The Pulitzer Pisstake!

And now for a hiatus from my hiatus...

As you may have noticed, I've been absent of late doing God-knows-what, who-the-hell-knows-where (well, writing in Prague actually). As such I've missed some pretty big events. The newly elected premiere of the banana state done gone and scrapped his literary awards, proving that the idiots up north just voted in some even bigger idiot who cannot read. Former Waffen SS lackey Gunter Grass went and pissed in the face of Israel (which was an interesting about turn for the once staunch supporter) and so the troubled state reciprocated by taking a diplomatic dump on his head. Needless to say, both came out looking rather mucky. And JK Rowling proved herself the most canny being in publishing by choosing to eschew the Hunger Games generation in favour of a book for "grown-ups" (aka the former little shits who got into reading thanks to her series about earthenware).

Meanwhile, prize season has kicked into high gear, with the shortlists for the IMPAC and the Orange (really, is that still going?) awards being released. Particular kudos must go to shunned Arthur C. Clark almost-was Christopher Priest for launching into an hilarious tirade about the authors who beat him to the quick. But all that pales in comparison with news that the Pulitzer committee wouldn't be awarding a prize for fiction this year, the first time it has failed to do so since 1977. To be fair they were served up a pretty ordinary shortlist - an incomplete (in every sense of the word) novel by David Foster Wallace, a novella by now two-time bridesmaid Denis Johnson (not that novellas are totally out of contention for major prizes - I'm looking at you Julian Barnes), and a mildly exciting debut by Karen Russell. Surely there were more deserving contenders. Surely the Pulitzer committee need not have passed over this year's prize for fiction. I mean they awarded it to Geraldine Brooks for Chrissakes (I still maintain they meant to give it to E. L. Doctorow for a book of the same name in the same year but were to embarrassed to admit their mistake). There must have been something worthy of the massive sales spike such an honour bestows. Think of the poor publishers!!! Who will put food on their paper plates?

If only I had finished my book in time. I coulda been a contender!