Does critical acclaim pay the bills? Hardly

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Back in the good old days, literary prizes would barely buy a used beret. Aside from the big four — the Pulitzer, the Nobel, the Guggenheim and the MacArthur — literary prizes rarely topped $50,000. Imagine my surprise when I received an unassuming little press release announcing the winners of the 2008 Strauss Living winners, a $250,000 prize judged and administered by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Madison Smartt Bell (left) and William T. Vollmann each will receive $50,000 a year for the next five years. Vollmann, who lives in Sacramento, expressed his “gratitude and relief.” Bell, who lives in Maryland and does a lot of freelance journalism, said the prize bought him time. Russell Banks, Ann Beattie, Francine du Plessix Gray and Robert Stone were the judges. Banks said something about “these parlous times, when it’s all too tempting for literary artists to turn inward” to commemorate the announcement.

Harold Strauss was the editor in chief of Alfred A Knopf. He died in 1975. The Strauss Living Awards were established in 1983. In that year, the prize went to Cynthia Ozick and Raymond Carver. The American Academy, housed in three of New York’s toniest landmark buildings, designed by McKim, Mead & White, Cass Gilbert and Charles Pratt Huntington, was founded by, among others, William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Henry James, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

Susan Salter Reynolds