The Pulitzer prize for fiction will not be awarded this year after the jury couldn`t raise a majority for any of the candidates. But is this such a bad thing?Alex Clark: Observer writer and former Booker prize judge Just what the literary world needs - another judging spat! I confess that when I heard that the Pulitzer prize for fiction, due to be awarded to the best American novel of last year, was being kept in its cupboard because the committee couldn`t reach a majority verdict about any one of the three finalists, my first thought was - good on them. Why do prize juries insist on pronouncing one book - or play, or work of art, or piece of music - worthy of attention and acclaim, even if they privately think that it wasn`t all that, just the thing that drifted to the top of the pile or whose advocate had the loudest voice in the final meeting?But then I began to think that this is not as strong a statement as one might hope. The committee -called on to adjudicate between three novels from an initial 341, which had been sifted by three judges that included novelist Michael Cunningham - weren`t actually making a stand about the quality of contemporary fiction, they were just admitting that they didn`t know how to make their minds up. And more importantly they`ve made the prize seem somehow detached from what`s really going on in the world of letters. An award should be a snapshot of the cream of a culture at a particular moment - not the expression of some Platonic ideal of art. Shouldn`t it?Nick Fraser: Broadcast editor and former Sundance festival judge When it comes to prizes I am deeply conflicted. If any film, book or public figure in relation to whom I can claim the remotest connection wins the obscurest prize, I`ll join in the chorus of acclamation. And I am filled with indignation when the films I`ve helped produce don`t win. But something always says to me, `Hey, stop... ` Beginning with my school days, when I aimed to cart away every prize in sig ...
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