#pullitzer

The Pulitzer Prize is an award for an achievement in American journalism, literature, or music. Every year there are fourteen prizes given out in journalism, six prizes given out in literature, and one prize given out in music. The award winners receive $10,000 in a cash prize and the winner of the Public Service category is gifted with a gold medal in addition. Any piece that wins a Pulitzer Prize are marked with a gold stamp that shows the award. The prize was started in 1917 by Joseph Pulitzer. Joseph Pulitzer is an influential American Newspaper editor and publisher. He came to the United States seeking a military career as a recruit in the Union Army in the American Civil War. After the war he became a reporter on a German daily newspaper and became active in politics. At the height of his career, he became one of the most influential journalists in the United States.

Pulitzer established the prize in his will that was written in 1904. Throughout its years, the criteria for the prize has gone through many changes. Pulitzer stated that the Pulitzer Prize should be awarded to “the American novel published during the year which shall best present the whole atmosphere of American life and the highest standard of American manners and manhood.” The judges are a jury of academics with interest in fiction who read all the submissions. After reading the submissions, they send a select few to Columbia with reasoning behind each decision.

Jennifer Egan’s novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In her novel, the characters deal with American life, which makes it an American novel, therefore making it a perfect candidate for the Pulitzer Prize. Egan’s novel is broken up into many different time settings and many different points of view and narrations. This novel stands out because it is a collection of short stories that all tie into a bigger picture once the reader completes the puzzle. A Visit From the Goon Squad is not just a novel, but it is a game too. This novel challenges the reader to piece together connections between characters that are harder to find with the narration that is out of order. The challenge Egan gives her audience is a strong reason that her novel won the important prize for fiction that only a select few authors receive. Egan’s language and plot of her novel also played a large role in receiving her award, but it was her complicated writing style that really convinced the jury she deserved the award. Egan’s complex writing style was something new that had not been done before in her generation of writers and that’s why her novel stood out to the jury.

Jennifer Egan’s novel was deserving of the Pulitzer Prize because it meets Joseph Pulitzer’s original criteria of the winner being an American novel that examines American life. The addition of the risks she took as a writer also show how deserving of the award the novel was and how it caught the jury’s eye by being something different and unexpected.

Works Cited

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Joseph Pulitzer.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 3 Apr. 2018, www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Pulitzer.

“Biography Joseph Pulitzer.” www.pulitzer.org/page/biography-joseph-pulitzer.

Pullitzer Prize Winners For Fiction: A Book Challenge [1/9]

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2015)

2017 The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

2016 The Symphatizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

2015 All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr 

2014 The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

2013 The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson

2012 - no award given

2011 A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

2010 Tinkers by Paul Harding

2009 Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout