The multinational Man Booker shortlist shows 'outsiders' are the new normal. Let's celebrate our unruly tongue
The 2013 Man Booker shortlist, clockwise from top left: NoViolet Bulawayo, Jim Crace, Eleanor Catton, Colm Toibin, Jhumpa Lahiri, Ruth Ozeki.
What did the English ever do for us? Unlike the Romans in The Life of Brian, not much in the way of aqueducts or wine. But even the stoutest anti-imperialist in any former British colony has to admit that the empire left us a rather wonderful language. The Man Booker prize may be one of the last shadows of that empire, evoking as it does an imagined community unchanged since 1921, when Irish independence began its demise. But the 2013 shortlist is startling evidence of what happened to the language the empire left behind. It is the great triumph of British culture – because it no longer belongs to Britain.
There is nothing new, of course, about the Man Booker list featuring novelists from the former colonies. This year's list, though, makes a definitive statement that such writers are no longer the exotic outsiders that add colour (literally as well as figuratively) to the British norm. They are the new normal.
There is one English writer on the list, the splendid Jim Crace. He takes his place alongside a Zimbabwean (NoViolet Bulawayo), an Anglo-Indian American (Jhumpa Lahiri), a New Zealander (Eleanor Catton), a Canadian-Japanese American (Ruth Ozeki) and an Irishman (Colm Tóibín). There's an element of the arbitrary about such lists, but this one does feel significant. It marks the death of two big narratives about language in general and English in particular.
From the 18th century onwards, there was the notion of "proper" English, an idea that expressed itself in pedantry about grammar and pronunciation but that was always about power and control. We can see it at work through, for example, Samuel Johnson and his protege James Boswell. Reviewing Johnson's dictionary, Lord Chesterfield wrote that the English language was in "a state of anarchy" and required the firm smack of discipline: "Toleration, adoption and naturalisation have run their lengths. Good order and authority are now necessary… We must have recourse to the old Roman expedient in times of confusion and choose a dictator."
More
There is nothing new, of course, about the Man Booker list featuring novelists from the former colonies. This year's list, though, makes a definitive statement that such writers are no longer the exotic outsiders that add colour (literally as well as figuratively) to the British norm. They are the new normal.
There is one English writer on the list, the splendid Jim Crace. He takes his place alongside a Zimbabwean (NoViolet Bulawayo), an Anglo-Indian American (Jhumpa Lahiri), a New Zealander (Eleanor Catton), a Canadian-Japanese American (Ruth Ozeki) and an Irishman (Colm Tóibín). There's an element of the arbitrary about such lists, but this one does feel significant. It marks the death of two big narratives about language in general and English in particular.
From the 18th century onwards, there was the notion of "proper" English, an idea that expressed itself in pedantry about grammar and pronunciation but that was always about power and control. We can see it at work through, for example, Samuel Johnson and his protege James Boswell. Reviewing Johnson's dictionary, Lord Chesterfield wrote that the English language was in "a state of anarchy" and required the firm smack of discipline: "Toleration, adoption and naturalisation have run their lengths. Good order and authority are now necessary… We must have recourse to the old Roman expedient in times of confusion and choose a dictator."
More
No comments:
Post a Comment