My younger son saw me at the computer the other day and asked what I was doing. I told him I was updating my reading list. He asked about my progress and calculated that in a little more than a year I would be finished with all 83 books. He asked, “So when you are done, you will have read every Pulitzer Prize winning work of fiction?”
I nodded, at which point he said, “That’s weird.”
Thanks.
Once I have finished my quest, and read all 83 (or 84, by that time) Pulitzer Prize winning works of fiction, should I go back and reread the 14 I read before I knew I was on this journey? I read The Good Earth nearly 40 years ago! Does it still count? You tell me, please.
Yes, the prose is just as overwrought as the cover art. Arrowsmith is written in that odd, jaunty, jolly 1920’s style that makes every emotion seem false and nothing seem to matter. I encountered the style previously while reading Oil! by Upton Sinclair. Unless you love exclamatory sentences and 20’s slang, be warned. Arrowsmith did teach me the word “pelf,” meaning riches, sometimes ill-gotten, and “weal,” meaning the common good, and related to wealth, as in “Commonwealth of Nations.”
Those two words, and their nearly opposite meanings, emblemize the central conflict in Arrowsmith – Should Martin Arrowsmith (called Sandy by his first wife) become a private practice physician who treats his patients in such a way as to take a great deal of their money – (pelf), or a researcher or public health worker – (weal)? Arrowsmith tries a little of each, but eventually settles on Public Health and research.
Once again, as in All the King’s Men, the conflict in Arrowsmith echoes the debate over health care today. The wealthy doctors in the book refer to Public Health Departments as “socialist” and are worried about government clinics taking their business. They have no real concern about public health, lower case p, lower case h. Simply substitute greedy insurance companies and the public option, and voila, it’s 2009! It seems that anytime people try to help those less fortunate, others, who think only of their own well being, cry “socialism.”
Martin eventually gives in to his most pure impulses and begins doing research for the weal of society and actually develops a vaccine/cure for bubonic plague. He goes to the West Indies, at risk to his own safety, with his beloved wife, Leora, as his helper. While Martin is off saving lives in a particularly risky village, Leora forgets to inject her medication and dies. Arrowsmith is, we think, bereft. Here the prose style truly seems to mask the true emotion. Although he expresses his deep love for his wife throughout, when she dies, he seems anything but inconsolable and we’re on to the next jaunty adventure in the flip of a page or two!
Martin eventually marries again, this time into High Society. He and his second wife have a child, a boy, and Arrowsmith summarily deserts them when he realizes that he is not cut out for the society life. He feels that he must join a colleague, who has escaped civilization in his woodlands home where he produces serum to support himself while primarily doing research. Arrowsmith’s abandonment seems not to be particularly earth shattering. Arrowsmith tells his wife, “Send the boy to me when he’s ten!” Again, the times, or the style of the writing, seem to belie what we sense is actually happening. Is Arrowsmith not filled with sorrow and remorse? Is his wife not furious? We can’t tell! Martin’s desertion is treated as if it is simply a case of, “A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.”
Arrowsmith, the novel, is long and crammed with tedious laboratory science, while simultaneously managing to be a little misogynistic, and stylistically off-putting. It provides an interesting contrast to So Big, which was written in the same era and which is extremely readable and enjoyable, and packed with authentic emotion. Arrowsmith is not terrible, and on some levels, I enjoyed it a bit. However I can’t recommend it unless you find yourself on the same quest as I.
RogerRater Score (1-5) 3.4
This novel has substance, mass, weight - in a word: gravity. I expected to dislike this book based on my two prior readings of Malamud’s The Natural, which I disliked intensely both as a child and as an adult. Instead, I was mesmerized by The Fixer. The plight of Yakhov Bok captures the heart and imagination. How could this happen, and how could this fiction seem so real?
Yakhov, a handyman, (hence, the fixer), is arrested for a murder he did not commit. He is a victim of rampant Anti-Semitism and he is being made a scapegoat for corrupt and incompetent state officials. Perhaps more appalling is that some of the characters are not truly anti-semitic but are only pandering to the true hate-mongers for personal gain.
Yakhov is imprisoned for the ritual killing of a Gentile boy, and his pride and stubbornness - which he comes by rightly - prevent him from apparently making his life easier by lying and implicating other Jews, or by issuing a false confession. Practical considerations play into Yakhov’s decision as well, since he never knows if any of the government officials offering him ‘better treatment’ are telling the truth. A false confession could shorten his time in prison, or could shorten his life.
