Queer Eye for the Literary Award

Back when the Nobel committee had a member resigning in a shit-fit, I mentioned that as far as I can tell, you have to have a homosexual character to qualify for the Pulitzer.

This is not a homophobic rant, by the way, in case you were going there. Don't bother. Some of my best friends are homosexual characters... Ah, where's Lenny Bruce when you need him? How to entertain your 'colored friends' and all that.

But it's eerie, I think Anne Tyler's 'Breathing Lessons' may be the only Pulitzer-winning novel going back to 1982 or earlier, that didn't include homosexual characters or themes. And maybe 'Breathing Lessons' has one I forgot about. I didn't notice Quoyle's Aunt being gay when I read 'Shipping News,' it had to be pointed out to me by a friend I was discussing the book with. Quoyle was so dense about it, I guess it rubbed off on me. I was so expecting Wavy to turn out to be a lesbian that I missed the subtler homosexuality of the Aunt.

And the narrative focus of 'Breathing Lessons,' the ultra-flake Maggie, she could probably walk through a Gay Pride parade and not notice any homosexuality. She'd be too caught up in how to fix everything around her. Fixing things much the way an unfrozen cave-man might 'fix' your car for you.

But 'Breathing Lessons,' while funny, brings up the bigger question of 'how the hell do they figure it's the winner?' According to their own site (see item #19), they have no criteria. Isn't that nice?

Looking around, you will find such high-tone phrases as 'high literary quality and originality.' You'll also see that they admit the prize is totally subjective and that they intentionally refrain from defending themselves or responding to criticism of any kind. Fine, I too reserve the right to ignore criticism.

I listened to 'The Stone Diaries' at work this week. Note, I did not say I read it. I do not believe I am a 'Recorded Books Reader.' Audio books help pass the day, and when you work sixty hours a week at times, it's a good thing. But it's passive, you get the story told to you. In a way, this is a reversion to the tradition the novel springs from, the bard who travels about telling tales for his supper; in another, it's passive compared to actual 'reading,' something which is often described as a 'passive' pursuit itself.

If I find 'Breathing Lessons' a less-than-obvious Pulitzer, 'The Stone Diaries' goes to another level. It's good writing, but it's also, basically, Willa Cather recycled. It is not original, it plots poorly (even compared to Willa Cather), and it's pedestrian stuff. The only reason I kept listening is because I assumed all this pedestrian shit was the setup for something that would startle me, make me think. Evoke a reaction. I guarantee you, if it was the print form, I would not have gotten past 30 pages.

So how did this unremarkable, if smooth, piece of writing win a Pulitzer? Here's my theory: near the end, when Daisy is practically dead, and less lucid than her narrative voice (something which breaks the suspension of disbelief a bit, IMO), this totally superfluous character, the minister who sort of 'comes with' the hospital she's been to after her heart attack, he tells her he's gay and asks her advice regarding his mother.

Why is it there? Earlier, she's told the candy-striper she doesn't want to see him, and gets bullied due to her sense of manners into admitting him. She's not exactly among the 'faithful,' though she'd consider it bad manners to be an outright infidel in the face of someone who's taken orders. There's no indication of why he'd think she, of all people, would be better than any other old lady for him to consult about this, and yet he travels cross-town to ask her advice about coming out to his 60-year-old mother.

There's nothing wrong with Daisy's advice, that he should keep his trap shut and accept that Mom probably already sussed this out. But why is this part of the text? It advances nothing of character or plot, tells us nothing we didn't know about Daisy, reveals nothing of the order of things except perhaps the societal shifts between her generation and Reverend Rick's. Nothing we haven't seen refracted through her children.

My theory of why it's there: 'The Stone Diaries' is the kind of book that's lucky to get an agent and/or publisher. It's not the kind of book to sell a gazillion copies, nor does it break any real literary ground. Carol Shields is a capable wordsmith, no doubt, but the authors at the grocery store end-cap have nothing to fear from her. She's got a gay preacher in the last chapters, which I think was inserted for the benefit of the Pulitzer jury.

Personal theory about Pulitzer criteria: if you're commercially successful, fuck off. Elmore Leonard, John MacDonald, etc, forget it. It doesn't matter if your next book makes the works of Shakespeare look like the classified ads, you've made too much money to get the prize. What you have to do is write well enough to pass for 'literature,' but not so well as to create a Pynchon conundrum, with the jury being overruled by the board, resulting in no award at all.

But to make sure you're in the running, better put a gay character in, whether it fits or not. Because the people who nominate and vote on the winners apparently believe that homosexuals, besides being natural interior decorators with great taste in clothing, are essential to worthy literature.

For that matter, the stereotype that gays are better at interior decor and wardrobe than straights, well it's hard to pass up a flattering stereotype, right? Chris Rock made a crack about how the problem with racial stereotypes is that most of the ones applied to blacks are negative. He expressed jealousy for stereotypes such as Jews being good with money. If memory serves, he said something to the effect that, 'I live for the day when someone says, "Hot damn! I got me a nigger accountant!

Hey, what if to win a Pulitzer, you also had t include black characters? And hispanics. Even if the story is about a 19th Century arctic exploration voyage setting sale from Newfoundland? If you have only one character, perhaps you're required to make him sexually ambivalent AND racially inscrutable.

Imagine the frustration of Tom Spanbauer, 'The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon,' it should have been a shoe-in for the Pulitzer. Homosexual incestuous Indian prostitutes pitted against hypocritical Mormons and genocidal cavalry?