Pulitzer’s no decision on fiction prize exposes flaw in process

And, some tongues have wagged over our nomination of Wallace’s posthumously published novel, “The Pale King,” which was unfinished at his death in 2008 and pieced together by his editor, Michael Pietsch, from drafts and notes. By that logic, the canon should expel such fragments as Kafka’s “The Trial,” Dickens’s “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” Byron’s “Don Juan,” Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” and Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales.” Maybe even “A Confederacy of Dunces,” which won the Pulitzer in 1981, should be reexamined since it might well have taken a different shape had its author, John Kennedy Toole, not died before it was finally published. Like these other works, “The Pale King” stands or falls, not on its back story, but on its coherence as a literary construction. Some readers saw merely a pile of notes; we read it to be, instead, a masterful novel of American workplace ennui, with strikingly original language on almost every page.

We three members of the Pulitzer jury were not charged with selecting the lengthiest, or the hoariest, or the most polished works of American fiction. We were not told to stick to the middlebrow, nor did we egg each other on to aim for the edgy. Our directive was to nominate “distinguished” works of fiction, published in book form in 2011 that, ideally, spoke to American themes. And 2011 saw a bounty of good novels. We unanimously agreed on our three nominees. In our collective judgment, these very different novels are three very distinguished works of fiction.

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“The Pale King” captivated us, even in its unfinished state. “Swamplandia!” is animated by high-flying story-telling ambition and Mark Twain-like humor. (Catch that exclamation point!) “Train Dreams” starkly summons up the lives of humble bit players in the saga of the American West and reads like myth.

All three novels are unforgettable, and if you read them all — which would be the best outcome of this Pulitzer debacle — I promise that your sense of the possibilities of American fiction will be enlarged.

In the past few days, I’ve been contacted by journalists from U.S., Canadian, Brazilian and Danish media outlets. My fellow jurors have also spoken to journalists near and far. Everybody wants to know if there’s “a crisis in American letters.” No, no crisis there, but rather a flaw in the process by which the Pulitzer Prize is decided.

Here are some suggestions for change, all my own: One solution— the obvious one — would be to let the jury who reads through the 300-odd works of fiction make the final decision as to the winner. We were invited to serve on the jury because we’re recognized as being, in some way, literary experts. Why, then, turn the final decision over to a board primarily composed of non-literary folk?

If that sounds too elitist, here’s another suggestion: If the board, which received our three nominations in early December, is unhappy with the jury’s choices, then why not request that the jury put forward alternative selections?

And, finally, how about changing the rules so that the winner is determined by a plurality, rather than a majority of votes on the board. (And — Hello! — given that there are 18 voting members of the Pulitzer board, perhaps one more body should be added to break any potential ties.)

The Pulitzer is too prestigious and crucial an award to book lovers, authors and the publishing industry to be sporadically — and unaccountably — withheld.

Corrigan, who teaches literature at Georgetown University, is the book critic for the NPR program “Fresh Air” and a regular reviewer for Book World.