How much a judge of true talent is the Booker prize? Last Monday’s
shock triumph of John Banville over Kazuo Ishiguro, Julian Barnes and
the Smiths Ali and Zadie is surely one that will go down as truly
unforgivable in the grand scheme of Booker Prize misnomers. There has
most definitely been a fair few. Yet sources close to the judging panel
commented on how, rarely, all six shortlisted books were in the running
for at least half the discussion which lasted more than an hour.
Novelist Josephine Hart, whose work has been translated into twenty-six
languages, and literary editor of the Evening Standard, David Sexton,
were among those anointed with the decision-making powers for this
year’s Booker. It was, though, by no means a verdict by acclamation. A
split vote scenario between Banville’s The Sea and Ishiguro’s lament of
loss and longing, Never Let Me Go, called for Professor John
Sutherland, the chair of judges, to cast the deciding glance Banville’s
way. Of The Sea Sutherland remarked, “It is an incredibly written piece
of work if very melancholy. But if you can’t tune into it, the novel
won’t work for you”.
Out of this rather unique scenario arises the question of how a novel
that, at the admission of the chief judge “won’t work” for many
readers, went on to take the more-than-prestigious, quasi-mythic Man
Booker Prize for Fiction. The Sea is nothing more than an unfeeling
exercise in coterie aestheticism, a collection of deceptively beautiful
sentences in the place of a fully developed novel with real riches and
deep delights. Style over substance, it seems, prevailed once more this
week.
And what makes the judges’ decision even more disconcerting is the fact that 2005 has been widely acclaimed as representing the strongest year
for fiction since the conception of the Booker prize thirty-six years
previous. The longlist, announced way back during the height of summer,
confirmed this with its finely tuned balance of established giants
mixed with young writers in the throes of their vibrant talents. The
roll call surveyed titles as diverse as first-timer Tash Aw’s
accomplished essay on fluid identities, but none of these novels even
made the expected leap to the shortlist. Nor, shockingly, did J M
Coetzee’s masterful metafictional accomplishment Slow Man.
So what does all this ultimately say about the quality of the other
books on this year’s “vintage” shortlist? Runner-up Ishiguro’s Never
Let Me Go reminds us of what gives greatest meaning to our lives in
this time of fear, what the jihadists most despise: love and loyalty.
The meaning of love in a time of fear is also a theme in Zadie Smith’s
third novel, On Beauty. Her mixed-race cast is adrift; they are all
searching for certainty, for meaning under the vexed umbrella of
Anglo-American relations. On Beauty asks important questions about that
all-encompassing relationship between culture and power.
Above all else, On Beauty, like the novels of McEwan and Ishiguro, is a
book about the present that fulfils the most demanding test of fiction
as stipulated by Ezra Pound: that it brings news of how we live, news
that will forever more stay news. It makes the decision of this year’s
Booker judges all the more perplexing, truly saddening in its lack of
vision. John Banville could never engage as imaginatively with the
challenges tossed up by the stormy new order of our society.ARCHIVE: 1st week MT 2005
What were Booker judges thinking?
