Annal:1984 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Pulitzer Prize in the year 1984. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Ironweed: A Novel
- 1984 Pulitzer–fiction winner
- 1983 NBCC–Fiction winner
- 1984 PEN-faulkner finalist
- Score: 26.34
Francis Phelan, ex-ballplayer, part-time gravedigger, full-time drunk, has hit bottom. Years ago he left Albany in a hurry after killing a scab during a trolley workers’ strike. He ran away again after accidentally—and fatally—dropping his infant son.
Now, in 1938, Francis is back in town, roaming the old familiar streets with his hobo pal, Helen, trying to make peace with the ghosts of the past and the present.
- 1984 Pulitzer–fiction finalist
- Score: 6.34
In The Feud Thomas Berger returns to the era and milieu that he knows best—small-town America in the 1930s. THE FEUD chronicles encounters, hostile and amorous, between members of the Bellers of Hornbeck and Bullards of Millville.
The trouble begins when Dolf Beller, on an innocent mission for paint remover, chews an unlit cigar in Bud Bullard’s hardware store, where no smoking is allowed. Within 24 hours the store burns down. Dolf’s car blows up—and the feud begins.
“I marked my copy of The Feud with a star wherever its blend of irony,…
- 1984 Pulitzer–fiction finalist
- 1983 NBCC–Fiction finalist
- Score: 12.34
“A dozen stories that overflow with the danger, excitement, mystery and possibility of life…Carver is a writer of astonishing compassion and honesty…his eye set only on describing and revealing the world as he sees it. His eye is so clear, it almost breaks your heart.” —Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World
“Cathedral contains astonishing achievements, which bespeaks a writer expanding his range of intentions.” —The Boston Globe
“A few of Mr. Carver’s stories can already be counted among the masterpieces of American…
