Un-Man-ned Booker Prize

The decision of the Booker Prize to throw open the competition to all English-speakers (code: come in USA) rather than just Britain, the Commonwealth, Eire and Zinbabwe is another case of homogenisation, better known as following the money.  Distinctiveness is cast aside, much like Euston Arch.  Suriname’s plans to join The Commonwealth can now be shelved, for surely the only reason for their application was to be able to participate in the Man Booker Prize.  Can probably kiss goodbye South Sudan’s accession too.

A spokesman for the prize celebrated the inclusiveness of the prize, where any English-speaker from “Chicago to Sheffield to Shanghai” can enter.  This sums up the imaginative bankruptcy of the decision (which has been debated for a long time).  First of all, it is a failure of alliteration by including a soft ‘c’ city, just because they couldn’t think of another American city that began with ‘S’ (Seattle?  San Francisco? San Diego? Santa Fe?  For a truly worldwide feel, St Petersburg, Florida?)  People, in general, don’t read books out loud either, unless they have an audience, so it fails on that count as well.  Secondly, it is too writer-ly.  A book containing such a phrase - without disowning it immediately through postmodernism - would barely be able to secure an agent, let alone a publishing house and forget all kind of lists, long and short.  Famous writers (Elmore Leonard, Sebastian Faulks) were/are always at pains to stress that if it sounds like it is written, dump it and start again.  Alliteration is like kryptonite to all tomes aspiring to win the Booker Prize.

Like the one-sided extradition treaty, written in American phraseology and signed by a blind British Home Secretary, which Theresa May effectively placed on a more equal footing by blocking Gary McKinnon’s removal, many American awards are not open to all and sundry English-speakers, e.g. the Pulitzer Prize (unless ones happens to write a distinguished history of the USA).  It penalises all the other authors from The Commonwealth (or formerly part of), in the first instance be denying them a place on the long list, which can be the difference between earning a living through writing or not and secondly, by the sheer volume of books that now need to be perused by the judges, nuances that can make the difference between winning and not may be overlooked.  The Man Booker Prize board may spare their blushes with the fig leaf that winning it will be an even greater accolade but such an abstract concept I feel would gain little traction to winners and runners-up alike.