Thursday, April 01, 2010
The 'Lost' Booker Prize
Although I am known here to be pretty dubious about competitions including the literary (and of course would be a marketing-literary fool not to be pleased to win one!), I'm giving two cheers for the 'Lost Booker Prize', precisely because it shows up the (often unacknowledged) arbitrary nature of such prizes: the books eligible for this one are those which fell between the two stools of eligibility the year that the deadline for submission for the Booker Prize was changed. Not so thrilled by the voting system, though: anyone can vote online, without having bothered to read all of the shortlisted books, presumably - or even any of them, I guess. Though on second thoughts, that makes a nice mockery of the whole idea of winners, doesn't it...?
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9 comments:
I'm rooting for Mary Renault. Might even bother to vote; I didn't realise it was being done via Joe Public!
yes it does make a mockery out of it..
hmm well i can't see much wrong with voting for something you know little or nothing about, after all isn't that how most governments are elected? lol.
the whole point of democracy is, as far as i'm concerned, to let people do what they like (so long as they don't harm others). so whether i'm voting for a political party candidate or a book prize nominee, i am free to do so for whatever reason i choose. and so is everyone else. (is that a bit too liberal?)
if you want to validate your LBP vote by reading the whole shortlist first, well and good (but you should really have read all 22 on the longlist if you want to pursue that line of reasoning fully). but then, if it was left to the panel of judges to decide on the winner they'd still cop for some flak no matter what decision they came to; all the more fuel to the argument for letting the public decide, i think (particularly as it's just a bit of fun and there's no prize money involved)
a good enough reason to vote for JG Farrell, in my opinion, is that john crace couldn't think of a bad word to say about Troubles: now there's a statistic! he's actually found a book he likes.
but it's also a great book. here's hoping the public vote it in (for whatever reason)
Yes this is all completely true - as long as everyone accepts that it's all a bit of fun. The reason I only gave two cheers is that I suspect that some people won't see it like that, and will take the winner as 'the best' and those that didn't win as less good, ie as though it were some kind of objective judgment.
valid comments elizabeth.
i have first-hand comment from your fellow blogger susan hill, however, that troubles was not only the best book of 1970 (she claims to prefer it to her own i'm the king of the castle!) but the best of the several years following 1970. she was an old friend of Jim's and so followed things closely; i, however, was 2 years old, and nowadays have my hands full of young children, research, writing my own books etc to consider reading the whole shortlist, so voted for Jim (my second cousin). i sometimes dream of retirement, when i'll be able catch up with my bookshelf...
Must say Troubles does sound great - and I agree, anything John Crace likes is a firm recommendation for me - and now you've whetted my appetite further!
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