Norris, Sharon (1995) "Simply the best (better than all the rest?)" : an investigation into the , 1980-1989, with particular regard to the general rise in business sponsorship of literary awards during the eighties, and the likely effects of the Booker on fiction. PhD thesis.

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Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] 'Simply the Best (Better than All the Rest? )'

An investigation into the Booker Prize, 1980-1989, with particular regard to the general rise in business sponsorship of literary awards during the Eighties, and the likely effects of the Booker on fiction.

A thesissubmitted for the degreeof Doctorof Philosophyat the Departmentof EnglishLiterature, University of by

SharonNorris, M. A.

APRIL 1995

(c) SharonNorris 1995 2 SUMMARY

The thesiswas planned as an attemptto investigatethe generalincrease in thenumber of literaryprizes in the 1980sand particularly those sponsored by business.However it is alsoan investigationinto the specificworkings of the BookerPrize as the bestknown literary award of its kind in Britain, andinto the effectsthat prizessuch as the Booker may have had on fiction.

Part 1 deals initially with the history and founding of the Booker Prize.

Then in Chapter Two it covers some of the broaderissues involving literary awardsin general,such as the tendencyamong them to encourage a conflation of businessand aestheticideals.

Part2 dealswith theissue of patronagefor the artsand with the predominanceof particularsocial groups among the authors,judges and membersof theManagement Committee of the BookerPrize. I also examinehow certaintypes of supposedlyaesthetic evaluations arise and how they subsequentlycome to predominate.

In the final partof the thesisI look at the issueof standardisationas it relatesto the novelswhich won theBooker Prize during the 1980s. 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As with anyonewho embarksupon a researchproject, there are many peoplewhom I haveto thankfor makingthis finishedthesis possible. I havereceived a greatdeal of help,some of a practicalnature, some of the natureof 'moralsupport'. I am gratefulto all of thosewho helpedin any way andwould hopeI havenot offendedanyone by singlingout the following:

I shouldlike to acknowledgethe financialsupport of theCarnegie Trust for the Universitiesof Scotland,without whom this thesisquite literally would not havebeen possible. Special thanks are also due to Book Trust, to BookerP1c, to Whitbread,and to KallawayLtd. In addition, I am very gratefulto all of thoserepresentatives of companiesand other prize- awardingbodies who took time to answermy manyquestions and thus to provideme with essentialinformation for this thesis. I am alsoextremely gratefulto Mr Allan Schiachof Glenlivetwho took the time to meetme in person,and to Mr David Grantof Glenfiddichwho gaveme the chanceto experiencea top-levelprize ceremony at first hand.

I shouldlike to thankMrs Betty Bums andmy mother,both of whom helpedme out financiallywhen I wasin dire straitsduring the first yearof my studies,and also Mr Philip Attenboroughof Hodderand Stoughton, who contributedseveral of his company'sBooker winners and who encouragedme greatly during this period.

I shouldalso like to thankmy employersover the last few years. In particular,thanks are due here to Mrs Ann Karkalasof the Departmentof Adult andContinuing Education at the Universityof Glasgow,to all the staff at the University'sAccommodation Office, andespecially to Mr Alan Barr of the EFL Unit at the University. I shouldalso like to expressmy thanksto The OpenUniversity in Scotland.

Thanksare due to the following peoplefor the help andadvice which they providedduring the courseof my research:Mary Haightof the Department of Philosophyat the Universityof Glasgow; Dr Ian Thomsonof the Departmentof Psychology;Valerie Wills, fort-nerlyof the Marketing Departmentat theUniversity of Strathclyde;the ScottishHome and Health Department;and the Scottish Health Education Group. 4 In addition, specialthanks are due to Amal Chatterjeefor his patience and computing expertise,to Debby Murphy for typing up Chapter Four while I had a broken wrist, to Jan Green for helping with some proof reading, and to Mrs Margaret Greenfor advice on formatting and for general moral support and friendship. My thanks are due also to Judith Harriman of the 'sComputing ServicesUnit for advice on the presentationof a very troublesomegraph.

I should like to offer my heartfelt thanks to the many friends, colleagues and studentswho have encouragedme through the "difficult" times which are the lot of the researchstudent.

Finally I shouldlike to offer my specialthanks to ProfessorPhilip Hobsbaum,my supervisorand my own 'patronsaint of lost causes'.His toleranceand forbearance of a difficult andat timeserratic student have beengreatly appreciated.

