The Belfast Telegraph is one of the many newspapers having fun with the fallout from Sir Howard Davies "cocking a snook at the literary establishment", specifically its reviewing culture. David Lister enacts his name with entertaining examples of "literary love-ins" between reviewers and authors. But these reveal not so much the incestuous nature of literary culture as a sour view of friendship.
Back in the primary source, Sir HD complains that too many reviewers are not brave enough to say a novel doesn't work. Even if this were true, by what criteria is a novel deemed not to have worked? Is it by the logic of the novel under review or by the standard of the kind of novel Sir Howard wants to recommend to the public? We're not told. Of course, I think it's the former. As I argued in my blog-review of JM Coetzee's latest novel - a book the Booker judges singled out for criticism - is, on its own terms, a success; that is, a necessary failure. It reverses what it means for a novel to "work". And that, I would say, is one of the distinctions of a literary novel, certainly so late in the literary day. It staggers me that Booker prize judges are so insensitive that they can't see this.
In the next line of his complaints, Sir HD adds that reviewers "don't care whether [novels are] readable or not". Again, what is "readable"? Diary of a Bad year is, I would say, relatively easy to read. On the other hand, I found the opening chapter of On Chesil Beach unreadable - a novel that received a high number of respectful reviews and made the Booker shortlist. Clearly there are different opinions here, but reviewing isn't just about opinion; it's about patient attention to the work. This tends to even out the kind of judgements Sir HD wants. Maybe the chairman unwittingly disapproves of patience. There is evidence to suggest it.
Sir Howard happily admitted to having read submitted novels at a rate of 80 pages per hour. Jeanette Winterson compares this to putting a record on at 78 instead of a 33: "if you've got some bloody idiot who thinks it's great to read at 80 pages an hour when it's not The Da Vinci Code, you're doomed! Well, I am." Sir Howard's responds by misquoting and misrepresenting the reason for her outburst.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Contact
Please email me at steve dot mitchelmore at gmail dot com.
Website roll (in alphabetical order)
- ABC of Reading
- An und für sich
- Being in Lieu
- Blckgrd
- Blue Labyrinths
- Books of Some Substance
- Charlotte Street
- Craig Murray
- Daniel Fraser
- David's Book World
- Declassified UK
- Donald Clark Plan B
- Ducksoap
- Flowerville
- In lieu of a field guide
- Kit Klarenberg
- Literary Saloon
- Notes from a Room
- Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
- Of Resonance
- Resolute Reader
- Robert Kelly
- Rough Ghosts
- Socrates on the Beach
- Spurious
- The Goalie's Anxiety
- The Grayzone
- The Last Books (publisher)
- The Philosophical Worldview Artist
- The Reading Experience
- Times Flow Stemmed
- Tiny Camels
- Vertigo
Recommended podcasts
Favoured author sites
Blog Archive
- November 2024 (1)
- October 2024 (1)
- September 2024 (1)
- July 2024 (1)
- June 2024 (3)
- May 2024 (31)
- April 2024 (8)
- February 2024 (1)
- December 2023 (2)
- October 2023 (2)
- September 2023 (1)
- August 2023 (1)
- July 2023 (2)
- June 2023 (2)
- May 2023 (1)
- April 2023 (1)
- December 2022 (2)
- November 2022 (1)
- October 2022 (1)
- September 2022 (1)
- July 2022 (2)
- April 2022 (1)
- December 2021 (2)
- November 2021 (1)
- October 2021 (1)
- September 2021 (1)
- August 2021 (1)
- July 2021 (1)
- June 2021 (1)
- April 2021 (1)
- February 2021 (1)
- December 2020 (1)
- November 2020 (1)
- October 2020 (2)
- August 2020 (1)
- June 2020 (1)
- March 2020 (1)
- February 2020 (1)
- December 2019 (2)
- November 2019 (2)
- October 2019 (2)
- September 2019 (2)
- June 2019 (1)
- May 2019 (1)
- March 2019 (1)
- February 2019 (2)
- January 2019 (1)
- November 2018 (1)
- September 2018 (1)
- August 2018 (1)
- April 2018 (1)
- March 2018 (1)
- February 2018 (1)
- January 2018 (1)
- December 2017 (1)
- October 2017 (1)
- August 2017 (2)
- July 2017 (1)
- June 2017 (2)
- May 2017 (3)
- March 2017 (1)
- February 2017 (3)
- December 2016 (1)
- October 2016 (1)
- August 2016 (2)
- July 2016 (1)
- June 2016 (2)
- May 2016 (1)
- April 2016 (2)
- March 2016 (1)
- February 2016 (2)
- January 2016 (1)
- December 2015 (1)
- November 2015 (1)
- August 2015 (2)
- June 2015 (1)
- May 2015 (1)
- March 2015 (1)
- February 2015 (2)
- January 2015 (1)
- December 2014 (1)
- October 2014 (1)
- September 2014 (2)
- July 2014 (1)
- June 2014 (2)
- April 2014 (1)
