Om mislykket romanforfatter som forsøker å rømme unna problemene sine. Men Pulitzerprisen klarte ikke Greer å flykte fra.
Sent i går kveld norsk tid var det duket for utdeling av årets Pulitzer-priser: 14 innenfor journalistikk og syv innenfor drama, litteratur og musikk.
Årets skjønnlitterære vinner var slett ingen bombe. Andrew Sean Greers Less ble utropt til en av fjorårets beste bøker av et helt kobbel av ledende amerikanske medier: Washington Post, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post og Paris Review, samt den amerikanske bibliotekforeningen.
Vinnerromanen beskrives som en satire om amerikaneren utenlands og som en bittersøt kjærlighetshistorie om tapte sjanser. Handlingen kretser rundt Arthur Less, en mislykket romanforfatter i midtlivskrise. En bryllupsinvitasjon dumper ned i posten. Kjæresten din gjennom de siste ni årene skal gifte seg med en annen. Å takke ja vil gjøre det beklemt, å takke nei vil være et nederlag. På skrivebordet ligger en rekke invitasjoner til mer eller mindre halvgode litteraturarrangementer verden over. Hvordan flykte fra byen? Ved å takke ja til dem alle.
Siden går det slag i slag med vår venn Arthur. Som forlaget beskriver det: “What would possibly go wrong? Arthur Less will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Saharan sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and encounter, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to face. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. Through it all, there is his first love. And there is his last.”
Her er årets vinnere innenfor drama/litteratur, med juryens begrunnelse:
Fiction:
Andrew Sean Greer: Less (Lee Boudreaux Books/Little, Brown and Company). “A generous book, musical in its prose and expansive in its structure and range, about growing older and the essential nature of love.”
Drama:
Martyna Majok: Cost of Living. “An honest, original work that invites audiences to examine diverse perceptions of privilege and human connection through two pairs of mismatched individuals: a former trucker and his recently paralyzed ex-wife, and an arrogant young man with cerebral palsy and his new caregiver.”
Historie:
Jack E. Davis: The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea (Liveright/W.W. Norton). “An important environmental history of the Gulf of Mexico that brings crucial attention to Earth’s 10th-largest body of water, one of the planet’s most diverse and productive marine ecosystems.”
Biografi:
Caroline Fraser: Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Metropolitan Books). “A deeply researched and elegantly written portrait of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House on the Prairie series, that describes how Wilder transformed her family’s story of poverty, failure and struggle into an uplifting tale of self-reliance, familial love and perseverance.”
Poesi:
Frank Bidart: Collected Poems 1965-2016 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). “A volume of unyielding ambition and remarkable scope that mixes long dramatic poems with short elliptical lyrics, building on classical mythology and reinventing forms of desires that defy societal norms.”
Generell nonfiction:
James Forman jr: Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). “An examination of the historical roots of contemporary criminal justice in the U.S., based on vast experience and deep knowledge of the legal system, and its often-devastating consequences for citizens and communities of color.”
Rapperen Lamar vant for øvrig årets musikk-Pulitzer. Mer om de øvrige vinnerne her.
(Foto: Kaliel Roberts)
