Ondaatje's victory of the Golden Book Booker Prize is complicated

This article was originally published on The Conversation, an independent, non-profit source of news, badysis, and commentary from academic experts.

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Authors: Jody Mason, Associate Professor, Department of English, Carleton University and Dessa Bayrock, PhD Student, Department of English, Carleton University

] "American movies, English books – remember how they all end up? … The American or the Englishman gets on a plane and goes in. That's all The camera goes with him, he looks out the window in Mombasa or in Vietnam or Jakarta, somewhere now he can look through the clouds, the tired hero, a few words to the girl next to him. So, the war, for all intents and purposes, is over.This is enough reality for the West.This is probably the story of the last two hundred years of the war. Western political writing, go home, write a book, hit the circuit. "- Michael Ondaatje, ghost of Anil.

Michael Ondaatje recently won the Golden Booker Booker for his novel "The English Patient." Honored with a Booker when it was published in 1992, the book was "crowned as the best fiction work of the last five decades of the Man Booker Prize. "

The Booker Golden Man was created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Man Booker, now one of the world's best-known literary awards. A group of writers and journalists were each badigned a decade in the history of the award, and each was asked to choose a novel

British novelist, Kamila Shamsie – including the 2017 novel "Home Fire" was selected for a Booker – champion Ondaatje "The English patient" as the winner of the 1990s. The public was then asked to select the winner among the five books in an online survey, and Ondaatje came in first

The victories of Ondaatje Booker are complicated. More than anything, Golden Booker's victory at Ondaatje highlights the contradictions of literary value in the current context of global merchandising of creative goods. His success of 1992 can be examined in the broader context of the prize, its relation to postcolonial fiction and the globalization of Can Lit.

The Symbolic Capital of Legitimation

In his 2001 study, The Postcolonial The literary and exotic critic Graham Huggan argues that the Man Booker Award has deep connections to the history of the slave work and indenture. A multinational agribusiness with roots in the Caribbean sugar industry has created the price. Despite its colonial history, the Booker has often praised postcolonial novels criticizing the structures of imperialism from which the Booker was born

According to Huggan, this model deserves to 39 to be examined: does the Booker fold the "shared" postcolonial novels? A culture that is allowed, again, by a metropolitan center?

The Man Booker, asks Huggan, does it allow England, a country that "is no longer an actor in the world's economic sweepstakes," to accumulate "a symbolic capital"? legitimization of cultural strength? "

" The English Patient "decency English through the figure of his patient" English "non-English (Almasy) .But his Booker victory attracted both the novel and Ondaatje to an institution that praises cultural diversity while repeating the old structures of power and cultural distinction

Similar accusations have been leveled against the form and function of official multiculturalism in Canada: he is a writer of Sri Lankan descent who emerged as a poet in the 1960s and whose creative work began to explore his South Asian roots in the 1980s, Ondaatje came to represent a liberal multiculturalism, which the Canadian government was pleased to promote on the scene International

Can Lit Goes Global

The Canadian literary community had already celebrated Ondaatje with two Governor General's Literary Awards for his collections of poetry, a collection of works by Billy the Kid "(1970) and" There is something with a knife that I learn to do "(1979).

Can Global Bed: It has shaped alone the international image of Canada and Canadian writing.

Ondaatje Booker's victory in 1992 is also a constituent element of the global era of blockbuster fiction that changed literary publishing in English Canada. The rise of Ondaatje to international fame in the 1990s coincided with the aggressive consolidation of publishing in Canada with a handful of multinationals. These changes included the partial and then total sale of the publisher of Ondaatje, McClelland & Stewart, to Random House of Canada (now Penguin Random House).

These changes have nurtured an editing environment in which multinationals appropriate the future of authors. in more and more competitive offers that are largely motivated by literary awards.

The literary prize and the contradictions of literary value

It is tempting to claim that the Golden Booker for "The English patient" can be explained because the novel was transformed into a film to success. This recycling of content to produce maximum profits in an unpredictable market for creative products is now very familiar to fiction readers.

Indeed, Ondaatje is probably best known as "the author of the novel that has been adapted in the Multiple Academy". "The film is sensual, offering a lush visual tour of the globe while enhancing the love story of the novel to the detriment of its political criticism – notably the criticism of Western power and the racism that underlies it.

In his acceptance speech of Golden Booker, Ondaatje acknowledged that the adaptation of his novel by Anthony Minghella in 1996 probably had something to do with the results of this vote.

We think that the dedication of "The English Patient" with the Golden Booker is more complex than that.The very existence of the Man Booker Award and other prestigious literary awards, such as the Scotiabank Giller Award of Canada, testifies to the character Continuous distinctive of a value interpreted as "literary".

Ironically, this value continues to be produced by a historical tradition – the distinctions between literary value and the market, especially those that have set in the focus of the romantic period on the spontaneous and natural processes of creation.

These distinctions are the bread and butter literary awards that do not dedicate marketing but literary excellence and author inspiration.

In such a context, writers' gestures regarding their autonomy with respect to the market are significant. In his acceptance speech, Ondaatje thanked "the small presses everywhere – they were the first to publish me". Indeed, Ondaatje is a long-time supporter of small publishers such as Toronto's Coach House Books and small businesses such as Brick magazine. These are genuine commitments.

It is also obvious that such commitments, such as those that accompany the production of literary-specific celebrities, have meanings that go beyond the framework of Ondaatje.

Despite, or more accurately, because of the corporatization of literary publishing in the English-speaking world, affiliations to the small press give Ondaatje the non-instrumentalized, non-commercial literary credibility that writers still need. The search for such credibility is what drives our insatiable interest in literary awards, Gold and others.

At a time when the commodification of literature has never been so apparent and blatant, it appeals to the autonomy of the writer. confirmation of literary award authentication – are more critical than ever.

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