How do you win the Booker Prize? I have no idea. Get in touch if you do. I’ve been shortlisted and longlisted and served as a Booker judge, and while there are certain perennial features that would tempt you to make a wager on outcomes, there’s enough random wildness to make it interesting.
This year’s Booker longlist of 13 titles was described by the chair Mary Beard last week as ‘something for everyone’. Maybe those with a fetish for lesbian boxing dramas set in 1920s San Francisco will feel let down, but it is fair to say this year’s longlist covers a lot of ground.
The announcement of the longlist always launches a thousand whines because even if you can manage something for everyone, something isn’t enough for most observers. Too little of this, too much of that.
The antagonists are familiar. Celebrities vs newcomers. Bloated corporate publishers vs whippet seditionaries editing from a kitchen table. Men vs women. Women vs men. Yarn-merchants vs punctuation-haters. Straight vs gay. Agit-prop vs beauty. Caucasians vs non-Caucasians. If nothing else, the longlist gets books debated.
The Booker is the one prize that can change your life as a writer. Longlisting is great but it’s a trade matter – it means your next book should get published and probably better published. Sometimes shortlisting can rocket sales, but getting the Booker is the jackpot.
What have I learned about the Booker process since I was first shortlisted in 1993? Most years I can guess quite a few of the longlist, not because I’m a clairvoyant but because I know which titles have the money behind them. Yes, drinks and lunches for booksellers and journos, and a profligate amount of circulating galleys have an effect. If you know the judges and their tastes that can obviously help. But if there’s one universal truth I’ve ascertained from the writing game, it’s that you can never be sure who will like your book, or why. You might hope it’s because of your searing indictment of the injustices of Western capitalism but it might be because of a weasel making a brief appearance in chapter 11.
So how does this year’s longlist shape up in comparison to predecessors? Ireland (which has produced five winners in the prize’s 57-year history) and the Caribbean are regular attendees. This year, they’re represented in the form of Djamel White’s All Them Dogs and Marlon James’s The Disappearers respectively. We get a typical state-of-the-nation novel (according to the Islington-dinner party code): Elizabeth Strout’s The Things We Never Say, in which she makes the daring revelation that Donald Trump may not be the best President the United States has had.
The announcement of the longlist always launches a thousand whines because even if you can manage something for everyone, something isn’t enough for most observers
This year, however, we also have Luke Kennard’s novel Black Bag (which I haven’t read), which sounds wonderfully comic. It has to be said that over the years there has been a marked tendency for Booker lists to be dour and worthy. Laughs have been in short supply. It’s been James Kelman over Irvine Welsh.
Most years, a plucky independent or small publisher charts. This year it’s Jacques Testard’s Fitzcarraldo Editions, which published Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodman. I wonder how much longer Fitzcarraldo can stay in that minnow category. For the past few years Fitzcarraldo books have been near must-have on all prize lists. It’s verging on the miraculous.
I couldn’t care less about the logo on my book’s spine, whether it’s Randy Penguin or Hachette. But Fitzcarraldo is the only imprint in the UK (and possibly the world) where readers might purchase a book simply because it’s published by Fitzcarraldo. Testard has achieved brand supremacy. He’s taken Pete Ayrton’s policy at Serpent’s Tail, of pushing foreign fiction and outsider antics, and upped it. Then added the template of French publishing house Les Éditions de Minuit and made Fitzcarraldo almost a fashion accessory. By not bothering with different covers, Testard’s saved a fantastic amount of money and also energy (covers tend to be the most contentious part of the publishing process). As easily identifiable as Louis Vuitton, the Klein Blue Fitzcarraldo covers grant the carrier an aura of international sophistication.
In terms of nationalities, the longlist also features four Americans (five if you count Douglas Stuart’s US passport). How the Booker Foundation runs its business is their business, but since they threw the doors open to any English-language novel in 2014 (previously only novels from Commonwealth, Irish or South African writers could enter), I fear that younger British writers are being squeezed out by Americans. And Brits don’t get to run for the Pulitzer. However, this year Missouri Williams waves the flag for British youth with The Vivisectors.
The gender balance this year is 7-6 for the women, as it was last year. The lament that women were being overlooked might have been true in the past – since 1969, 18 women have won the prize compared with 36 men – but it certainly isn’t now. Since we’re supposed to live in an age of equity, representation and demarginalizing, is there still a justification for the Women’s Prize for Fiction? I can’t think of a single literary prize that’s men only. It looks like Andrew Tate will have a lot of time on his hands. Perhaps he should consider sponsoring an international literary prize exclusively for men? Let’s say The Jockstrap Prize? Entrants would have to bench-press 200lb.
But how, then, do you win? Perhaps gender, nationality and a stylish blue cover can boost the odds these days. But is it enough? I’ll let you know on my next attempt.
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