As they get ready to announce the Pulitzers, over at The Atlantic Wire our beloved book critic Maureen Corrigan reflects on the upheaval over last year’s awards. Along with the novelist Michael Cunningham and editor Susan Larson, Maureen was one of the jurors for the 2012 fiction prize. They passed on their recommendations to the Pulitzer board (which has final say) and were as shocked as the rest of us to learn there would be no prize awarded that year for fiction.

“We Need A Fiction Pulitzer In 2013”:

Corrigan told me, “It was a terrible day last year. I think my fellow judges and I are cautiously optimistic that the board will complete its job this year; otherwise we probably all wish the Pulitzer anniversary speeds by as quickly and painlessly as possible. It’s so crucial that extraordinary writing be recognized and brought to the attention of a wider audience and prizes like the Pulitzer can do that.” 

There were a couple of high points to hang onto, though. As much as she still feels disappointed about the failure to choose a winner, the reading experience itself was wonderful, Corrigan explained, the sort of thing she’d yearned for in grad school, “like being in the most intense and tiniest book club,” she said. “We did clash and argue, but God, we took it seriously. That’s the part that really made me angry: We heard when everyone else did that there would be no prize, and that there would be no explanation. I think if you don’t give out the prize, you have to give a reason.”

UPDATE: Full list of Pulitzer winners here.

Novelist Mohsin Hamid, who lives in Lahore, Pakistan, talks to Terry Gross about living in cities with a reputation for violence:

In a way, I think if you live in a city or a place where violence is common, then it perhaps doesn’t matter so much if the violence is the likelihood [of] somebody [who’s] going to mug you or attack you in your house or they’re going to blow you up in your barber shop. Violent cities, people who live in violent cities, find a way — as New Yorkers did 30 or 40 years ago — they find a way to just carry on. But you’re stressed out. You’re worried, you know. There’s times when they, for example, will turn off all the cell phone service in Lahore and you can’t make a phone call because they’re scared [that] on a particular religious holiday somebody will use a cell phone to detonate a bomb or coordinate a terrorist attack. You know, that’s freaky when those things happen. In fact, once recently we had a hospital emergency where my father was unwell and we had to take him to hospital but we had no mobile phones. We couldn’t call his doctor, you know. These things happen in daily life and, yeah, it’s upsetting and unsettling.”

Image via Dirty Old 1970s New York City

A dark and stormy night, an isolated manor house and a knock at the door all play a part in Sadie Jones’ delicious romp of a novel. Set in Edwardian England, it tracks a noble but cash-strapped family whose lavish dinner plans go awry when they’re asked to shelter a crowd of refugees.

Maureen Corrigan picks five mysteries you should read this summer: ” All of the following mysteries are written by veterans of the form. Most are part of long-running series; all are standouts, either because of their distinctive literary delights or because of ingenious variations on familiar plots and characters.”

(via 5 New Mysteries Return To The Scene Of The Crime : NPR)

I would probably have to say that reading fiction — those stories fill the space that other people might use religious stories for. The bulk of what I know about human life I’ve gotten from novels. And I think the thing about novels that make them important to the people who love them is that there’s always another perspective.

— Tom Perrotta on fiction vs. religion

When things get too comfortable and things get too safe, I get the feeling like I’m smothering. It’s like somebody’s burying me in feathers.

— Writer Harry Crews died on Wednesday at the age of 76. He had a hard life and didn’t made it any easier for the characters in his novels.

Dirt is the price you pay for a place being interesting.

— Maureen Corrigan, Two Books That Delight in New York City’s Dirt

Every book better be fully intimate, it better be all you have. I’m obviously not shy because I’m going to talk your ear off today but I’m private, which is different. But the idea for me to be truly intimate – for me to be naked and raw – the fiction allows me to do what I need to do emotionally. And with this book, certain stories were looking at things – it was a change for me to look at things that were right there.

— Nathan Englander on writing fiction.

I have a friend who reads the obituaries looking for fresh widowers before someone else gets to them. And all she requires is a penis and a pulse.

— Hilma Wolitzer’s finely observed comedy of manners follows the romantic misadventures of recently widowed 62-year-old Edward Schuyler, who reenters the dating pool with a splash.

Maureen Corrigan’s 10 Favorite Novels of 2011

Poetry and Fiction About War

An Army Wife Reflects On ‘When The Men Are Gone’

Soldier-Poet Brian Turner, Framing War in Verse

Reflecting ‘Stateside’ With A Loved One At War

Poets Of World War II

Russell Banks’ latest is an uneven effort to excavate and redeem the dregs of modern society. Critic Maureen Corrigan says the novel — about porn addiction and sexual predators — is compelling in a low grade, nightmarish sort of way.

Namely, could it be that a decade after the attacks, America finally has the 9/11 novel — one that does justice, artistically and historically, to the aftershocks of that day?

— Maureen Corrigan reviews Amy Waldman’s debut novel, The Submission.

I would probably have to say that reading fiction — those stories fill the space that other people might use religious stories for. The bulk of what I know about human life I’ve gotten from novels. And I think the thing about novels that make them important to the people who love them is that there’s always another perspective.

— Tom Perrotta, on the importance of fiction in his life.

tballardbrown:

 Taking On Crime In A Racially Divided D.C. : NPR

All 17 of George Pelecanos’ crime novels have been set in his hometown of Washington, D.C. — but he isn’t writing about politicians, lawyers or lobbyists. Instead, Pelecanos’ stories look at the city’s greasers and drug dealers, its working black families, and its ethnic neighborhoods.