COMMENT
The Booker brouhaha
|
Is there more to the Man Booker Prize than mere media hype? A lot, feels RENUKA RAJARATNAM, celebrating the Prize's embrace of post-modern and contemporary realities.
|
AFP
The judges this year (From Left): Rowan Pelling, Chris Smith, Tibor Fischer, Robert Macfarlane, and Fiammetta Rocco.
IN some reading circles it has been regarded as a sign of sophistication to decry The Man Booker as a crass lit-biz hype or view it as a bogus literary event which has established itself as a British cultural institution rather like a Derby Day. Not only has the Man Booker been seen as a sporting fixture offering entertainment of a fussy nature but the book buffs of the literary kind are horrified by this autumnal nightmare which overlooks the literary merit of the book and are unable to decipher the erratic and eccentric judgements of the jury. On the Booker track, the worst verdicts ever pronounced were: D.B.C. Pierre's Vernon God Little, Anita Brookner's Hotel Du Lac, Keri Hulme's The Bone People, and this year's winner Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty.
Countdown games
Yet another reason for lit-lovers to moan and groan about this controversial award is the way in which it is tuned with the BBC (Channel Four). Intending to create an atmosphere of a countdown excitement, the channel presents a board (bored) of panel of discussion on fiction in general and the short-list in particular. The panellists, comprising writers, editors, critics and academicians, wittily air their opinions on the omissions and submissions and artfully dodge questions so that the would-be-winner is a well-kept secret, reserved for that decisive moment — a shocking "googly" delivery which would stump one and all!
Now why on earth should the discreet practice of novel writing be exposed and hyped as only the TV can expose and hype? Although this is a good objection, one cannot deny that the Man Booker is a media-made prize, reinventing its glitzy and sexy image year after year. The public love the fuss it creates and the writers and the booksellers love it for its money, fame and the telly impact which is so powerful that not only the winner but the short-list too gets the bestseller label.
Come October
Thirty-six years on, The Man Booker continues to stir, through its controversial nature, a "literary" October revolution, moving fiction from the confines of high tradition to the popular and wider readership, embracing the working class. By doing so, what are the new directions and dimensions in fiction today? What are the new artistic fashions and forms determining the Booker fiction? Are writers who ardently wish to be a part of this brouhaha actually losing their "inner" individual voices in attempting to fit into this raw and glitzy formula prescribed by the Booker criteria? As a consequence, does a Booker tradition exist at all or is it the making?
Although I do hold some reservations about the award, as a book(er)-buff I have more reasons to celebrate the Booker brouhaha than decry. The prize has brought to the fore a common "wealth" of literatures across the world, reflecting various conditions of the English language cultures. The Man Booker's vibrancy comes from this counter-cultural sensibility offering extraordinary stories of cultural migrations, integrations, transformations and transmissions — giving the prize its global reach. It has succeeded well in exciting an international response by initiating a global conversation. The Booker's credible role lies in its potential to be a descriptor and to be a powerful agent of change, bringing readers closer to an understanding of one's own and other cultures as well. The track record of the Man Booker on these terms has been amazing as we have enjoyed some really good greats such as: V.S. Naipaul's In a Free State, Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Iris Murdoch's The Sea, the Sea, Coetzee's Disgrace, Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day and Ben Okri's The Famished Road. On the popular ratings and on the book-sellers' hot list are: Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally followed by Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, Yann Martel's Life of Pi and Roy's God of Small Things.
Tribute to Henry James
This year's Booker short list includes two extraordinary novels which are both inspired by the American master of fiction — Henry James. Colm Toibin's The Master is an enthralling book which narrates in elegant prose how James subtly blends his art with his experience. It is a splendid novel composed with a poised restraint and admirably captures the contrast between Henry James's vibrant fiction and the elusive, undramatic quality of his own life. Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty too draws its interest from Henry James but Hollinghurst places his story of a gay relationship amidst the political setting of the Thatcherite England. The novel evokes memories of Julian Barne's satire on the Thatcher period called England, England. Both the books are powerful for their black-comic strength but Hollinghurst's story gives new life and provides a human angle to a gay friendship. In his earlier novel The Spell, Hollinghurst had sensitively dealt with the theme of sexual misery involving a gay male love and lust story. The Line of Beauty is entrancingly stylish, sensational when seen within its sexual-political context and poised in its conventional structure.
A dose of controversy
While it is time to celebrate new experiences and welcome a theme that has remained "outside" the conventional mainstream, the prize has kicked off a controversy because the Chairman of the jury, Chris Smith, who is a former Cultural Secretary is a self-proclaimed gay himself. The media has a now a sexy story of Smith's sympathy for the fiction of gay experience and holds him responsible for the prize pick and needless to say the press are gleefully knocking down Smith's public image much to the embarrassment of Blair's cabinet. What is truly troubling for Hollinghurst is that the controversy has somewhat mitigated his accolade but the source of comfort is that his pocket is enriched by an extra £50,000.
Two other astonishing books in the short list are The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall and Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. Both are phenomenal in their artistic form and fashion. While the former is striking for its stunning imaginative tale, the latter excels in its structural design and craft. Both derive their vitality from the post-modern aesthetics of promiscuous mingling of materials and generic elements, creating an enjoyment hybrid forms and images while skilfully achieving a conflation of voices and perspectives. Cloud Atlas is remarkable for the way in which its six separate stories of diverse genres are cleverly brought into familiar contact with each other. Connecting and resonating with the past, present and the future, with memory, history and destiny, Mitchell initiates a new version of the narrative form — playful and self-reflexive in style. Like a cubist artist he effortlessly tells his stories through multiple perspectives each undercutting one view point with a radically different one. Intricate design and deft craftsmanship are the phenomenal feats of Mitchell's prose but the book's huge size and its complexity, which sort of prolongs the exercise of unravelling the riddlesque elements, could be intimidating to the readers of the popular kind. And remember, the Booker believes in reaching out to a greater audience and when it does that, the booksellers celebrate the benefit too.
Magic that works
Some of these reflections on The Man Booker makes one wonder if the Booker magic works or not today. I think it works to a certain extent because of a newness that keeps coming up due to the post-modern tendency of the (in)famous promiscuous mixing and re-mixing of styles, contents and forms. In that context, what then are the ingredients that brew within the potion of this premier prize? The Booker has been nourished by the popular magic-realism trend, the historic sense, the post-colonial strains, the migration stories, the diaspora and identity issues related to culture, class, race and sexuality. Also gaining firm ground in the Booker fiction are the dyspeptic, science and detective fiction. The abundant vitality of the Booker comes from the MIN — the Moral Indignation Novel which protests that everything is wrong with the world (Roy's God of Small Things, Coetzee's Disgrace, J.M. Ballard's Empire of the Sun, Peter Carey's The History of the Kelley Gang are a few cases in point). And finally, what makes a book win? It is TGR — a Thumping Good Read — accessible in meaning, a darn good story, stylish, a page-turner and not a "great-masterpiece" which only a handful of clever people ever manage to reach the ending.
What has been wonderful about the Booker brouhaha is that it has tracked for over 35 years different paths and picked up different energies mirroring strains of modern life and selfhood, perception and belief, culture and society — all manifesting a significant change in today's fictional landscape.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Literary Review
