Said Roddy Doyle, author of the Booker Prize-winning "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha," quoted in "Booker prize chairman laments poor quality of entries/A former prizewinner heading this year’s jury said many of the 153 novels submitted were not worth discussing as judges whittled down the list to six contenders" (London Times).
There are regularly more than 150 “literary fiction” titles in contention for the prize. New novels by all previously shortlisted authors are entered automatically, and some publishing houses are allowed several entries each depending on previous success....
Doyle said the number of books they all had to read was "daunting." He said that such were his reading responsibilities, one day he recorded only 17 steps on his pedometer "and it took eight steps to the kettle from where I was sitting."
That's why I consume my "literary fiction" in the form of audiobooks, but I guess Roddy Doyle is too virtuous to take shortcuts. And yet he does take the most obvious shortcut and stop reading at the point when he realizes — "realises" — that he's reading a book that hasn't got a shot. I guess it's annoying to see so many bad books presented to him as in contention for the prize. Depressing even, especially if you're not getting your usual walks.
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This is about as stupid as getting a job in government or being a DEI director.
I suspect that AI writing has been used by many authors, and the judges are picking up on it. Art shows have lots of AI "pop art" too.
I wonder how many great novels of the past would make it through if he never read or heard of them before.
Same thing's been happing in Sci-Fi for 15+ years.
Books, generally, are too long. Is anyone familiar with Blinkist and some of the other "reader's digest" -type services?
Mainly for non-fiction, the idea is to give you the several take-aways from a book that are the ones you'll be able to take away anyway - and pick-up the whole book it you want to go deeper.
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Gong Show rules rule. Life is short…
What a surprise! Most contemporary art (whether writing, painting, sculpture, music, or whatever) sucks. While that's probably always been true, what sets this era apart is that most of the art that receives praise from our 'elites' sucks worse than the popular dreck.
Snark because the guy is telling his truth? (Although I believe I tried Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and didn't get far.)
Most book prizes are now "statements." The books themselves are often mediocre or worse. Someone should look a little more closely at the Emperor and his haberdashery.
Here is an interesting question for AI: "How many white male authors have won 'prestigious' literary prizes in this millennium not named Cormac McCarthy?"
So don't blame us if your novels suck.
Another institution that has degraded under the weight of painfully self-conscious wokery. Booker Prize winners (and shortlists) used to be reliably great reads. Now they're hilariously blatant signaling.
Not available on Kindle. Fuck Paddy Doyle
John Henry
He doesn't owe anybody a full reading. Stopping as soon as he's decided it's not a good book is the right way to approach this task.
Query: what percentage of good books have gone through a sensitivity reader? What percentage of bad books have?
"Not available on Kindle. Fuck Paddy Doyle"
Try Roddy Doyle
Prof: whatever his given name is, he’s a paddy. GSTK, JSM
Maybe they can hold the prize banquet in Waterloo Station's men's toilets?
If I had 153 novels to read and judge for ONE very prestigious prize, I would spend less than an hour sorting them into 3 piles.
Probably not worth reading (maybe 100). Possibly worth reading 40. Probably worth reading.
I'd spend the rest of the first day going through group 1 and giving them a chance to jump to one of the other piles but basically setting them aside, into the discard pile.
I'd spend the second day reading 5 or 10 pages of the 40 books in the middle pile and either adding them to the discard pile or putting them in a must-read pile, the 4th pile.
Then I'd start reading the books in the third pile, beginning with the book I most feel like reading. Read it until I feel like tossing it aside — into the discard pile.
You've got to make a crazy game of it. If you feel too guilty about that, you shouldn't be a judge.
Now, you might be thinking: Althouse, is that how you graded exams?
No, I read every single exam, every word, even taking the time to struggle to understand what the student might be trying to say. And I was mostly reading handwriting (Doyle complains about the small print in the novels he's reading).
I did that because each student received a grade, and that mattered a lot to him or her. In the case of awarding a prize, there is only ONE prize to be given. You need a way to winnow it down to the finalists, and it's a very subjective decision. In the end, someone deserving will get the prize... if you judge on merit. The only thing to feel guilty about is if you don't judge on merit.
My experience is that very few Novels get signifiantly better as the go along. The exception is old-timey 19th century novels which usually start slow as the writer gives us the "set-up" and introduces all the characters.
If you have 153 novels, do triage. Read them till you can make a decision. Bad ones get rejected. Good ones get put to one side. Ones in the middle - that's another pile. Then read the "Maybes" until you can decide. Good or Bad?