- March 2014 (3)
- November 2013 (2)
- October 2013 (1)
- September 2013 (1)
- August 2013 (1)
- July 2013 (2)
- April 2013 (1)
- March 2013 (2)
- February 2013 (1)
- January 2013 (1)
- November 2012 (2)
- August 2012 (1)
- July 2012 (1)
- June 2012 (1)
- May 2012 (3)
- March 2012 (3)
- February 2012 (1)
- January 2012 (1)
- November 2011 (1)
- October 2011 (2)
- September 2011 (2)
- July 2011 (3)
- June 2011 (1)
- May 2011 (3)
- April 2011 (5)
- March 2011 (3)
- February 2011 (1)
- January 2011 (2)
- December 2010 (7)
- November 2010 (1)
- October 2010 (5)
- September 2010 (2)
- August 2010 (3)
- July 2010 (4)
- June 2010 (2)
- May 2010 (3)
- April 2010 (4)
- March 2010 (11)
- February 2010 (3)
- December 2009 (3)
- November 2009 (5)
- October 2009 (5)
- September 2009 (3)
- August 2009 (6)
- July 2009 (6)
- June 2009 (4)
- May 2009 (8)
- April 2009 (8)
- March 2009 (12)
- February 2009 (11)
- January 2009 (7)
- December 2008 (7)
- November 2008 (7)
- October 2008 (17)
- September 2008 (7)
- August 2008 (7)
- July 2008 (7)
- June 2008 (7)
- May 2008 (7)
- April 2008 (5)
- March 2008 (8)
- February 2008 (2)
- January 2008 (9)
- December 2007 (26)
- November 2007 (28)
- October 2007 (14)
- September 2007 (22)
- August 2007 (13)
- July 2007 (17)
- June 2007 (11)
- May 2007 (22)
- April 2007 (11)
- March 2007 (23)
- February 2007 (25)
- January 2007 (21)
- December 2006 (8)
- November 2006 (23)
- October 2006 (21)
- September 2006 (16)
- August 2006 (14)
- July 2006 (32)
- June 2006 (17)
- May 2006 (24)
- April 2006 (16)
- March 2006 (18)
- February 2006 (15)
- January 2006 (8)
- December 2005 (8)
- November 2005 (10)
- October 2005 (7)
- September 2005 (13)
- August 2005 (13)
- July 2005 (8)
- June 2005 (15)
- May 2005 (11)
- April 2005 (12)
- March 2005 (8)
- February 2005 (7)
- January 2005 (15)
- December 2004 (2)
- November 2004 (4)
- October 2004 (6)
- September 2004 (2)
Contact steve dot mitchelmore at gmail.com. Powered by Blogger.
80 pages per hour...that's astounding. The best I've been able to get up to was 73 back in the heady days of the late 90s through a diet of amphetamines, sleep deprivation and electric shock therapy. The books I read... not that I can remember much about them, but there were plenty of them. I now average a disappointing 64 per hour, and that's only because of limiting myself to writers of the short, clean, curt style...Camus' Outsider, that kind of thing.
ReplyDeleteThe lines from Blake, which I read earlier at a furious pace, come to mind:
The errors of a wise man make your rule
Rather than the perfections of a fool
I don't understand the logic of single winner judgments. Nor of the collaborative process. I would rather see each judge read and submit a vote independently in a multi-tiered process of elimination. At some set point, if there is a tie for the first choice, perhaps one or two additional votes might be taken, and at that point, if there are three or four at the top--then there would be three or four sharing the prize.
ReplyDeleteI would hope that might be the case more years than not. More realistic, in terms of the comparative merit, and in those years when a consensus selected a single winner, it would mean a great deal more.
Setting up a literary honor as though it were a track meet, with a single "winner" makes no sense at all: a publicity gimmick to sell books. No matter how much self-satisfied ego stroking the judges get out of participating in this sort of folly... like the joke; we know what you are, now we're just haggling over the price.
I must confess to never having recorded my reading speed, though what does it mean these days when so many books (paperbacks in particular) are puffed out with white space and generous margins to bump up the word count and appeal to that most aliterate of book-choosing concepts, value for money?
ReplyDeleteIn any event, surely the book decides the speed, not the reader? You're not going to get much out of Saul Bellow at 50 pages an hour, let alone 80. Similarly, there'd be little point in dawdling for a minute and a half over each page of a Patricia Highsmith suspense novel.
I have some concerns with the way Sir Howard Davies, for example, gave his thoughts on the six shortlisted novels in the Independent a week before the announcement; but in his defence, if you read the full text of his speech on the Booker site, the stuff about reviewing takes up literally a few lines.
Incidentally I read Winterson's new novel quite quickly too and very much enjoyed it.
The correct phrase is a flock of fools. A bunch should only be used in conjunction with bananas.
ReplyDeleteIf literary prizes mattered, they wouldn't.
ReplyDelete