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Anti-Prize Culture?

JA October 21

The announcement of the Booker and the Nobel Prize earlier this month saw two of the more glittering events of the literary awards-season come to a close. No one can deny that these prizes are a huge honour for the winner, and, let’s face it, a whole lot of fun for readers as well – we get to speculate about the odds, hope, hedge our bets and then complain about the final decision for days on end.

On the other hand though, it’s arguable that these big prizes – the Miles, the Booker and the Nobel – have begun to fall out of favour in recent times. Some of these are old gripes – the awards are out of touch, or unrepresentative, or, in the case of the Nobel, just too damn obscure. Anyone who’s ever sat on a judging panel knows that it’s often less about literary merit and more about negotiation (the sad reality of anything decided upon by committee). Hilary Mantel, who won the Booker in 2009 and served as a judge in 1990, reflected thus:

I’m glad I was a Booker judge relatively early in my career. It stopped me thinking that literary prizes are about literary value. Even the most correct jury goes in for horsetrading and gamesmanship, and what emerges is a compromise.

Other criticisms pull no punches. This from Damien G. Walter:

The rumour is that the Booker Prize rewards the best literary fiction. What utter arse. If it did I would still loathe it, but my hatred would be irrational. The Booker is a clarion call of cultural elitism …

The complaint that these elite prizes simply give up more the same has also been levelled at the Miles Franklin Award, which demands that the winning novel depict ‘Australian life in any of its phases’ (and in turn can result in worthy books missing out). Last I heard, the trustees were ‘open’ to rethinking this clause, but seeing as we’ve heard nothing yet I’m guessing it will remain as is for the foreseeable future.

Enter the anti-prizes – some of these, like the Ig Nobel Prize (which, in case you didn’t guess, is a parody of the Nobel Prizes) have been around for years while others, like the Not the Booker Prize, which began in 2009, are relatively recent alternatives. At the more humourous end of the scale you also have things like the Diagram Prize for the Oddest Title of the Year and the Bad Sex Awards, the literary equivalent of the Razzies. (This year Tony Blair is an honoured nominee – read this passage and then cringe, here).

The agenda for these is as varied as their voting systems. Most, I would say, aren’t there because people want major prizes done away with altogether, but rather to provide a healthy and often tongue-in-cheek antithesis. Part of why they are so popular, especially on the blogosphere, has much to do I think with current trends in digital culture. So much of the net involves taking power out of the hands of a select few, and redistributing it among the plugged-in masses. Everywhere you look users are able, and indeed encouraged, to rate, comment and approve – from blogs and reviews on Amazon or iTunes, right down to the instantaneousness of ‘liking’ something on Facebook or retweeting it on Twitter. In other words, it’s all about agency, and how you’re able to reach out and connect in hope of being counted.

The Not the Booker prize is a good example of tapping into this desire for a popular counterweight. It was created in direct response to criticisms about its parent award by the Guardian, who then asked readers to nominate and vote for their own favourites. Not to be taken too seriously, the trophy is the coveted Guardian mug, with the winner announced around the same time as the actual Booker.

The Ig Nobel Prize similarly asks the public to nominate contenders, but then leaves the final decision up the board, which consists of several Nobel Laureates, writers, athletes, scientists and ‘other individuals of greater or lesser eminence’, as well as a ‘random passerby’ who is traditionally invited to help judge on the final day. If you’re curious about the calibre of the winners – Australian writer Glenda Browne won the Lit Prize in 2007 for ‘her study of the word “the” – and of the many ways it causes problems for anyone who tries to put things into alphabetical order’.

One of the more interesting counter-awards out there is the Hugo. You’d be right in pointing out that this is major prize in itself – the Hugos are highly anticipated each year and carry a huge amount of cultural clout. Past winners include Arthur C. Clarke, J.K. Rowling, Philip K. Dick, Kurt Vonnegut and, this year, China Miéville and Paolo Bacigalupi, as well as Shaun Tan. However, unlike say the Booker or the Miles, the winner is chosen by members of Worldcon, who are invited to nominate a shortlist and then vote. The Hugos also have a wide range of categories, including fanfiction, art, semiprozines, best editors and novelettes, and in this it clearly pegs its own particular agenda – prestigious, yes, but also with an enthusiastic blend of geekdom and edge.

On a side note, I think some of the big prizes are attempting to retain relevance, either by coming up with web-driven projects like the Lost Booker Prize, or by making decisions that seem, within their confines, deliberately risky or atypical. This year, for example, the Miles Franklin made quite a point of selecting its first a ‘crime’ novel as the winner via Peter Temple’s Truth. This year’s Booker also described Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question as ‘the first unashamedly comic novel’ to take the top gong.

So far, Australia is still lacking a counter Miles Franklin Award…

 

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