Pulitzer Book Club Inclusion Guide
No Pulitzer Novel Award 1940
INCLUSION MILESTONES
1941
• Pearl Harbor attack sparks US World War II involvement
• Lindbergh's antisemitism publicly condemned
• Exec Order 8802 bans racial employment discrimination
AUTHOR INSPIRATIONS
Pulitzer jurors identified “The Trees” (Conrad Richter) and “The Ox-Bow Incident” (Walter Van Tilburg Clark) as candidates for Pulitzer Novel Prize. Pulitzer board felt “For Whom The Bell Tolls” (Ernst Hemingway) should win.
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Columbia University President, Nicholas Butler, calls Hemingway’s novel “offensive and lascivious.”
Board caves to Butler; awards no prize rather than award the Pulitzer to a “lesser” novel than “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
For “Whom the Bell Tolls” was a Book-of-the-Month selection and best seller by an author who ultimately won a Pulitzer (Old Man and the Sea) and the Nobel Prize for Literature.
1941 was the first time since 1920 that there was no prize awarded for the Novel.
“For what are we born if not to aid one another?”
― Ernest Hemingway, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”
Novelist Dorothy Canfield Fisher, likely the first female member of a Pulitzer Novel jury, was part of the jury that rejected “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
Force feeding.
“For Whom the Bell Tolls” is (also) a John Donne poem.
Boardroom.
What is your reaction to the Pulitzer novel selection/review process for the 1941 prize?
What makes a novel or leader’s behavior “offensive” or “lascivious”?
“For Whom the Bell Tolls” is set in Spain during the Spanish Civil War.
“For Whom the Bell Tolls” was adapted as a movie in 1943.
“The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” (Carson McCullers) and “Native Son” (Richard Wright) were published in 1940.