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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Booker Schmooker

12:33 / 26.09.02

Booker prize time again (shortlist here), and once again I am struck by the fact that I don't really want to read any of these books (with the possible exception of the Sarah Waters one). Every year the same - the shortlist is so DULL. Surely there must be more enticing literary fiction out there; or am I suffering from a blind spot here?

And yet this is the most discussed literary prize in Britain (with the possible expection of the Whitbread, but I still think the Booker wins out).

Do literary awards like this help or hinder literary fiction? (they might help it by bringing it more to the fore of the public consciousness; they might hinder it by only bringing six books to the forefront of the public consciousness and, incidentally, bookshop displays - leaving other, similar books which might well be as popular to rot on the shelves). How could they be made better? More interesting? More engaging?

I think literature and fiction are EXCITING (or they bloody well should be) and it distresses me to look at a shortlist which, every year, seems so predictable. Even the fact that Zadie Smith didn't make it on this one was predictable.

Make it new!

Tryphena Absent

13:49 / 26.09.02

The problem with this prize is that the fiction has to be deemed respectable from a literary standpoint. That means the everyday books that people read don't actually end up on the list- you get the inane writing of Carol Shields up there but where's the stuff that's actually fun to read. Ok, I admit, I have a minor thing for the flourescent cover brigade. I like reading shit and I'll admit it but why shouldn't we award the best shit rather than the boring, been done before, half literary booker wank.

I doubt very much that literary awards help or hinder, people who read books tend to buy off the shelves rather than from the front of the shop, this doesn't include airport and train station readers. If you go in to Waterstones they usually have a fair amount of books that are quite good on offer anyway. The Booker prize is obsolete.

14:43 / 26.09.02

The thing that surprised me there was that they're complaining about the books submitted by publishers - I suppose it should have been obvious that publishers enter books, but that doesn't seem the right way to go about it.

If the publishers only submit what they think the judges want, and then the judges only have a narrow range of stuff to judge, then the whole thing is going to become narrower and more boring with every year that passes.

The solution ... I'm not sure. Perhaps there needs to be a panel keeping an eye on what's coming out throughout the year and picking up anything that looks interesting - and then form a shortlist from that?
And I think they have to define exactly what they're looking for. Encouraging "new writing" will give a totally different shortlist to "great writing" or indeed "funny writing".

15:25 / 26.09.02

I'm not sure it's true that the Booker is altogether obsolete. There's absolutely a section of the public who seize on prize-winning books (or almost prize-winning books) - Not convinced that 'The True History of the Kelly Gang' or 'Atonement' would have shifted as many copies without the interest generated by their nomination. And I guess, to some extent, that's no bad things if it means people will read more widely.

The Return Of Rothkoid

23:09 / 26.09.02

Mr Quick; while I don't particularly like The True History Of The Kelly Gang, pretty much anything Carey writes is going to shift units. He's already got the props of having won the award, and it sort of becomes a seal of approval, you know? Like authors who win it will become People Whose Books You Should Buy Regardless by dint of a small level of acclaim.

Maybe that's what the purpose of the awards is? To create a canon that doesn't think it's one?

I don't agree that it's obsolete, however. But it DOES need to fuck shit up in a literary style.

The Return Of Rothkoid

23:09 / 26.09.02

Or, rather, to BE fucked up. Reviewed. Reconstructed.

07:45 / 27.09.02

Rothkoid - I completely agree, but my point is that it's not clear to me that the Booker is meant to be an especially literary award anymore. As you rightly say "authors who win it become People Whose Books You Buy Regardless". But is this necessarily a bad thing?

I know he didn't win the prize, but I reckon a lot of people who bought 'Atonement', say, had never read any Ian McEwan before, and if they do now, well, that's got to be OK, no?

The Return Of Rothkoid

15:26 / 27.09.02

Mr Quick; no, entirely. I believe it is a good thing that people read the books nominated that may never read anything else by them - it's a good way of broadening tastes. However, it also runs the risk of becoming like a fancified version of a book-of-the-month club, y'know?

Christ. More when I'm not so incapacitated by alcohol.

17:21 / 28.09.02

I'm one of those terrible people who will go out and buy one of the shortlisted books...but ya know, you have to get your reading recommendations somewhere. Maybe a friend will tell you something is good, maybe you will hear about something in a magazine or online, maybe a panel of judges choose it for an award...book choices don't spring out of nowhere.

Take the point about the dull choices. Read an article, in the Independent I think, blaming the publishers who only ever nominate their "serious literature" books.

Anyway, prizes are fun. I always appreciate ideas for new reading so the more shortlists the better.

17:25 / 28.09.02

in america we have the god awful "oprah's book club"
to me that is what the booker is, and i agree its just a glorified reading list for ppl that don't bother to think for themselves anymore.

