Pulitzer winners

I pay a lot of attention to my dreams. Often they’re no more than mental regurgitation of a day’s events, or nonsense, if I recall them at all. But some stand out in my mind and provide important insights. Do you ever act on your dreams?

This morning I dreamed I met a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning author. The author in the dream doesn’t exist in real life, as far as I know. He let me take a look at his latest prize. It was a large silver disk, nothing close to what is actually presented to winners, I’m sure.

I don’t have any ambitions of winning an award like that. I’ll be glad if a publisher picks up any of my scribblings. But that dream made me wonder if I should read more award-winning books—winners of the big honors like the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. It would be a good learning experience and might be easy on my budget, if I can find them in my local library.

I looked up some lists of winners, and realized some are books I’ve already read, some I’ve considered reading in the past but never got around to, and others I’ve never heard of and wonder why.

Some actual two-time or more Pulitzer winners, though not necessarily in the same category (and presented here in no particular order):

John Updike

Norman Mailer

Robert Penn Warren

Richard Wilbur (poet)

Toni Morrison has won both the Pulitzer and the Nobel once each

Philip Roth has won the Pulitzer once, the PEN/Faulkner Award twice, and the National Book Award twice