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Outcry over absent fiction Pulitzer shames literary world

Why absence of a Pulitzer in fiction is a good thing

By Leah Hager Cohen

 | 

    April 22, 2012

The Pulitzer Board seems to have shamed its own jury by declining to approve any of its finalists, and in turn to have shamed all of American letters, or at least its fiction output over the past year. Furthermore shame is endemic to the entire system of meting out prizes for creative endeavors. While awards are meant to commend, and thus to nurture art, they also hurt the very thing that is essential to making it.

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