Hello Gentle Reader
A surprise or the idea of a surprise is double sided concept. There is the surprise of doing something completely out of expectations; and then there is the surprise of doing something that has already been done. By simply recycling the content, one is able to say they are ground breaking – in similar ways; with differences in the superficialities. Literary awards often do this. Each of them falls into this pattern—from the Booker Prize to the Nobel Prize for Literature. Prime examples would be: Hilary Mantel winning the Booker Prize a second time for the second novel in her trilogy about the Tudor era and King Henry the VII and Thomas Cromwell. While the Nobel Prize for Literature recently fell into the pit hole by awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature recently to Mo Yan a hack Chinese magical realist writer; and ninety-seven with Dario Fo, who is at times, simply a high class political clown. Sometimes this works, and can be considered a great achievement, despite its predictability and other times it’s just a sad shake of the head.
There is no doubt in my mind that Lydia Davis is a spectacular writer. Her short stories – are sometimes compared to prose poems; and she translates French writers like Marcel Proust and Flaubert into English. She won this year’s Man Booker International Prize. The Man Booker International Prize has awarded the prize to numerous great authors over its short time: Ismail Kadare, the late Chinua Achebe, and Alice Munro. Controversy struck in two-thousand and eleven with the award going to Philip Roth. One judge resigned in protest. It was a literary dramatic soap opera. With Philip Roth didn’t even go to accept the award in person, but instead communicated in skype – as if to add insult to injury. For the second year though in a row, an American author wins the Man Booker International Prize. Nothing against Lydia Davis; but if a prize says it can take on the Nobel Prize for Literature, and is more transparent it must do better than rewarding the same old western countries in a row – for three years in a row a Canadian and now two American authors have won simultaneously. That is not showing an ‘international,’ reputation. It’s more of an embarrassment really. What makes the Nobel Prize for Literature so amazing and frustrating is that it can bring obscure or unknown authors to the forefront; as well as rewarding it to well-known authors.
Quite frankly one of the greatest problems with the Man Booker International prize is that the chair of this year’s award Professor Sir Christopher Ricks had thought of many of the authors as being obscure. That is insulting not only to the author’s publishers the authors themselves, or to their readers; but it is also rather embarrassing to the western literary institutions who have been criticised for their lack of translations – and this just further proves how English speaking countries are to isolated and insular in language in literature. Attempts have and are being made against it; but the general consensus from the literary establishment is still very behind in the times. Only a few authors truly were unknown to me in this list: Marie NDiaye of France; UR Ananthamurthy from India and Intizar Husain of Pakistan. All the others I have had working knowledge of them. I had actually hoped for Swiss, German speaking author Peter Stamm to win the prize personally.
Congratulations to Lydia Davis are of course in order. Though hopefully the Man Booker International Prize in the coming years will continue to mature and become a contender and competitor to the Nobel Prize for Literature.
On a side note:
Nobel fever is heating up, with a tweet from the Swedish Academy – or rather about the Swedish Academy, that the Prize has been narrowed down to five contenders.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
*And Remember: Downloading Books Illegally is Thievery and Wrong.*
M. Mary
