Literary Prizes

Although the judges for the NBAs change every year, the sense that the fiction jury is locked in a frustrating impasse with the press and the public is eternal. (One notable recent exception: the selection of Colum McCann’s “Let the Great World Spin” as the winner two years ago.) The press, assuming that the amount of media coverage a novel gets is a reliable indicator of its merit, expresses bafflement. The judges, if they respond at all, defend their choices as simply the best books submitted.

Neither view is entirely persuasive. While it’s certainly true that celebrated novels are not necessarily good, it’s also true that they aren’t necessarily bad, either. Whatever policy each panel of judges embraces, over the years, the impression has arisen that already-successful titles are automatically sidelined in favor of books that the judges feel deserve an extra boost of attention. The NBA for fiction often comes across as a Hail Mary pass on behalf of “writer’s writers,” authors respected within a small community of literary devotees but largely unknown outside.

It’s understandable that the judges (all fiction writers themselves) want to correct this neglect, and that the press interprets this as a rebuke to its own judgment. However, the larger reading public has also proven recalcitrant. If you categorically rule out books that a lot of people like, you shouldn’t be surprised when a lot of people don’t like the books you end up with. This is especially common when the nominated books exhibit qualities — a poetic prose style, elliptical or fragmented storytelling — that either don’t matter much to nonprofessional readers, or even put them off.

If outsiders fail to sympathize with the judges’ perspective, the judges often have a distorted sense of the role literature plays in the lives of ordinary readers. People who can find time for only two or three new novels per year (if that) want to make sure that they’re reading something significant. Chances are they barely notice media coverage of books — certainly not enough to see some titles as “overexposed” — and instead rely on personal recommendations, bookstore browsing and Amazon rankings.

Prizes are one part of this mix, if an influential one, and the public mostly wants the major awards to help them sort out the most important books of the year, not to point them toward overlooked gems with a specialized appeal. In a culture dominated by film and television, all literary novels are so obscure as to be virtually invisible, and books that seem ubiquitous to people embedded in the publishing world are anything but to those who aren’t. (The next time you’re waiting for a bus, ask the person next to you if he or she has heard of Jeffrey Eugenides or “The Art of Fielding.” Hell, ask them if they’ve heard of Jonathan Franzen.)

For these reasons, the National Book Award in fiction, more than any other American literary prize, illustrates the ever-broadening cultural gap between the literary community and the reading public. The former believes that everyone reads as much as they do and that they still have the authority to shape readers’ tastes, while the latter increasingly suspects that it’s being served the literary equivalent of spinach. Like the Newbery Medal for children’s literature, awarded by librarians, the NBA has come to indicate a book that somebody else thinks you ought to read, whether you like it or not.

As a kid, after several such medicinal reading experiences (“… And Now Miguel” by Joseph Krumgold was a particular chore to get through), I took to avoiding books with that gold Newbery badge stamped on their covers. If it weren’t for a desperate lack of alternatives one afternoon, I’d never have resorted to E. L. Konigsburg’s “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,” which became one of my favorites. Today’s adult readers, with millions of titles a mere click away, are unlikely to find themselves in such straits.

I don’t doubt there have been similarly wonderful books scattered throughout the NBA’s famously esoteric short lists over the years. (I can also attest that there’s been more than one pretentious turkey.) Whether the NBA will hold onto its fading ability to get anyone to read them is another matter.

This year is a particularly contentious one, with the panel chairwoman, Dame Stella Rimington (a former director of MI5 and author of spy novels), announcing that the judges prioritized accessibility: “We want people to buy these books and read them, not buy them and admire them.” Another judge said a book had to “zip along” to make the cut. Like the typical NBA short list, the 2011 Booker shortlist includes mostly little-known titles, but this time the complaint is that the criteria used were too “populist” and that more “challenging” titles by bigger names were neglected. (On Wednesday, Julian Barnes won for his novel “The Sense of an Ending.”)

