Chris Smith and the Booker Prize
23 September 2004 - Booker books are drivel says judge
The shortlist for the Man Booker Prize has just been announced. Every year publishers are invited to submit two books as entries for the award. The original 132 entries have now been reduced to a shortlist of six.
What I find interesting about this year's selection is not those that made it, but those that didn't.
Chris Smith, the former culture secretary who chaired the judges, said there had been some "surprisingly bad" books on the original list.
Another judge put his views even more strikingly. Robert Macfarlane, a writer and academic, said: "They ranged from drivel through many shades of drivel."
The official website declares: "The Man Booker Prize represents the very best of contemporary fiction". To be fair the judges pointed out that their final shortlist was of excellent quality, but it does not bode well for anybody that dives into their local bookshop in the hope of a new modern classic that the bulk of what publishers think is their best contemporary output appears to eminent authorities to be 'drivel'.
But then again maybe we should remind ourselves of the words of the chairperson of the judges. In the first annual Shaw Lecture, as transcribed in his book, 'Creative Britain', Chris Smith says:
"Consider for just one moment the salutary warning he [George Bernard Shaw] gives to putative Secretaries of State for Culture who might be inclined to intervene: 'Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.'"
So it's a bit of a gamble. If we put our faith in the judges then maybe they have saved us hours of laborious reading by warning us off a whole host of poor quality books. On the other hand it might just be that all the judges have shown us is their own particular tastes. Many is the time when supposedly authoritative people fail to recognise quality. J.K. Rowling was rejected by tens of publishers who failed to see the appeal of Harry Potter. She was, of course, not alone.
In my younger days I used to edit an arts magazine and we had hundreds of submissions of short stories and poetry. I have to admit that I was guilty of dismissing much of the work as 'drivel'. But looking back I realise that it was as Shaw observed a matter of 'taste' and that upon reflection some of the work had an appeal that I originally failed to recognise.
So, I for one will still be judging books by their cover and as I make my brisk search through the bookshop's shelves I will not have anybody else's thoughts blinkering me - just my own prejudices.