Man Booker Prize 2008

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by nnyhav

Louise Doughty comments on the selection...

Alex Clark does something similar on the prize's site. It's just a pity beither actually say much. Heneage hasn't, as far as I'm aware, commented; and Singh Kohli is no doubt too busy reading Harry Potter to comment. At least Portillo said something controversial (can't find link) in that he didn't read all the books submitted.

[nnyhav]

Nigel Beale is with ya on this one, so far as criteria go (and his prior GuardPost has the link to Portillo's complaint).

[Mirabell]

Nigel Beale is a colossal twat and it shows, again.

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by Mirabell

Nigel Beale is a colossal twat and it shows, again.

In what way?

[Eric]

Colossal: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/colossal
Twat: Twat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So let's translate:

Nigel Beale is a stupendous vagina and you can, on a second occasion, see it for yourself.

I had to look up Nigel Beale on the internet, as I had never heard of him. We in the Netherlands don't hear much about what goes on north of the USA. Could we perhaps return to the Booker, man, instead of talking about large specimens of female genitalia? That lowers the whole tone of the discussion to that of adolescents who have just discovered what goes on between people's legs.

But if Mirabell says so, then Beale must be so.

[Mirabell]

dude.

*shakes his head*

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by Stewart

In what way?

Hm. I am reluctant to comment. Beale exasperates me. See this post and the follow-up post.

There are many things wrong with it, but I have had a two hour argument with my smarter fiancé and now I am less sure about the extent of the daftness of his criteria comments.

We do agree on two things, though. That the idea that judges need to "justify" their decisions is almost philistine, and that the instatement of such a need could lead to a dynamic that may pre-define the type of book that can win, which is the type that has been winning prizes for 100 years and is firmly inthroned and canonized. I believe we had a discussion of sorts on that on the board, which turned.

And this is where we come to number two. it is, of course, exactly this what Beale wants. Clearly he is dissatisfied with the likes of Vernon God Little winning the booker, as this dumb paragraph shows

First off, judges must have read a significant number of canonical
works (Don Quixote, War and Peace, Shakespeare’s Plays, Ulysses, The Iliad, The Divine Comedy and the like) against which to judge the relative merits of those titles they have been assigned to evaluate.

This list, granted, not the full list, but still, it's what popped out of his rear end first, anyway, this list shows where his literary priorities lie, where he's coming from, and why he dislikes the direction all of this is heading to.

[Eric]

The great guru Gombrowicz, he say:

Stop being exasperated, learn a few more languages, and the truth will make you free. As will a sense of humour.

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by Eric

The great guru Gombrowicz, he say:

Stop being exasperated, learn a few more languages, and the truth will make you free. As will a sense of humour.

thank you?

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by Stewart

Why? I'm 230 pages in and it's rubbish. It could have done with the first two hundred pages being lopped off.

I finished Child 44 last night and, review forthcoming, it's an embarrassment, not just to the Booker, but to letters. I really don't know what the judges were thinking when they put this tripe on the list. It has no redeeming features whatsoever, unless you count that it ends as such. It offers nothing!

[Irene Wilde]

Originally Posted by Stewart

I finished Child 44 last night and, review forthcoming, it's an embarrassment, not just to the Booker, but to letters. I really don't know what the judges were thinking when they put this tripe on the list. It has no redeeming features whatsoever, unless you count that it ends as such. It offers nothing!

Uh-oh, it sounds like Stewart has a found the equal to That-Book-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named. Oh was this only The Alchemist bad?

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by Irene Wilde

Uh-oh, it sounds like Stewart has a found the equal to That-Book-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named. Oh was this only The Alchemist bad?

No, it's not as bad as The Alchemist. I suppose I'm mad at reading it because it's a generic, run-of-the-mill thriller: the sort where one man goes up against the system for what he believes in and to put things right. I wouldn't read such stuff through choice, so wouldn't have had a problem with the book. But because the judging panel have put it on the Booker longlist, which effectively categorises it as one of the best thirteen books by Commonwealth writers, I've read it and it's Nothing.

The best way to view it is as a melodramatic monologue. It's third person all the way, but the author is giving you no chance to enjoy it; he has all the details and he's going to share them. Were he up to giving sharp details and good observations, it might have pushed it up a star (from ), but the writing is extremely limp and doesn't move beyond basic, unimaginative details. Dialogue is used to fill in details unrealistically, and the viewpoint jumps about throughout scenes, sometimes within the same paragraph.

It's no surprise to learn that Tom Rob Smith is a scriptwriter, because that's how this book started life. Action Scene 1 links to Action Scene #2 and these link all the way to Action Scene #n. No depth, no questions: no point. I'm reminded of Martin Amis's review of Thomas Harris' Hannibal where he called it a "snorting, rooting, oinking porker, complete with twinkling trotters and twirlaround tail". And people actually buy this? Books like this?

[Sybarite]

Originally Posted by Stewart

I finished Child 44 last night and, review forthcoming, it's an embarrassment, not just to the Booker, but to letters. I really don't know what the judges were thinking when they put this tripe on the list. It has no redeeming features whatsoever, unless you count that it ends as such. It offers nothing!

