[ad_1]
In 1969, PH Newby accepted a check for £ 5,000 from the jury chair of the first Booker Prize, Dame Rebecca West, for her novel Something To Answer For . The ceremony was modest at Drapers Hall in London. His wife was painting the Booker trophy in gold – it was resin and depicted a woman holding a bowl in the air. They kept him by the front door, where he made an excellent key holder.
At age 50, the Booker is one of the most well-known literary awards in the world and carries considerable marketing. Nielsen has already counted books sold the week before and after a Booker victory – sales of DBC Stone Vernon God Little increased from 509 copies to 8,627 copies, a jump of 1,595 percent. Total sales for a Booker winner are equally impressive – Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assbadin went from 8,228 copies to 500,717 copies in 2000, for example.
More crucially, he has glamor. The gossip flows from each award jury that has gathered behind closed doors, slightly stunned by the effort of reading over 100 books, or the effort to bluff if you've been lazy. Some of these leaks are memorable – Beryl Bainbridge recounted a terrible last meeting between the judges where Philip Larkin maintained an icy silence, Brendan Gill offered to jump off the balcony and exhausted, Bainbridge sank "lower and lower under the table".
There is nothing modest either about the Booker's ambition or his scope. The winner gets a check for £ 50,000, but in the words of Graham Swift, who won in 1996 for Last Orders "Prices do not get written and writers do not write to win price, but in the near-overabundance of literary rewards now offered, the Booker remains special.It is the one that, if we are completely honest, we covet the most. "
Inevitably, detractors have prospered as well , predicting the disappearance of Booker from the 1970s. Indignant letters to the Times; complaints that she was too imperial, or losing her identity by opening to the Americans in 2014; Perhaps it's too sophisticated – the 2011 jury's legibility demands and the books that tug at it – or too dull, letting crime-fiction cross the drawbridge
But this year, the Golden Man Booker's 50th birthday, I did not expect to be so caught up in the game. The award asked five writers and critics to choose a book from the Booker Laureates each decade. Robert McCrum chose VS Naipaul In a free state from the 1970s. Lemn Sissay chose Penelope Lively's Tiger of the Moon for the 1980s, triggering moans from fans from Salman Rushdie ( Midnight's Children winner of 1981). Kamila Shamsie chose Michael Ondaatje The English Patient for the 1990s; for the 2000s, Simon Mayo chose Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel ; and for this decade, Holly McNish chose George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo .
It was not surprising when the public, who voted in the Golden Man Booker poll, settled on the wonderful The English Patient of Ondaatje. But the pleasure of this poll has come from revisiting all those decades of books and writing, going back years to see the authors – Nadine Gordimer, Ian McEwan, Carol Shields, Timothy Mo – that you would not have. -be not discovered as easily or very quickly. the price.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the Pulitzer's short lists were not so readily available outside the United States, and because they were limited to American authors, they remained at a distance. The Booker felt more accessible, and with writers like Anita Desai, Romesh Gunesekera, Rohinton Mistry or Chinua Achebe on short lists early on, much more like a hospitable club.
At age 50, the Booker's biggest challenge will be staying relevant. The fury of admitting American authors will probably disappear – I was initially skeptical, but a national award seems an anachronism. Others remain fierce critics. Julian Barnes, winner in 2011, suggests that the Booker could lose its distinctive quality: "I thought it was silly when it was announced and I think it's still silly."
The Booker has always had his critics. Although it has been opened earlier than many awards to colored writers, women writers (and protagonists) are still underrepresented. He finds a sometimes unpleasant balance between the popular and the literary – JK Rowling and Val McDermid, for example, might not be eligible, even though their work meets the standard set in 1969, for the best novel novel according to the. opinion of the judges who an.
But it is nonetheless likely that it will set the standard for a few decades to come, perhaps because the Man Booker has consistently delivered good long lists and short lists, and because the price does not go down. adapts to the changes of the zeitgeist. The golden girl has been replaced by a plaque, which is no longer so useful for holding keys, but still coveted.
Join our online book group on Facebook at FTBooksCafe. Subscribe to FT Life on YouTube for the latest FT Weekend videos
Source link
