Man Booker chairman berates reviewers
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What’s as stunning as Anne Enright’s ‘The Gathering’ winning this year’s Man Booker Prize? The comments made by Sir Howard Davies, Man Booker chairman, who used the award ceremony Tuesday night to attack the state of book reviewing in the U.K. Davies’ speech dominates coverage in today’s Times of London, with Enright clearly in the background--even though the piece features a prominent photo of her with a strange expression on her face (shock, perhaps, at her unexpected win?).
Davies (left) complains that, too often, reviewers soft-pedal mediocre works by established writers, while ignoring vibrant new voices altogether. This star treatment hurts the greater cause of contemporary literature.
‘There appear to be some novels where people leave their critical faculties at home,’ Davies said during the Booker announcement. ‘They decide ‘so and so is a great novelist’ or ‘an up-and-coming novelist,’ and give them the reverential treatment.’
The article ends with an exercise in contrasts: Davies’ comments on recent novels by Jeanette Winterson, Ben Okri and J.M. Coetzee are set beside what British critics wrote about them. One is left with the distinct feeling that the reviews are, well, a bit too fulsome, just as Davies contends.
A piece on Okri’s ‘Starbook’ in the Observer says the book ‘stands in the grand tradition of myth-making exemplified in ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ and ‘Midnight’s Children.’ ‘ This may well be, but such grandiose comparisons are more often the stuff of press releases--not critical reviews. What is Davies’ take on the novel? ‘It’s more or less unreadable,’ he said, ‘but you would never catch that from the reviews because of the status that Okri has achieved.’
Meanwhile, TLS editor Peter Stothard fires back at Davies on his paper’s blog, defending his choice of reviewer for Coetzee’s latest book.
Nick Owchar
Photo credit: London School of Economics