Arrowsmith: A Final Shudder.
Good Lord, you mean to say that Lewis won his Pulitzer for having ripped himself off? According to this account of Main Street at The Millions it would appear so. What a smug little hack. Well, at least Penny doesn’t have to feel bad for not having read his best stuff. You may not have had the Whopper itself, but you have had the Whopper Jr., and the lingering taste and indigestion is the same…
Actually, this fills me with fear. When you consider the ratio of canonical authors to classic novels on the to-be-read list there is cause for worry: Wharton, Cather, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner, Bellow, Cheever, Mailer, Updike, Morrison, Roth. Wharton — the Age of Innocence. Fine and dandy. Steinbeck for Grapes of Wrath, doubleplusgood. But Faulkner for The Reivers? Hemingway for the Old Man and the Sea? Beloved is Morrison’s best known, and American Pastoral widely considered one of Roth’s best, I believe. But then they are more recent and more familiar….I wonder in time how many of these will come to seem pity prizes, disguised lifetime achievement awards, or just the fruits of a weak year, like Kate Winslet’s Oscar…
April 1, 2009 at 10:51 am
It’s so gratifying (and probably rare) for a major award to actually hit the sweet spot in an author’s career that we should probably view it as…. *insert sports metaphor here about some rare feat: a hat trick? a no-hitter? oh, well* At least the Pulitzer hasn’t seemed to be the kiss-of-death career-killer that the Nobel is supposed to be. (Some of these careers were dead already! Ha! Zing! *sigh*)
Also, stupid pep.