The Meh Booker Prize and the Fear of Ridicule

The shortlist for the 2018 Man Booker prize, the fiftieth edition no less, was announced on Thursday. Six books have been plucked from the longlist, which itself is selected from all the novels written in English and released in the UK during 2018, a pretty large field one imagines. That shortlist: Everything Under; The Long Take; The Mars Room; Milkman; The Overstory; Washington Black.

Despite the fanfare and media hype that surrounds the Man Booker prize shortlist and eventual winner, I doubt that I’ll be reading any of this year’s nominees. Why? Well from my perspective it’s a clear case of the Emperor’s New Clothes.

Over the years I’ve read three winners of the Man Booker prize. Two of those winners I read without cognisance of their credentials, Yann Martel’s Life of Pi and The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. The third prize winner, I read having heard an entertaining radio interview the author gave while promoting the book, then the award of the Man Booker prize in 2015 convinced me to take the plunge on Marlon James with A Brief History of Seven Killings. I enjoyed the first two books, they were adequately entertaining without setting my world on fire, but the third was excruciating to read, seriously, it was painful. Normally I’ll get through a book in around a week, depending on the size and how difficult it is to put down, the reading of A Brief History dragged on for month after interminable month. I started reading it during November and eventually I forced myself to finish it during a week off work in February. The whole time I kept thinking that there was a payoff just around the corner, that something would be revealed which would explain everything, it never happened, and the plot became more confusing the longer I read. Characters merged into each other, despite frequent references to the guide provided. I read and re-read sections repeatedly, trying to fathom how it all fitted together, upon finishing, I was none the wiser.

My painful experience with A Brief History has led me to believe that the Man Booker Prize is basically a high brow book club. The judges are afraid to admit that they couldn’t follow a narrative. In an Emperor’s New Clothes fashion, they nod along with the only person on the panel capable of following the plot, desperately hoping that no one asks them what they thought of a particular chapter, or to provide an interpretation of a character’s motivations for a particular act. Trembling at the thought that someone might demeaningly glare at them and enquire, “Didn’t you get it?”  And so a book that is too confusing for large parts of the population to follow is awarded the ‘premier prize’ in fiction, thousands of readers buy the book and either wade through it, pretending they enjoyed it and praising the author for the sheer scale of his ambition, and challenging their perceptions with his audacious take on the historical characters, alternatively they throw it away and pretend they never picked it up in the first place, like a Man Booker judge, it just wouldn’t do to admit that you couldn’t follow it.

Unlike a Man Booker Judge, assuming my assumptions above are correct, the main reason that I read is for entertainment, rather than to propagate an image of sophistication and towering intellect. Having made the choice to spend my spare time reading there are several further reasons behind my choice of what I read, escapism from the daily grind being the prime example. For me fantasy literature ticks this box in a way that other genres cannot. Of the six novels shortlisted this year, none could be included in the Fantasy section of your local bookshop. It may surprise you to know that of the previous winners (all 49 of them), only the aforementioned Life of Pi could even remotely be considered a fantasy, and in truth it’s more metaphorical than fantastical. What may surprise you even further, is that of the books shortlisted in each of the 49 years to date, a grand total of zero belong on the Fantasy shelves. Think about that for a second, not a single fantasy book, released by an author from the Commonwealth, in the UK, in the last fifty years, has been deemed worthy of the shortlist. Not one. The Man Booker prize it seems, does not deem Fantasy to be of sufficient artistic worth to merit a single entry on the list

So why the dearth of Fantasy literature on the shortlists? I suspect that the reason, is similar to the reason for awarding the 2015 prize to A Brief History, Fear. Fear of ridicule. There is a widely held perception that upon becoming an adult we should put away childish things. To a lot of people, fantasy falls in to the definition of childish things, perhaps this is due to the prevalence of fantasy themes in children’s literature. Lots of the bestselling children’s books have fantasy themes, almost everyone I know of a certain age loved Roald Dahl books as a kid, pretty much all of his works would be considered fantasy books if they were written for adults. Harry Potter, the Chronicles of Narnia, Earthsea and Skulduggery Pleasant are other, more obvious, examples of fantasy in popular children’s literature. Imagine the derision you’d have to deal with as a judge, if you put forward a juvenile fantasy novel for the Man Booker prize. In the oh so grown up and sophisticated world inhabited by Man Booker judges move, Fantasy is a dirty word, Magical Realism is as far down the road to childishness as they dare to tread.

So what’s my point? Just this, ignore the hype and the intellectual snobbery, shun the shortlisted books and embrace your inner child, pick up a fantasy classic instead, you’ll probably enjoy it a heck of a lot more, and unless it’s The Wheel of Time omnibus (not actually available, probably because you’d struggle to pick it up without a forklift truck) you’ll probably be finished well before Christmas.

P.S. There does of course remain the possibility that I am a tremendous luddite, and that A Brief History and all other Man Booker approved titles are just going over my numbskull head. In which case, meh!