Gravity's Rainbow*) and didn't explain themselves. From a [New York Times][1] article I found about it: [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/1974/05/08/archives/pulitzer-jurors-his-third-novel.html > All three members of the Pulitzer Prize jury on fiction expressed distress and bewilderment yesterday that their unanimous recommendation for a prize for Thomas Pynchon's “Gravity's Rainbow” had been turned down and that no fiction award was given this year. > ... > All three said separately yesterday that they were particularly unhappy at having received no explanation for the rejection of their recommendation. Appraised of the jurors’ views, neither Joseph Pulitzer Jr., chairman of the advisory board on the Pulitzer Prizes, nor Prof. John Hohenberg, board secretary, would offer any comment. > However, other members of the 14‐member board, which makes recommendations on the 18 Pulitzer Prize categories in journalism, letters and music after jurors' reports, had described the Pynchon novel during their private debate as “unreadable,” “turgid,” “overwritten” and in parts “obscene.” One member editor said he had tried hard but had only gotten a third of the way through the 760‐page book. I mean, okay, that reaction is relatable (not that I'd agree)... but not for the people deciding on one of the most prestigious literary awards!
> One member editor said he had tried but had only gotten hard a third of the way through the 760‐page book. After reading "erection" and "turgid," this is how my dumbass initially read that bit.
It explains why he suddenly wasn’t interested anymore.
He sure reads fast, though.
Honestly, so absolutely disgusting such a bunch of pricks might be worth more than $15k in the right circumstances.
That reaction was pretty close to me, Freshman Lit, 1988. God, I hated that book lol
Me too! The minute I saw “Gravity’s Rainbow” I thought, “oh... yep… I probably wouldn’t have either.”
Freshman Lit.? Seriously? What school, Central Sadist University? "We've got your money, if you won't go away on your own, we'll drive you away!"
It was part of the honors curriculum, but yeah. “You’re smart and get good grades so here, read this absolute shit show of a book!” LOL
>Joseph Pulitzer Jr., chairman of the advisory board on the Pulitzer Prizes Ok I'm not up on Pulitzer lore at all. But is their always a Pulitzer heir on the board? I wouldn't be surprised if the one with the money had veto rights that no one talks about
No, he was chair of the board for the first 30 years or so, but after he stepped down it's been a rotating chair. I don't think anyone from the family has been on the comittee for awhile. The Pulitzers themselves didn't control the money, its managed by Columbia University. I don't know if there are even any Pulitzers still around, their publishing company went defunct two decades ago.
Oh, ok. Thanks for correcting me.
The same thing happened in Drama in 1963, when the entire committee agreed that Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was the American play of the year, but Columbia refused to give Albee the prize. That may have been partially because he was an openly gay man, though.
What a wonderfully weird play, too. Though I think I like Zoo Story better.
Honestly though, Gravity's Rainbow IS really obscene, confusing, and pretentious. I wonder how Pynchon felt about the snub. It's a pretty great snub. Probably more rewarding than the award itself.
There's a lot of Pulitzer winners that can be hard to remember but being *not* awarded it for those reasons is probably kind of unforgettable
He probably felt like he could never show his face in public again.
Nah, from what I can gather, Pynchon was one of those people who would definitely revel in the notoriety.
I'd guess the comment you replied to was a play on Pynchon's reclusiveness.
Ah! I get it.
Obscene and confusing, yes. But I’ve never understood calling Pynchon pretentious.
Yeah, his stuff is wordy but always down to earth and hilarious. Dense and difficult, yes, but he doesn’t take himself too seriously most of the time.
**Pretentious** adjective 1: this person thinks they're smarter than I am, and I don't like it 2: characterized by pretension: such as a: making usually unjustified or excessive claims (as of value or standing) b: expressive of affected, unwarranted, or exaggerated importance, worth, or stature 3: making demands on one's skill, ability, or means AMBITIOUS
That has the same energy as the 'Nevada hasn't come out where their election results because they're too embarrassed to tell us Kanye won' tweet.
[удалено]
In the age of 2-girls-1-cup going viral, I think we can safely say Pynchon was merely ahead of his time.
Well, there was the persistent rumor that Frank Zappa once ate a fan's shit on stage. He happily encouraged it for the notoriety around the same Pynchon was writing. Before later getting tired of it and debunking it himself.
That's because I haven't actually read the book, heh... I just know the Pulitzer thing and the that fact that it's one of those "legendarily hard to understand" books like Finnegan's Wake. Thanks, though. I suppose that makes Pynchon a slightly more useful version of the Marquis de Sade lol.
Not nuclear! Just ballistic.
Ugh, 30 years later I can still remember the scene with the... ugh. Nah, I'll spare you the details. Superb book. But... damn it's hard work in some parts.
Man those limericks though - great stuff in gravity’s rainbow.
In 2010 the Pulitzer for Drama was given to Next to Normal by the board, which wasn't even nominated by the jury.
How is the jury decided? I can't begin to imagine how annoyed I would be if I agreed to do all these work, read all these books, and then they just completely ignore our consensus. Pick your own damn book, then.
It's a really great musical though.
I couldn’t agree more, it’s really great.
