April 24, 2009

Failed novelist with absolutely no sense of bitterness about it gets job at NPR

by

Margaret Ayers Barnes: Literary loser, says NPR

Margaret Ayers Barnes: Literary Loser, says NPR

According to this NPR story — which has been stirring up something of a fuss — you’re kind of a loser if you win the Pulitzer Prize yet don’t become a household name for the length of posterity.They offer the following list in evidence:

  • His Family by Ernest Poole, 1918
  • Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield, 1927
  • Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin, 1929
  • Laughing Boy by Oliver Lafarge, 1930
  • Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes, 1931
  • The Store by T.S. Stribling, 1933
  • Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller, 1934
  • Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson, 1935
  • Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis, 1936
  • In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow, 1942
  • Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin, 1944
  • Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens, 1949
  • The Way West by A.B. Guthrie, 1950
  • The Town by Conrad Richter, 1951
  • The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor, 1959
  • The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O’Connor, 1962
  • Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson, 1978

As postulated by the NPR reporter, whose name I’ve forgotten: “Were these books great in their time, but only in their time? Were the Pulitzer jurors simply out to lunch? Or maybe the literary pickings are just slim some years.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.

  • CDM

    Travels of Jamie McPheeters is a terrific read, even at this late date. It certainly doesn’t deserve obscurity.

  • CDM

    Travels of Jamie McPheeters is a terrific read, even at this late date. It certainly doesn’t deserve obscurity.

  • Joanna

    Our bookgroup is doing Years of Grace and I was trolling for information and photos of the author when I found this NPR story. Although not read widely, I think this novel was a wonderful view of Chicago from 1890s-1920s. It seems to me that “classics” go in and out of fashion; for a number of years Nelson Algren was out of print and hence it was impossible to assign readings on him or do scholarship, so it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle of obscurity. There is definitely an Edith Wharton influence to Barnes work and I wish that she was more widely read.

  • Joanna

    Our bookgroup is doing Years of Grace and I was trolling for information and photos of the author when I found this NPR story. Although not read widely, I think this novel was a wonderful view of Chicago from 1890s-1920s. It seems to me that “classics” go in and out of fashion; for a number of years Nelson Algren was out of print and hence it was impossible to assign readings on him or do scholarship, so it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle of obscurity. There is definitely an Edith Wharton influence to Barnes work and I wish that she was more widely read.

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