No fiction worth celebrating?

By now, most people who are interesting in important prizes have discovered no Pulitzer prize was given for fiction this year.     The last time that happened was in 1977.    Despite how it may seem, hundreds of American authors publish books every year.    Take this link for a succinct description of the process of choosing, written by one of the people who gave the committee the three possibilities.  (I think the URL is longer than the article.)   http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/pulitzers-no-decision-in-fiction-exposes-flaws-in-the-process/2012/04/18/gIQAXJooRT_story.html?wprss=rss_style    I haven't read the three 'offerings' so I can't verify their worthiness...or lack of worthiness.    All I can do is question how no novels or short story collections could be worthy of this prize.   None.    The curt, ambiguous answer is 'no consensus could be reached.'    So why couldn't it?   If a small group of talented, knowledgeable, discerning readers can whittle a list of 300 or so down to three, how could the actual committee fail to choose one of them?    The Washington Post article posits some half-assed reasons that have been bandied about--to the fury of the woman who helped whittle the list. 

I suspect something more mundane is at work, based on my knowledge of the awards in past years: none of the three were 'high-profile' enough to be selected.    Think I'm off?    Look at the list: how many have you heard about or read?    How many authors are unknown to you?    If you read American fiction even moderately, the answer to the first will be a high number and the second, a low.    And though two of the authors on this year's short list are known, respected authors, these particular works did not arrive with the necessary hoopla--and in the case of David Foster Wallace's The Pale King, negative press.    As the article explains, he didn't finish it.   He died in 2008.   Someone put his fragments together into the form that was published.    That kind of thing is never going to win.    It can be the greatest work of fiction in the last twenty years, no way does it get picked.     (I doubt it is.)    And it certainly didn't burn up the bestseller lists.    Neither did the other two.

The much discussed 'problems' of the selection process lie with the committee voters.    They are not specialists.    Nor really experts.    Their conservatism is obvious.    They choose what will make them look 'important', politically 'aware', 'relavant'.    Worth seems to be incidental,  though I have only read two winning novels of recent vintage I thought mediocre, and by that I mean, neither terrible nor wonderful: Rabbit at Rest by John Updike and American Pastoral by Philip Roth.   The latter was particularly disappointing when it won over a singularly American masterpiece: Don DeLillo's Underworld.  (I have to admit, the winners were certainly 'popular'.)    My list of mediocre plays is longer, alas.    And the prize for music has become a place to name someone who hasn't won before but writes in a style that everyone has heard before, namely, tonal.   Many of these pieces are good, a few are great, but none in the last twenty-five years would challenge a season ticket holder to The New York Phil, or any other conservative symphonic body (save maybe L.A. or San Francisco) or most Chamber Music Societies in the country.    I heard early works by this years winner, Kevin Puts.   He was young.   I'm sure a decade has garnered him needed experience, so he has had the chance to polish his skills where they were lacking.   (The pieces I heard were rather 'unfinished', though his talent was never in question.)    I would bet money, piece unheard, he did not get less conservative.   And with the 'new rules' allowing any kind of music at all, the conservative factor will only go up.    I'm not against tonal music.    Tonality is still a viable means of communication.    Jennifer Higdon knows how to use it well.    (She won in 2010 for her Violin Concerto.)     It just shouldn't be the criteria.     And there is absolutely no reason why the fiction prize went unawarded this year--no good one, anyway.