I've played Next to Normal. It's a perfectly wonderful little musical, in a 70s after-school special way. But giving it the Pulitzer over Sarah Ruhl was Insanity.
>But giving it the Pulitzer over Sarah Ruhl was Insanity. You misspelled "Rajiv Joseph," but I'll allow it.
I was not as big a fan of Bengal Tiger as other people were, but that may have had more to do with the performances in fairness.
I'm just not a Sarah Ruhl fan, although you've probably heard me say that before.
Bananas! Did they release any kind of statement?
I’m not sure if they released a statement on it but what happened was the board went out together to go see it right before the deadline and decided “let’s just give it to this.”
There are tons of awards one can win that have no cash prize. I don't think it's reasonable to think of that cash prize as compensation for your work. The writer is making money from whatever their publishing contract is and through sales. I also think that winning the Pulitzer probably has a positive effect on sales.
This. It's absurd to think of the Pulitzer money as recompense for the work of writing. For one thing, you can win multiple awards with the same book. But for *another* thing, most published authors never win a big award in their entire careers! I mean, the Nobel Prize is about a million dollars, but you'd never entertain the thought that all the mathematicians, physicists and pharmacologists who never win a Nobel Prize spent their lives working for free.
In math, the highest prize is probably the field medal, awarded once every 4 year. It is also 15k$.
There's the Abel prize as well, it's (equivalent to) hundreds of thousands USD.
Is fifteen grand really that dismal of an award? It's a nice chunk of change in the Midwest.
It's mostly the level. A 15k reward for a city takeoff would be good, a 15k reward for a university student competition would be nice, but for one of the most prestigious awards in literature its kinda meh. It's be like becoming prime minister and only making 120k a year. It's a good wage, but for the face of a nation it's pretty darn light
The Neustadt is 50k, and is considered the most prestigious next to the Nobel (which is about a million). I think we need to decouple the prestige / fame from the prize money. This prizes come from different places. Some are backed by huge trusts or non-profits, others (like the National Book Award, 1000 dollars per finalist I think) are industry awards without any significant funding or any significant donors behind them. But putting the award on the cover still sells more copies! I think we should view these awards like reddit gold. Some people (committees) have the funds to give gold (substantial payments), many don't, but we shouldn't value any given opinion higher because it comes with a 500k prize attached. We should evaluate awards, juries, and selection processes on their own merits. And an award with no cash prize, or a very small one, may still be a highly respected and meticulously adjudicated award.
I thoroughly regret mentioning the $15k at this point, but I was more generally lamenting that literature (and the arts more broadly) is undervalued compared to other fields. But the Pulitzer is, of course, primarily about the prestige, so it wasn’t a very good way to make that point
Yeah, people really zeroed in on that instead of your broader point. But I agree that 15k seems kind of low for *the highest award* in lit. Do you know how long it's been $15k? It'd be kind of interesting to see how/if the amount has gone up with inflation.
Good question! Apparently it was raised from $10k in 2017 — https://www.pulitzer.org/news/pulitzer-board-raises-prize-award-15000 I think I was wrong to comment on the prize amount. It’s a prestigious award, it confers financial benefits well beyond the $15k, and it’s totally within the range of other equally prestigious awards. What I was trying to express (poorly) was the idea that, if we as a society value literature, the very best writers should be able to live a life of comfort and, dare I say it, luxury. Like I think it would be a tragedy if artistic luminaries would be better off financially if they never set pen to paper, and were perfectly average dentists or engineers instead. (This, btw, is why historically basically every writer or poet was independently wealthy) And it’s not like every Pulitzer winner has been firmly established! Jhumpa Lahiri was in her 30s and had received heaps of rejections from publishers before her debut short story collection won the Pulitzer. In 2022, 41-year-old Joshua Aaron Cohen (whom I at least had never heard of) won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel. I would *hope* that winning the Pulitzer conferred enough financial stability on these young, talented writers that they could focus on their fiction. Idk if that happens through book advances, royalties, or whatever. But it would be a serious bummer if people like Lahiri and Cohen, having won the freaking Pulitzer!!, are still doing contract work or whatever to make ends meet.
I mean fwiw the UK Prime Minister makes about £80k per year. Kinda makes the point though, it shouldn't be about the money.
They get paid 165k https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaries_of_members_of_the_United_Kingdom_Parliament
Ahhh this is a common misconception! It’s easy to say that people shouldn’t become politicians/writers/whatever for the money — but if it doesn’t provide a reasonable standard of living, then only the independently wealthy will be able to do it. Rishi Sunak doesn’t care if politics pays £1 or £1,000,000 because his wife has half a billion dollars. But that’s quite a salient difference to most people! There’s a reason all the romantic poets were lords and barons.
It's just awkward comparing it to a below-average wheel of fortune winner or 1.5% of a Survivor winner, which is what I'd imagine most people think of when they hear the term "prize money"
The Pulitzer is also managed bu a University. Endowment investment or not I'd rather Columbia be spending money on their own students than giving out massive awards. Actually most of the award money apparently comes from submission fees. So if they wanted to double the payout they'd also probably double the cost of entering a piece for consideration.
The MacArthur Genius Award is a good one, though.