The fixer’s treatment is horrific, and his only friend, Bibikov, an official who believes him and who will stand up for him, is killed by the officials who want to see Yakhov brought to ‘justice.’ The depth of the hatred, corruption and cruelty is truly shocking. The most startling aspect of the book is how Bok’s own actions, some of which included the most minor offenses (and which were offenses only because he was a Jew) could be so easily and effectively turned against him and used to make him look at least circumstantially guilty. Of course, that circumstance is compounded by ‘witnesses’ who used their hatred as an excuse to lie in order to ensure that Yakhov would shoulder the blame for the murder, which was likely committed by the boy’s mother. In some cases, the witnesses’ hate may have so blinding that they truly believed the lies they told. These hate-mongers are as much imprisoned by their anti-semitism as Yakhov is by his prison’s bars. And their anti-semitism clearly is intended to symbolize any form of hate or prejudice.
Yakhov may be a fixer, but he can’t seem to fix anything that will spare him his years of rotting in prison, sometimes in chains, with little or no sanitation, sadistic guards, dirty, bug infested food, illness, injury and more. He suffers literally anything and everything short of death. He languishes unindicted, but held indefinitely as the ‘investigation’ progresses. Through the trials of hell, Yakhov refuses to compromise. Yet, he somehow maintains hope that he will be indicted, and be tried and that the government’s charade will be revealed. His moments of hope are, of course, brief, and interspersed sparingly throughout his general pain and despair.
When he is finally indicted, and rioting breaks out on his way to his first day at trial, Yakhov’s fear-addled mind drifts into a fantasy meeting with the Tsar, to whom he pleads his case. It is in this rather ambiguous way that the book ends. The ending is not however, unsatisfying. After Yakhov’s unimaginable suffering, and all we have suffered with him, no mere verdict (and punishment, if guilty, or release, if innocent), would possess the gravity demanded by the dignity and courage that this character has shown. We are better off not knowing Yakhov’s fate, but simply knowing Yakhov.
And while this novel is dark, and might rival The Road in that area, it is more hopeful than that bleak book. Even in the most hate-filled era in Russian history, during which people literally believed that Jews had cloven hooves and needed to kill Christians to drink their blood, Yakhov had his defenders. Bibikov tried to help and paid the price. A few journalists and revoultionaries also spoke out on the fixer’s behalf. Better any protest than the total silence that led to the Germany of the 40’s.
The Fixer is a novel that will leave you thinking about it, and wondering over it, long after you have left it. It will also leave you appreciating your right to a speedy trial, your right to representation, and the Consitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. As long as no one can call you an ‘Enemy Combatant,’ it is highly unlikely that what happened to Yakhov could ever happen to you.
If you long for a novel of substance - gravity included no extra charge - read The Fixer. Truly, it would seem that it is Malamud who is ‘The Natural.’
NOTE: Not recommended for prison reading material. 
RogerRater Score: (1 – 5) 4.9
I just finished my 50th of the 83 Pulitzer Prize winning works of fiction. It feels like a huge milestone, although there is so much farther to go. Subtracting the fourteen I had already read, I have read 36 in a year and a half. So, by early 2011 I should be finished! I am loving every minute so far, but what shall I start on when the fateful day of completion arrives? The Booker Prize? Time Magazine’s All-Time 100 Novels? Or mebbe I should jus’ go on ahead and git a life! Your comments would be most welcome.
A post about The Fixer will appear shortly, and before my post about A Summons to Memphis. I just feel much more strongly about Malamud’s book and there is a lot I want to write. Thanks for checking in here periodically.
I was shocked to find that the title of this novel truly refers to the silly game we all play with toddlers! Like Ferber’s other books, Giant, or Cimarron, I thought the title must have some greater meaning. But it is, in fact, derived from the So Big game, and SoBig becomes the nickname of one of the main characters, Dirk DeJong.
Dirk’s mother, Selina Peake DeJong is So Big’s main character and the emotional center of the novel. We meet her as a girl, living with her raconteur father after the death of her mother. She loves her life and happily endures her hardships when her father’s gambling leaves the pair in poverty. On the other hand, she revels in the good life of restaurants and hotels and the theatre, even as a young girl, when her father is flush with his winnings. After her father’s death, and against her best friend Julie’s wishes, Selina, thinking it a temporary stop in a lifelong adventure, becomes a schoolteacher.
Heading out to the Dutch ‘High Prairie’ of Illinois, she meets and lives with the Pool family – honest, kind, hard-working truck farmers, who expect little from their children but their labor. Selina takes the Pool’s sensitive, artistic son, Roelf, under her wing and encourages him to follow his muse and his heart. It is as a result of Selina’s attention and encouragement that Roelf heads to Paris and becomes a famous and acclaimed sculptor. Roelf may have also run to Paris to quell his unrequited and impossible crush on Selina.
