There are two things a writer, especially one early in their career, should never read.
The first is Pat Conroy’s novel The Prince of Tides. I think I have said it before in this blog—576 pages and not a word wasted. Not necessarily my favorite from the perspective of a story, but in terms of a well-written novel, you do not get much better than this. Anyone who has ever penned a single sentence should feel small in the shadow of Conroy.
The second thing you should never read is Michael Cunningham’s Letter from the Pulitzer Fiction Jury: What Really Happened This Year, which I read this morning in The New Yorker blog. Cunningham gives you a look into the selection process for what has to be the most prestigious award short of the Nobel Prize (Cunningham himself makes the comparison in a backhanded sort of way).
Cunningham was a member this year’s three-person fiction jury which made a recommendation of three novels (chosen from 300) to the eighteen voting members of the Pulitzer board. The jury did their job. They submitted three titles—Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, Swamplandia by Karen Russell and The Pale King by David Foster Wallace. It was the Pulitzer board that failed to make a decision, for reasons we may never know.
Cunningham gives extraordinary insight into the selection process, acknowledging that each judge on the three-person jury brings their own criteria with them. Cunningham comes from the Pat Conroy school—every word, every sentence has to count. There are no exceptions. Another judge is looking for a story to fall in love with. Another judge looks for story. It changes every year with a new jury.
There are some interesting revelations. Cunningham writes about how they were all looking for “the Big Book … a book that was, if not over five hundred pages long, vast in its scope, enormous in its concerns.” Alas, the jury narrowed is down to six or seven novels, and the selection of the final three was painful.
Interestingly enough, although there was discussion of “the Big Book,” Train Dreams was an 82-page novella. Quality over quantity.
The Pulitzer letter affords extraordinary insights and despite my earlier admonishment, should be mandatory reading for every fiction writer. It reminds you just how hard this business of writing fiction is. I am rethinking a scene in Rules for Giving, and I’m down to editing the last fifty pages. Letter from the Pulitzer Fiction Jury: What Really Happened This Year is a piece I will read at least once a week to remind me of what good writing is.
See ya’ later.
PS.:
Cunningham also mentions some Pulitzer trivia: novels that were not awarded the Pulitzer.
- The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
- The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
- Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner
- The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
- Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
- The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow
- On the Road, Jack Keroac
- Catch-22, Joseph Heller
- The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
- Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
- Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
- Deliverance, James Dickey
- The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor, Flannery O’Connor
- Ragtime, E. L. Doctorow
- The Collected Stories of Grace Paley, Grace Paley
- Underworld, Don DeLillo
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