The book that started my Pulitzer shelf

As I said in my previous post, my interest in reading winners of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction started with One of Ours by Willa Cather. However, I have since learned that I had read a number of other great winners of the award: Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose, Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth, Upton Sinclair's Dragon's Teeth, Allen Drury's Advise and Consent, William Faulkner's The Reivers, Alice Walker's The Color Purple, and Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove. Before learning about the award, I didn't pay much attention to whether any of these books had won the Pulitzer. I found out later they had won the award and realized that the Pulitzer had been given to some of my favorite novels.

Some people might wonder why I have focused only on the winners of the fiction award and have not gone in for reading winners of the Pulitzer Prize for history, biography, drama, or non-fiction. My only explanation is that I love a good story with the characters, the situations with whick they struggle, and the ways they resolve their problems. The Pulitzer Prize for fiction is usually given to an American author dealing with life in America. What could be better than reading to find out whether Jody in The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings gets to keep the young deer he has raised as a pet even though it is eating the family's crops? What could be better than reading the Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk to find out whether the officers on the USS Caine who relieved Captain Queeg of his command during World War II were justified because of Queeg's irrational behavior? So, fiction fits my interests and gives me enjoyment in my leisure reading. Also, I don't have time to read everything, even if it won the Pulitzer for some category other than fiction. Therefore, I choose fiction.


Now more about the book that got me started on my Pulitzer reading. I will share some of my views of One of Ours by Willa Cather, 1922, the Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction in 1923.

In One of Ours Cather writes of a young man, Claude Wheeler, who grows up on his family’s prosperous farm in Nebraska during the years leading up to World War I. It’s a rather contented time for the people on the large Midwest farms, at least for the Wheeler’s in Nebraska. There seems to be plenty of land, corn, and cattle. The farm life required a lot of work but families assisted by hired hands were able to produce a surplus. Better tractors, trucks and automobiles were purchased with the surplus. Prosperity also made it possible for some of the sons to leave the farm to seek other employment or a college education. Claude’s older brother got to be a farm implement dealer in their town. Claude wanted to go to the University of Nebraska but, instead, ended up being obedient to his father’s wish that he stay on the farm and take it over one day.

Claude married a woman who seems to love him but leaves the farm to help her sister with the missionary work she is doing in China. Claude continues to work on the farm but isn’t contented. World War I comes along in time to give Claude a chance for a new life and he is eager to go to war. One of Ours suggests that America was ready for a war and the Nebraska farms were able to send their sons into battle. The boys were ready to go over there and teach the Kaiser a lesson. Claude loves his war experience in France and finally finds what he has been looking for in life. He finally starts living but does he really? I won’t give away the end but I strongly recommend One of Ours by Willa Cather.