To make the dispute even more confusing, the “challenging” title most often noted as an omission from the Booker shortlist, Alan Hollinghurst’s “The Stranger’s Child,” has been shortlisted for the Galaxy Prize, which is dedicated to “books with wide popular appeal, critical acclaim and commercial success.” Furthermore, in response to what they regard as the creeping lowbrowism of the Booker, a group of malcontents, led by literary agent Andrew Kidd, is floating the idea of an alternative, to be called the Literature Prize, for novels that are “unsurpassed in their quality and ambition” without regard to popular appeal.

So it’s no wonder that all of this (and a commentary I wrote last week on the NBA shortlist) prompted author and academic Anne Trubek to write a blog post complaining that no one sufficiently explains “upon which criteria are the novels being judged … What makes a masterpiece? Are there objective grounds or is it relative? What role do race, gender, etc. etc. play in which literary works are elevated to the ranks of the great? Who gets to make those decisions? Which formal attributes are lionized over others? (difficulty = good; sentimentality = bad).”

Trubek then goes on to recall a conversation with a friend on the board of the National Book Critics Circle who was ruminating over a possible nominee for that organization’s annual fiction prize. The friend ultimately decided against the book because it lacked memorable characters, which Trubek immediately seized upon (at last!) as a definite criterion. If we all agreed that what distinguishes a great novel is great characters, she writes, we could really get down to work. (Although without Trubek, who notes, “memorable characters do not, for me, make a great novel.”)

Of course, not all novels are about character — take, for example, David Markson’s “Reader’s Block,” a book we put on Salon’s best-of-the-year list back in 1996. It has no characters — at least no conventional characters — since it’s made up of discrete anecdotes, quotations and epigrams, each one no more than a few sentences long. It went on our list because I, for one, was impressed that a work so fragmented could seize my interest so entirely that I couldn’t resist reading it while walking down the street (not a good idea in my neighborhood).

So that’s an example of my criteria, but the ability to fascinate one particular literary critic is not the basis for judging a national prize, which is a reason why these awards use panels of judges. The space between the poles of personal preference and the notion of objective merit is where the electricity of literary prizes is generated. We can all agree on how to measure the tallest building or the fastest car, but on the question of how to determine the best novel we will be arguing ’til the end of time.

Trubek is right, though, that we should more clearly state the criteria we bring to that argument. All judges say, “We just picked the best books,” when controversy arises around their choices, but shrouding their deliberations in mystery only invites more speculation. Like Trubek, I’m a fan of the the Morning News’ annual Tournament of Books precisely because its judges are asked to explain in detail why they prefer one book over another.

Talking about the standards we apply would at the very least make the discussion a lot more interesting. Whatever the merits of their shortlist, this year’s Booker judges have succeeded in getting their fellow countrymen to talk about what constitutes a “great” book. That people want to argue with those choices isn’t, in my opinion, a sign of dysfunction. Instead, it shows that we care not only about our literary culture but about the idea of sharing it with a world full of fellow readers.

Further reading:

Website for the Man Booker Prize

The article in the Guardian newspaper in which Stella Rimington describes the criteria used in judging this year’s Booker Prize

Also in the Guardian, former poet laureate and Booker chairman Andrew Motion questions the premise that “readability” and literary quality are mutually exclusive

The Galaxy National Book Awards website, announcing the shortlisting of, among others, Alan Hollinghurst

Anne Trubek asks for more clarity about the criteria for excellence in discussions of literary prizes

Last year’s Tournament of Books at the Morning News website

It took Callil a few days to present a fuller explanation. In the meantime, it was fascinating to watch various commenters respond to the kerfuffle. “I’m discouraged by what I assume is her ideologically inspired illiteracy,” Wendy Kaminer assumed for the Atlantic Online. “Is there a terrible scar of monotonous male sexuality in these inventions that limits their power or makes Roth deserve Callil’s dismissal?” fulminated Jonathan Jones in the Guardian. “To claim that,” he went on, “is to misunderstand what a novel is.” Eileen Battersby, in the Irish Times, sniffed, “The sexism and ego of Roth can certainly offend, and obviously bothers the irate Booker judge Carmen Callil.”

