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slemslempike) wrote2022-07-06 04:30 pm
slemslempike) wrote2022-07-06 04:30 pm
Booker Progress
I am six months into my new checklist hobby (previous such pastimes including seeing all of Shakespeare's plays performed) of reading the winners of the Booker Prize. I am starting from the first one and moving forwards, skipping over those I have already read for expediency's sake. The list can be found by clicking this link.
I read through the first three with moderate alacrity:
1969: Something to Answer For - PH Newby
1970: The Elected Member - Bernice Reubens
(The "lost booker" is here, Troubles by JG Farrell, which I read last year)
1971: In a Free State - VS Naipaul
Strong thematic connections for these are loss of reality, and loss of empire. Something to Answer for happens in Suez, and the protagonist is deeply unreliable, and begins to be aware that he is not even sure himself what is true and what is not (he calls his mother - but is she dead? He can't remember what he believes). The Elected Member follows the son of a Jewish family in London, who is in hospital after developing mental illness related to drug use. In a Free State has been published twice. The first time, the Booker-winning time, the main story is prefaced by two short stories. The second time the main story stands alone. Guess which one I bought first, and which does not count as Booker-winning? Correct. Once remedied, I thought all three stories were excellent. The main one returns to the themes of loss of empire, with white people driving through a newly independent African state and finding their previous privileges do not protect them as much as they assume.
After these first three I was stuck for ages at the 1972 winner, G, which is described as an "experimental novel" and I hated it. The occasional crude genital drawing does liven things up, true, but overall it is not for me. Well, to be fair I liked the bit about flying over the Alps. It's not really awful, but it is pretty dull, and I think maybe it was more innovative at the time than it is now, so the "experimentation" is not really evident to me. Plus quite a bit of man-writing-woman (though from his other work I think he is trying not to be here at least). I had forgotten until I read this: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/19/john-berger-g-classics-booker that Berger donated half of the prize money to the Black Panthers. I tried to trick myself that therefore reading it is a form of BLM allyship, but it didn't work. Eventually through sheer diligence and much watching the percentage counter slowly rise I finished it.
1973 was another already-read JG Farrell - The Siege of Krishnapur
In 1973 there were two winners, Holiday by Stanley Middleton, and The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer. I read the former and it seemed very like a lot of other middle-twentieth century books where a middle class man (or woman, or couple, or family) go to the seaside for a holiday, noting the gradations of class and vulgarity around them, experience classic seaside landlady behaviour, and return home, though with the the addition of a crumbled marriage and an interfering father-in-law. This is the sort of novel I rather like, so a nice relief after G. High hopes for the Nadine Gordimer next.
6 down, 49 remaining, of which I have already read twelve, so 37 to read. Too early really to think of the next checklist, but I do look wistfully at the Women's Prize for fiction.
I read through the first three with moderate alacrity:
1969: Something to Answer For - PH Newby
1970: The Elected Member - Bernice Reubens
(The "lost booker" is here, Troubles by JG Farrell, which I read last year)
1971: In a Free State - VS Naipaul
Strong thematic connections for these are loss of reality, and loss of empire. Something to Answer for happens in Suez, and the protagonist is deeply unreliable, and begins to be aware that he is not even sure himself what is true and what is not (he calls his mother - but is she dead? He can't remember what he believes). The Elected Member follows the son of a Jewish family in London, who is in hospital after developing mental illness related to drug use. In a Free State has been published twice. The first time, the Booker-winning time, the main story is prefaced by two short stories. The second time the main story stands alone. Guess which one I bought first, and which does not count as Booker-winning? Correct. Once remedied, I thought all three stories were excellent. The main one returns to the themes of loss of empire, with white people driving through a newly independent African state and finding their previous privileges do not protect them as much as they assume.
After these first three I was stuck for ages at the 1972 winner, G, which is described as an "experimental novel" and I hated it. The occasional crude genital drawing does liven things up, true, but overall it is not for me. Well, to be fair I liked the bit about flying over the Alps. It's not really awful, but it is pretty dull, and I think maybe it was more innovative at the time than it is now, so the "experimentation" is not really evident to me. Plus quite a bit of man-writing-woman (though from his other work I think he is trying not to be here at least). I had forgotten until I read this: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/19/john-berger-g-classics-booker that Berger donated half of the prize money to the Black Panthers. I tried to trick myself that therefore reading it is a form of BLM allyship, but it didn't work. Eventually through sheer diligence and much watching the percentage counter slowly rise I finished it.
1973 was another already-read JG Farrell - The Siege of Krishnapur
In 1973 there were two winners, Holiday by Stanley Middleton, and The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer. I read the former and it seemed very like a lot of other middle-twentieth century books where a middle class man (or woman, or couple, or family) go to the seaside for a holiday, noting the gradations of class and vulgarity around them, experience classic seaside landlady behaviour, and return home, though with the the addition of a crumbled marriage and an interfering father-in-law. This is the sort of novel I rather like, so a nice relief after G. High hopes for the Nadine Gordimer next.
6 down, 49 remaining, of which I have already read twelve, so 37 to read. Too early really to think of the next checklist, but I do look wistfully at the Women's Prize for fiction.
no subject
I applaud your diligence. I'm too old and running out of time to read books I have to 'manage to finish'. I'd rather reread something I know I'll like.