Anglocentric Nostalgia for the Past?

What, then, of the 2009 shortlist? At first glance, it breaths the spirit of the 1970s. Fiercely English, it is strongly inclined to the historical narrative. Every one of these books explores the past in some form.

Taking few risks, it offers JM Coetzee and AS Byatt the prospect of a return visit to the winner's podium. In a recession, it's a list that will transmit a warm glow of reassurance into the troubled breasts of nervous UK booksellers. God knows what they will make of it in Beijing or Kuala Lumpur.

Occasionally, as it has every right to do, the prize turns its back on posterity. This year, Booker is in denial, big time.

Robert McCrum weighs up this year's Booker shortlist in The Observer, and it's very nice of him to consider what we think here in KL, isn't it? (I think we just shrug and say "Fine, just guarantee us some quality reading." You all agree?)

Tim Adams in the same paper makes a very good case for the Booker shortlist this year being symptomatic of the general British desire to escape into the past.

Fiction editor at The Telegraph, Lorna Bradbury, is very happy with the selection:

There hasn’t been a Man Booker shortlist to match this one since 2005, when the shortlisted novelists Kazuo Ishiguro and Zadie Smith went on to split the judges so irrevocably that John Banville came out the ultimate winner. ... If the longlist contained the requisite number of outsiders and eccentrics, such as James Lever’s comic novel narrated by Cheeta the Chimp, the shortlist concentrates on quality and seriousness

In an interesting piece at The Irish Times, Fintan O'Toole, reckons that Irish authors William Trevor, Ed O’Loughlin and Colm Tóibín didn't make the cut this year because :

The advance word had hinted at a feeling that there have been quite enough Irish winners for the moment, thank you. .... (And also because) Irishness is losing its gloss.

So much can be read into a shortlist!

McCrum Muses on Age

Old people, in general, don't have literary careers ... most writers begin to attract attention - as new young voices with something original to say.

Robert McCrum in The Observer today has some sobering things to say about authors and age, backed up with plenty of interesting examples.
Apparently, authors are most likely to produce great works in their 30's and most literary careers last no longer than ten years.
He reminds us that :

As a writer, you are always starting out afresh. Age and experience may teach you some tricks, but it will not touch your work with magic.

(Pic is of one of the exceptions to all this - 91 year-old memoirist Diana Athill, one of the finalists in the Costa Book Awards.)

McCrum in Ten Chapters

The Observer's literary editor Robert McCrum hangs up his hat after more than 10 years in the job and gives us a fascinating whistle-stop tour of the changes he has seen in the publishing world in that time.

Along the way he shares his thoughts on subjects such as: Zadie Smith and the new generation of authors; how Amazon.com has changed the retail market; the rise and rise of Rowling; Franzen snubbing Oprah; the explosion of literary festivals; how literary prizes have come to be the most reliable guides in a perplexing landscape; why McEwan's success typifies the decade; how blogs have taken over the role of reviewing; how Lynne Truss talks to our anxiety in an age of cultural upheaval; and finally, the Kindle.

This article is a must-read for anyone interested in the trends, and it's nice to discover that McCrum is very optimistic about the future of the book :

... what I have described are the birth pangs of a golden age. The market for the printed book is now global; the opportunities for the digital book are almost unimaginable. To be a writer in the English language today is to be one of the luckiest people alive.

McCrum Muses on the Booker

Back to books then after that brief elephantine interval.

Robert McCrum in the Observer, in the wake of the upcoming Best of Booker contest, assesses the impact of the Booker Prize on what we read.

It's a great thing, he says for promoting global readership and creating a conversation :

... about what we look for in new fiction and what we think its purposes might be ...

and it's thrown up some very exciting winners. (He mentions Rushdie, Naipaul and Coetzee.)

Though on the downside (and with this I wholeheartedly agree) :

The bizarre exclusion of American writers ... restricts the significance of the prize.

