{"id":7236,"date":"2012-04-16T15:30:47","date_gmt":"2012-04-16T19:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=7236"},"modified":"2016-07-13T18:27:21","modified_gmt":"2016-07-13T22:27:21","slug":"2012-pulitzer-prize-for-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2012\/04\/16\/2012-pulitzer-prize-for-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the first time since 1977, the Pulitzer committee elected to honor no work of fiction.<\/p>\n<p>The three nominated\u00a0finalists were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><em>Train Dreams<\/em><\/strong>, by Denis Johnson (my review <a title=\"Mookse Review of Train Dreams\" href=\"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2012\/01\/03\/denis-johnson-train-dreams\/\">here<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li><strong><em>Swamplandia!<\/em><\/strong>, by Karen Russell (my review <a title=\"Mookse Review of Swamplandia!\" href=\"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2011\/01\/30\/karen-russell-swamplandia\/\">here<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li><strong><em>The Pale King<\/em><\/strong>, by David Foster Wallace<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>Each has its problems.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><em>Train Dreams<\/em> is a novella first published in <em>The Paris Review<\/em>\u00a0in 2002. It won the O&#8217;Henry\u00a0award for short stories in 2003.\u00a0So, though I liked it a lot, I can see why it didn&#8217;t win &#8212; though why was it eligible in the first place? In the end, it just must not have been declared good enough.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><em>The Pale King<\/em> is the unfinished novel David Foster Wallace was working on when he committed suicide in 2008. The Pulitzer can and has been awarded posthumously, but it is understandable why it wasn&#8217;t awarded to an unfinished book an editor put together &#8212; as the Pulitzer website puts it, this book was &#8220;posthumously completed.&#8221; Again, if it was eligible in the first place, it must have just been not good enough.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><em>Swamplandia!<\/em>, in my opinion, just wasn&#8217;t very good. So I&#8217;m with the committee on that one.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>It will be interesting to see how this hits the world of publishing. Afterall, it&#8217;s one thing to be a finalist when another book has won. But if no book wins . . .<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Pulitzer Prize winner has been announced &#8212; wait! <a href=\"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2012\/04\/16\/2012-pulitzer-prize-for-fiction\/><u>Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[798],"tags":[],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-7236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/Pulitzer-Logo.jpg?fit=225%2C224&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-1SI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7236"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19330,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7236\/revisions\/19330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7236"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}