Prizes, Yes, But Give Them Wisely

Given that I’m in the midst of judging finalists for a literary award, Garth Risk Hallberg’s piece about the good and the bad surrounding literary prizes hit home in a number of ways. First Garth posed a question that is absolutely fair to ask: are there too many prizes?

It may be worth bearing in mind, though, that many of these seemingly venerable prizes are no older than the mobile phone. Thirty-five years ago, fewer than half of the above awards existed. It’s also interesting that hand-wringing about the health of book culture was at that time less pronounced. While correlation is not evidence of causation, it would appear that the spread of those little gold circles – which project, in the wilds of the bookstore, an aura of critical consensus – is in reality a response to a crisis of authority. These days, everyone’s got an opinion. Should everyone, then, get an award? Or, to put it bluntly: are there too many prizes?

I like his answer, essentially: Yes, there are, but that shouldn’t stop us from praising the prizes that do good work. As to those prizes that don’t do such great work, see the “St. Francis College Literary Prize for a fourth book of fiction” (which I first thought was a joke):

The first is the St. Francis College Literary Prize for a fourth book of fiction. “What’s the best fourth book of fiction?” would have been a great parlor game or blog debate. But with no sign of the college trustees’ tongues being in their cheeks, the design of this prize was so narrow – its proxy for “midcareer” so arbitrary – that it seemed to me to verge on parody. In theory, the prize was to offer “significant…support” to a writer at a crucial juncture. In practice, it was an occasion to give $50,000 to Aleksandar Hemon (who had just won half a million from the MacArthur Foundation)… and to get him to come lecture at St. Francis College. Then again, Hemon is a terrific writer, and we can take these things with a grain of salt, can’t we?

Garth’s point here touches an a key aspect of evaluating a prize: the winner. He’s right to say that even if Hemon deserved the award as the best author of a fourth book of fiction in 2009, it was kind of lame to give it to him after he’d just become a MacArthur Genius. (By that same token, a commenter to Garth’s post sticks up for the so-called Super Booker (which Garth maligns) by noting that the original one in 2005 brought Ismail Kadare to prominence.)

And this is why I’m not sure that prizes should necessarily be given out to the book or author the judges perceive as “best.” Obviously, quality should be an important factor–probably the most important. But to make that the sole criterion seems so . . . 1950s. Do we still choose anything this way these days? With all the factors that can influence decisions in this world, it seems necessary to evaluate prize books with an eye to context: even if X is the best book you read for the prize, why not give your vote to Y, since the latter’s book was almost as good and has sold just under 1,000 copies, while X’s book has been a bestseller for weeks?

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