Selina meets and falls in love with a local farmer, Purvis DeJong. They marry and Selina moves from the Pool’s to the DeJong farm - one of the poorer in the district, though not for lack of Purvis’ honest efforts. While Purvis is good and kind and hard-working, luck rarely finds him, and because he is unwilling to take risks with time or capital to improve the farm, he and Selina live a hand-to-mouth existence, albeit a reasonably happy one. Purvis and Selina have a son, Dirk, to whom Selina is quite devoted. She calls him, and continues to call him, SoBig through much of his life, much to his chagrin as he gets older.
Selina is bound to do all she can to give Dirk every advantage which she did not have. After Purvis dies of Pneumonia from working the cold, wet, lower acreage on their farm, Selina begins to implement the improvements that she had suggested, and which had been rejected by Purvis as too risky or too time-consuming. The disheartening scene of Selina and Dirk taking their first wagonload of produce to market in Chicago is heart-wrenching. Selina is mistreated because she is a woman doing a man’s work, and as a result her load of precious vegetables is nearly wasted. Through sheer strength of will, she manages to sell much of her load door to door and narrowly avoids disaster.
In doing so, she runs into her friend Julie, now an extremely wealthy socialite. Julie’s father makes a loan to Selina and through her backbreaking work, and her brains, she makes her small farm prosper, even getting her DeJong asparagus on the menu at some of Chicago’s finest restaurants. Through all this time Selina encourages Dirk to see the beauty in life and pursue the artistic path as an architect. Although he tries architecture, Dirk is better suited to making money as a bond salesman. Selina remains proud of SoBig and loves him dearly, but can’t help feeling disappointed that he has little appreciation for life’s great beauty.
When Dirk falls in love with the commercial artist, Dallas, this theme is repeated. Dirk’s advances ”>are thwarted because Dallas feels that he has too little appreciation for the beauty in life. When the now-famous artist, Roelf Pool, comes to Chicago for a visit, and Dirk sees the spark between he and Dallas, as well as Selina’s obvious, maternal love for Roelf, Dirk questions his life and his choices. Ferber’s clear message is to live life for love and beauty and that those choices will truly make us So Big.
Ferber’s novel packed two great surprises for me – the strong feminist overtones, long before feminism came into fashion, and the surprising emotion I felt at the reunion of Roelf and Selina. I found myself more than a little choked up. It is the rare book that has evoked that response from me. But the purity of Selina’s motives toward Roelf, and the depth of their feeling for each other, is quite touching. Selina is a true inspiration, even in a world where we use that term in reference to self-serving, self-help gurus. Selina is conrasted quite strongly against the other, richer woman in the book, who are petty and concerned only with themselves, their money and their social standing.
Selina is the epitome of intelligence, grace, strength, and inner beauty and one of the most finely honed characters I have encountered in my Pulitzer travels. So Big is rarely read and little appreciated today, yet I would encourage anyone interested in integrity, strength of character or just plain grit, to search out and read this book. It may bring you close to tears as well, and will surely leave you feeling so much bigger than before you read it.
RogerRater Score: (1 – 5) 4.8
I have finished So Big and it exceeded my expectations. It evoked a very surprising reaction which I will share in my post about the book. So I am now TWO POSTS behind – A Summons to Memphis and So Big. It is all the fault of the Angels and Dodgers. Being a crazed baseball fan, I am rushing home to watch my two, now one, teams in the second round of the playoffs, and consequently not having time to write anything of substance, or what passes for substance in my writing.
By sometime next week, those two posts will be in their proper place!
I just finished A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor. What an interesting little world it describes. I hope to have a post about it up in day or two. It reminded me a great deal of The Optimist’s Daughter. They are both small in scope and deal with familial relationships and elderly fathers remarrying, or attempting to.
I am now on to So Big and I have high hopes since it was written by Edna Ferber who wrote the excellent and gritty novel on which the musical Showboat is based. Thanks for reading and check back often, or subscribe!
Frank Bascome, the main character of Independence Day, is ensconced in his self-styled ”Existence Period.” He is content to be a suburban landlord, a real estate agent, a hot dog stand owner, and a divorced father of two. He is not emotionally invested in anything: not in worrying about his son Paul’s rather serious issues, not in disliking his ex-wife, not in missing his former job as a sportswriter, not in being driven crazy by his current clients who disparage every house he shows them, nothing, nada, zip.
He moves through his life in a detached, bemused manner and uttered what, in a previous post I had called my favorite line in any of the Pulitzer Prize winners I had read so far: “I was moved as if to a tear, but not quite.” The line has since been superceded, but it remains a very strong second.
