"In those early days, another person also shaped the Pulitzer Prizes into awards that would honor works that unapologetically sought to better the moral and nationalistic spirit of the age. Nicholas Murray Butler, whose numerous accomplishments would later include running for vice president of the United States on the Republican ticket in 1912, seeking the Republican nomination for president in 1920 and 1928, and winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, was appointed acting president of Columbia University in 1901 and assumed the presidency the following year. He held that post until his retirement in October 1945, and his reign over Columbia—during which the student body increased from 4,000 to 34,000—also extended to the formation, administration, and expansion of the Pulitzer Prizes.44 Like Pulitzer, Butler viewed the arts through a moral lens. In a 1904 draft memo for the prizes, Pulitzer indicated that he wanted the prize for the novel to recognize a work of fiction that “shall best present the whole atmosphere of American life, and the highest standard of American manners and manhood.” Butler changed the wording to read “wholesome atmosphere,” the advisory board approved this change in 1915, and until the public debacle over Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith in 1926, when Lewis refused the prize that year on account of a snub by the Pulitzer Advisory Board over his novel Main Street (1920), Butler's emendation stood.45In the Selected Letters, Hemingway's only comment on the Pulitzer is on the occasion of winning the award in 1953. On 6 May 1953, Hemingway wrote Wallace Meyer that:
Butler refracted much of life through this powerful prism. After America entered World War I, he “proclaimed a moratorium on academic freedom in which he threatened all faculty members who ‘are not with whole heart and mind and strength committed to fight with us to make the world safe for democracy.’”46 He also single-handedly prevented Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls from receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1941. When the advisory board affirmed their choice of the Hemingway novel, “Butler angrily moved to the doorway of the Trustees' Room and there announced that he would refuse to submit the Board's recommendation to the [university] Trustees.” His brinksmanship went unreported for over twenty years, but no one dared cross him at that time.47
44Information on Nicholas Murray Butler comes from http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1931/butler-bio.html.
45Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, 55–57. For more on the struggle over Lewis, see Fritz H. Oehlschlaeger, “Hamlin Garland and the Pulitzer Prize Controversy of 1921,” American Literature 51, no. 3 (Nov. 1979): 409–14.
46Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, 29. For a broader view of the Red Scare of 1917–1920, see Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort (New York: Guildford Press, 2000), 87–91.
47Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prizes, 144–46. Hohenberg posits that Butler held a personal antipathy toward Hemingway's works, although Hohenberg offers no documentation to support this assertion (92–93)."
"Actually Mary was very pleased and I was pleased too although I don't take it very seriously after the A Farewell to Arms business and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Wasn't it that year [1941] that they refused to give a prize at all? I remember Max [Perkins] writing me about it. There was some kind of monkey business too about A Farewell to Arms. But I've forgotten what it was."Baker only says:
"A meeting of the Advisory Board on Pulitzer Prizes was meantime talking place at Columbia University, far away in New York. The judges unanimously chose For Whom the Bell Tolls as the best novel written by an American and published in 1940. But the Chairman of the Board had other ideas. 'I hope,' said Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia, 'that you will reconsider before you ask the University to be associated with an award for a work of this nature.' The Board, which included Arthur Krock of The New York Times, heard this veto with dismay. But the 'few feeble murmurs' around the table died quickly away, and Hemingway, who had never won a major literary prize, was denied this one by an act of Olympian intercession. In Manila some days later, he learned that there would be no Pulitzer Award in fiction for the year 1940." (pg. 363)posted by octobersurprise at 7:33 AM on April 17, 2012 [2 favorites]
« Older Three thousand years ago, snow fell on Greenland, ... | "We're bringing you a new Time... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by obscurator at 2:01 PM on April 16, 2012 [12 favorites]