Should Pulitzer Prize / Nobel Prize novels be considered classics?
What are YOUR thoughts?
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Are Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winners classics?
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3 comments:
Not all of them are. Check William H. Gass' article on the Pulitzer Prize. He explains how the award-giving committee is too preoccupied with concerns not related to the aesthetics of the work, such as the reputational risk associated in the act of recognition itself.
Stan
http://minotauromachia.wordpress.com
Not all of them. Check William Gass' article on the Pulitzer Prize and how works are judged.
Great question.
First of all, Nobel Prize winners are people, not books, so one can't really say that a person is a "classic". Seeing that all good authors have bad books, you also can't say that all Nobel Prize winners simply generate classics. But, also, you have to remember that most Nobel Prize winners garner the award because they wrote some monumental novel; such as Hemingway with Old Man And the Sea, Steinbeck with The Grapes of Wrath, Mann with Buddenbrooks, Hesse with the Glass Bead Game, and William Golding with Lord of the Flies. Such novels should be, and are, considered classics, but it's definitely a stretch to name every Nobel Prize winners' novel a classic.
Onto the Pulitzer Prize; yes, but in a certain fraction of the cases. Awards like the National Book awards and the Pulitzer Prize definitely have their good choices, but being the rate at which America cranks out classic novels, you can't call every single one a classic. Also, you have to take into consideration that some novels win the award just because the author wasn't honored several years earlier for a masterpiece novel he wrote.
Hitherto; sometimes, not all times, but frequently.
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