Independence Day is wry and ironic and quite funny, much in the vein of that line above. The central plot point of the book finds Frank planning to take his Paul on a long holiday weekend to several sports halls of fame pre=”fame “>in order to bond more closely with him, and to exert some influence over his life. His son is depressed, surly and had recently been arrested for shoplifting. A particularly telling scene, which illustrates Paul’s state of mind, finds the two at the basketball Hall of Fame. Frank is encouraging Paul to compete with him at taking shots at a number of baskets from a moving sidewalk. When Paul’s turn comes, he simply rides from one end to the other without launching a single shot. He is disinterested and disaffected and Frank doesn’t really know what to do.
In addition to his son’s problems, violence seems to follow Frank, yet not affect him directly. A co-worker, (and former-sometime-girlfriend of Frank’s) has been raped and killed in a house she was showing. Frank senses that he should be saddened. Later, Frank and his son stumble on a murder scene at one of the motels they are staying in. Frank senses that he should be outraged and saddened. His real estate clients, the Markhams, are about to pass the point of no return, where they have seen too many houses to ever close a sale. Frank senses that he should be bothered and annoyed. Nothing in Frank’s life truly seems to be working well, yet none of it seems to shake Frank from his ennui. He is just too busy existing. He appears to be reaching a similar point of no return in his emotional life.
In addition to all of this, Frank’s relationship with Sally, his current girlfriend, is going nowhere and he secretly half hopes to remarry his ex-wife. The only head of steam he can generate is his fairly intense dislike for his ex-wife’s new husband. While not much of this sounds terribly funny, Frank is a skilled observer of human nature and his ruminations are insightful and amusing. And, really, who can not relate to a middle-aged man, floating through life without the desire or the energy to truly get a hold of, or fix, what is wrong? You don’t think you can? OK, what middle-aged, suburban, white guy can’t, at least?
Finally, Frank’s other half-hoped-for change is that Paul will come to live with him full-time, and he hopes their trip will move Paul in that direction. When Paul takes some rash action on their trip and is fairly seriously injured, Frank’s emotions must, and do, finally come to the surface and the emotional point of no return is avoided, perhaps temporarily. Whether this will at last be the end of Frank’s “existence period” is left rather ambiguous, but Frank remains strangely and slightly optimistic about his prospects, as well as Paul’s, despite some fairly convincing evidence (see above) pointing in the opposite direction. And, with Frank’s newly rediscovered emotions, we feel slightly optimistic for him as well.
Independence Day is an insightful, amusing and enjoyable book. A classic? No. Worth savoring? Yes. especially if you are a middle-aged, suburban, white guy. And, from the point that you finish the book, Fourth of July weekend will never look quite the same to you again.
RogerRater Score: (1-5) 4.1
I have now read two books in a row that were not PPWs: The Lost Symbol (and I am embarrassed to say that I enjoyed it) and How I Became a Famous Novelist. The latter skewers every possible pretension in literature by giving us a main character who determines, and exploits, the formula for writing a best-seller purely to make money, get girls and get revenge on a former girlfriend.
Along the way, the Dan Browns, Sue Graftons, John Grishams, Tom Clancys and all the others are toasted and roasted for being money-grubbing hacks. Particular targets are the Nicholas Sparks and Pat Conroys of the world, who manipulate the emotions of a certain demographic to make loads of money. Our hero, Pete Tarslaw, throws a dash of “all of the above” into his novel, The Tornado Ashes Club. Despite his cynicism, and his true motives being made public, his book becomes a best seller, with the resultant controversy fueling sales.
If you have ever read a novel that you thought was pretentious or written just for the money, or read ridiculous gibberish next to a painting in a museum or gallery, or heard, and was offended by, Rod Stewart singing Hot Legs or Do Ya Think I’m Sexy, this book will have you ROFL. It leaves anyone who is not fully authentic in the world of the arts, a bleeding corpse on the floor.
And, having read this dissection of all that is fake in the world of “literature” and having read an egregious, if entertaining, example of a book written just for money, (The Lost Symbol) I am really glad to turn back to Pulitzer Prize winners with A Summons to Memphis. I am halfway through and highly impressed.
Even Pete Tarslaw, the uber-cynical anti-hero of HIBAFN comes to realize, at the very end of his hilarious journey, that some novels are truly moving and truly have something to say. Unfortunately for us, the book that makes him come to this realization is not real. It is the made-up-for-the-purposes-of-How-I-Became-A-Famous-Novelist novel, Peking.
Pulitzer Quest | pulitzerquest on Woo-hoo! Another Milestone and… |
 | Martha Masdeo on Woo-hoo! Another Milestone and… |
| pulitzerquest on Reading List |
 | William Koon on Reading List |
| pulitzerquest on A Bridge to the Afterlife? The… |