This thesisis dedicatedto my fellow pupilsat LevemPrimary School, Nitshill, Glasgow,1967-1971. ýl TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION p7

PART 1 INTRODUMON p24 CHAPTERONE p25 CHAPTERTWO p47 CONCLUSIONTO PART I p75

PART 2 INTRODUCI'ION p83 CHAPTER THREE p85 CHAPTER FOUR p106 CONCLUSION TO PART 2 P129

PART 3 INTRODUCTION p134 CHAPTERFIVE p135 CHAPTERSIX p175 CONCLUSIONTO PART3 p210

CONCLUSION p217

POSTSCRIPT p224

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY p235

TABLES TABLE1 p247 TABLE2 p249 TABLE3 p260 FIG. I p262 FIG. 2 p263

APPENDICES APPENDIX 1 p266 APPENDIX 2 p309 6

'The basic idea Js that the concordance of liking evoked by is due certain works of art .... to something other than a single excellence inherent in the quality of the work itself; rather it is the product of a complex process in which a variety of forces - some ideological, some highly material - contend with one another and ultimately produce something that is in itself far from immune to the actions of chance. ' LEVIN SCHUECKING,

The Sociology of Literary Tastel

1 SCHUECKING,L., (1966).The Socioloaut-LiterarvTaste. Und Edition). Routledgeand Kegan Paul,, pvii. - 7 INTRODUCTION

'The historians tell us that the decade is far too brief a time- span to reveal an historical trend or manifest any significant process of change or evolution. In artistic and cultural history it has a good deal more importance, for it is about the time it takes for a particular artistic generation to coalesce,or a particular style or mannerism to become central. ' 2

It is customaryat thestart of a thesisto outlinethe argumentwhich follows for the reader,and also to providea generalintroduction or overviewfor thosenot intimatewith thecontext within which the chosen topic is to be discussed.'Ibus in this introductionI proposeto outlinethe basicargument to be presentedin the following chaptersand I shall also indicateto thereader the contextin which this argumenthas arisen.

For well over a centurythere have been fears about the growing commercialismand commoditising of literature.These are not new, nor areliterary prizes. In fact someof theearliest literary prizeswere given by the ancientGreeks at the originalOlympic Games. However over the last thirty yearsor so therehas been a largerise in the numberof new prizes, andwith this havecome renewed fears that suchprizes have had theeffect of commoditisingfiction in a way andto an extentnot previously anticipated.

The lastquarter century in particularhas seen a sizeableincrease in the numberof prizes,awards and bursaries on offer for all kinds of literature. These from range thosewith conventionaltypes of remit - to rewardthe 'best'in any givencategory - to prizeswith a moreesoteric approach, suchas the QuatrefoilAward, which seeksto honourthe:

2 BRADBURY,M., (1988), "Closingtime in the Gardens!', or What happenedto writingin the 1940s!', Ho. Not Bloomsbu[y,Columbia University Press, New York, p67. 8 '... authors of the book or books judged to have contributed the most towards an understanding and/or love and appreciation of oriental rugs. '3

During the 1980sin particular therewas a significant rise in the number of awards and this went hand-in-handwith, firstly, a general increase throughout the decadein the level of the businesscommunity's involvement in the setting up and sponsoringof awards, and, secondly, with a correspondinglylarge increasein the amountoffered by the sponsorsto the author of the winning novel, poem or work of non-fiction.

The Booker Prize may be said not only to be representativeof thesetrends; it becamethe most successfulaward of its kind during this period. On thesegrounds alone it deservesa fuller investigation, for to datelittle work has been done on the implications of literary prizes.

Malcolm Bradburyhas argued that a decadeis a suitableperiod of time in which to makean assessmentof theimportance of anycultural or artistictrend. Certainlythe rise in boththe numberand value of literary awardsmay be seenin theseterms. However,the prize phenomenonmay alsobe seento havebeen a usefulbarometer of theeconomic climate over the ten yearsfrom 1980-1989as well asreflecting trends and innovations in corporatemarketing strategies over this period. This is evidentnot only in the growthof the prize-sponsorshipphenomenon which paralleledthe mid-Eightieseconomic boom, but alsoin the economicrecession which followed, sincemany prizes subsequently folded, changed their remit, or, asin the caseof the GuinnessPeat Aviation Award, alteredthe frequency of presentation.

The Bookerhas succeeded in a mannerunlike any otherBritish literary

award in insinuating itself into the common cultural consciousness,Again

3 See Guideto LiteralyPrizes. Grants and Awardsin Qritainand Ireland.Book Trust and the Societyof Authors,London, 1990, p28. 9 this is a processthat was especially conspicuousduring the Eighties.

Thus the ageingnovelist Maurice Kingsley is a surprise winner of the

Booker in later life in Dennis Potter's 1989 television series Blackey-cs.

Similarly, the plot of Simon Brett's comic novel ]Ie Booker Boo , also published in 1989,revolves entirely round the repeatedefforts of one ýddition, aspiring novelist to win the prize. In the Booker, along with the

Nobel Prize for Literature, is probably the only literary award which membersof the generalpublic are likely to have heard of, and that in itself is an achievement.

