Anybody read (or reading) the Booker longlist?

Cafe Society
1

I don’t think there’s a thread or anything on this yet, is there? Every year when the Booker comes up I always feel like a literary retard because I’ve never heard of most of the books. This year the longlist is:

Tash Aw, The Harmony Silk Factory
John Banville, The Sea
Julian Barnes, Arthur & George
Sebastian Barry, A Long Long Way
J.M. Coetzee, Slow Man
Rachel Cusk, In the Fold
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
Dan Jacobson, All for Love
Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian
Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black
Ian McEwan, Saturday
James Meek, The People’s Act of Love
Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown
Ali Smith, The Accidental
Zadie Smith, On Beauty
Harry Thompson, This Thing of Darkness
William Wall, This is the Country

Okay, I’ll admit right now that the only one I’ve read is Never Let Me Go, and the only ones I can remember hearing of off the top of my head are A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian and Shalimar the Clown. I might have heard of The Harmony Silk Factory or that might be a brain artifact, I dunno.

Now, I’m a well-read literary type person. I’m a librarian, for pity’s sake. I keep up with the professional literature, I read the Bookslut blog, I try to keep up. So how on earth do I never know what’s evidently going on in modern literature? Have the rest of you heard of the longlist books before they’re announced?

Looking at last year’s longlist, I’ve read two, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and Cloud Atlas. I’ve heard of a few more - I suspect I’ve only heard of The Line of Beauty because it won the Booker Prize, though.

So, in other words, somebody tell me I’m not a freaking culturally illiterate moron, please. How many of the Booker longlist have you read? (One hears from Bookslut and something some guy’s doing over at the BBC that In the Fold is a waste of my time, but maybe I should sit down and read the others? Maybe we should have a “beat the ceremony” book club?)

2

There was talk of opening the Booker prize to all comers a while back, did that actually happen? The list you put up suggests not, they seem to be all British and commenwealth names.

You’re a keen reader if you’re trying to keep up with the Booker longlist. I can’t remember a time when British lit didn’t lag a mile behind US fiction writing (IMHO), curious to hear that anyone in the US would pay it any attention. I’m well out of the loop though, so maybe this view is outdated.

I dunno, we Brits invent the novel, invent rock n roll, then just call it a day.:confused:

3

That I am aware, Spain invented the novel (Don Quixote) and the US invented Rock n’ Roll (Dick Dale*.)

  • Elvis played the blues, regardless what people called it at the time.
4

Trying to stay within forum rules here, but that that’s…um…a pretty silly thing to say.

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Well, I figure there’s got to be some great books somewhere on that list, right? The two I read off last year’s list are amazingly good, Never Let Me Go is good, there’s got to be more “good” on the list, right? But I haven’t got the time to read bad books, I’d really like somebody, like, say, a prize committee, to pick the best for me. I was just curious to see if anybody else was as modern-lit ignorant as I seem to be.

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P. D. James’ autobiography she talks about being on the Booker committee. The jist of it is that they really can’t read everything they’re supposed to and certainly not in depth, so the long list is basically “what ought to be good,” the short list is “what some of us thought was good,” and the winner is nearly random. I don’t know… I do like the lure and romance of the prize, but I am not at all convinced that a well-read person need pay any attention to it.

7

Its just my opinon as a reader Atticus, nothing too silly about it. It comes down to ones taste in books, really, which is not worth arguing about. You clearly understand this point.

That said, there is an arisotcracy of US fiction writers that just doesn’t exist in the UK. People like John Updike, Thomas Pynchon, Don Delillo, Philip Roth etc etc have been massively influential in shaping the novel over the last fifty or so years, no one in Britain has similar credentials. I don’t think there is any question that many British writers have (or maybe had) an awe-struck inferiority complex with respect to the grand old men of American letters, and produced very derivative work as a result. Martin Amis would be the classic example of this type of writer, who is perpetually nominated for the Booker.

The names mentioned above are getting very old, and certainly their best work is behind them. Their influence is waning, young UK writers now realise that the days of writing a giant postmodern metanarrative and garnishing literary plaudits for it are well and truly over. Maybe there will be a rennaiscence in British fiction.

Here are two links describing the inferiority complex of the Booker, together with vigorous rebuttals from UK writers:

article from theage

article from the guardian

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Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, John Fowles, V S Naipaul, Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, Vikram Seth etc. etc.

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These authors have nothing like the sphere of influence over the western novel as the names I mentioned previously. They’re obviously brilliant writers (with one exception), but they’re just not in the same league as their American counterparts. Someone like Thomas Pynchon is a reference point for the progression of fiction writing in the late-twentieth century, he’s going into the history books. Do you honestly see someone like John Fowles or Ian McEwan in a similar light?

BTW, if you think Margaret Atwood has had a massive influence on shaping the novel in the last fifty years, let me be the first to tousel your hair, give you 50p and send you off to get yourself an ice cream.

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To be fair I think it’s far too early to say which of these writers is destined for the history books. If you want to put Pynchon up on some kind of mythic pedestal then you are welcome to but I don’t see the evidence that he deserves it yet.

I think I mainly just object to your idea that there’s no exciting writing coming out of the UK at the moment. If you really believe that you need to read more.

(And okay, I just included Atwood because it was getting a bit malesy).

11

Margaret Atwood isn’t even British, is she? I thought she was Canadian. (I know that’s fine for the purposes of the Booker but not for “there are no literary giants in the UK.”)

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No arguments there Ithaka, I certainly need to read more. I’m going on a very long train journey next week and was meaning to load up on some books for the trip, so maybe I’ll pick a few titles of the Booker longlist. I know Zadie Smith talks about being a David Foster Wallace fan, so maybe I’ll try her book. :slight_smile: (Thanks for posting the list ZSofia)

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Curses, just forget I even mentioned her, ok? :smack:

Myler, I actually tend to agree that the Booker list is fairly safe stuff. If you want some exciting UK writing try Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell or Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer.

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Zsofia, don’t worry too much about being a retard. If you check out this Amazon list, you’ll see that the majority of the long list books haven’t even been released in the US yet. Kinda hard to stay up on books that aren’t available…

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The Rushdie isn’t even out in the UK. The judges get advance copies.

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Cloud Atlas was on the Booker list last year. I second it, though, it’s really good.