The Non-Pulitzer and the Metrics of Magic

"On April 16, 2012, the Pulitzer Prize Board announced that it would award no Pulitzer for fiction in 2012. This was, to say the least, surprising and upsetting to any number of people, prominent among them the three fiction jurors, who’d read over three hundred novels and short-story collections, and finally submitted three finalists, each remarkable (or so we believed) in its own way. [...]

The board’s deliberations are sealed. No one outside the [Pulitzer Prize] board will ever know why they decided to withhold the prize.

  
     Utter objectivity, however, is not only impossible when judging literature, it’s not exactly desirable. Fiction involves trace elements of magic; it works for reasons we can explain and also for reasons we can’t. If novels or short-story collections could be weighed strictly in terms of their components (fully developed characters, check; original voice, check; solidly crafted structure, check; serious theme, check) they might satisfy, but they would fail to enchant. A great work of fiction involves a certain frisson that occurs when its various components cohere and then ignite. The cause of the fire should, to some extent, elude the experts sent to investigate."
— Michael Cunningham, Page-Turner (The New Yorker)
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PO'd Publishers Poo-poo Pulitzer Prize Pronouncement

Joseph Pulitzer, 1847 - 1911
(From: Wikipedia)

"One day after the Pulitzer Prize board said it would not award a Pulitzer in fiction for the first time in 35 years, the publishing industry was still seething, with some going as far as offering surrogate winners.
     Publishers Weekly posted a list of books from 2011 that could have been chosen, including Chad Harbach’s Art of Fielding and The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka.
     On Tuesday, Sarah McNally, the owner of McNally Jackson Books in SoHo, said she would present her own awards to The Great Night by Chris Adrian, We the Animals by Justin Torres and Pym by Mat Johnson.
     Publishers Weekly posted a list of books from 2011 that could have been chosen, including Chad Harbach’s Art of Fielding and The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka.
     On Twitter, Doubleday suggested the Twitterverse choose its own Pulitzer winner (using the hashtag #TwitterPulitzer), immediately prompting nominations like The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta and The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides.
     Striking a rare note of optimism, publishers of the three fiction finalists said they hoped the books would nevertheless get a boost in a rare year without a winner in the spotlight. 'In years past it’s the Pulitzer winner that captures all the attention and all the sales,' said Paul Bogaards, a spokesman for Alfred A. Knopf. 'But since this year there was not a winner and there’s much conversation about the finalists, this may be an opportunity and a catalyst for sales.'”
— Julie Bosman, The New York Times
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