Daily News from New York, New York • 126

picked ws series tor prize By RICHARD ROSEN The 17-member Pulitzer Prize board makes the prize selections on the basis of recommendations of jurors and sends them for a final decision to Michael Sovern, president of Columbia on rJr ft t-hX- V'Ta 1 1 1 1 A University. The university was desig nated by Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the old New York World, to make the The Pulitzer Prize jury in the national reporting category recommended that the Daily News receive the award for its series on the nation's military preparedness, but the Pulitzer Prize board reversed the verdict and selected The New York Times for the prize, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday. The five-member national reporting jury recommended four finalists for the prize out of 66 nominations that were judged, with The News ranked first, Michael Gartner, jury chairman and editor and president of the Des Moines Register and Tribune, explained in an interview; The series on immigration and illegal aliens that appeared in The Times and a Washington Post series on gov- ernment contracts tied for second place, followed by a series in the Philadelphia Inquirer on the energy crisis. The 65th annual prizes, which carry $1,000 grants except in the public service category, were announced on Monday. THE SEVEN-PART News series, entitled "The Crippled Giant," examined all the armed services and found the United States' military machine unprepared for war.

The articles were reported and written by Joseph Volz, Richard Edmonds, Bob Herbert and Alton Slagle. awards. In addition to Sovern and Osborn Elliott, dean, of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, and Richard Baker, board secretary and administrator of the prizes, the board is made up of newspaper editors and tives, University of Chicago president Hannah H. Gray and Washington Post columnist William Raspberry. "WE HAD FOUR very good series but we couldn't agree among us on a clear first choice," Gartner said.

"So we took a vote in which we gave points and the series with the lowest number of, points won. That series was the Daily News' It was a damn good series, but so was The Times'." Baker said the board often rejects the recommendation of jurors and "goes its own way totally." "The board is entrusted by the will of Joseph Pulitzer to award the prizes," Baker said. "We can give it to the man in the moon if we want to. The board goes its own way totally. It is helped by what the juries send up but its hands are not tied at all.

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your cigarettes. (You can leave your willpower at home.) Qmse ffr flie book Mom's drive won dead son a Pulitzer By BELLA ENGLISH For Thelma Toole, the last 12 years blended together into a depressing cycle of hope and heartache, with the phrase, "I'm sorry, but always ringing in her ears. Lugging a 400-page manuscript written by her son, who had killed himself, the elderly woman knocked on publishers' doors, telephoned strangers and fired off angry letters. She wouldn't take no for an answer. Finally, after 11 rejections from publishing houses, her mission of love Come to a FREE introductory meeting Sunday thru Thursday (April 12-16) at 8:00 Please note 6:00 PM meeting at the Biltmore Hotel).

Choose the day and location most convenient for you. paid off. "A Confederacy of Dunces, written by John Kennedy Toole, was published last May by the small Louisiana State University Press. On Monday the book no one had wanted, written by an author who committed suicide in 1969 because he couldn't get it published, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. "I kept on and on, trying to get it published because I realized I had to vindicate my son and show up.

the stupidity of the publishers," the 79-year-old widow said yesterday, speaking from her New Orleans home. "They're like lice, they're stupid lowlifes." DOGGED BY HER SON'S death and armed only with a mother's love and a yellowing manuscript, Thelma Toole staged a lone campaign to get her son's work published. "A Confederacy of Dunces" is a comic portrayal of the NEW YORK Nanuet SHERATON INN Rt. 59 Rose Thelma Toole O) in NEW JERSEY East Brunswick "RAMADA INN Rt 18 Naricon Place Summit SUBURBAN HOTEL 570 Springfield Ave. Paramus HOLIDAY INN 601 From Rd.

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(At Glen Cove Rd.) Fishkill HOLIDAY INN -Rt. 9 I-84 (Exit 13, I-84) adventures of a New Orleans character who rebels against the modern world. Toole, who entered Tulane University at age 16, wrote the book when he was 25, while in the Army, teaching English in Puerto Rico. When he returned home to New Orleans after his two-year stint, he bounded up the stairs to his parents' apartment and placed the manuscript in his mother's hands. "I read it over the next day or two," she recalled.

"I became convulsed with laughter." But despondent over his nagging yearslong failure to find a publisher, her son turned on the engine of his car and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. He was 32 years old, the only son of an automobile salesman and a speech teacher. "HE WENT INTO HIS SHELL," Thelma Toole said. "It definitely had to do with the book. He was crushed." Desperate herself after eight rejections, she took "A Confederacy of Dunces" to novelist Walker Percy, who was teaching at Loyola University in New Orleans.

"He wrote me a postcard and called it the most flavorful book he'd ever read," Toole recalled. "He told me I'd have to have it retyped. So I paid $210 to have it done. I guess there were a lot of typos." Percy tried in vain to peddle the 400-page work to his publisher, Farrar Straus Giroux, who rejected it on grounds that it would never be a commercial success because its author was dead. CONNECTICUT .1 Danbury RAMADA INN Exit CLIP AND SAVE AS A REMINDER OF DATE, TIME LOCATION.