The Booker Prize is elitist and irrelevant, and so what?
Snobby and out of touch, The Booker Prize gets told it is descending further and further into irrelevancy every year. But who cares, Anna Moloney asks.
Every year the Booker Prize rolls around and with it a number of think pieces on how the prize is irrelevant, elitist, tedious, unpredictable – you take your pick. Many of these stances are justified: certainly the average person cares little about the Booker; nominated books may well prove tedious; and it is without a doubt elitist – only a real literary snob would care to choose their reading material based on its Booker credentials.
In other words, you won the Booker Prize. So what?
Surely, the notion that every year the best book is determined by a set group of people with a set group of interests within a set frame of time is absurd. What makes a good novel is in itself a near impossible question, debated since the form’s inception and a crucial part of the first week of lectures for any English literature degree. Inevitably, therefore, every year the crowned winner of such a title will be the subject of much criticism: either that it was too literary, too populist, that it wasn’t as good as x, that it is too similar to every other Booker winner, that ultimately the winner is chosen due to a good bit of luck. And that’s all very well, but it really doesn’t matter.
The thing is, the Booker Prize does not pick the best book every year. But that does not make its choices arbitrary. The process itself – in which five judges, chosen by the Booker Foundation, embark on a mammoth task to read around 150 books in seven months (yes, that’s around a book a day), followed by a rereading of 12/13 of those books, followed by a re-rereading of six of those books – may not be infallible, but it is certainly quite rigorous.
How those books are chosen is also not as whimsical or unreasonable as some may suggest. Around 10 per cent of the books considered are called in by judges, while the rest are put forward by publishers. Now, while publishing houses no doubt have a vested interest (yes a nomination will significantly drive up sales), their specialism – – publishing books – – arguably makes them well-suited to the task.
How the judges are chosen is a better question to pose, and the answer is less clear-cut. “Essentially what you’re looking for are people that are going to read on behalf of the general public, but not second guess them,” is how Booker Prize Foundation director Gaby Wood has described her criteria. Wood said the panel, which changes every year, is chosen to encompass judges with different tastes, with “diversity in the broadest sense” in mind.
Writers, publishers, professors, actors, comedians, scientists, Nigella Lawson and a former Archbishop of Canterbury have featured among previous panels. Wood has said it is the combination of judges, rather than the individuals themselves, that proves the most important. And Wood herself is only one of 14 on the advisory committee, made up of writers, publishers, booksellers, journalists and the likes, who hand select the judges.
The criteria for being selected as a judge is so vague it makes the judges’ ultimate mission – choosing the best novel of the year – seem well-defined. But it is not surprising the criteria is so loose; this is a subjective process, its determination can never be a perfect science.
Having said that, the one piece of criteria we can pin down is a discerning one: they must be willing to do the job. Though it isn’t without glamour, the role certainly entails hard graft. The job description – to read around a book a day for seven months straight, for a wage that former judge Val McDermid said all in all probability came in below minimum wage – guarantees at least one thing: you’ve really got to like books, and perhaps that’s the best we can ask for.
While we can proceed to ask who chooses the Booker, and who chooses who chooses the Booker, and who chooses who chooses who chooses the Booker, neither you nor I want to. And if you do, bon voyage, my friend. There will always be ways the process could be made fairer and more rigorous but we should accept it for what it is: a niche literary prize which takes considerable care over its task.
The prize is not without legitimate criticism. The Booker has its own well-publicised history with controversy: its colonial roots for one, while ‘pale, male and stale’ accusations are also not unfounded (this year’s shortlist contained more Pauls than women). But that it is elitist in a literary sense – well, of course! Prizes that award the ‘best’ of things are by nature elitist. And, unless we wish to celebrate bad writers, we should keep them that way.
All in all, as we, indignant, ask why our favourite book of the year didn’t make the cut, we should remember what the Booker claims to do – choose the best book in the opinion of its judges – and not what we perhaps wish it to do: choose the book we liked most this year. Identifying the best of art as it is produced will always be an impossible task, but we may as well give it a go. What it provokes is invaluable: debate about literature. The Booker Prize is a geeky price for geeky people, and what a wonderful thing that is.