Read all pulitzer prize winning novels

Marilynne Robinson gives us a letter from an aging pastor (he’s 77) to his young son. The letter is a meditation on aging, about faith and forgiveness, about regret and love, about family and memory…just the sort of thing an old man might write to his not even a teenager yet son.

It’s a good, gentle novel.

I don’t know that it quite lives up to the blurb on the book jacket:

“Gilead is the long-hoped-for second novel by one of our finest writers, a hymn of praise and lamentation to the God-haunted existence that Reverend Ames loves passionately, and from which he will soon part.”

Honestly, I’d give the book the Pulitzer for its jacket copy.

It’s not my favorite Pulitzer winning novel, but it’s a good book.

Usually I can finish any book I start, but I only read 20 pages of this one before I gave it up for lost. The writing felt like Margaret Wilson was explaining things to me rather than telling a story. Bear in mind that I did enjoy Alice Adams which is something I shouldn’t have enjoyed.

And yet…

This is the sort of thing I wouldn’t normally like: some pretense at high society and being “in” and “fashionable” but Alice is a rather likeable character who used to be “in” but because of her family’s lack of fortune is finding herself on the “outs”.

The writing / language / dialouge is a bit stilted, but that seems to come with the era and setting. Alice tries so hard and it is humorous.

Pretty good book.

I just overloaded Pulitzer novels from the library: One of Ours, Alice Adams, The Able McLaughlins, and Gilead. I’ll have some progress coming up.

A co-worker of mine suggested I should read the character of Ignatius with the voice of “Comic Book Guy” from the Simpsons in mind. That worked for two lines and then I went back to my recurring Two Minute Hates. A Confederacy of Dunces is a comic Pulitzer Prize winning novel set in New Orleans where Ignatius is this obnoxious character who apparently was not properly socialized as a small child. He is something of a mental case, insists on talking and whining about his “valve”, does not bathe or clean anything in his room. His white sheets are stained yellow from dirt, cannot hold down a job without getting fired. At one place he tries to make the factory workers rise up in revolution, but if anyone has anything like a rational opinion Ignatius is enraged.

I struggled. I did not laugh. I did not even smirk. Ignatius was such a disgusting protagonist that all I really wanted out of the novel was for someone to do great violence to him. Alas, Ignatius soldiers on making everyone else look stupid somehow. Please, someone tell me that New Orleans and the French Quarter is not populated by the people in this novel. Please.

I’ve finished the first section of Pulitzer winning novels. Of course, the Pulitzer was first given out in 1918 and I only had to read two books for the decade.

Now complete:
1918: His Family – Ernest Poole
1919: The Magnificent Ambersons – Booth Tarkington