It seems that award season has begun -- book awards, mind you. In Los Angeles, it's easy to for that phrase to inspire images of fluffy gowns, brilliant jewels and horrific grandstanding on the part of network interviewers. I suspect that book prize events have their own, albeit less showy, contrivances, awkward moments, and glad-handing. At The Observer, Robert McCrumb contends that after mayday, the world of literary prizes goes gangbusters. He notes the Ondaatje Prize, the Caine Prize, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize, The Samuel Johnson Prizes, the Science Book Prize, the Mind Awards, The Orange Broadband awards and the Romantic Novelist of the Year awards.
A rather harsh way to begin another literary week:
"You might not think it from this publicity, but most literary endeavour ends not in prizes, but 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.
It's not much better at the top. Many established writers will privately concede that their work is the wreck of a better idea. Even among bestsellers there are comparative failures, those in third place that should have been number one, number 17s that were expected in the Top 10. And so on."
I've been a curious observer in the proliferating world of prizes and it baffles me a bit. Why so many? So often? Does the proliferation of prizes weaken the meaning? Water the whole thing down? It seems inevitable.
The seeming madness of too many prizes reminds me of two of my favorite writers and their take on prizes: Julian Barnes called the Booker prize "posh-bingo" (which McCrum references) and John Banville, in his recent visit to Los Angeles, reminded us that "We have to be wary of prizes (book or any other) as a measure of our work. The only judgment is the judgment of time."