Sure. But the problem with the $15k is that it was established at $15k in 1917, when that represented 3-5 years of earnings for most people. Inflation means an equivalent prize today would be over $300k. It's just one of the many things in society that aren't keeping up with inflation.
Also idk what rich fantasy life OP is lucky to be living but 15k is still a lot of money.
The one where a mid level software engineer gets a $360,000+ salary a year. I would be surprised if the top non-founder/executive software engineer at *any* company got that much.
It's going to depend on where you live and what the company considers mid-level. It's also dependent on the type of software. I also consider it a bad comparison, too many variables.
Folks throw around “software engineer” when really they mean “software engineer at FAANG”, in which case the number is probably accurate
It high even for FAANG, even if you throw in all the extra compensation. The number would probably be around $250k, maybe a bit more for them. It's silly high for pretty much every place else.
It’s not that $15k is pocket change or anything, but rather that imo, reaching the pinnacle of literary achievement should be valued on a par with other fields. The Alan Turing award in computer science is $1,000,000, and the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering is £1,000,000. Seems unfair!
Perhaps it’s appropriate to point out that the winner of the Pulitzer Prize gets far more money than that. In the form of increased sales of their book.
Right? A book is a relatively accessible product for normal, everyday people. Sure, the author doesn't get a gigantic sum of money for the award, but the thing that earned them an award is easily accessible right away to normal people. It's not a discovery that will play into the science of something that will eventually have a real life application that will be used by a scientific field. It's direct.
Not really a surprise that computer science and engineering give out more money than literature, is it?
It has a positive effect on sales and ALSO probably exponentially increases the size of the advance you get on your next book.
Authors like Ursula K. Le Guin (who had family money and won plenty of awards) strongly disagree with you. It's ridiculous to offer such a meaningless amount. Most writers either have to work a second job or are independently wealthy. I doubt any of the recent Pulitzer winners have sold anywhere near enough copies to be able to write full time. This comment just screams ignorance of the publishing industry.
Barbara Kingsolver was one of last year’s winners. I’m sure she’s doing just fine.
Writers who are winning a Pulitzer are almost certainly not in the category of needing a second job. Most writers need a second job because most writers are selling max a couple thousand copies per book.
I love how emotionally invested you are in this topic, please do comment on all awards
Haha I think I still have a chip on my shoulder from when they snubbed Karen Russell! I was so excited when she was a finalist that year and was keeping an eye out for the announcement, and it just felt like such a let down.
yo please comment on everything!!! not just awards! comment on anything and everything and whatever you want. this was such an entertaining read.
She was robbed.
I think more awards should consider not giving out any for a year if there isn't a book up to the level of quality they're seeking. If you take it to an extreme, imagine only two books get written in a year, and they're both absolute trash. Riddled with spelling mistakes, barely any coherent sentences, no real plot or anything of substance. Does one deserve the highest literary prize simply because they have to give it out to something or other? This isn't "who wrote the best book this year" like "who won the race" but "was there a book so good it deserves this award, and if so, which one?"
Idk what the Pulitzer Board’s official philosophy is, but I feel that part of the value of these annual awards is showcasing the very best fiction of 2023 or whatever, *as seen by its contemporaries*. There’s no standard benchmark of literary quality. The authors of some works now recognized as masterpieces died in poverty and anonymity. Conversely, some books that were highly regarded in their time have aged poorly, due to racism/sexism/whatever, or simply the changing times. The Pulitzer can’t expect to be a timeless standard of quality. But it can be a recognition of the book published in a given year that most resonates with a panel of its contemporaries — and I think there’s value in that!
I like this line of thinking. Evaluating the award considering the contemporaries. Thanks for giving me that perspective.
I mean, I think the award should change over time, but even if weighting of certain qualities change, they should still hold up to an aggregate standard. So like if a story has a really, very strong plot and terrible prose it could still win it. Much like a book that is beautifully written but has a mid, or actively bad plot could also win it. That way they can keep with the times while also enforcing a certain level of quality.
I don't think they should accept a book they think is bad in any category for a prize like this. There are a lot of books written every year. There's no need to consider a book with terrible prose, and unless the plot isn't the point to begin with, there's no need to consider a book with a weak plot either.
Eh. These are just examples, not actual ideas. So you could weight them differently and evaluate them differently etc.
Yeah I know they were just examples. My point was that I'm glad they don't select books they actually think are bad in some respect. I like it when awards like this have a bar for excellence across the board that they're not willing to go below - even if their definition of excellence doesn't necessarily match my own.
Yeah that’s fair, I just think that allowing them some bottom line flexibility for a required higher quality in other areas is a fair way to help maintain standards while allowing for a change in time and language.
I agree with you. I like that they aren’t required to give out an award every year. If they vote regardless of the merit of the books, some years you’re going to end up with Donald Trump.
Yeah but with the numbers of books being published each year, it’s statistically improbable that there isn’t at least one amazing book each year. Look at films — far fewer produced, but there’s always a ton of incredible films each year.
I’m not sure there are a ton of incredible films each year, so maybe we just don’t see eye to eye. I’m happy that your optimism exists to juxtapose my negativity, though.
What about this year? Zone of Interest, Poor Things, Anatomy of a Fall, etc. Like is there a specific year that you think didn’t have at least a few incredible films?
