Pulitzer Mania!

The Pulitzer Prizes have been announced. Junot Diaz continues to dominate fiction, winning the award for The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Robert Hass, whose poem I discussed last week, has won the poetry prize. The Baltimore Sun was shut out, despite Scott Templeton's incredible work on the homeless problem in Baltimore. Tough break, buddy. In other news, people just can't stop throwing bouquets at Bob Dylan, as he won the award in "Special Citations," which sounds roughly like what you get if the cops catch you smuggling fruit into California.

The winners in the book-ish categories:

• Fiction: The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz
• History: What Hath God Wrought, by Daniel Walker Howe
• Biography: Eden's Outcasts, by John Matteson
• Poetry: Time and Materials, by Robert Hass and Failure, by Philip Schultz
• General Non-fiction: The Years of Extermination, by Saul Friedlander
• Drama: August: Osage County, by Tracy Letts