Not so obviously, in fact. Nothing in Callil’s initial statements about the affair indicated that her opposition to Roth’s work had anything to do with sexism or raunch. When she published a full account of her objections in the Guardian on Saturday, she expanded on a complaint that she’d mentioned from the start: Roth is the second North American (after Alice Munro) to receive the prize in its four-year history. Given that this variation on the Booker Prize is labeled “International,” and that it provides an additional grant that the winner may use to fund further English-language translations of his or her work, Callil had hoped that it would go to a less usual suspect.

She also doesn’t like Roth’s work very much, as she made abundantly clear. For the record, while I’m more or less in Callil’s camp when it comes to Roth’s fiction (particularly the face-sitting bit), her first remarks were thoughtless and high-handed. Perhaps Callil believed she was acting in the hallowed tradition of British literary prize judges who have aired their dirty laundry in the press, but insulting an author (any author) by name in such a context is uncalled for. There are enough readers who love Roth’s work to make him a reasonable choice for an important award, even if Callil can’t personally endorse that choice.

However, the really interesting aspect of the story is the straw woman erected by pro-Roth commenters like Kaminer, Jones and Battersby (among others) before Callil explained herself at length: the dour feminist scold who’s incapable of separating art from “ideology.” Instead, it turned out that Callil finds Roth’s fiction “narrow. Not in the Austen, Bellow or Updike sense, because they use a narrow canvas to convey the widest concepts and ideas. Roth digs brilliantly into himself, but little else is there. His self-involvement and self-regard restrict him as a novelist.”

These are legitimate aesthetic reservations, even if not everyone agrees with them. Yet if you do agree with them, and you happen to be a woman, chances are excellent that — no matter what you say — Roth proponents will assume your aversion is based in politics. This is as frustrating as telling the chef you don’t care for lamb chops and getting a self-righteous lecture on his supplier’s humane farming practices.

As recently as 30 years ago, subjecting a work of art to a political litmus test — is it racist, sexist, classist, homophobic? — was considered the supreme critical method, but fortunately times have changed. Unfortunately, they have changed with a vengeance. Now, in many circles, critiques that can be labeled as “politically correct” can also be summarily dismissed as “not literary arguments but emotional or ideological ones,” to quote Kaminer.

Presumably, literary arguments can also sometimes be emotional and ideological (this one certainly is!), but the point seems to be that if you’re a female reader who hates Roth novels, you must be motivated by (irrational) passion and doctrinaire political animus, whether you realize it or not. Your taste could not possibly arise from anything but “illiteracy” and an inability to understand “what a novel is.” Patronizing? You bet. Why, it’s enough to turn a girl into a feminist.

Further reading

Judge withdraws over Philip Roth’s Booker win: The initial story in the Guardian

Wendy Kaminer’s appreciation of Philip Roth in the Atlantic Online

Jonathan Jones on why Philip Roth deserves the Man Booker International Prize

Eileen Battersby defends Philip Roth in the Irish Times

Carmen Callil on why she resigned from the Man Booker International panel

The Literary Review has admitted from the start that getting publicity for its journal is the motivation for the event. The Review’s co-founder, the late Auberon Waugh, said that originally he wanted to single out the best sex scene from the year’s crop of fiction but his fellow co-founder, Rachel Koenig, deemed this concept “too boring.” Koenig also told the Independent that Waugh had become tired of the whole thing shortly before he died in 2001, and herself referred to the award as “a pretty old T-shirt.”