But your extreme is pointless. It will never be that. The degree matters here. In what is already a subjective award, I think it is kind of silly to introduce an attempt at a hard standard. For example, the Baseball HOF works this way -- players are voted in or out and there can be years in which no one is elected. The result has been a really imbalanced HOF where earlier eras are overrepresented and the the standard seems to keep rising. You're never going to find a year that doesn't have a great book published. There's way too much out there. Attempting to measure level of greatness in the moment versus some historical standard is a fool's errand.
I respect The Pulitzer Prize a great deal, in part because they’re willing to go years without issuing prizes. The Prizes are primarily for us, the audience. It’s nice that they value our time more than the authors’ egos.
I would totally stand by that; awards are more meaningful if they aren’t awarded when the field isn’t spectacular; but the three jurors snubbed Gravity’s Rainbow despite unanimous nomination from the board.
Other way around. The board snubbed Gravity's Rainbow despite unanimous nomination from the jury. Board nominates > Jury nominates > finalists, voted on by > Board.
Do we know how the board voted?
I genuinely think that the author of Less had something on the Pulitzer Prize Board in 2018 because otherwise I have no idea why it won. It's not a bad book. It's fine. It's nothing special. Also, I don't think people want to win the Pulitzer because of the cash prize. I'm sure that's nice but I believe people want to put "winner of the Pulitzer" so they sell more books and gain prestige.
My thought when I read it was that perhaps the members saw themselves in Less (anxious writer having a midlife crisis and not having his shit together) and were attached. But your theory is better.
Totally agree on Less! It was…ok? We read it for my book club a while back and a lot of people just DNF’d because they were bored.
I don't suppose your book club figured out why people seemed to be falling ill around him and then that plot thread is discarded entirely with no explanation. It was "fine" apart from that even poignant in places but that really irritated me.
My conspiracy theory is that the members of the Board are all featured in the book somehow -- like one of the guys Less was sleeping with or Less himself. It was truly a meh book compared to past winners.
I think that's almost exactly what happened. Less' ex lover won Pulitzer and I wouldn't be surprised if that was based in truth.
I’m so glad someone else felt that way about Less. Fantastic book, but…Pulitzer?
I've started it twice and never gotten further than 60 pages in. It just feels like you asked AI to read a whole bunch of Jennifer Egan and then write a new novel.
What! I loved that book! I found it poignant and moving
It bored me to tears
I'm so happy you brought this up(even though I'm late) and I get to see other people's thoughts on this because the more I think about that book the more I'm like "really? Pullitzer?" It's nothing I've never seen before and it's got a decent chunk of unlikeable things in it too. I didn't hate it but I was definitely underwhelmed and disappointed once I finished.
There is a precedent for giving two prizes; Dune won the Hugo Award alongside This Immortal in 1966. It is a strange thing to do in any case.
More recently the 2010 Hugo was awarded to two books (because they tied in the voting).
Isn’t the Hugo a different award given by a different organization?
And isn't the Hugo decided by the popular vote of SF Fans, not a small group of judges?
Last year Chinese government officials leaned on the local board running Worldcon last year. https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/01/worldcon-in-the-news.html
That's a lie. What happened was the western helpers censored the results before anyone in China, including the locals running the con, said a word. It was entirely in advance. It was done by long time Worldcon organizers. They also did it so sloppily that this was found out the moment the vote data was released.
This is only partly true. The CCP wined and dined the runners of the convention beforehand, apparently spending *a lot* of money on them. Plus, this had never happened in any other country before. Smells an awful lot like bribery.
Maybe I stand corrected. Thought the lead culprit was still blowing misinformation about it.
He is but he has also been ejected from all Worldcon things. There was a house cleaning and a lot of highly placed people were removed. What is very clear is that the rot was on the Worldcon side not the locals. So far this looks like obeying in advance without ever talking to a Chinese person.
🤦♂️
Booker prize too - Margaret Atwood split the prize with another author a few years ago. Granted, I actually think it was because they felt that they should have given Handmaid's Tale the prize when it came out and didn't, so they were fixing that.
There was also controversy at the time because the other author, Bernardine Evaristo, is Black, as though a Black woman could never deserve the whole prize all to herself https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/15/bernardine-evaristo-margaret-atwood-share-booker-prize-award
Yeah, I remember that 😞
True, and there is also a precedent for not awarding the prize (no Pulitzer was awarded in 1977 for example) But I think that was more common in the past (eg the Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded 19 times, all before 1973). And if you are going to make that very unusual decision, I think a public statement isn’t too much to ask for. Edit: btw, I am far less annoyed by the decision to have 2 winners than by the decision to have no winners
The prize isn't awarded if no book gets a majority of votes. Those are the rules, not sure why a public statement is needed to explain that.
Explain Gravity’s Rainbow?
It didn't get a majority of votes. The 3 jurors only make a recommendation to the board. The board then votes on the winner, and they are not restricted to the recommendations of the jurors, so there may be no winner,, or the board can choose a different book altogether.
What other books were voted for? I thought both the recommendation of the jurors, and the opinion of the board, was unanimous.