While this bit will have my buddy KayKay screaming with that's-exactly-what-I-keep sayings :

The judges we spoke to were discreet about the secrets of the committee room. Privately, some have spoken with dismay of the way in which the Booker jackpot ... has sponsored a new genre, the 'Booker novel'. Typically, this is a book without discernible narrative purpose, scarcely a single credible or memorable character and prose that should be nailed to the door of the Guildhall as a timely caution against the perils of creative-writing groups.

Oh dear, Kaykay, I carry your caustic voice around in my head at all times and it's changing the way I see novels. Aren't book clubs dangerous?

The UK Book Biz in 2007

Robert McCrum in the Observer reviews fortunes of the UK publishing world in 2007, and reports that in a year dominated by "HP7":

Rowling's reported wealth would rise this year to £545m, but the reality of literary life was rubbed in when, last March, a survey of some 25,000 authors revealed that the typical British writer earned only about £4,000 a year (significantly less than the £6,300 reported in 2001). Blogging and the internet might have liberated the writer from the garret, but it seems that you still cannot take the garret out of the writer.

He also slips in this, which will no doubt delight many of you:

From some points of view, 'literary fiction' is becoming as much a genre as science fiction.

And I was always snobbish enough to think that it was at the burning sun centre of the universe with everything else in orbit, dreaming of becoming it!

Winners and the Rest

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Robert McCrum quotes "the laureate of literary failure" Samuel Beckett in this Guardian piece about the value of literary prizes and how most literary endeavors are doomed to end in failure ...:

First, there are the countless manuscripts completed, but never published, and the hours of frustrated composition tossed into the wastepaper basket. Then there are the thousands of books published, but not reviewed. These, in turn, are matched by the scores of titles reviewed, but scarcely sold.

So ... erm ... why are you still writing?

McCrum notes that this is the season for the longlists and shortlists for all kinds of awards, and I've been very slipshod missing some of the news, so this is a catch-all catch-up!

Remember I posted the shortlist for the Ondaatje Prize the other day? Well, Hisham Matar walked away with it for In the Country of Men. (Am applauding for a book I love.)

Remember I mentioned the National Short Story Prize? (Of course you do - after all the argument about whether Kureishi's story being pulled by the BBC was censorship or not.) Anyway it was won by Julian Gough with David Almond being named as runner-up.

And I thought you might like to know that Rosie Thomas (right) won the 2007 Romantic Novel of the Year award for Iris and Ruby!

But the pleasantest award surprise has to be that a Malaysian won a Pulitzer Prize!

More award news to come ...

Pynchon On Pinchin'

The fallout from the Ian McEwan did-he-or-didn't-he
-plagiarise-and-anyway-does-it-matter debate continues.

The Independent reports that: ...

Lucilla Andrews' 30-year-old book No Time for Romance, previously on sale on Amazon for $12.50, has jumped to $2,185.71 (£1,100).

Novelists from the usually reclusive Thomas Pynchon to Zadie Smith have leapt passionately to McEwan's defense, and yesterdays' Times lists their statements. The most succinct is Martin Amis:

Historical fiction – as opposed to historical fantasy – cannot be written without help from historical sources. The novelist acknowledges that help, with gratitude, and the world moves on.

while the snippiest is Margaret Atwood who offers the lovely expression "flea-hitching" to posterity. ('Scuse me while I scratch.)

Meanwhile Ben McIntire finds himself "in bed with McEwan" and quite enjoying it.

Natasha Alden, the PhD student whose research started the furor explains the purpose of her research and the questions it has thrown up about the right and proper way of using other people's writing. She notes:

It is very difficult for anyone not to be influenced by vivid and well written words and not to replicate them, consciously or unconsciously. The novel is a hybrid form – based in reality, but making something new; this is particularly apparent in historical novels. Historical details, as McEwan has said, bring life and vigour to fiction. The imagination is crucial, but research brings truth. So what is the novelists’ responsibility to their sources? How can a contemporary novel speak to the past, or speak out of it ...?

(I do hope Ms. Alden eventually turns her thesis into a book. I'd want to buy it.)

Of all the musings on the topic, I most enjoyed Robert McCrum's article in last Sunday's Observer. (Shakespeare a pickpocket?)

