Category: literary life
Despite the persistent rumors that Julian Barnes’s Arthur and George would win the 2005 Man Booker Prize, the award last night went to John Banville’s The Sea. There’s lots of coverage in the British press. The Times, for instance, provides a glimpse of the judging process:
The chairman of the judges, Professor John Sutherland, described The Sea as “a masterly study of grief, memory and love recollected”. He hailed the quality of Banville’s writing: “You feel you’re in the presence of a virtuoso. In his hands, language is an instrument.”
But he acknowledged that the melancholic subject-matter made it a “slit your throat novel” which was perhaps too difficult for some readers – and some of the judges. Professor Sutherland had to cast the deciding vote after the judges were split at the end of their one-hour judging session between Banville and Ishiguro.
“There were six novels that were all good – and then a bloody guillotine is coming down on your head in an hour. The discussion could have gone on for three days. There’s something abnormal about these novels competing. It’s very sad that you have to have a gladiatorial combat to get people to read good novels.”
Over at the Independent, Boyd Tonkin throws a hissy fit over the choice of Banville.
Yesterday the Man Booker judges made possibly the worst, certainly the most perverse, and perhaps the most indefensible choice in the 36-year history of the contest. By choosing John Banville’s The Sea, they selected an icy and over-controlled exercise in coterie aestheticism ahead of a shortlist, and a long list, packed with a plenitude of riches and delights.
And that’s just the nice part. He’s pretty pissed at John Sutherland, the chair of the judges, whom he accuses of distorting the views of fellow judges back in 1999. Read the full piece here. For a radically different take, you can also hear from the winner himself, in this BBC report:
Banville said: “Even if I’d lost I’d still think it was a good year for the Booker. It’s been a good year for fiction.
“It’s nice to see a work of art winning the Booker Prize – whether it’s a good work of art or a bad one, it’s what I intended it to be.
“I’m very encouraged that people have responded to a book that’s very carefully crafted.”
We know at least one reader who is ecstatic about the win. You can also read Mark Sarvas’s interview with Banville, conducted just a few weeks ago, over at his blog: Part 1, part 2, and part 3.
The New Zealand Herald has a profile of Caryl Phillips, whose intriguing new novel, Dancing in the Dark, is a fictionalized account of the life of Bert Williams, a West Indian actor who made a fortune performing in blackface in the early 1900s.
The Faustian nature of this bargain intrigued Phillips, who has written about race and identity his entire career. “The more I read about him, the more I thought to myself: what on earth was he thinking?” Phillips takes a sip of lemonade and cringes. “I mean, what on earth would make somebody go against the grain � and continue to perform and embrace the mockery of this image?”
Some of the answers can be found in Dancing in the Dark, which turns Williams’ life into a three-act of novelettes. The first section describes Williams’ journey to the stage. The second introduces his rise to fame, his weakness for drink, his sexless marriage, and the problems that developed with his African-American co-star, George Walker. In the final section, Williams has a short, lonely ride at the top, a stranger to everyone, including himself.
On a related, but non-fictional front, I recently received an advance review copy of Mel Watkins’s Stepin Fetchit, a biography of Lincoln Perry, the actor who made a name for himself in the 1920s and 30s by playing Uncle Toms and other figures of comic relief for white America. I haven’t gotten to it yet (still buried under a pile of assignments) but hope to read the new Caryl Phillips novel at the very least.
While I was at Bread Loaf this summer, I went to many readings–faculty, staff, students–and heard lots of different pieces, fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. One of the most memorable was a strange, stunning and wonderful poem by Cincinnati poet Matt Hart. Even after all this time I still remember the poem very well. I found out later that it appeared in a chapbook called Revelated. I don’t read as much poetry as I could (or should) but this is one collection that I definitely plan on getting. Check it out.
Those of you in Portland tonight can check out this reading at Reading Frenzy, a.k.a. the smallest bookstore in America, which is right next to the largest bookstore in America.
Tuesday, October 11th, 7pm
John Crow’s Devil & Wide Eyed
Reading with Marlon James and Trinie Dalton
More info here.
Swedish billionaire Sigrid Rausing has purchased Granta (one of my favorite literary magazines) as well as Granta Books.
[Julian] Barnes said he too was an admirer of the philanthropy, observing that it was all too rare in publishing. ‘I have been an admirer of and contributor to Granta over the years,’ he said. ‘Granta is a force for good in British letters and one of the few remaining places where you can place a short story in this country. It’s very strong editorially and I don’t have a bad word to say about it. It’s been looking to fall from one benevolent owner to another and that seems to have happened.’
Rausing also started a publishing house earlier this year: Portobello Books.
Jim Ruland’s collection of stories, Big Lonesome, is reviewed in Las Vegas City Life.
It’s Ruland’s gleeful ability to stomp on icons that makes him fun to read and which gives his collection the flavor of being hit in the face with a stiff slam-pit elbow, but it’s his bone-serious looks at the wars we fight — both with guns and tanks and on the surface of our minds — that show the most promise. In particular, the lead story in the collection, “Night Soil Man,” about three zoo workers who must kill their animals before Nazi air-raids do the job for them. It’s a horrific and sad story, but ultimately shows the most humanity of any of Ruland’s 13 tales.