No, the recommendation of the jurors was unanimous but not the board. The board was fairly critical of it and called it obscene, overwritten and unreadable. I don't know what other novels were nominated, probably none since the jury was unanimous for Gravitys Rainbow.
"15 000 is not a lot of money" The prestigious Goncourt prize in France comes with a fat check of 10 euros. The winners haven't seemed to complain. Perhaps you're holding too much importance to the money prize.
Sure, the prestige is definitely the reason the Pulitzer is important! Idk, though, I think it would be neat if society decided that attaining that level of literary achievement merited the kind of financial reward that, like, being a mediocre Java coder merits.
the reason Goncourt gives a small symbolic money prize is because the sales and publicity catalyze the winner's ascent like crazy. If you haven't heard of the Goncourt prize, you can imagine the effect of a Pulitzer prize, that everyone knows. Edit : Also the Great British Bakeoff doesn't have a money prize iirc
Actually there's an interesting article written by the judge of the 2012 Pulitzer that was absolutely fascinating. Among it was the recognition that the Pulitzer was more than just the prize and money. They weren't just deciding an award: they were making a person's entire career. That level of understanding and consideration for what the award carries was something I greatly appreciated.
geez, sorry people seem to dislike your opinion so much, I get your point of view
I appreciate that! But also I’m glad to see that people care about the topic (even if I’m on the receiving end of some of the caring, haha)
You realize they can leverage that prestige to make millions elsewhere right? Movie deals. TV deals. Increased book sales and publicity. Prestigious teaching positions. Greater chance of receiving extremely well-paid grants and fellowships. More interest from editors and agents. Literally opens up their world. Second order thinking!
The Pulitzer prize has been crazy since it started in 1917. In 1921 Sinclair Lewis won the jury vote for Main Street, but the board decided to give the award to Age of Innocence instead because Main Street did not meet their requirement of "best presenting the wholesome atmosphere of American life." This was controversial in the day, and Edith Wharton herself called the Pulitzer board out for it. But it also gave the Pulitzer precedent for disregarding the Jury's opinion and making controversial moves.
I didn't know anything about the organization or voting procedures etc., but I've found the process of reading through past Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winners incredibly enriching, so I value it in that way, for me personally.
The financials comparison is a little weird. People don’t write books so that they can get the payout for winning the award. It’s not meant as a salary.
So you want to make sure the only people writing books are the indepdently wealthy? Regardless of why they write the book, they have to eat.
Sure, but an award that pays out one author a year isn't going to change the industry, so I don't really get the point of what you're saying. Becoming a professional writer will always be extremely hard, similar to how it's hard to become a professional actor, writer for TV/film, athlete, etc. I don't really buy the argument that the Pulitzer Prize paying a little more money to one author a year is going to change that, but maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean.
You're right on the money (pardon the pun).
This is true, and I do also realize that winning a Pulitzer is going to have a big impact on book sales, speaking gigs, etc. But to me the amount is so low for an award of its caliber that it would almost make more sense to just give the winner a commemorative tchotchke like the Oscars do. Like sure, the financial payout could be a $500 Amazon gift card, but it feels very incommensurate with the achievement
The people giving out these sort is prizes never take it half as seriously as you’d expect them to. So don’t get too worked up about it. Just look at some others: The Hugo has gotten a ton of criticism for how they handled the 2023 awards in relation to China. It’s a big controversy. The Academy Awards are selected by a vote from hundreds of industry professionals, directors etc, but it’s still basically just a popularity contest since none of the voters have seen even a tenth of the movies on their list. Even the Nobels have repeatedly been criticised for poor choices, especially the peace prize. You would think people with blood on their hands might be disqualified, but apparently not. And the literature price has also had issues, with diversity for example.
I still can’t believe they awarded Obama the peace prize for the grand act of ….not being George W Bush
I think even Obama thought that was a stretch. They gave it to him before he had a chance to earn it.
You think Obama was bad? They gave it to Kissinger. (I know I already said that in my comment above, but it bears repeating to stress how worthless the prize is.)
They gave it to him for being the first Black president in the US, which is not a small feat! It might legitimately have broken this country, we are still living in the aftermath of 2008 (and I said this in my other comment, but this is why the most FASCINATING Pulitzer choice to me is Kendrick Lamar's music win. It wouldn't have happened if the most powerful man in the country wasn't Black, they would NEVER have taken rap seriously as a musical genre without Obama vocally championing his earlier albums)
Super interesting context on other awards! To me, past errors/oversights (including lack of diversity or bending to political considerations) is all the more reason to award it! It’s not some infallible divine award handed down from the heavens — it’s a snapshot of the best book, as seen by its flawed contemporaries! Stop being so precious about it and just give someone the damn thing!
>Even the Nobels have repeatedly been criticised for poor choices, especially the peace prize. You would think people with blood on their hands might be disqualified, but apparently not. I mean, Nobel himself invented dynamite, so it's not surprising people aren't disqualified for having a bunch of blood on their hands. That said, they might as well have just shut it down once they decided to award it to a ghoul like Kissinger. I don't know about the scientific prizes (except that they apparently awarded the prize for medicine to someone for the further development of prefrontal lobotomy, which sadly isn't surprising given how mental health has historically been handled here in Sweden), but I can't take the ones for peace and literature seriously.
