A lesson in completely missing the point, on the 95th anniversary of Main Street

On the infallibility of literary awards givers:

In 1921, the Pulitzer committee unanimously recommended Main Street, but the trustees of Columbia University vetoed it and instead chose Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence (1922), which they praised for its "wholesome atmosphere of American life and the highest standard of American manners and manhood." Lewis was annoyed, but he admired Wharton and sent her a sincere congratulatory letter. Wharton wasn't too pleased either, since the trustees thought her novel was praising a way of life she meant to be criticizing; she responded to Lewis: "When I discovered that I was being rewarded — by one of our leading Universities — for uplifting American morals, I confess I did despair. Subsequently, when I found the prize should really have been yours, but was withdrawn because your book (I quote from memory) had 'offended a number of prominent persons in the Middle West,' disgust was added to despair." Two years later, the same thing happened with Lewis's next novel, Babbitt (1922); it was recommended for the Pulitzer, but again it was overruled by the trustees, this time losing to Willa Cather's One of Ours (1922). Lewis wrote in a letter to his father: "I'm quite sure I never shall get the Pulitzer — my books are too critical to please polite committees. [...] Personally I don't care a hang." When he was offered the 1926 Pulitzer for Arrowsmith (1925), he refused it. But in 1930, Lewis became the first American to win the Nobel Prize in literature, an honor that he accepted.