The Book Killers

First, an admission. The title and subtitle of this essay adds up to one of those half-true, sensationalistic headlines blatantly fashioned to provoke. Like all such headlines it is, strictly speaking, a lie.  Canada’s publishing players, by and large, don’t hate our two biggest fiction prizes. That is, not entirely.

But remember how you hated your parents as a teenager?

Sure, they fed you and clothed you and didn’t laugh when you said you were starting a band after high school. So of course you didn’t hate-hate them, but—okay—you  kind of did. They also lectured you on the evils of pot with a scotch-and-soda in hand.

They had the audacity to call Lou Reed “noise” before heading off to give “Bagpipes of the Highlands” a spin on what it amused them to call “the ol’ victrola.”  I’m talking about the grudging resentment that arises in the face of wanton and unreasonable displays of power.  I’m talking about Cordelia exiled by a whim of the dotty King Lear, Lear himself raging impotently against the Gods’cruel caprice. As flies to wanton boys are we writers, publishers and agents to Rabinovitch, Clarkson, and their respective cadres of faceless jury-members.  They kill our books for sport. 

Except, of course, when they don’t—when the clouds part and a gilded hand reaches down and for one brief, shining moment, you bask in the gods’ strangely arbitrary favour.  But this leads me to hate-reason one.

Hate Reason One: The Lottery

Book prizes are fun when you, or your client, or your author are nominated for one.  Oh yes. The author gets flown somewhere, put up in a decent hotel.  He or she is interviewed about The Book, the product of perhaps as many as ten years of near-thankless drudgery.  Meanwhile agent and publisher can breathe a sigh of relief, for their efforts too have been rewarded. Interest is paid, by god, precisely the kind of interest every author feels is her due (she will tell you otherwise—“Oh I never expected anyone would take any notice of it”—and will be lying). 

And that’s the problem: every single author feels this way, and a handful of them have every right because their work is splendid and should be held up and declared so publicly.  Each year, well over a hundred new works of fiction are published in Canada.  Many are called, but few are chosen, and often, no one can tell you why Stunning Achievement should be anointed one year while the equally accomplished Rollicking Tour-de-Force is ignored.  Literary types know that the moment both the Giller and GG shortlists are announced, the griping will commence:  Good lord, where is so-and-so?  How could they nominate the bland, middle-class musings of whosherface, completely overlooking the edgy, vital prose of whasisname?  And how on earth is it possible that the luminous work of you-know-who-I-mean-the skinny-one could be disregarded yet again?

Hate Reason Two: The Griping about the Lottery

I hate the griping for the same reason I hate gossip—because it’s pointless, mostly petty, and I do it.  The griping has a variety of permutations, some nobler than others.  First there’s the contention: it’s political.  This means different things.  Sometimes it means that there is a person on the jury who doesn’t like a certain author and therefore wouldn’t consider said author or if he came out with an internationally admired Canlit Crime and Punishment.  I’ve sat on a jury or two and am sorry to say that this does happen.  Another permutation of the political arises when, say, a grand old man or dam of Canadian letters has published a long-awaited work and one jury member decides that simply the fact of said grand man/dam having produced this book means they should damn well get the prize, or at least a nomination.  I’ve seen this too.

Scuzzier versions of the “it’s political” gripe arise when people start making insinuations about the author’s nationality, and/or the country about which he or she has written.  These scuzzballs will tell you the suspiciously swarthy author is being acclaimed and acknowledged for one reason only: their exotic allure.  This of course is a steaming pile of crap, but is an unfortunate leap people make from the contention that there has often been seen to be an element of orientalism at work in jury selections.  I mean oriental in the literal sense: the other.  I’ve heard this described as the World War II factor, or, put more succinctly: “Giller Bait.”

To refer to a novel as “Giller Bait” denotes a strain of thought in Canadian publishing which insists that serious, relevant, and therefore successful literature must be about something besides 1) here and 2) now.  If it involves some kind of horrible war or, even better, a genocide, this makes it doubly prize-worthy because it shows our authors to be such a grave tribe of thinkers, unafraid to tackle The Big Issues.

I want to add that I have read brilliant Canadian novels about war, and equally brilliant novels set in other countries.  But the World War II factor dictates that unless you are writing one or the other in Canada, you can in no way compete with writers from countries which are actually interesting, countries that have actual, interesting history to draw upon, unlike the lousy backwater we apparently inhabit.  This is a national attitude towards our literary culture that is so self-hating and self-defeating it makes me scream. And I do believe it exists. But does it really affect the Giller and GG shortlists as much as some would have us believe?  Yes.  No.  Maybe.

Hate Reason Three: The Yes/No/Maybe Thing

Let’s look at this year’s shortlists for the Giller and GG’s. Alice Munro tops both. Does she fit the grand-old-dam category?  Yes.  Does her nominated book, Runaway, accord with the dictates of the World War II factor?  Emphatically, no—she’s writing about neighbourhoods that are a bus-ride away from where I’m sitting, the kind of people I run into every day at the grocery store.  I’m reading all the books this year, and can tell you that Munro’s is on both lists because it should be.  I don’t care if she’s nominated every other year.  I don’t care if she’s always in The New Yorker.  I don’t care if you’re sick of ‘the whole Alice Munro thing.’  It’s my opinion that Munro just plain knows how to put a story together better than most.  A lot of people don’t agree with me.  So there it is again: yes, no, maybe.

Annoying, isn’t it?  Wouldn’t it be great if we in the publishing industry could just come down on one side of the fence or another: Yes!  The selection process is a corrupt farce, rewarding fads, well-connectedness and artistic mediocrity in general.  No! Both lists put forward a legitimate sampling of the very best of Canadian literature, and every novel or short story collection selected by the jury is chosen for one reason only—literary merit.  But maybe it’s not as simple as either of these contentions would have it.  Maybe there’s truth to be found in both camps.  Maybe we should take the prizes for what they are—a celebration of writing itself and a nice way for authors, both known and unknown, to snag a few readers and enjoy a fancy night out. Maybe.

Vancouver-based Lynn Coady is writer of fiction and journalistic essays.  Her most recent novel is Saints of Big Harbour.