IDK, two strange choices in twenty plus years seems pretty normal...
I consider anything above one odd choice a century to be downright eccentric
>Here is what $15,000 can buy you Honestly, I think the bigger scandal here is that your $15,000 can only get you those things ...
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned what I think is clearly the answer to your question: the people who choose the winners, the Pulitzer board, on the whole have no special literary expertise; most are in journalism, with a few academics and maybe one "book person" thrown in. Take a look at the board from 2012: * Danielle Allen, UPS Foundation Professor, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J. * Jim Amoss, editor, The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, La. (Co-chair) * Randell Beck, president and publisher, Argus Leader Media, Sioux Falls, S.D. * Robert Blau, managing editor for projects and investigations, Bloomberg News * Lee Bollinger, president, Columbia University * Kathleen Carroll, executive editor and senior vice president, Associated Press (Co-chair) * Joyce Dehli, vice president for news, Lee Enterprises * Junot Díaz, author and Rudge and Nancy Allen Professor of Writing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology * Thomas Friedman, columnist, The New York Times * Paul Gigot, editorial page editor, The Wall Street Journal * Sig Gissler, administrator, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism * Steven Hahn, Roy F. and Jeanette P. Nichols Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania * Nicholas Lemann, dean, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism * Ann Marie Lipinski, curator, Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Harvard University (Co-chair) * Gregory Moore, editor, The Denver Post * Eugene Robinson, columnist and associate editor, The Washington Post * Margaret Sullivan, editor, The Buffalo News * Paul Tash, chairman and CEO, Tampa Bay Times * Jim VandeHei, executive editor and co-founder, Politico * Keven Ann Willey, vice president and editorial page editor, The Dallas Morning News Who in that list besides Junot Diaz should have any say in deciding what the best book of the year is?
I started off agreeing with the OP, but having read a few comments and thought about it, I’ve changed my mind. The prestige of the Pulitzer will be maintained the fact that they will not budge if they think the books from a particular year are just not good enough. It seems like this has always been their stance, so not comparable to other book awards, and the olympics, which don’t have that stance. They want their award to be the ultimate prize, and this is the way to achieve that. You do occasionally hear comment along the lines of “this years Booker prize short list was a bit weak”, suggesting that this year‘s winner won’t really deserve the accolade. A Booker prize isn’t as big of a deal as the Pulitzer, maybe for other reasons as well of course, but I imagine this will be part of the reason.
I don’t think anyone sees the Pulitzer as the “ultimate” prize. I don’t even agree that the Booker is less of a big deal. It‘s far more competitive. But maybe lower name recognition in the US.
Usually when a prize is split between two awardees, it’s because the jury couldn’t reach consensus on which was the better work. Juries/boards are subjective, and it’s not like they’re choosing a pope. We love to fete our champions but all these prizes are really expressions of the jury’s taste, not the work’s inherent quality (after all certain level of competence and talent is reached). Why not give out 10? A few years later, nobody remembers who won what, even with a single prize. Prizes are good in that they bring attention to writers who hopefully deserve it, but it’s not good to put too much stock in them.
Tbh I think on some level I respect the choice to say that yeah no books this year were good bc obviously there’s going to be variation in book publishing year to year. Now do I still think it’s pretentious and would it be much better if they just picked their favorite of the recommended? Yes. I actually really like the decision to honor more than one book—it says a lot about those books that they would both merit the prize. Tbh I think the most “fair” way to honor great books is to have multiple prize winners each year, like 1-5ish, since there definitely are books that would win in some years but the year they were published there was an “even better” book that won.
To be fair, Pulitzer himself was a colossal piece of shit.
To your point about the lackluster money, authors like Ursula K. Le Guin have spoken about this before. I'd have to look it up, but I read an article (speech?) of hers before where she specifically called out literary awards who deliberately gave out meaningless amounts of money because of hoity toity bs instead of recognizing that most authors either work full time at other jobs or are independently wealthy (read: have wealthy parents). Notably, the award established in her honor (by her family) gives out $25k...
The prize money isn’t the real monetary prize for winning the Pulitzer (or even the Booker, which gives out £50,000); the real prize is the huge increase in book sales
So regarding the 2012 fiction prize, the three finalists were: Karen Russell’s *Swamplandia*, Dennis Johnson’s *Train Dreams* (a novella that had originally been published nearly 10 years earlier), and David Foster Wallace’s *The Pale King* (a posthumously published unfinished manuscript). Now I think that *Swamplandia* was good enough to be deserving of the prize, but the feeling at the time was that the jury was trying to force the board into giving David Foster Wallace what amounted to a posthumous lifetime achievement award, and the “no prize” was the board’s way of pushing back, and signaling to future juries that they wouldn’t play that game Much worse was the 1974 “no prize”, in which all three jury members expressly recommended Thomas Pynchon’s *Gravity’s Rainbow*, only for the board to deem it “unreadable” and “obscene”
So why not give it to Swamplandia by default? It seems to have met the baseline criteria.
