Template:Did you know nominations/The Rector of Justin

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... that the choice between The Rector of Justin and Herzog for the 1965 National Book Award for Fiction was described as "a conflict of philosophies" about life itself?

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Source: [The Rector of Justin] was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction, losing to Shirley Ann Grau's The Keeper of the House and Bellow's Herzog, respectively. [https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1965/] The Rector of Justin still received positive reviews, but at the end of 1964, Francis Brown (The New York Times) drew a distinction between The Rector of Justin and its awards-season competitor, Bellow's Herzog. He explained that the choice between the two reflected a fork in the road for American literature: "There is a conflict of philosophies: belief that life has a purpose, or if it doesn’t, at least the living of life can have some joy to it, contends with insistence that there is nothing to life but the living of it, and that even that is absurd." [https://www.nytimes.com/1964/12/06/archives/a-sorting-out.html]}}
ALT1: ... that MGM proposed casting Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn for a film adaptation of Louis Auchincloss' novel The Rector of Justin, but the film was never made? Source: Walter Wanger optioned the film rights for MGM. [https://www.nytimes.com/1964/11/01/archives/new-york-previews-new-horizons-for-cukor-niven-and-hatfield.html] He recruited George Cukor to direct, Samuel A. Taylor to write the screenplay, and Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn to play the leads. However, Tracy was in poor health and the film was never made.{{Cite book |last=Curtis |first=James |url= |title=Spencer Tracy |date=2011 |publisher=Hutchinson |isbn=978-0-09-178524-6 |pages=821–23 |language=en}}
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Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has fewer than 5 past nominations.}}

Namelessposter (talk) 17:45, 23 April 2025 (UTC).

{{re|Namelessposter}} 16px Wow. This is rated as a good article. The hook is an interesting fact about the book. Approved. Moondragon21 (talk) 13:36, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
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{{re|Moondragon21}} Thanks for the kind words! I just wanted to front one matter: there are two Earwig flags. I don't think the Oppenheimer Tablet essay is actually an issue since the Earwig flag is mostly a block quote, but the MacFarquhar New Yorker flag is a more nuanced matter since it's principally based on quotes from her interview of Auchincloss. I just want to make sure that we're all on the same page about how to move forward. Namelessposter (talk) 17:15, 23 May 2025 (UTC)
{{re|Namelessposter}} You're welcome. Those passages are quotations so I don't think that is an issue for this DYK. Moondragon21 (talk) 12:26, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

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