13:28 / 30.09.02

No, I reckon the Booker's meant to be more like the Pulitzer. It isn't very much like it, of course, but it tries. I don't know whether Kavalier and Clay would have won the Booker, for example - the Booker judges seem to prefer books which fit into the Booker tradition (e.g. Rohinton Mistry, who has been nominated before). They also compensate for not giving the thing to authors for the right books - see McEwan's win for Amsterdam. So, to rehash an ancient argument, Jonathan Coe has never been even considered as far as I know, and yet he is very popular and not at all bad (whether or not he's better than Will Self is pretty irrelevant as Will Self is not really a Booker candidate either); whereas Barry Unsworth, who is read by fewer people, is frequently on the long-list at the very least. not to say that he's worse than Jonathan Coe, because I think he's very good indeed, just that he's more of a booker author...

08:59 / 15.10.02

in america we have the god awful "oprah's book club"
to me that is what the booker is, and i agree its just a glorified reading list for ppl that don't bother to think for themselves anymore.

I wonder how Oprah's book club stands in comparison to our very own Biblioteca Barbelith reading group. Are they similar? High art versus mass culture? Cult culture versus mass culture? Culture versus commerce?

23:00 / 22.10.02

Gosh what a surprise... especially after the Booker people put the press release up on their site last week. Ach well.

Still, beezer news for Canongate - more power to their elbow.

Buk - re: the reading group: if ours functioned properly on a regular basis I think it would be more like the Guardian's reading group (currently doing Gilgamesh, anyone fancy it after Malory?). Oprah tells her club what to read; we collaborate on the decision, and therefore the books we choose reflect the taste of the members rather than the convenor of the club...

11:04 / 23.10.02

Well I haven't read the book and after the winner's over the top performance on Newsnight last night I will definitely not! Talk about a self-obsessive... Thought that the gravelly voiced Kirsty Wark might hit him!

10:24 / 19.10.04

Ok - so its that time of year again?

I like the booker because I feel it introduces me to stuff that I may never have read- amsterdam by Ian McEwan being the first booker winner I was aware of reading just because it had won. I know its sometimes a bit up its own arse and I've not (yet) read any of the books on the list (although I have just bought 2 as presents.)
anybody read any of the short list yet? I've mainly been put off by the amount of Hardbacks- I think Bitter Fruit & Electric Michelangelo are the only ones in paperback
any any good?
Thoughts?

Heres the shortlist 2004 as it stands:

Achmat Dangor
Bitter Fruit

Sarah Hall
The Electric Michelangelo

Alan Hollinghurst
The Line of Beauty

David Mitchell
Cloud Atlas

Colm Tóibín
The Master

Gerard Woodward
I’ll go to Bed at Noon

The winner is announced later today....

11:19 / 19.10.04

i remember bobossboy read a book off the booker list a couple of years ago. i still haven't stopped taking the piss.

bbboy: shut up twat it was good actually.
gmbt: ooh yeah, ooh mister literature! ooh yeah i read dead grown-up books me!

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:26 / 19.10.04

Yes, but you kids pathologise difference in any form. That's not about books, it's about you.

This seems, with the addition of Hollinghurst and Mitchell, a pretty populist list. Anyone read any of them so far?

11:42 / 19.10.04

eh? which pathology was i ascribing him or his actions there then? difference to what? and which kids?

the only booker book i ever read was amsterdam, oh and the booker of bookers, or booker squared the ultimate booker midnight's children. the latter's got lots to recommend it but really needed an editor come page four hundred or so. the first is sufficiently poor to have rendered any aspect of the booker prize into nothing other than an indicator of suitable targets for mockery.

11:54 / 19.10.04

I haven't read any of them, but my mother had this to day about the Woodward:

'I have had to read one of the Booker short list, I got the one called 'I'll Go To Bed At Noon', which I cannot recommend. It's mainly descriptions of drink related incidents of varied severity, is told very slowly and with immense detail, and contains lots of deaths of cirrhosis. All without coming to any great conclusions though you do
feel that you know the family very well by the end of
the 450 odd pages...'

I understand that the favourite is David Mitchell.

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:56 / 19.10.04

oh and the booker of bookers, or booker squared the ultimate booker midnight's children.

I'd suggest that Possession was the Booker of Bookers - it sold massively more than the writer's previous form had suggested, it was long (Booker winners get fatter and fatter through the 90s) and it was concerned largely with English teachers.

Interestingly, Amsterdam is mentioned above, by Kit-Cat Club, as an example of the Booker committee giving the award to a writer for the wrong book, much as the Academy gives Oscars for mediocre performances to people too young for lifetime acheivement awards whose best work is clearly behind them and whose best role was beaten out by something, in hindsight, quite dire. I'm not saying McEwan's best work is behind him. I'm just sayin'.