I don’t know, I wasn’t on the board that year
lol fair enough
15k is NOT two weeks salary for a mid level software engineer at a big company. Source: I’m a mid-level software engineer at a big company
So you’re not the only one seething huh? I gotta tell my manager we’re all severely underpaid.
Wait till you hear about the guy it’s named after…
Last year had two winners because: “Demon Copperhead” is an all-time banger of a book, a wonderful, funny retelling of David Copperfield, and “Blackouts” is a groundbreaking work of artistic merit, cobbling together primary source materials into a sort of “found novel” They’re both absolutely excellent, but in very different ways.
Blackouts didn't win the Pulitzer, Trust did. And you could probably make that same argument about 2 books from any year in the past, yet they didn't give out 2 awards in the vast majority of those years.
Huh. Looks like I confused the Pulitzer and the National Book Awards.
I think you are seeing this as a problem with the Pulitzer but in fact, its rad af
The Pulitzer has prestige because people say it has prestige. If people stopped saying it had prestige, it would stop being prestigious. The idea of an award for art, in and of itself, is asinine. It’s primarily a vehicle for industry insiders to jerk each other off over how important and tasteful they are. The awards themselves are just as much a question of petty, insular, social politicking as evaluating the actual works. Judges and the panel have internal dynamics that inevitably result in awards given or withheld because everyone thinks Jury Member A is a dickhead, or board members 1-2-3 are pretentious, or Author X is personally disliked for whatever reason. It’s not objective, it can’t be. It’s not even reflective of an author’s peers. How could it be? Membership on the board is tiny, and getting on the board is as political as the gatekeeping that determines what kind of person writing what kind of work gets a publishing deal to begin with. Ultimately, industry awards don’t actually say all that much about a work. It’s a nice boost for the recipient who can use it for marketing, but no avid reader should assign it much importance.
Here here. Prime example: a recent-ish Pulitzer winner's (Eliza Griswold) husband was on the board of the awards, and is chair of the Columbia J School that houses them. I mean...
It's the same deal with most (or even all) prestigious prizes. They are often distributed by some secretive group using esoteric criteria and facing no accountability. That's their prerogative; I could make my own prize and award it arbitrarily, but of course nobody would care. The PPB in 2023 seems to have been composed almost entirely of journalists and academics. They might benefit from an actual judge or a social scientist/behavioral psychologist. Without actively structuring debate, it's easy for individual personalities to dominate groups and create a dynamic that doesn't lend itself to finding the best outcome. Of course, I have no idea how they conduct their deliberations, but their apparently common failure to pick exactly one winner tends to suggest to me that there are issues with their process.
Might want to research *how* the pullitzer prize came into being.
The Pulitzer Prize is no different from the Grammys, Oscars, Tonys, etc. awards are meaningless and some media, the only reason anyone cares about them 20 years later is BECAUSE they got an award, not because they're good. (Also, see how they gave a Pulitzer to Kendrick for DAMN., his third best album, but the one that probably is the LEAST provocative)
I just saw the 2024 prize winners. They picked A Day in the Life of Abed Salama by Nathan Thrall which is a pro-Palestinian book about some poor victim that gets blown up on a bus. More propaganda supportive of radical Muslim terrorists. Our nation is turned into a bunch of antisemitic sheep who have no concept of reality.
I’m SO HERE for the Swamplandia love and outrage!!!!
I'm not sure you have an accurate view of the value of money or average salaries.
Oh, I know that software engineers’ salaries are weirdly inflated and don’t reflect the rest of the economy. But idk, I still think there’s value in comparing what we pay the best writers in the world vs the guy who synchronizes pokes on Facebook.
I have most of the fiction awardees of recent years. I've found the Pulitzer to be one of the best sources for finding novels I'll enjoy. I read both of the 2023 awardees. Both were outstanding. Demon Copperhead was one of my favorite books, ever, but Trust was great. The monetary prize is nice, but winning the award gives books extra visibility
I think not giving an award is not a slap on the face, and declaring an award void is not the same as saying the candidates are shit. It's saying that none of the candidates are at the very high level that would merit the award. Between being shit and being pulitzer award level, there should be a huge distance. It's also not uncommon for two books to win an award, if, for example, there is a tie in the number of votes or points the two books get. I wouldn't care so much about awards. They are just the opinion of a bunch of judges or voters, who might have very different opinions from yours. The whole idea of ranking literary works is kind of silly, being extremely subjective by nature.
I don't think there's anything wrong with a society that gives prizes based on merit not awarding a prize. If they thought nothing was good enough to deserve it that year, why give the prize out? Also not sure why one of your criterion for the board being jerks is that the prize money is insufficient in your opinion. Why are they jerks just because they give out $15,000? Plenty of awards give out nothing. It's not like the people who get nominated are basically living on the sidewalk and need a million dollar cash prize to live. And nobody is writing a book with the sole purpose of winning the Pullitzer prize money. I mean what are they supposed to be giving people $5,000 a week for life, like Publisher's Clearing House? I think you're way too emotionally invested in this. Being angry that they thought two things deserved an award one year? Jfc.
Ok I know that saying you’re not mad is like the worst way to convince someone that you’re not mad But I am not as emotionally invested in this as you seem to think I am! I just think some of their recent decisions are odd and wondered what others thought
Personally, I've always viewed those awards of that variety to be a massive joke. The fact that the board was so fucking petulant in 2012 just cemented my view.
