by Robert McCrum and AN Wilson in The Observer, Sunday 13 February 2011
Robert McCrum
When Martyn Goff ran the Booker prize, I thought there were no depths of shameless publicity to which he would not sink on behalf of his employers. I was wrong. His successors, it seems, have learned from their master. This "Best of Beryl" takes the biscuit. Like you, I imagine, I always felt that Beryl deserved to be publicly recognised as the rare, influential and original contemporary British novelist she was.
If Booker is, as it claims, our premier fiction prize, then her name should be on the winners' trophy. But to memorialise her in this tacky way as the eternal runner-up, less than a year after her death, strikes me as a sick joke, the kind of insensitive ploy that only a prize addicted to self-advertisement could come up with.
Even more ridiculous than crass is the idea of asking the public to nominate a preferred work from her oeuvre. What, one wonders, would Beryl have made of a competition that only she could win? You could hardly make it up. These are the antics of people for whom books are bingo. Prizes have little to do with literature in the long run, but I feel that this stunt cheapens her memory and takes seriously something for which she probably didn't give two hoots.
AN Wilson
There are two questions here. There is what we all think of the Booker prize and there is what we think about Beryl. I leave it to you to trash the prize. Like it or not, it has become the British equivalent of a Pulitzer or Prix Goncourt, which makes the absence on the list of winners of such names as Elizabeth Bowen and Anthony Powell all the more surprising.
But it is of Beryl I would like to think. Even if the motives of the prize organisers are tacky, I do not think it is wrong to honour her in this way. She truly minded that she had not won the prize. And it was a glaring injustice that she failed to do so. After she died, I reread all her books and felt ashamed that I had not fully appreciated her very distinctive voice. Of course, I had enjoyed her early comedies. But only a slow rereading made me recognise a truly remarkable and original writer.
Unlike some of the other giants, such as Bowen or Powell, who failed to be shortlisted for the Booker, Beryl was very much associated with it. Whenever she was on the shortlist, bookies and journalists speculated about her chances. I say, let posthumous justice be done!
She would not have been pompous enough to think this idea was an insult to her memory. She would see its comic side – she saw the comic side of everything. But, in words from her hero Dr Johnson: "See Nations slowly wise and meanly just/To buried Merit raise the tardy bust."
Robert McCrum
I say, let posterity deliver posthumous justice, as it surely will. But let's move on a bit because Beryl is not here to relish the surreal comedy of this wheeze. My question to you, as a fan, is: allowing for the vicissitudes of prize juries, why do you think Beryl's "distinctive voice" was overlooked? I share your sense that this was "a glaring injustice". So what went wrong?
I can't, just now, find a Johnson quote to cap yours, but I must recall that the last time I was with Beryl, it was to celebrate Johnson's 200-and-something birthday in Gough Square.
AN Wilson
The laws of libel would forbid me from recounting my experience of being a Booker judge. Suffice it to say that I think that Beryl was overlooked, very often, because she was, in general, patronised by the entire publishing world – by her publishers when she was at Duckworth, by the prize organisers and by the press. Because she was an actress, and a comedienne, who hid much of herself behind the mask, they all thought: "Oh, it's only old Beryl again, slightly pissed, writing one of her 'little' books."
Because the patronising attitude was so strong, Booker and the press actually preferred her to be a bridesmaid rather than a bride – it made a better "story". And, as one of their officials was saying (intolerably) the other day, she was a good sport. So, whatever the tarnished reasons for this stunt, there is an ironical twist of justice in it. Or so I think. I well remember that evening in Gough Square, though, as often with an evening with Beryl, the memories are a bit fuddled.
Robert McCrum
I think you're absolutely right. And maybe you and I are guilty of the same kind of instinct in springing so chivalrously to Beryl's defence. Neither she nor her books needs us now. Still, I do feel rather queasy about this "bride/bridesmaid" stuff. You would never have said, of Howard Jacobson (before 2010), that he was an usher, not a bridegroom. Or perhaps you would. There are parallels here: he was often shortlisted and, when it came to last year's dinner, was absolutely convinced he hadn't a ghost of a chance. Say what you like about Booker, it never fails to surprise.
AN Wilson
We are in danger of spoiling the debate game by agreeing with each other too much! Of course, Beryl will survive and her reputation will grow, Booker or no Booker. I confidently predict she will be seen as one of the towering figures of our time, when most former Booker winners have been completely forgotten. In the short term, however, nearly all novelists have a dip in their reputations in the years immediately following their deaths. The public and the publishers switch off, as they have done with Kingsley Amis. If this bit of nonsense prevents that happening to Beryl, and her books sell more and more copies, that must be good.
Full article here.
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