单选题 .  Aside from perpetuating (使……持续存在) itself, the sole purpose of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters is to "foster, assist and sustain an interest" in literature, music, and art. This it does by enthusiastically handing out money. Annual cash awards are given to deserving artists in various categories of creativity: architecture, musical composition, theater, novels, serious poetry, light verse, painting, sculpture. One award subsidizes a promising American writer's visit to Rome. There is even an award for a very good work of fiction that failed commercially once won by the young John Updike for The Poorhouse Fair and, more recently, by Alice Walker for In Love and Trouble.
    The awards and prizes total about $750,000 a year, but most of them range in size from $5,000 to $12,500, a welcome sum to many young practitioners whose work may not bring in that much money in a year. One of the advantages of the awards is that many go to the struggling artists, rather than to those who are already successful. Members of the Academy and Institute are not eligible (有资格的) for any cash prizes. Another advantage is that, unlike the National Endowment for the Arts or similar institutions throughout the world, there is no government money involved.
    Awards are made by committee. Each of the three departments Literature (120 members), Art (83), Music (47)—has a committee dealing with its own field Committee membership rotates every year, so that new voices and opinions are constantly heard.
    The most financially rewarding of all the Academy-institute awards are the Mildred and Harold Strauss Livings. Harold Strauss, a devoted editor at Alfred A. Knopf, the New York publishing house, and Mildred Strauss, his wife, were wealthy and childless. They left the Academy-Institute a unique bequest (遗赠): for five consecutive years, two distinguished (and financially needy) writers would receive enough money so they could devote themselves entirely to "prose literature" (no plays, no poetry, and no paying job that might distract). In 1983, the first Strauss Livings of $35,000 a year went to short-story writer Raymond Carver and novelist-essayist Cynthia Ozick. By 1988, the fund had grown enough so that two winners, novelists Diane Johnson and Robert Stone, each got $50,000 a year for five years.1.  What does the passage mainly discuss? ______