The challenge facing this year's Booker judges reminds us that recognising excellence in literature is about far more than personal opinion - Rick Gekoski in The Guardian
How do you judge a book? John Banville's Booker-winning The Sea divided the critics. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian
The longlist for the Man Booker 2011 came out last month, and I don't even recognise half the names. Some of the old favourites are there – Barnes, Barry, Hollinghurst – but a lot are not. I like that. It not only freshens the air, it suggests the judges have actually done their reading and thinking, instead of reflexively picking the same-olds, and starting the process from there. It will be fun to see who wins.
The one thing I can guarantee, though, is that the process of deciding the winner will be contentious, and the final choice will not be unanimous. That's what happens with literary prizes, especially when there are five judges, who would find it hard to agree on what fizzy water to order. According to the Man Booker Prize's literary director, Ion Trewin, the final decision has never been unanimous. When I was a judge in 2005, three of us agreed that John Banville's The Sea was a wonderful novel, and of the two dissenting voices, one "loathed" it, and the other described it as "total cod".
We are often assured that choices with regard to literary prizes are "a matter of opinion," that they are "subjective". I can see what someone who says this is driving at – such decisions could hardly be called "objective," could they? – but whoever claims this, it seems to me, has got it wrong. Because most people who call something "subjective" imply the additional term merely. Just a matter of opinion. Different judges: different winner. Subjective. As if one might just as easily, and defensibly, have picked a novel by Jeffrey Archer as the winner.
But the very strength of feeling that the choice of Banville occasioned suggests just the opposite. Those who are appalled that we should choose what Boyd Tonkin called "an icy and over-controlled exercise in coterie aestheticism" clearly think that we were wrong. And those pleased by our choice of a novel that is (according to The Spectator) "brilliant, sensuous, discombobulating" surely imply that we were, if not right, at least fully justified.
Claiming that something is right or wrong is generally regarded as more than mere opinion. Murder is wrong, being kind to old ladies is right: such conclusions are the result of first principles, argument and sustained consideration. If I prefer merlot to cabernet sauvignon, football to cricket, blondes to brunettes, spinach to mushrooms, that is a matter of taste, and I am under no obligation to defend my preference. But if I adore murdering, and am gratuitously beastly to old ladies, I am (in many ways) likely be called upon to defend myself.
Where does this leave us? With a clear distinction between matters of taste and matters of judgment. You like Mateus Rosé better than Château Pétrus? No problem. You think it is a better wine? You're wrong. You're clearly without the experience, palate, or discrimination to make such a judgment. As unfit as I would be to decide which sort of catalytic convertor to fit to my car. I simply don't know enough. This seems obvious, but increasingly such a position offends against the spirit of the times. Nobody is wrong these days. We are all "entitled to our opinion", and the notion that there is some gap between opinion and truth, assertion and argument, seems to be getting lost.
Gekoski's full, thoughtful piece here.
The one thing I can guarantee, though, is that the process of deciding the winner will be contentious, and the final choice will not be unanimous. That's what happens with literary prizes, especially when there are five judges, who would find it hard to agree on what fizzy water to order. According to the Man Booker Prize's literary director, Ion Trewin, the final decision has never been unanimous. When I was a judge in 2005, three of us agreed that John Banville's The Sea was a wonderful novel, and of the two dissenting voices, one "loathed" it, and the other described it as "total cod".
We are often assured that choices with regard to literary prizes are "a matter of opinion," that they are "subjective". I can see what someone who says this is driving at – such decisions could hardly be called "objective," could they? – but whoever claims this, it seems to me, has got it wrong. Because most people who call something "subjective" imply the additional term merely. Just a matter of opinion. Different judges: different winner. Subjective. As if one might just as easily, and defensibly, have picked a novel by Jeffrey Archer as the winner.
But the very strength of feeling that the choice of Banville occasioned suggests just the opposite. Those who are appalled that we should choose what Boyd Tonkin called "an icy and over-controlled exercise in coterie aestheticism" clearly think that we were wrong. And those pleased by our choice of a novel that is (according to The Spectator) "brilliant, sensuous, discombobulating" surely imply that we were, if not right, at least fully justified.
Claiming that something is right or wrong is generally regarded as more than mere opinion. Murder is wrong, being kind to old ladies is right: such conclusions are the result of first principles, argument and sustained consideration. If I prefer merlot to cabernet sauvignon, football to cricket, blondes to brunettes, spinach to mushrooms, that is a matter of taste, and I am under no obligation to defend my preference. But if I adore murdering, and am gratuitously beastly to old ladies, I am (in many ways) likely be called upon to defend myself.
Where does this leave us? With a clear distinction between matters of taste and matters of judgment. You like Mateus Rosé better than Château Pétrus? No problem. You think it is a better wine? You're wrong. You're clearly without the experience, palate, or discrimination to make such a judgment. As unfit as I would be to decide which sort of catalytic convertor to fit to my car. I simply don't know enough. This seems obvious, but increasingly such a position offends against the spirit of the times. Nobody is wrong these days. We are all "entitled to our opinion", and the notion that there is some gap between opinion and truth, assertion and argument, seems to be getting lost.
Gekoski's full, thoughtful piece here.
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