Pulitizer Prizes?

As I've noted, I read a lot.  To say that I have a problem that requires a twelve-step program would be insulting to some but wholly accurate when it comes to my voracious reading habit.

For that reason, I think I can say with some level of experience beyond that of a beginner that I've read a few books that have won awards.  From a conceptual standpoint, I don't understand how one can grade and reward art.  As the saying goes, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.  I think the natural extension of that aphorism isn't much of a stretch -- if the pun can be pardoned.  It's the same reason that I reject such putative sports as figure skating and gymnastics.  Neither activity is something I could ever do, each requires great dedication, training and skill and each is a physical endeavor.  But how can one person's performance be judged or graded accurately over another's? 

That being said, I've had occasion to read some books that have won Pulitzer prizes.  The prize itself didn't draw me to the books.  In one case, the provocative title and backstory did.  In another case, it was the subject matter itself that drew me in.  But once I read the books, I was left wondering how it was determined that these books were deemed to be the efforts most worthy of acknowledgement.

The one book that was awarded the Pulitzer that completely confounds me is A Confederacy of Dunces.  The title grabbed me from the minute I heard it, because I've often thought of situations in which I was surrounded by such confederacies.  But when I heard the fact that the author, John Kennedy Toole, had died some years before the award, my curiosity was piqued.  So I picked up the book and plodded through it, trying to figure out what the point of the story was.

Imagine my surprise when after reading it, I found out that it was characterized as a picaresque novel.  Having read the book that started the genre, Lazarillo de Tormes (no, it wasn't Oliver Twist; the English-speaking world has virtually no regard for Spanish-language books, but that's a diatribe for another day), I found there to be little similarity between Dunces and Lazarillo.  In fact, I found Dunces to be an overly-indulgent waste of time.  There was no point to the story.  A far more compelling story was the bringing to life of the book itself, with Toole's unfortunate suicide and later redemption with winning the Pulitzer for his formerly rejected work.  But the book itself?  A monumental waste of time, in my humble opinion.

And that last statement brings me back to the original point about trying to grade or judge art.  I may be totally wrong, a minority of one, about Toole's book.  It might be the greatest thing since the Bible, but it just didn't impress me. 

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles