In one of the most gloriously accidental decisions in recent literary history, Percival Everett’s James has won the Pulitzer Prize. Not because it is the best, or the most highly praised, or even the most voted for. It won by default. Because the judges, that select committee of professional indecisives, could not agree on any of the three finalists. So, like someone giving up and tossing a coin, they chose the fourth. A novel that wasn’t in pole position, or on the podium, or even on the radar.
It would be funny if it weren’t so revealing: is the most prestigious literary prize in the United States really awarded as if we were deciding on a pizza for a bachelor party? Best of all, the three finalist novels—the ones that did pass the jury’s quality filter—were by female authors. All women. But of course, choosing one would have meant excluding the other two, and that, in certain circles, is already considered a crime against sensitivity. Better to avoid the moral dilemma and reward a man who happened to be passing by with a recycled Twain novel.
Because James, let’s not kid ourselves, is just that: a re-reading of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of the slave Jim. An idea that is not new, is not particularly provocative in 2025, and, in Everett’s hands, does not seem to have excited more than a handful of critics too busy justifying their frenzy with footnotes. In Spain, at least, someone had the courage to say so: Alberto Olmos, in his column titled with surgical precision: “Why we couldn’t care less about the novel of the year in the United States”, read James in its entirety and lived to tell the tale. What he found was “a novel that is not very long, but quite soporific,” with “deliberately simple and, at times, clumsy prose.”
But the Pulitzer jury, of course, is not swayed by trivialities such as style or emotion. They work with other parameters: identity balance, delicate consensus, internal equilibrium, self-imposed correctness. They do not reward the best novel, but the least controversial. And in this case, the least controversial was the one that no one expected or discussed, because no one thought of it in the first place.
In short, James won because the other three canceled each other out in a Pyrrhic battle. It’s as if in a presidential election, the three main candidates tied with zero votes and the president was the substitute mail carrier who delivered the mail to the White House on November 6.
So congratulations, Everett: you’ve won the lottery without buying a ticket. And congratulations to the jury for showing us that even the Pulitzer can be a parody of itself. Next time, roll the dice and spare us the mock deliberation. Or just award the prize to the least-read novel of the year, as a form of existential protest.
In any case, someone should tell Twain that not only has he been resurrected, but he has also been rewarded with a watered-down version of his own work. He would probably die laughing.
