The Hicks Place

My Pulitzer Progress

The Pulitzer Prize winning books of fiction are listed by year below. The works I have read thus far are indented.  I set a goal of reading all of them a couple of years ago, and have been working my way through the list, trying to find the ones that seemed to interest me most in used book stores, or by putting the titles in my Amazon wish list.   Some, like A Death in the Family, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tales of the South Pacific and The Magnificent Ambersons I had read earlier.  I have traced my progress by listing books as I read them in the column at left, and if you look at that list you will note that other books which have piqued my interest pop up there from time to time. 

I have thoroughly enjoyed almost every one of these I have read, and post them not merely to boast but to encourage others to undertake this project.  Younger readers will likely not find the older books as interesting as I have, but maybe you will be surprised.  At any rate, I think I have a happier outlook on life since I stopped reading so much political commentary and biographies of great men, and began to invest my time in these award winning works of fiction.  I enjoy having these books on my book shelf or in my Kindle. 

The Pulitzer Prize winners for Fiction 

2009  Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

        2008   The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

2007  The Road by Cormac McCarthy  

         2006 March      by Geraldine Brooks

         2005 Gilead: A Novel by Marilyn

         2004 The Known World by Edward P. Jones

2003	Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides 
     2002	Empire Falls by Richard Russo 
     2001	The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon 
     2000	Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri 
     1999	The Hours by Michael Cunningham 
1998	American Pastoral by Philip Roth 
1997	Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser 
     1996	Independence Day by Richard Ford 
     1995	The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields 
     1994	The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx 
     1993	A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler 
     1992	A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley 
     1991	Rabbit At Rest by John Updike 
     1990	The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos 
     1989	Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler 
1988	Beloved by Toni Morrison 
     1987	A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor 
1986	Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry 
     1985	Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie 
1984	Ironweed by William Kennedy 
1983	The Color Purple by Alice Walker 
    1982	Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike, the latest novel in a memorable sequence
    1981	A Confederacy of Dunces by the late John Kennedy Toole (a posthumous publication) 
1980	The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer 
1979	The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever 
1978	Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson 
1977	(No Award)
     1976	Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow 
     1975	The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara 
1974	(No Award)
     1973	The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty 
1972	Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner 
1971	(No Award)
1970	Collected Stories by Jean Stafford 
     1969	House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday 
     1968	The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron 
1967	The Fixer by Bernard Malamud 
     1966	Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter 
1965	The Keepers Of The House by Shirley Ann Grau 
1964	(No Award)
     1963	The Reivers by William Faulkner
1962	The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor 
     1961	To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee 
1960	Advise and Consent by Allen Drury 
1959	The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor 
    1958	A Death In The Family by the late James Agee (a posthumous publication)
1957	(No Award)
1956	Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor 
1955	A Fable by William Faulkner
1954	(No Award)
1953	The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
1952	The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk 
1951	The Town by Conrad Richter 
1950	The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. 
1949	Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens 
     1948	Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener 

(From 1917-1948, the award was given as the Pulitzer Prizer for Novel)
     1947	All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren 
1946 (No Award)
1945	A Bell for Adano by John Hersey 
1944	Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin 
1943	Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair 
1942	In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow 
1941	(No Award)
     1940	The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
1939	The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings 
     1938	The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand 
1937	Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell 
     1936	Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis 
     1935	Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson 
1934	Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller 
1933	The Store by T. S. Stribling 
1932	The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
1931	Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes 
1930	Laughing Boy by Oliver Lafarge 
1929	Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin 
1928	The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder 
1927	Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield 
1926	Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
1925	So Big by Edna Ferber 
1924	The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson 
      1923	One of Ours by Willa Cather 
1922	Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington 
1921	The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton 
1920	(No Award)
      1919	The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington 
1918	His Family by Ernest Poole 
1917 (No Award)

My Story

Night before last I was young and with a pretty blonde girl.  We had been together, but perhaps in a group of college or high school friends, and she was saying goodbye.  The last thing I remember is she was smiling and  I think trying to tell me that this was more than just I’ll see you later.  But I was happy and she was smiling and I  told whomever it was with me that she liked me and I really liked her, and we would be together again.  But of course we never were. 

As I was going to the bathroom my leg was hurting and so I ran my right hand along the dresser top and kept my left on the footboard rail.  The stiffness lessened slightly with each step until I got to the little step, up to the toilet, and then I really felt the pain in my right knee.  It almost felt, across the middle of my knee cap, like it would give away.  As I sat there I rubbed my hand along the muscle and it felt cold and tight, what little feeling there was because the nerves were not connecting normally.  There was a lack of feeling.  When I got to bed and lay on my left side with the hurt knee on the bed in front of me; a sharp pain and the ache was worse.  I got up and went back to the medicine cabinet for two Tylenol. 

Day before yesterday I was cutting the grass.  It was 6 to 8 inches tall, due to the spring rains and our being away in Roanoke for a dozen days.  In fact it was raining when we got off the train at 4:30 that morning and was still raining when I picked up the mail just before noontime.  But the wind was blowing and the sun came out and by 3, they were qualifying at the track.  An hour later I decided it was dry enough to cut the grass.  I had to go slow, even with the mower set as high as it would go, but had no trouble and was finished in an hour.  I put the mower in the garage and was coming up the walk when something happened in my right knee, it felt like it was going out from under me but it didn’t, but I hurt and was limping then as I came into the house.  I took two Tylenol, fixed my evening martini, put on a light jacket and went out on the front patio to enjoy the late evening sun.

As we drove out of the driveway yesterday morning, on the way to our usual Sunday morning breakfast, Andy our young neighbor was standing at the gate likely getting ready to take his morning run.  He was saying something to his wife who was sitting on their back porch.  Marcia exclaimed, “She is wearing glasses!”  We had never seen her in glasses before.  I smiled to myself and a saying from my youth popped into my head, so as we turned out into the street I said, “Guys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.”  With that, she, my wife, was mad.  “Why are you upset?”  “I wear glasses!”  “So?, I was just saying a phrase I heard in my youth, it had nothing to do with you.”  “But it means that women who wear glasses are ugly.”  “Well, but that isn’t what I meant, Krista isn’t ugly.”  (We have often commented to each other about how handsome and pretty our young neighbors are.)  That comment didn’t help, so it took me at least ten blocks to convince her that it was just a random thought like my strange brain often comes up with and it didn’t represent how I felt about her, my wife.

Yesterday evening we went to a Chinese restaurant, she likes Chinese.

It turned cool Saturday evening and last night the temperature got down to about 40.  At first I was with some people and there was snow on the ground and we were walking around a semi-trailer.  Then we were in a small tent which had a stove and a rug on the floor and it seemed to be home to someone.  As we walked out of that tent we were in a huge tent which had lots of people walking around and there were groupings of furniture where you could sit ant talk, it seemed like a hotel lobby and apparently there were several of these small tents attached to it.  I got up to go to the bathroom again, still hobbling on my knee.  When I came back, I pulled the bedspread up for more warmth and went back to sleep.