IP Picks🔎: Ready for a New 'Thelma & Louise'?
➕ 'Mean Girls' with murder, a house swap gone awry — and a classic hero reimagined
Welcome to The Optionist. Thanks for reading along.
The controversy swirling around the Pulitzer Prize Board’s selection of Percival Everett's James for its fiction prize over three finalists that received more votes is interesting in the way it echoes the debate in Hollywood over how much box-office success should be taken into account for the best picture Oscar.
The fiction jury gave the Pulitzer Board, which has the final say, the standard three finalists to consider, plus a fourth pick as an additional option. A majority of the board couldn't agree on any of the three top finalists, so they went with the fourth option: James. This is not unprecedented, but it is rare. The board has disregarded the top-three finalists before, either deciding not to hand out an award (as in 2012), or picking the fourth option as it did for the drama award in 2010 and (most likely) with the fiction prize in 2015. Almost immediately, critics suggested the decision was motivated by sexism and a lack of courage. The top three finalists were all written by women and appealed more to literary critics than the reading public at large. (James, a take on Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn as told through the eyes of James, the enslaved person who escapes to join Huck for part of his adventures, has been a smash, selling more than 700,000 books and spending more than 50 weeks on the Publishers Weekly bestseller list.)
As Drew Broussard, the first to flag the controversy, wrote: “No matter how you slice it, this says to me to the 2025 Fiction Jury turned in what would have been a world-shaking, all-woman trio of finalists in a year when one novel by a male writer has taken up quite a lot of the available oxygen, and the Board — one way or another — said, ‘No.’” He then wondered "if a bit more bravery or even just ambition or, more plainly, willingness to be weird on the part of embattled, well-meaning institutions might be called for, in times such as these.”
I can’t say for sure that sexism didn't play a role, but to me, the explanation is simpler. Like the Oscars, there's always been a tension between what's commercially popular and what's critically celebrated when it comes to the Pulitzer’s book prizes, especially when it comes to fiction. James is the rare novel that has sold well and garnered critical acclaim. In addition to the Pulitzer, it won the National Book Award and was named as a Booker Prize finalist. Also, Everett's personal profile has never been higher thanks to the 2024 best picture nomination for American Fiction, which was based on his 2001 novel Erasure. Not to mention the fact that Steven Spielberg has been planning to bring James to the big screen with Taika Waititi pegged to direct.
I think the Pulitzer Board chose James for attention and relevance. Like the Oscars, I suspect the board is concerned that in a world where the news business is in total shambles and TikTok is the most influential platform for literary criticism, the award isn’t getting the same attention and respect that it once did. In James, the most talked-about literary novel of the year — and a bestseller, to boot — it probably saw the perfect opportunity to have its cake and eat it too.
One more thing on the topic of the Pulitzer Board lacking courage: Although I definitely think there's a need for a robust conversation about sexism in literary prizes, the idea that selecting a reimagining of the most celebrated and controversial novel in American history (and one that focuses on the most controversial part of that story) lacks courage is silly to me. I mean, just look at the headlines. The Trump Administration's attack on DEI programs has led to the Naval Academy’s removal of Maya Angelou from its library (but not Mein Kampf!) and the Department of Defense’s elimination of web pages celebrating the achievements of non-white servicemen and women. These folks want to erase Black people from American history. Period. In that context, honoring a popular novel that also asks Americans to think hard about race and the history of slavery is a pretty brave choice.
On to this week’s picks, which include a female-buddy chase thriller and a taut mystery that’s also an engrossing psychological exploration of how middle school bullying can haunt people for years. The full lineup:
A thriller that could be this generation’s Thelma & Louise
A drama about the unexplained death of a student and how it forces a college journalist to re-examine her role in bullying the victim years earlier
An action-thriller that reimagines Zorro and is already attracting suitors
A dramedy about a house swap between two families in crisis
A Sliding Doors-esque drama that finds a celebrity waking up in an alternate timeline where she’s no longer famous, but her dead BFF is still alive