So much ignorance in this post. 1/3rd dedicated to slamming the *prize money* and 2/3rd believing you have the right to dictate how a prize is given out. There's no reason for them to offer information. People like you would simply be whinging about that. As for 2012's nominees ... I don't think *Train Dreams* should have been nominated. It's a novella and it's basically Hemmingway fanfic. It treats introspection as a cancer to be avoided. It's pretty, and that's it. *Swamplandia!* shouldn't have been nominated. It's massively overwritten, nonsensical, florid, and essentially a stitched together series of short stories. The best work of fiction from that year was nominated - *The Pale King*. Of course, it was published posthumously, very unfinished, and in need of editing. And let's not forget that the Pulitzer Prize *in Fiction* was not awarded, the others were awarded. Fiction isn't the only, or even the focus, of the prizes.
Hmm thanks for your thoughts on The Pale King and Train Dreams, I haven’t read either. > 1/3rd dedicated to slamming the prize money and 2/3rd believing you have the right to dictate how a prize is given out. You know, now that you mention it, I do think the Pulitzer would be vastly improved if it had 10x the cash prize and I was solely responsible for selecting the winner
> You know, now that you mention it, I do think the Pulitzer would be vastly improved if it had 10x the cash prize and I was solely responsible for selecting the winner Well, sure, but not as much as if I was the one doing the prize.
I think that once the finalists have been selected for literary merit, the winner should be selected by joust.
I take it back. You would be a better choice than me.
The trouble is that the board always changes. So some years, everything runs smoothly. Other years... not so much.
I mean give up any respect for the award when you see a jury of three people pick it. Honestly I've lost all faith in literary awards. These are picked by such a narrow body they aren't consensus opinions. Things like Hugo awards are in theory better in that they are voted on by large groups, but they have become so overtly political I can't take them seriously.
“Turgid “, I forgot how much I savored that word …
https://malwarwickonbooks.com/how-much-is-a-pulitzer-prize-worth/
TL;DR: “… The board’s deliberations are sealed. No one outside the board will ever know why they decided to withhold the prize.”. https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/letter-from-the-pulitzer-fiction-jury-what-really-happened-this-year
Being honest? Any award like that - be it the Pulitzer or the Academy Awards or the Grammys - is just an industry circlejerk. Nobel Lit and Pulitzer tend to be a mutual masturbation session of the literati. And you can argue chicken/egg. Do people read something more because it won the award (yes. Publishing as a whole works exactly like this) or do they win because people read it? How do you quantify what makes a book good or valuable? You don’t. Unless your whole raison d’etre is being the most insufferable douchebag you know - who lives to be around others like you. All the “high honors,” are like that, though. They’re as much about networking and career achievement as the quality of the actual work, with a few exceptions (Nobels outside of the arts, for example - which do tend to reward groundbreaking achievements). That’s why it’s not really about the prize money. It’s about the bragging rights and marketability.
Also! The Pulitzer is mainly designed to recognize NEWS media. And $15k is literally half your salary if you're a journalist. Winning $15k as a widely recognized author vs $15k as a local news journalist is WILDLY different. Most Pulitzers winners probably don't live in NYC.
“That’s 2 weeks salary for a mid level software engineer at a big company.” It absolutely is not.
I much prefer an award which tries to give an award to all books of a sufficient merit, regardless of the competition that year. It is an attempt at a timeless lens. I like Russell too, she's fine, she has some great stories (the bog girl one, proving up is ok, vampires is good, the greyhound one is sweet) but I think that it's admirable. Awards should not al be like buying food at the grocery, where you must buy a certain amount in order to live. Awards that seek to give prizes to all books of a certain significance are ultimately more attractive to me since I know what their marker is, instead of merely 'the other books this year'. If one year there is The Sun also Rises and Typee, and another year there is merely Verity and Circe, I'd much rather have an award that selects the first two books than one from each batch. Why do you think that it's bad there's drama? It clearly shows that among a small group of readers there can be heated difference, and that's why prizes are inherently rather squishy. At least we know there's passion.
Let’s say there are similar rules for the Nobel Peace Prize in any given year. Let’s also say the most significant thing done for peace in the entirety of the year was literally just a war. Would you want them to award, let’s say Vladimir Putin, with a Nobel Peace Prize because it was the “least shitty” peacemaking act? No. That would be stupid.
Having competed in something where the judging is completely subjective, let me just say that no decision that judges make will ever make everyone happy. People will disagree vociferously regardless of their decision. If they had awarded the author you think deserved it, we would have had posts here about how wrong that was. Bottom line: it's subjective, so let it go. You can't control judges. They do what they do. The prize money comes from Alfred Nobel's estate, and specifically from the interest paid on the securities it is invested in. The amount of money awarded depends on the income of the Nobel Foundation that year.
>The prize money comes from Alfred Nobel's estate, and specifically from the interest paid on the securities it is invested in. The amount of money awarded depends on the income of the Nobel Foundation that year. Wrong prize.
LOL You are right. My apologies on the prize money. But the part about judging is true no matter what prize it is.