Entertainment

NEW YORK (AP) ― Thanks to Bob Dylan, rock 'n' roll has finally broken through the Pulitzer wall.

Dylan, the most acclaimed and influential songwriter of the past half century, who more than anyone brought rock from the streets to the lecture hall, received an honorary Pulitzer Prize on Monday, cited for his "profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."

It was the first time Pulitzer judges, who have long favored classical music, and, more recently, jazz, awarded an art form once dismissed as barbaric, even subversive.

"I am in disbelief," Dylan fan and fellow Pulitzer winner Junot Diaz said of Dylan's award.

Diaz's "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," a tragic but humorous story of desire, politics and violence among Dominicans at home and in the United States, won the fiction prize. Diaz, 39, worked for more than a decade on his first novel -- "I spent most of the time on dead-ends and doubts," he told The Associated Press on Monday -- and at one point included a section about Dylan.

"Bob Dylan was a problem for me," Diaz, who has also published a story collection, "Drown," said with a laugh. "I had one part that was 40 pages long, the entire chapter was organized around Bob Dylan's lyrics over a two year-period (1967-69). By the end of it, I wanted to throttle my like of Bob Dylan."

The Pulitzer for drama was given to Tracy Letts' "August: Osage County," which, like Diaz's novel, combines comedy and brutality. Letts calls the play "loosely autobiographical," a bruising family battle spanning several generations of unhappiness and unfulfilled dreams.

"It's a play I have been working on in my head and on paper for many years now," said Letts, reached by the AP in Chicago at the Steppenwolf Theater Company, where "August: Osage County" had its world premiere last summer.

"There were just some details from my grandmother, my grandfather's suicide (for example) that I had played over and over in my head for many, many years. I always thought, `Well, that's the stuff of drama right there."'

Former U.S. poet laureate Robert Hass, already a National Book Award winner for "Time and Materials," won the poetry Pulitzer, as did Philip Schultz's "Failure."

"This is the book ... I have always wanted to write," Schultz told the AP. "Everyone is expert on one subject and failure seems to be mine. ... I was born into it. My father went bankrupt when I was 18 and he died soon afterward out of (a) terrible sense of shame. And we lost everything, my mother and I."

Other winners Monday: Daniel Walker Howe, for history, for "What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848"; Saul Friedlander, general nonfiction, for "The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945"; for biography, John Matteson's "Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father."

"I wrote my book in a way that is generally accessible to the curious literate reader," Howe said. "And I think that's very important, and I wish more books were written that way."

"It's a special honor because it ties me even more to the country of which I'm now a citizen," said Friedlander, who became a U.S. citizen seven years ago and won the German Booksellers Association's 2007 Peace Prize for his work on documenting the Holocaust.

"I am surprised, grateful, overjoyed -- and a little embarrassed to do this with my first book," said Matteson, a professor of English at John Jay College in New York City who added that his 14-year-old daughter was an inspiration.

"Not only did I understand parenting better after writing the book, but being a parent helped me to write the book."

Dylan's victory doesn't mean that the Pulitzers have forgotten classical composers. The competitive prize for music was given to David Lang's "The Little Match Girl Passion," which opened last fall at Carnegie Hall, where Dylan has also performed.

"Bob Dylan is the most frequently played artist in my household so the idea that I am honored at the same time as Bob Dylan, that is humbling," Lang told the AP.

Long after most of his contemporaries either died, left the business or held on by the ties of nostalgia, Dylan continues to tour almost continuously and release highly regarded CDs, most recently "Modern Times." Fans, critics and academics have obsessed over his lyrics -- even digging through his garbage for clues -- since the mid-1960s, when such protest anthems as "Blowin' in the Wind" made Dylan a poet and prophet for a rebellious generation.

His songs include countless biblical references and he has claimed Chekhov, Walt Whitman and Jack Kerouac as influences. His memoir, "Chronicles, Volume One," received a National Book Critics Circle nomination in 2005 and is widely acknowledged as the rare celebrity book that can be treated as literature.

The 2008 Pulitzer Prize winners and finalists:

JOURNALISM:

Public Service: The Washington Post for exposing the mistreatment of wounded veterans at Walter Reed Hospital. Finalists: The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer for reporting on the effects of the mortgage crisis; Newsday of Long Island for investigation of dangerous gaps on railroad platforms.

Breaking News Reporting: The Washington Post staff for its coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre. Finalists: The (Boise) Idaho Statesman staff for its coverage of the Sen. Larry Craig scandal; The New York Times staff for coverage of a fire in the Bronx that killed nine people, eight of them children.

Investigative Reporting: Walt Bogdanich and Jake Hooker of The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune staff. The Times won for stories on toxic ingredients in medicine and other products imported from China; the Tribune for exposing faulty regulation of toys, car seats and cribs. Finalist: Miles Moffeit and Susan Greene of The Denver Post for reports on the destruction of evidence in criminal cases.