At the end you should have just the good ones to read.
A hat with the titles of the books on separate pieces of paper sounds like a good option here.
A member of my family is a librarian and we receive copies of publications like Booklist and Publishers Review. Please take a look at these publications. You will see a publishing industry obsessed with gender and identity politics, left wing cheerleading, and the normalizing of decadence.
For years I've followed the lists of nominees for National Book Awards, Bookers Prize, and Pulitzers. It was once an efficient way to identify excellence. No more.
Looking at the Booker prizes and its just absurd. For the 16 winners you have:
1) Six women (One black)
2) Two black men
3) Two explicitly Jewish writers
4) One from Sri Lanka
5) Five White men. One from UK, One from Austrailia, One from Ireland and Two from USA.
Its not about literary quality, its about diversity.
Once it was thought that writing fiction took talent. Now it appears that it only takes time.
These literary prizes always had an element of politics and favoritism in them. But its become the defining characteristic in 2021. The Hugos, for example, just came out said "We're a leftwing group that believes in diversity. No centerists or rightwingers need apply".
That's why no one pays attention anymore, or just thinks "Well it won the prize. It *MAY* be good".
Regarding sorting quality into piles: The grade for student paper or exam can very often be estimated from the first page or two. Some struggle to hit the point across several pages, while others nail it in half a page. This doesn't work so well with novel-length fiction, as many chapters and passages are put in for effect and atmosphere or foreshadowing (e.g., Moby Dick's digressions).
I lost interest in contemporary fiction upon trying to sort through all the boring and useless and derivative content. I recall one book with an EXTENDED description of how the protagonist had a large bladder could hold his pee and then it described him peeing off the back of a boat for several minutes. All of this was presented with a description of his internal monologue. I don't know how long it lasted, as I moved on from that book.
The novel is sort of a way-station or motel between the factual matter it originates from -- history, biography, autobiography, memoir, journalism, essays, etc. -- and the eventual film. Once, maybe from 1830 to 1980, it was the big deal, the main event. Not anymore.
Did UW bestow an award for best written exam in each required core class (Constitutional Law)?
I won only one, in Fiduciary Relations, from the most notorious ball buster on the faculty. I was so proud. Class is no longer considered part of the core.
Select your judges to meet your evaluation criterion and split all the books among the judges to be read. Give each judge 5 min to describe the book and then all judges vote to keep it on the short list. Then every judge reads the top 10 and votes again. That would cut down the number of books each judge had to read by the number of judges.
In statistics as a ta it was easy to grade tests, just see if they got the right answers, if not see if you could see any thought displayed in the solution to give some partial credit.
[O]ne day he recorded only 17 steps on his pedometer "and it took eight steps to the kettle from where I was sitting."
People from that part of the world are so quaint and droll and Hobbit- or leprechaun-like.
“Doyle said the number of books they all had to read was "daunting." He said that such were his reading responsibilities, one day he recorded only 17 steps on his pedometer "and it took eight steps to the kettle from where I was sitting."
Get a treadmill.
DEI has greatly simplified the winnowing process. Used to be you judged a book by examining its cover. Now you can just glance at a photo of the author.
It takes a lot longer to listen to an audiobook than to read the book. Where do you find the time?
I just abandoned William Vollmann's "Europe Central" about 20% into the novel. Vollmann has a technique--but this "novel" felt like a series of somewhat biographical sketches. When you have to ask whether there's a point that the author is trying to make, or if you can't see the point, is there a narrative to carry you along to the end--and the answer is No and No, I stop wasting my time. I do listen to audiobooks--maybe on a long drive, or while working in the shop, but it's a hard and slow way to get through a book.
I stopped reading the comments a couple in, realizing that I just don't care about this topic...
Althouse wrote: "The only thing to feel guilty about is if you don't judge on merit."
The only thing to say to the judges is "J'accuse!"
I read Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. It was about this Irish kid whose old man gets laid off so he pools his savings with some friends and buys what we in the construction biz used to call a "roach-coach". It was pretty funny and the writing was pretty good. Can't remember much of it other than that, though.
I should have said “straight white men.”
The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller is really good read.
Flesh by David Szalay is another superb book -- rare case of a book meeting and even exceeding expectations.
As Michael Fitzgerald noted, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is a great read as well. Everyone who was a young boy who loved messing around with his friends, going places where they shouldn't (like construction sites), and had some nice friends as well as not so nice friends, will find resonance with it.
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