The Challenge

My officemate slapped a list on my desk about three weeks ago. The heading was "The Challenge," and below that was a list of all the books that have ever won the Pulitzer prize in fiction. Our job, she said, was to read all of them.



Then, as she looked at the list, she realized she would have to read Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. She declared she simply couldn't make herself deal with him. He's currently much out of favor in the academy, owing to his sexism, cardboard cutout female characters, etc., etc., etc. I, for one, find his work quite stimulating despite his shortcomings, but since I cannot bear Annie Proulx's precious characters, we then allowed as how each of us could elect to omit ONE selection. Note, however, that in order to count Updike's Rabbit is Rich, we have to read the entire trilogy. Another thing: books on CD or audiotape are not permitted.

Here is what I have already read:

The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee (who hasn't?)
The Optimist's Daughter, Eudora Welty
A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
Beloved, Toni Morrison (what happened to her?)
Breathing Lessons, Anne Tyler
A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (an Indiana connection here)
The Hours, Michael Cunningham (in my top ten list)
Empire Falls, Richard Russo
Middlesex, Jeffry Eugenides
The Road, Cormac McCarthy



I just finished McCarthy's The Road, an excellent but grim book that has made me exceptionally grateful that spring is only a month away. Two nights ago, I picked up Styron's Angle of Repose. I've read perhaps twenty pages and it is excellent so far, a quality distinctly absent from some of the selections on this list. Despite the trendy choices the esteemed committee has made in the past, it's a great list to chew through, though I suppose this contest ranks right up there with my current mania for knitting as an exercise in futility. Perhaps it is self-indulgent and pointless in the long run; there are many great books and films written today, and sweaters in every color are available for fifty bucks or less right now at Macy's. But it's winter time, and even though the writers' strike is ended, there is nothing on television (there never really was), and these pasttimes keep me from mischief.