[bksvol-discuss] FW: Gilead' captures Pulitzer Prize for fiction

  • From: "Allison Hilliker" <allison.hilliker@xxxxxxx>
  • To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 21:09:06 -0700

EMAIL THIS EmailHi all,

Thought some may find interesting.  Anyone scanning Gilead yet?  

Allison


'Gilead' captures Pulitzer Prize for fiction
By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY
NEW YORK - The novel Gilead and the Broadway drama Doubt, a parable, which both 
deal with religious beliefs and doubts, won Pulitzer Prizes on Monday. (
Extremism under scrutiny: Marilynne Robinson's Gilead examines polarization in 
society.

Marilynne Robinson won the fiction award for her graceful and thoughtful novel 
about a 76-year-old Iowa minister looking back at his life and his forebears.

John Patrick Shanley won the drama prize for a play that deals with a priest 
suspected of molesting a child and with a nun who takes him on, defying a 
patriarchal
church.

In journalism, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times each won two 
prizes. The award for investigative reporting went to the Willamette Week
of Portland, Ore., with a circulation of 90,000, for exposing a former 
governor's sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old girl.

Robinson, 61, who previously won a National Book Critics Circle prize for 
Gilead and the PEN/Hemingway Award for her 1981 debut, Housekeeping, said of 
winning
a Pulitzer: "It's an award you've heard of your entire life. But I'm aware 
there are lots of good books, and there is always something accidental when
one is singled out."

Gilead is written in the form of a letter the Rev. John Ames, in failing 
health, is writing to his 6-year-old son in 1956. It deals with the minister's
life and the lives of his father and grandfather, both of them preachers. One 
is a pacifist, the other is a gun-toting abolitionist.

Robinson, who teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in Iowa City, says the 
novel reflects her belief that "America is quite a religious country, but it's
the extremes that have taken over the public discussion. I think many people 
have a different experience and understanding."

Shanley, 54, said he was 'floored" when he heard the news. "If you work in the 
entertainment field, you're always surprised when things go well. You have
to gear yourself toward disaster in order to survive."

Of his play, he said: "I think that there are certain issues on the table in 
this time we live in. ... There are many people of conviction who live in the
cemetery of ideas. ... People who entertain doubt are living in the combustion 
of life ... I think it may reflect that we're tired of people being utterly
certain of where they stand all the time."

The prizes of $10,000 each are awarded by Columbia University upon the 
recommendation of an 18-member Pulitzer board. In lieu of the cash prize, the 
winner
in public service receives a gold medal.

Contributing: Elysa Gardner

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