Swansea Bay July 09
BOOKER 2009
There are 133 entries for the 2009 Man Booker Prize and the longlist will be announced by judges James Naughtie (in the chair), Lucasta Miller, Sue Perkins, John Mullan and Michael Prodger on July 28th.
The Man Booker longlist, or ‘Man Booker Dozen' will be narrowed down to six titles for the shortlist which is to be announced on September 8. The winner will be announced on October 6.
It's Booker time again. The 2009 longlist of books selected by the judges will be issued at the end of July and all enthusiastic readers are agog to see which titles make the grade.Despite the fact that the Booker judging panel has acquired a reputation for making ‘safe’ choices that are not of the literary quality that the world’s most famous literary prize should represent, the glamour surrounding the prize makes the actual quality of the book a negligible issue. In the last 10 years, many of the winning books have been so dreary that I have forgotten the title and author as soon as I'd finished the book. Take the 2007 winner Anne Enright’s ‘The Gathering,’ a dull and utterly pointless novel that was instantly forgettable. And then in 2006 Kiran Desai’s long-winded ‘Inheritance of Loss’ only proved that her mother Anita Desai was the better writer.
I look back on others like John Banville’s ‘The Sea’ (2005)and Margaret Atwood’s ‘Blind Assassin’ (2000) with the quiet satisfaction that I will never knowingly be so mind-stoppingly bored again. Nice work, judges.These two titles were easily the worst ever.
I stand admonished for presenting what is unarguably a personal and subjective point of view.I retort that reading is a personal,subjective issue .
I'll concede the rare exception -- two winners in the last decade of the Booker do stand out for outstanding merit.In 2004 Alan Hollinghurst's haunting ‘Line of Beauty’ and in 2002 Yann Martel’s ‘Life of Pi’ were both books of timeless quality.
Last year, from the shortlist, I quite liked ‘White Tiger’ by Arvind Adiga but thought it too much of a lightweight to be a serious contender for 2008 -- and predicted that it would therefore probably be the choice of the judges.
In fact,from the shortlist, Sebastian Barry's ‘Secret Scripture’ was beautifully written,even poetic in parts and should certainly have been the winner ---- given that the best entrant, Salman Rushdie 's ‘Enchantress of Florence’ did not appear in the shortlist at all.
Rushdie’s was easily the finest work of the whole 2008 lot, long and shortlist. Profound yet entertaining, it has more philosophic content in two pages taken at random than the whole of any of the listed novels.
To vindicate my (personal and subjective) opinion, Rushdie has subsequently won the Best of Booker 40th anniversary award for ‘Midnight’s Children’ - -- he is now Nobel material!
Nonetheless I love the whole Booker flurry and wouldn't want to see its demise, but it has become a circus for lightweights and cannot be taken seriously any longer.
In any case whatever the title that wins, the publisher can be assured of huge sales worldwide which itself is a bit of a turn-off. I do loathe being one of a mindless herd……
HOW THE BOOKER PRIZE WAS BORN
The Booker Prize was the brainchild of Tom Maschler,chairman of publishing house Jonathan Cape who was inspired by the prestigious French Prix Goncourt literary prize to create a British equivalent.He campaigned for a UK prize that would be bigger than the Somerset Maugham award
A sponsor was found in Booker McConnell Ltd and the Booker Literary Prize was launched in 1969 with PH Newby’s ‘Something to Answer For’ as the first winner.
Maschler appears to agree with my assessment of the judges’ choices. He says, “ I have two particular concerns. One is that on a number of occasions the winner seems to have fallen far short of fulfilling our goal i.e. it was inordinately difficult to recognise the winner as ‘the best book’. Clearly this is a highly subjective question. Nonetheless, some of the novels have been such very strange choices that it is really difficult to make sense of them.” Hear,hear Tom. Perhaps you need to select the judges with as much care as the books??