I've just, within the last few minutes, been handed it to review. Well, I suppose that the readership of the magazine that the review will be for will like a "generic ... thriller". If anything, it might convince them to think the Booker more accessible than many of them usually would.

[Sybarite]

Originally Posted by Sybarite

I've just, within the last few minutes, been handed it to review. Well, I suppose that the readership of the magazine that the review will be for will like a "generic ... thriller". If anything, it might convince them to think the Booker more accessible than many of them usually would.

I'm a quarter of the way through it.

How on earth did this ever make it anywhere near the longlist – never mind the shortlist?

It's a run-of-the-mill thriller – I have seen absolutely nothing thus far that lifts it above that. And it's not remotely original.

Howlingly obviously, Martin Cruz Smith did a vastly better job with a very similar idea in the excellent Gorky Park – which actually had me wanting to run down to Whitechapel and buy matjes herrings and enjoy them with a neat vodka on the side, so good was it at conjuring a sense of Moscow. But nobody is going to suggest that Cruz Smith should have been Booker listed or that Gorky Park is literary fiction.

And it is also reminds one of the case of Andrei Chikatilo, who murdered 52 women and children – where the investigation was hampered by the reluctance to acknowledge that crime existed in the Soviet Union. That case was later made into a film, Citizen X.

It's so blatantly anti-Soviet that Tom Rob Smith seems to spend much of essentially beating the reader about the head with his: 'oh look how awful life in Stalin's Soviet Union life was'. But yet again, Cruz Smith did a vastly better and more subtle job of creating, on the page, a sense of a culture of paranoia.

Looking at the list of judges, I'm wondering if it's on the list because Portillo (or any of the others, for that matter) just found the propaganda so knicker-wetting fab that it dulled any sense they might have had of critical ability.

[Irene Wilde]

There will no doubt be a film. It will no doubt be huge. People will read the book and think they are very literate for reading a book considered for a literary prize. They will come here and want to discuss this masterpiece endlessly while complaining about writers like Joyce and Pynchon, with phrases like, "I just don't get them" or "their books don't draw me in like Smith's classic Child 44." Anyone attempting to show them the error of their ways will be called elitist. It will be minutes of entertainment.

Thank you, Booker people.

[Sybarite]

Originally Posted by Irene Wilde

There will no doubt be a film. It will no doubt be huge. People will read the book and think they are very literate for reading a book considered for a literary prize. They will come here and want to discuss this masterpiece endlessly while complaining about writers like Joyce and Pynchon, with phrases like, "I just don't get them" or "their books don't draw me in like Smith's classic Child 44." Anyone attempting to show them the error of their ways will be called elitist. It will be minutes of entertainment.

Thank you, Booker people.

It's funny you should say that, Irene, because according to the Guardian review in April, Ridley Scott has already taken the option on the film.

Article

But I completely agree – this dumbs down what is, after all, supposed to be a literary prize.

[Irene Wilde]

With any luck it won't make the short-list, Rushdie will scoop up another one because Booker loves giving him prizes, and the people who see the movie won't realize there was a book behind it.

[Stewart]

Interesting year for the Booker, anyway, given that much of the titles are relatively so so in peoples' views. I'm on my fourth title, The Clothes On Their Backs, which is okay so far. I had to abandon Michelle de Kretser's The Lost Dog as I had wasted two days on it and was getting nowhere and didn't want to lose my momentum, especially after just getting back in my stride a month back. (Will return to it, though.)

Netherland by Joseph O'Neill has been the best read, so far, although I think it just misses out on being truly great because, for all it's wonderful metaphors and turns of phrase, you really have to push yourself through it. Very rewarding book, though.

[Funhouse]

Originally Posted by Stewart

Interesting year for the Booker, anyway, given that much of the titles are relatively so so in peoples' views. I'm on my fourth title, The Clothes On Their Backs, which is okay so far. I had to abandon Michelle de Kretser's The Lost Dog as I had wasted two days on it and was getting nowhere and didn't want to lose my momentum, especially after just getting back in my stride a month back. (Will return to it, though.)

Huh, I had to put down The Clothes On Their Backs, because I really wasn't enjoying it (although I will return to it). I did like The Lost Dog a lot, despite a few reservations. That's definitely on my shortlist, along with The Enchantress of Florence, which, by the way Irene, I doubt will take out the prize, precisely because they've already given him one this year. I've nearly waded all the way through A Fraction of the Whole and while it's promising, and very funny in parts, it's about 300 pages too long. Who lets a first-time novelist write a 700 page novel? Have they never heard of an editor?

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by Funhouse

Huh, I had to put down The Clothes On Their Backs, because I really wasn't enjoying it (although I will return to it). I did like The Lost Dog a lot, despite a few reservations.

Ha, nice inversion there. On the subject of The Lost Dog I got thirty pages in and had to start again, this time gettng fifty pages in, but the temporal jumps and the cast of many from the off meant I couldn't really settle into it. But I'm in a minority, as most who have read it on the Booker forum seem to have enjoyed it.

Who lets a first-time novelist write a 700 page novel? Have they never heard of an editor?

Fantasy editors?