So why not give it up? Or better yet, go back to Waugh’s original plan. It doesn’t take much nerve to stand up in front of a boozy crowd and read sex passages from other people’s books in a mocking tone of voice while everybody sneers and groans. No one raises an eyebrow if you talk about what doesn’t strike you as erotic. Doing the opposite, however, amounts to admitting that you’ve found something arousing, and thereby risking the British equivalent of the ninth circle of hell: embarrassment.

“Their attitude is: ‘Next time you think of writing about sex, don’t,’” said Susie Bright, who was the editor of the Best American Erotica anthology series for 15 years. “I can’t think of any other fundamental human experience that writers would be encouraged to keep to themselves.” Melissa Katsoulis, a literary reviewer for the Times of London, certainly seemed to conform to Bright’s impression when asked to comment on the award by the BBC: “Sex is a subject best avoided altogether,” she said. “If I was writing a novel, I wouldn’t attempt to write it except in the most Victorian and prim way, because it’s awful. It’s a cliché, but the moments of genuine frisson in books are when hardly anything happens.” Speak for yourself, missy.

Another frequent British complaint about literary sex scenes was voiced by former Man Booker Prize judge Lucasta Miller, who told the Independent, “A trap people fall into is an earnest anatomical description of sex. The difficulty with the anatomical is that it can read like a bit of a textbook.” Perhaps the required reading in English schools is a lot more exciting than the stuff we get here, but I can’t recall ever reading a sex scene in a novel (good or bad) that even remotely resembled a textbook. I suspect (but who can tell?) that what Miller is lamenting here is the use of such latinate terms as “penis” and “vagina”; in which case, why not embrace the old reliable Anglo-Saxon terminology? You are English, after all.

Perhaps terminology lies at the heart of the problem. The presenters of the Bad Sex in Fiction Award gleefully seize upon their targets’ most outlandish metaphors; Somerville compared a nipple to the “nose of the loveliest nocturnal animal, sniffing in the night.” Yet perfectly serviceable, if disreputable, four-letter words risk turning a scene, in the words of one commentator, into something “perilously close to erotica, with its cheapening effect of sexual arousal.” And we can’t have that, can we?

Well, why can’t we? Is there any reason why the literature that makes us laugh, cry and rage shouldn’t also, occasionally, turn us on? Bright’s anthologies — which included excerpts from literary works by such luminaries as Mary Gaitskill, Nathan Englander and Aimee Bender as well as purpose-built erotica of superior quality — repeatedly demonstrated that the distinction is blurry, if not outright irrelevant. Nevertheless, this year’s Booker chair, Andrew Motion, complained that there wasn’t much sex in the current crop of novels, and blamed (at least in part) ridicule from such vehicles as the Bad Sex in Fiction Award for inhibiting the Commonwealth’s authors.

The Bad Sex Award poses as a knowing blow against literary pretension while embodying the most retrograde prudery. How much more refreshing it is to hear novelist Lionel Shriver calmly announce in a recent NPR segment that she finds Maria McCann’s historical novel “As Meat Loves Salt” “one of the most erotic I have ever read.” Yes, the segment was part of a series called “My Guilty Pleasure,” but it’s hard to believe Shriver feels guilty about much of anything, let alone pleasure. Her own response certainly hasn’t “cheapened” her respect for McCann’s book.

This is the only antidote to the smirking crypto-priggishness of the Bad Sex in Fiction Award and its ilk: forthright praise for the literary sex writing that does work. I, for one, think Jane Smiley deserves more credit than she gets for this, with extra points for depicting wholesome, vanilla lovemaking that’s genuinely hot. (I recommend “Horse Heaven” and “Good Faith.”) Alan Hollinghurst’s descriptions of gay sex in “The Line of Beauty” are (to this reader) more exotic, but equally intoxicating. Readers, here’s your chance to strike a blow for literary libertinage: What are your favorites?

Referenced in this article

The Bad Sex in Fiction Award, 2010

Susie Bright’s Best America Erotica collections

Lionel Shriver on Maria McCann’s “As Meat Loves Salt”