12:49 / 19.10.04

'i'd suggest'

suggest away -

http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=0812969030

i'm quite aware, equally uninterested, at the hand-wringing after the organisers saw the shadow ian's lower lip cast over the environs of swiss cottage, back when he thought they weren't nice enough to enduring love, his masterpiece of unfulfilled suspense. the subsequent redress tainted utterly the prize's authority as a guide to the objective or qualitative 'worth' of a novel.

12:51 / 19.10.04

yeah i think perhaps there's an unnecessary touch of snark in that last one. please ignore.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:30 / 19.10.04

Never heard the "Britain's worst serial killer" gag then, Gambit?

13:35 / 19.10.04

not as far as i remember. care to enlighten?

13:40 / 19.10.04

ah i'm working it out - is the best serial killer the one who gets the most scalps? never gets caught? or kills the least number of people therefore doing the best by society? is the best booker the one which is clearly the most rubbishly bookeresque, or, fuck the floor, a book that might be good?

the english teacher bit hadn't sunk in yet.

nedrichards is confused

13:47 / 19.10.04

The David Mitchell book is very good and if you must buy one of the shortlist please buy that one. Mainly becuase there are robots and scifi trappings but also becuase he's a great writer and you should all go off and get copies of 'ghostwritten' and 'number9dream' straight away.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:19 / 19.10.04

Essentially, yes. It's a letter of complaint to a newspaper about the description of Harold Shipman as Britain's worst serial killer. Surely, the letter goes, Dr. S is Britain's best serial killer, having killed hundreds of people over a long period without capture. Britain's worst serial killer, the letter proposes, must be Colin Stagg, who was arrested after confessing to a policewoman he was trying to chat up on the Internet to a single murder which he turned out apparently not to have committed anyway...

So, yes, sorry, I meant that, in fact, Possession should be the Booker of Bookers because it contains everything that makes the Booker Booker (parallel narratives, lovingly-researched historical sections, vast numbers of words, a fixation on the academic study of English).

14:40 / 19.10.04

Well since almost none of us have read any of this year's nominees, and this thread seems to have skipped 2003, has anyone read any of those? I read last year's winner, Vernon God Little, and while it was an enjoyable read, I wouldn't have nominated it for any prizes.

14:14 / 20.10.04

I understand that the favourite is David Mitchell.

Really..?

Speaking as someone who barely ever pays any attention to modern 'literary' fiction and closed-mindedly sneers at most of it, I find it truly bizarre that the favourite for the Booker prize is by an author whose previous work I've read and quite liked.. oh well, er, good I suppose.

unheimlich manoeuvre

18:26 / 20.10.04

For the first time in the 36-year history of the Booker prize, the award has gone to a book with a strong gay theme, The Line of Beauty. BBC News Online speaks to the novel's author Alan Hollinghurst.
BBC News 20 October, 2004

...

I must admit to being much more excited by Cloud Atlas.

10:05 / 21.10.04

This seems, with the addition of Hollinghurst and Mitchell, a pretty populist list. Anyone read any of them so far?

I bought both Cloud Atlas and The Line of Beauty (which Xoc keeps referring to, irritatingly, as In the Line of Beauty, as if it starred Harrison Ford) in hardback, having read and enjoyed both writers' previous work. Have to say, I found Cloud Atlas quite difficult to read - I'm not sure why, but No.9 Dream (was that its name?) also seemed to drag and founder - and actually abandoned it halfway through (which I almost never do). The Line of Beauty, on the other hand, held my interest throughout. As with all Hollinghurst's novels, it's written with great precision; he's adept at describing those small day-to-day emotions which are usually overlooked.

And the bumsex is nice.

09:48 / 22.10.04

Well, Gambit will be excited to learn that I've read this year's booker winner, which I quite liked, although Mitchel's insistence on literary artifice is a little irritating, and the second to last story - the one with the clones and big bad corporations - seemed a tad hackneyed.

10:35 / 22.10.04

woo! mister lit'rature! clev*

thinking on this a bit, i've read graham swift's waterland, which i'm pretty sure won in its year, and that's the full lot of bookers i've had book with. on the basis of that, i'd have to say that midnight's children is still the acme of bookers in its establishment of many bookerish tropes - gifted/destructive children, interest in eccentricites of preceding generations of families, 'local brew' jam/booze whatever that affords psychedelic reframing, rustic cottage industries being swallowed by modernity, political/environmental territorial-boundary disputes, disingenuously self-effacing narrators.

i think, however, that the main character in waterland might be a history or english teacher too. waterland could tick more boxes, score better on its sats stats that perhaps in a masterful piece of extra-upmanship swift soars to the top of the booker heap, rarely to get his much deserved acclaim, in norfolk. alan partridge of brit-lit basically.

*errr!