The damnable task of being a Man Booker International prize judge

Deciding which living literary great to honour for their body of work is overwhelming, akin to 'sizing up the giants and arranging them in order'

by Rick Gekoski writing in The Guardian

Since January 2010, Carmen Callil, Justin Cartwright and I have been reading for the 2011 Man Booker International prize. Never heard of it? Well, it only began in 2005, so let me fill you in. The prize is awarded every two years to a living author, is worth £60,000, the winner is chosen solely at the discretion of the judging panel, there are no submissions from publishers and the judges consider a writer's body of work rather than a single novel.

This provides a beguilingly open-ended brief. It is up to us judges whom to read, what to read, and how to read, until one day a puff of smoke will go up (in Sydney on 29 May) and a great writer will be honoured. The three previous winners were Ismail Kadaré, Chinua Achebe, and Alice Munro.

It was hard to know where to start. We listed about 60 authors we thought should be considered. We consulted the list of novelists that our predecessors had discussed: some 80 names. We asked novelists, editors, academics, translators, publishers, critics and highly literate friends for their suggestions. We ended up, almost, with more than we could cope with. Not entirely undaunted, we have read and read and read some more, animated by the awful thought that we could be missing someone of the highest stature.

People often ask the annual Booker judges: "How many books did you read?" With the International prize there is no answer other than "thousands", for the prize honours a lifelong achievement in writing, and is tested by the judges' lifelong achievement in reading. But if you must: how many have I read since we began? The answer is 200-ish. And I've enjoyed almost every one, because if I didn't I just moved on to something better. We'd agreed to test to strength: no matter that some of a writer's output is of lesser quality, as long as the heights are majestic.

This process involves a different set of challenges from those involved in judging the annual Man Booker prize. When Martyn Goff, then administrator of that prize, invited me to be a judge for 2005, I asked him what a judge actually does? "It's simple," he said. "Just pick the best book." The International prize has a more ambiguous and elastic rubric. John Carey, chair in 2005, nicely observed that "the task allocated to us has been to size up the giants and arrange them in order of merit". Two years later, Elaine Showalter quoted this sentiment approvingly, while Jane Smiley, in 2009, observed that her "greatest wish is that the members of the next jury, for the 2011 award, will be overwhelmed with reading and endlessly frustrated by the requirement that they must choose one out of so many as 'the best'".

This process involves a different set of challenges from those involved in judging the annual Man Booker prize. When Martyn Goff, then administrator of that prize, invited me to be a judge for 2005, I asked him what a judge actually does? "It's simple," he said. "Just pick the best book." The International prize has a more ambiguous and elastic rubric. John Carey, chair in 2005, nicely observed that "the task allocated to us has been to size up the giants and arrange them in order of merit". Two years later, Elaine Showalter quoted this sentiment approvingly, while Jane Smiley, in 2009, observed that her "greatest wish is that the members of the next jury, for the 2011 award, will be overwhelmed with reading and endlessly frustrated by the requirement that they must choose one out of so many as 'the best'".

The full interesting piece at The Guardian.

Footnote:
The Bookman has been in Sydney for the announcement of the 13 author shortlist this week and various reports were posted on the blog Wednesday and Thursday.