The recent award of the Pulitzer Prize to Kakutani came as a shock.
Having made many wrongheaded decisions over the years, the Putlizer judges did it again.
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Folks who judge literary matters for the Pulitzer crowd could need basic instruction about doing this awards business. Or it may be that Roth was being rewarded for his long and distinctive career, rather than singled out for his most recent tome, a novel that drew carping from many distingushed critics.
Years ago, the Motion Picture Academy handed Elizabeth Taylor an Oscar for one of her worst films, the execrable "Butterfield 8." Liz had been desperately ill that year, nearly died, and the Oscar voters apparently felt they'd unfairly overlooked previous good performances. So she got an Oscar.
I went to The World Almanac to check past winners of the fiction prize. Usually the awards go to books that have sold well, which doesn't prove literary merit. Such lightweight novels as Allen Drury's political thriller "Advise and Consent" and Larry McMurtry's entertaining western "Lonesome Dove" are not novels that will endure in the annals of literature. Jane Smiley's "A Thousand Acres," an uneasy retelling of "King Lear," won't be remembered a few years from now. Saul Bellow won for "Humboldt's Gift," not his best work. Shirley Ann Grau won in 1965 for "Keepers of the House." Few remember her today.
My lack of appreciation for the reviews of Michiko Kakutani and Roth's most recent novel are shared by others prominent in the field.
Salon Magazine, one of the better reads on the Web, observed last week that Kakutani's win "didn't surprise many in the book world. The Times holds legendary sway with Pulitzer committees." The article noted that Kakutani has "pounced whenever writers like Updike, Philip Roth or Nicholson Baker have shown their darker, randier, more misanthropic sides." James Wolcott of Vanity Fair told Salon that "she has a very moralistic, cop-on-the-corner mentality. When a novel has unsympathetic characters in it, she tends to lash out. Her tone is often cranky and disagreeable, but she wants writers to be nice."
John Leonard, literary editor of the Nation, said Kakutani has "a tin ear," and her reviews lack generosity. He sees her largely negative reviews of Toni Morrison's "Paradise" and Thomas Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon" to be "benighted."
Calling "American Pastoral" "not among Roth's best," Leonard said, "That Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo were both overlooked once again simply flabbergasts me and dismays me and makes me angry. . . People complain about the length and complexity of these books; we ought to demand length and complexity of our writers. (Pynchon's) `Mason and Dixon' and (DeLillo's) `Underworld' are books that change the way we look at the world."
Jonathan Yardley, book critic for the Washington Post, and a Pulitzer winner for criticism in 1981, said the Pulitzer is not really a literary award. "It's a journalism award, largely presided over by journalists. You can't expect them to be that original in their selections."
In the not unbiased view of yours truly, the problem comes in that the media, particularly daily newspapers, give extraordinary amounts of press coverage to the awards, making readers assume that the Pulitzers have significance. They don't.
Yardley isn't worried about Pulitzer winners in literary matters gaining too much influence. "There is no such thing," he told Salon, "as a powerful book critic."
Sobering news to an old guy like me, slaving away for more years than I'd like to admit, carrying the news of books good and bad to the reading masses. Well, hell, I do get lots of free books even if I don't wield a powerful influence on the world of letters.
If you like Bob Powers, and everyone should, and you want to read more of his incisive columns, check out Innerart/artbits; The Columbus Free Press; Mid-Ohio Valley Arts Window; or go to Suite 101 and click on "Today's Fiction."