New York, May 5—Sinclair Lewis today refused to accept the $1,000 Pulitzer prize for his novel “Arrowsmith.”
Asserting that all prizes, like all titles, are dangerous, and that the Pulitzer prize is “peculiarly objectionable,” he wrote the award committee that he considered by such awards “every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient and sterile.”
He wrote that although it was generally believed the prize was given to the novel of greatest literary merit, the term of the award actually called for selection of the book “best presenting the wholesome atmosphere of American life and the highest standard of American manners and manhood.”
“This phrase, if it means anything at all,” he wrote, “would appear to mean that the appraisal of the novels should be made not according to their actual literary merit but in obedience to whatever code of good form may chance to be popular at the moment.”
From the front page of The Concord Times, Thursday, May 6, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn91068271/1926-05-06/ed-1/seq-1/
Taking inflation into account a $1,000 prize would be worth about $18,656 today. The book explores the conflict between idealism and practicality, highlighting the tension between scientific integrity and commercial pressures in medicine.
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