![]() ![]() ![]() Such criticism was not entirely parochial, and some of the negative comments on Pearl Buck’s writing abilities strike us still as very much on the mark. Chinahand Buck.” Lists of American writers besides Dreiser whom contemporaries mentioned as more deserving of the Nobel than Pearl Buck included Mark Twain, Henry James, Sherwood Anderson, Willa Cather, and John Dos Passos. ![]() It should have gone to Dreiser”-Pearson responded: “Nuts to her, say I, I think that was putting it mildly.” A full decade later on the eve of his own selection for the Nobel Prize, William Faulkner was still mocking “Mrs. The critic Norman Holmes Pearson referred to the academy choice as reducing the Nobel to the “hammish” (his word) level of the Pulitzer Prize and commented, “Thank heavens I have seen no one who has taken it seriously.” Referring to Pearl Buck’s widely quoted comment when she received the Nobel news-“I don’t believe it…. ![]() Pearl Buck had dedicated her writing life to novels and memoirs about China, and her selection was seen as a sop to public opinion, in a world where Japanese and German war scares were becoming a reality and China was a prime victim. They were not impressed that this was the third choice by the academy of an American writer in a mere eight years-the first being Sinclair Lewis in 1930, the second Eugene O’Neill in 1936. The announcement by the Swedish Academy in November 1938 that Pearl Buck had been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature was met with sarcasm and even derision by many writers and critics. ![]()
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