Tomorrow, at 3pm EST, the Pulitzer will be announced and we are both very, very excited.That... is a lie.
The Pulitzer is always a bit hit and miss. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was... NOT wow (I am HILARIOUS)... March was no more than glorified fan-fiction... I have tried to read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay so many times it is now my Everest... The Hours was soporific.
Which doesn't mean the judges cannot recognise brilliance. American Pastoral was superb, The Road was phenomenal and To Kill a Mockingbird... enough said.
The Pulitzer is a different award to most in that it does not announce a shortlist- on the day we are just presented with the winner and a runner-up. A very intelligent man (who obviously needs more to do) built a model last year predicting the 10 books most likely to win the Pulitzer. Considering he had both the winner and the runner-up on the list, that's pretty nifty regression analysis in my opinion. (Ahem, I have no idea what that means, I lifted it from the article.) If you want to read the rest of the article, including the list of books he predicts for 2009, click here.
I've only read four on the list: A Mercy by Toni Morrison, Indignation by Philip Roth, Netherland by Joseph O'Neil, and Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. I didn't like the last, so I'm not pushing for that and on the others I'm undecided, but I reckon Netherland is in with a pretty good chance, at either winner or runner-up. (If only because it's about cricket.)
Undoubtedly it will go to one I haven't read... sigh. Starving children in Africa have NOTHING on me and my troubles.
Most punters seem to be backing Morrison's prequel to her Pulitzer-winning Beloved, but we'll all know tomorrow. Any further predictions are welcome, but they don't count after 3pm EST.
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