Explanatory Reporting: Amy Harmon of The New York Times for her examination of the dilemmas and ethical issues that accompany DNA testing. Finalists: Beth Daley of The Boston Globe for coverage of how global warming affects New England residents; the staff of The Oregonian in Portland for reports on a breakthrough in producing microprocessors.

Local Reporting: David Umhoefer of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for stories on the skirting of tax laws to pad pensions of county employees. Finalists: Chris Davis, Matthew Doig and Tiffany Lankes of the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune for exposing predatory teachers; Jeff Pillets, John Brennan and Tim Nostrand of The Record, Hackensack, N.J., for a probe of favoritism and questionable state loans in a plan to build luxury housing on old landfills.

National Reporting: Jo Becker and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post for their exploration of Vice President Dick Cheney's influence on national policy. Finalists: The New York Times staff for stories about CIA interrogation techniques criticized as torture; Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune for his examination of racial issues in America.

International Reporting: Steve Fainaru of The Washington Post for his series on private security contractors in Iraq that operate outside most of the laws governing American forces. Finalists: The New York Times staff for coverage of the U.S. military's efforts to reduce sectarian violence in Iraq; The Wall Street Journal staff for reports on the dismantling of democracy in Russia under Vladimir Putin.

Feature Writing: Gene Weingarten of The Washington Post for chronicling the violinist Joshua Bell as he played beautiful music in a subway station filled with unheeding commuters. Finalists: Thomas Curwen of the Los Angeles Times for an account of a grizzly bear attack and the recovery of the two victims; Kevin Vaughan of the Rocky Mountain News, Denver, for a retelling of a school bus-train accident that killed 20 children in 1961.

Commentary: Steven Pearlstein of The Washington Post for columns exploring the nation's complex economic ills. Finalists: Regina Brett of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, for columns on alienated teenagers in a dangerous city neighborhood; John Kass of the Chicago Tribune for columns on the abuse of local political power and other topics.

Criticism: Mark Feeney of The Boston Globe for his command of the visual arts, from film and photography to painting. Finalists: Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post for movie reviews and essays; Inga Saffron of The Philadelphia Inquirer for architecture critiques.

Editorial Writing: No award. Finalists: Maureen Downey of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for editorials on harsh sentences for consensual sex by teenagers; Rodger Jones of The Dallas Morning News for editorials calling for mandatory roll call votes on statewide legislation; the (Madison) Wisconsin State Journal staff for a campaign against abuses in the governor's veto power.

Editorial Cartooning: Michael Ramirez of Investor's Business Daily for what the judges called his "provocative cartoons." Finalists: Tom Batiuk of King Features for a sequence in "Funky Winkerbean" portraying a woman's struggle with breast cancer; and Clay Bennett of The Christian Science Monitor for cartoons "marked by sharp focus and pungent simplicity."

Breaking News Photography: Adrees Latif of Reuters for his photograph of a Japanese videographer, sprawled on the pavement, fatally wounded during a street demonstration in Myanmar. Finalists: Mahmud Hams of Agence France-Presse for a picture of a missile falling on a target in the Gaza Strip while Palestinians scramble for safety; and the Los Angeles Times staff for photos of wildfires devastating parts of California.

Feature Photography: Preston Gannaway of the Concord (N.H.) Monitor for her chronicle of a family coping with a parent's terminal illness. Finalists: David Guttenfelder of The Associated Press for photos of Vietnamese children affected by toxic Agent Orange decades after the war; Mona Reeder of The Dallas Morning News for pictures of disadvantaged Texans hidden amid the state's prosperity.

ARTS:

Fiction: "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," by Junot Diaz (Riverhead Books). Finalists: "Tree of Smoke" by Denis Johnson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), and "Shakespeare's Kitchen" by Lore Segal (The New Press).

Drama: "August: Osage County," by Tracy Letts. Finalists: "Yellow Face" by David Henry Hwang; "Dying City" by Christopher Shinn.

History: "What Hath God Wrought: the Transformation of America, 1815-1848," by Daniel Walker Howe (Oxford University Press). Finalists: "Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power" by Robert Dallek (HarperCollins); "The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War" by the late David Halberstam (Hyperion).

Biography: "Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father," by John Matteson (W.W. Norton). Finalists: "The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein" by Martin Duberman (Alfred A. Knopf); "The Life of Kingsley Amis" by Zachary Leader (Pantheon).

Poetry: "Time and Materials," by Robert Hass (Ecco/HarperCollins) and "Failure," by Philip Schultz (Harcourt). Finalist: "Messenger: New and Selected Poems," 1976-2006" by Ellen Bryant Voigt (W.W. Norton).

General Nonfiction: "The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945," by Saul Friedlander (HarperCollins). "The Cigarette Century" by Allan Brandt (Basic Books); "The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century" by Alex Ross (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

MUSIC: "The Little Match Girl Passion," by David Lang, premiered Oct. 25 at Carnegie Hall, New York. (G. Schirmer, Inc.) Finalists: "Meanwhile" by Stephen Hartke (ELR Music Publishing Inc.); "Concerto for Viola" by Robert Sierra (Subito Music Publishing).

SPECIAL CITATION: Bob Dylan, "for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."

(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)