Pulitzer Prizes! (And ellipses aplenty)

Oh … yeah.

Um, the 2008 Pulitzers were announced a few days ago. I think. I mean, I know they were announced, but what would I be if not late to the story? The Washington Post dominated the journalism awards, taking seven of fifteen awards. Well, fourteen; a jury of five apparently found no nominee compelling enough to give an award for editorial writing. That must sting if you’re Maureen Downey of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Rodger Jones of the Dallas Morning News, or staff of the Wisconsin State Journal.

To be fair, though, jurors did award two prizes for investigative reporting, so the, uh, numbers, er, um … balance … out. Or something.

Ahem.

But let us move on to the more important … okay, relevant awards. (Really, a picture of a dying Japanese photographer amid a Burmese riot is moving and challenging, and I see why it’s a prize-winning capture of a moment in history, but … but … but. Yeah. Another ellipsis. Great. Fill in the blank.)

More humbly, then. Concerning the awards for Letters and Drama:

• Fiction: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz.
• Drama: August: Osage County, by Tracy Letts.
• History: What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, by Daniel Walker Howe.
• Biography: Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father, by John Matteson.
• Poetry: Time and Materials, by Robert Hass.
• Poetry: Failure, by Phillip Schultz.
• General Nonfiction: The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945, by Saul Friedlander.

I would be remiss, of course, if I failed to mention that David Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion received the award for Music, and Bob Dylan was given a Special Citation “for his profound impact on popular music and American culture”.

Our congratulations, of course, for whatever they are worth, to this year’s winners and nominees.

Oh, hey … click this link to read “Failure”, the title poem from Phillip Schultz’s prize-winning collection.

-bd