The collective shock and sputtering in the publishing industry began on
Monday, when the Pulitzer Prize board announced the winners in
journalism, letters, drama and music.
Except two categories had no winner: editorial writing and fiction.
Sig Gissler, the administrator of the Pulitzers for Columbia University, explained how it happened:
A winner is usually selected in a two-step process in which a
three-member fiction jury reviews hundreds of books, settles on three
finalists and sends those finalists to the Pulitzer board.
The board then reads the books and meets for two days to determine a
winner. A majority is required, and this year the judges could not come
up with one.
“Whenever they make a decision, it’s not meant to be a statement about
fiction in general,” Mr. Gissler said on Monday. “It’s just a statement
that none was able to receive a majority.”
As a group, the finalists were unorthodox and, as many people in the
industry have suggested, may have given the Pulitzer board pause. They
were Denis Johnson for “Train Dreams,” a book that was originally
published as a novella in The Paris Review in 2002 and then was
repackaged and released as a hardcover by Farrar, Straus & Giroux;
Karen Russell, whose debut novel, “Swamplandia!,” was published by Knopf
when she was only 29; and David Foster Wallace for “The Pale King,” a
book that was unfinished at the time of his death in 2008 and was later
completed by his editor.
The fiction jury was composed of Michael Cunningham, the novelist whose
book “The Hours” won a Pulitzer in 1999; Susan Larson, the former book
editor of The Times-Picayune in New Orleans; and Maureen Corrigan, the
critic in residence at Georgetown University.
Ms. Corrigan said on Tuesday that she was shocked by the failure of the board to choose a winner.
“When I heard, the first word that went through my head was
‘inexplicable,’ ” she said in a telephone interview. “Then the second
reaction was just anger on behalf of these three novels.”
Ms. Corrigan said she rejected the criticism that the Pulitzer board
might have thought the books too unconventional to be worthy of the
Pulitzer, a common charge, especially pertaining to “The Pale King.”
“I’ve heard that theory,” she said. “If they didn’t think that these
three nominations were somehow within the regulations that they have set
out, then they should have made that clear at the time that we
nominated them.”
In the book world there is no prize like the Pulitzer. For an author it
carries more weight and prestige than any other prize, even the much
celebrated National Book Award. Sales typically increase, partly because
Pulitzer-winning books tend to be translated into more languages and
sold in more countries.
This year some of the spoils may be divided among the finalists.
Picador, which was planning to release the paperback edition of “Train
Dreams” in August, has moved up the publication date to June 19, said
James Meader, a spokesman for the publisher.
“Swamplandia!” has already sold more than 200,000 copies in hardcover,
paperback and e-book editions and has gone back to press 12 times.
Vintage, a division of Knopf, will print more copies this week, adding a
seal on the front cover noting that the book was a Pulitzer finalist.
The force of the response to the Pulitzer snub could be chalked up
partly to the relatively rough year in the business so far. Last week
the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against five major publishers,
charging them with illegally colluding to set e-book prices. Three of
them have settled with the government, a move that could eventually
lower e-book prices across the industry.
Amazon, viewed by many authors and publishers as an all-too-powerful
player in the business, has rapidly expanded its publishing ambitions in
the past year.
“The fate of an entire industry seems to hang on the fate of every book,
and the feeling is perfectly understandable,” said Leon Wieseltier, the
literary editor of The New Republic. “People who know how to publish
books are in danger of being put out of business by people who don’t but
think they do.”
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