In my teenage years I embarked on a
self-improvement project, part of which was to read good books. At that point,
I didn’t figure I was ready for the ancient Greeks and Romans, or even the
Victorian authors, but I did think I could handle American fiction.
So in an
attempt to put together a list, I decided to lean on expert opinion and buy
American books that had won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I figured that
those books had been vetted by smart people at the time and surely were worth
reading. And besides, they’d probably look good on the bookshelf.
Armed with
that list, I went to Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena to begin building my
library. Imagine, then, my surprise, when I discovered that most of them were
out of print and unavailable. At this point, it was less than half a century
since the Pulitzer Prizes were first awarded, yet some of the honored books had
sunk without a trace.
Julia Peterkin? Caroline Miller?
To look at
some of the titles and authors on the Pulitzer Prize list from 1918 to 1940 is
to get a sense of the fleeting nature of literary fame. Here’s a partial list
of winning books and authors:
His Family by Ernest Poole, Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia M.
Peterkin, Years of Grace by Margaret
Ayer Barnes, The Store by T.S.
Stribling, Lamb in His Bosom by
Caroline Miller, Now in November by
Josephine W. Johnson, and Honey in the
Horn by Harold L. Davis.
Maybe one
of those books or authors will enjoy a comeback, but right now you look at that
list and say to yourself, I wonder what the competition was like. Well, in
1929, when Scarlet Sister Mary (now
unfindable) won the award, a fellow named Hemingway wrote a book called A Farewell to Arms, which you can still
buy today in any bookstore.
The
Pulitzer committee didn’t get it entirely wrong. Also on the list are books by
Booth Tarkington, Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, and Edna Ferber, all of whom
are at least somewhat known and read today. But the only two books on that list
that are widely known and read 75 years later are Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Margaret
Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind.
The Mysteries Lasted Longer
An
interesting sidelight to that Pulitzer list is that a couple of those forgotten
authors wrote mysteries. I’ve never so much as seen a copy of T.S. Stribling’s The Store, but I own his Clues of the Caribees, a selection of
mystery short stories that’s actually pretty good.
And I did
read John P. Marquand’s The Late George
Apley, winner of the 1938 Pulitzer Prize, which is a decent period piece.
But to the extent that Marquand is still known today, it’s probably for his Mr.
Moto mysteries.
All this
serves as a reminder that every book is subject to the test of time, and the
failure rate is high. I read Honey in the
Horn, which I think was about early settlers in Oregon, and I can’t
remember a single detail about it. But even though it’s been more than 40 years
since I read The Grapes of Wrath, I
can still recall the Dust Bowl scenes, the entry into California, and the farm
labor camps in the Central Valley. What I remember of the two books is probably
a good indicator of why one lasted and the other didn’t. It’s one thing to
impress your contemporaries, but it’s tough to fool posterity.
