Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Eugene O’Neill, Anna Christie.
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Edwin Arlington Robinson: Collected Poems. The poem that everyone knows by Robinson, because Simon and Garfunkel rewrote it and set it to music, is Richard Cory. But here’s another rather enigmatic poem from his Pulitzer Prize winning collection:
Cliff Klingenhagen had me in to dine
With him one day; and after soup and meat,
And all the other things there were to eat,
Cliff took two glasses and filled one with wine
And one with wormwood. Then, without a sign
For me to choose at all, he took the draught
Of bitterness himself, and lightly quaffed
It off, and said the other one was mine.
And when I asked him what the deuce he meant
By doing that, he only looked at me
And smiled, and said it was a way of his.
And though I know the fellow, I have spent
Long time a-wondering when I shall be
As happy as Cliff Klingenhagen is.
Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: Booth Tarkington, Alice Adams
Newbery Award for Children’s Literature in the U.S.: First awarded in 1922 to The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem van Loon.
Also published in 1922:
T.S. Eliot’s master poem, The Wasteland.
The Modernist classic Ulysses by James Joyce.
Sigrid Undset completes her Kristin trilogy with The Cross.
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis.
Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim. I just saw the movie based on this book for the first time, and I thought it was delightful. It’s sort of a modern fairy tale that takes place in a land of enchantment, a castle in Italy. (No fascists to be seen.)
And in February 1922, a new magazine, The Reader’s Digest, is launched. Sadly enough, the Reader’s Digest now is only a pale imitation of its former self. It used to be a fine place to get an introduction to the news topics of the day, plus feature articles, adventure and self-help, plus a condensed version of a best-selling novel or nonfiction story, plus some good jokes, anecdotes, and inspirational quotes. I’ve read it in the past several years a few times, and it just seems more commercial and less significant in the choice of topics and the depth of coverage. Nevertheless, here’s to Reader’s Digest, the magazine where lots of Americans, at any rate, learned to enjoy reading.
Few people read Edward Arlington Robinson today, and it’s their loss.
“Enchanted April” is a favorite movie, too.