So the jury has delivered its judgment. It is a much comforting one for all fictionators. And the whole business has created an entertaining little side-show for the last few days.

Perhaps now poor Mr. McEwan can go back to his work.

(Above: Pynchon's letter pinchoned from McEwan's website. All in the interest of research, you understand. Click and click to read.)

Another Shot

If you don't win one literary prize, hopefully you get a shot at another! I'm happy for Ian McEwan whose Saturday has won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize after losing out so badly in the Booker stakes.

And while Sarah Walters lost out to Zadie Smith in the Orange stakes, I'm sure we'll be seeing The Night Watch on the list for other awards later in the year. (It will eligible because it was only published this year, unlike the other Orange shortlisted books.) It is that good, believe me. John Ezard in the Guardian reckons it has a "formidable chance" of taking the Booker or the Whitbread.

I'd have hated to be a judge for either the Orange or the Booker with so many strong titles to choose from. And I am still perplexed by Robert McCrum's article on the novel losing its way. I am one happy reader and will let you know if that changes.

Related Posts

His Saturday - My Sunday (4/9/05)
The James Tait Black Shortlist Announced (3/5/06)

The State of the Novel

Robert McCrum in yesterday's Observer asks if the British novel has lost its way as money and celebrity and awards are thrown at it:

Out of a swamp of greed, ambition and creative writing crawled a new Gollum, the 'Booker novel', trailing the slime of self-promotion. This, typically, was a scarcely readable work of the imagination, devoid of narrative, character, plausible landscape or moral purpose, whose sole motivation was the desire to get on to that fabled shortlist. There was a boom in second-rate literary fiction, most of it now recycled into wallpaper and toilet tissue. Each year publishers began to bet ever more absurd sums on 'Booker novels' in the hopes of hitting the jackpot.

There's plenty of food for thought here, and McCrum gives an excellent history of the changing fortunes of the novel in Britain over time.

Now maybe I just haven't read enough beyond award lists recently (and even trying to keep up with the longlists and shortlists is a nightmare for this not terribly fast reader) ... but I've thoroughly enjoyed the contemporary fiction I've picked up recently and it's seemed to me that the novel is in pretty good shape.

I wonder which novels McCrum is thinking of when he talks of "scarcely readable works". His list of 20 all-time great Booker winners is very telling - John Banville's The Sea is so pointedly absent, as is Yann Martell's The Life of Pi ...

On the other side of the Atlantic, debate about the best American novel of the last 25 years (see my previous post on this) hots up with an online discussion between prominent authors and critics on the New York Times website about the books that made the list and about the state of US fiction in general.

There's quite a few more titles here for Animah's list too!

(Illustration nicked from the British Council's website)

Related Post

The Novel is Dead, Long Live the Novel (18/9/05)

Of Thickie Pariahs and Books By The Yard

Victorian Beckham has never done it in her life.

Neither had Noel Gallagher ... until just recently.

Read a book, that is.

I think there are plenty of people out there who don't read books and who are none the worse for it

says Hester Lacy in today's Guardian:

... it's fine for anyone to confess that they really can't stick shopping; one can even seem quite smug about it. Not so if you aren't keen on books. Reading must be about the only pastime that is pretty much universally seen as "good" and virtuous - so to say openly that you don't like books puts you beyond the pale. For someone to say they don't care for reading labels them as some kind of thickie pariah, fair game for any insult. To decide any such thing on the basis of one single trait seems both sweeping and snobbish.

Meanwhile, concerned to show the world that he certainly isn't (despite popular opinion) a thickie pariah, George tells us what he's taking along as holiday reading . Convinced?

I remember Thor Kah Hong of Skoob Books telling me years ago about how he had customers come into his shop and order books by the yard to complement their home decor and fool vistors.

Update:

Apparently Gerry Adams (Sinn Fein leader) isn't much of a reader either. According to Rober McCrum in The Observer he confided to the New York Times not only that he had never finished Ulysses but didn't know anyone who had. McCrum asks for suggestions for a reading list to rescue Posh from the depths of her own ignorance.