This thesisarose out of an attemptto understandthe phenomenonof the BookerPrize and in particularits riseto a newprominence during the

1980s,and to seethe Bookeragainst the backgroundof the generalrise in the numberof literary awardsduring this period. However,it alsoarose out of a desireto exploreand understand the following issues:why and how certainevaluations of fiction comeabout; what socialvalues may be saidto influencethese; the sort of powerand social standing of the group makingthe evaluations; the importance of financialbacking in deten-nining what getswritten andpublished; and, of mostimportance to the literary specialist,what effectsprizes such as the Bookermay be saidto havehad on the writing, disseminationand reception of fiction. The restof the thesistherefore is a responseto theseinitial concerns.

In the following chapters,and especially in ChapterTwo, I shall look at the rise of the Bookeragainst the backgroundof the particularlyfevered rashof new andwealthy awards which brokeout during the 1980s. I shall arguethat duringthis period,the Bookerbecame something of a phenomenon,in mediaterms at least,appearing to transcendthe intrinsic limitationsof business-sponsoredawards for fiction to becomesomething

of a culturaltotem. I shallexamine how this situationcame about and 10 whetherit is accurateto seethe Booker as having become, consummately, a reflectionof theprevailing zeitgeist of the 1980s,if indeedit is possible to speakof oneparticular 'spirit of the age'. It is my belief that both the rise of the Bookerduring the Eighties, and its potentialto influenceare of greatimportance to anydiscussion of the historythe novel duringthis period.

Froma strictly literarypoint of view themost important questions are thoseconcerned with whatsort of effectthe BookerPrize and others like it may be saidto havehad on fiction andon the statusthereof. Wasthe Bookerable during the 1980sto fon-nand influence taste for example,and did it subvertor reinforcetraditional literary values? In addition,if the Bookermay be saidin anyway to havereflected the literary standardsand valuesof the era,how representativewere these values, where did they arise,"and how did theprize come to be dominatedby membersof the literaryand media establishments?

I shall contendthat duringthe 1980sthis particularprize had the ability to greatlyincrease the sales of the novelswhich wereshortlisted, that it alsohad the ability to affectthe reception and evaluation of fiction and possiblyto promoteone recognisable genre of fiction at the expenseof others,and moreover, that theprize had the potentialto influencewriting itself. I shall now expandfurther on thesepoints.

The authorand critic MargePiercy in an article,in The Quardiallin 1991 wrote abouthow publishersdeal with the manuscriptsof first novels. In it shenoted how:

le, every writer craves the validation of seeing their work in print and the lack of the publisher becomes the badge of failurc. '4

See PIERCY,M., (1991),,28th January. II

In addition, if literature is an attemptto communicate,then failure to have a novel published,in addition to being a failure in the questfor validation, also representsa lost opportunity for communication. This necessarilyincludes the possibility of a communicationand dissemination of values.5 Publication, on die other hand, representsa recognition of talent, of one's writing ability, and indeed a validation of one's own experienceas worked out through fiction. For as Patricia Meyer Spacks has said:

"it be fiction (and ,' can argued that all poetry and philosophy and painting) ultimately constitutes autobiography, the artist inverting whatever the purported aim of his creation, only a series of metaphors for the self. " '6

Sincethe adoptionof theroyalties system and the decline of the circulatinglibrary, to havehad a work of literaryfiction publishedand for it to havebeen be successfulmay be regardedas beinga particular achievement,for themarket for this kind of fiction is relativelysmall, and traditionallypublishers have had to rely on the strengthof titles which do sell in orderto supportthe publication of novelswith literary pretensions which generallydo not.

It is truethat the latter is a traditionwhich hasbeen under threat since the adventof largemulti-national communications groups which havebeen lesswilling to sacrificea shareof the profit marginby re-investingin literary tides. However,given that this is still the generalpattem, the

BookerPrize, during the Eightiesand still in the Nineties,perhaps offers the ultimateaccolade. Where literary fiction doesnot normallysell well, herethe novelistis offeredthe tantalisingprospect of beingable to

5 See POTTER, R., led. ) (1989), 1iteraU Qomputing and Lfterary Criliciým, pB3, where Paul Fortier quotes from Riffaterre. 6 SPACKS, P. M.,(1976), Imagining a Self: Autobiography and Novelin Eightnenth Century England, quoted in ELLIOT, R.-C., (1982), Jbojjjw= Persona- The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, p33. 12 combine literary aspirationswith the financial rewardsof being a bestseller.

It will becomeclear to thereader in thefollowing chaptersto what extent the Bookerwas able to influencesales of novelduring the 1980s,and that this wasnot only the casefor the novelswhich won but wasalso true for the otherworks on the shortlist. Furthermore,the prizewas also able to increasethe salesof earlierworks by thewinner and the shortlisted authors.The advantagestherefore were, and still are,legion. The winningnovelist was almost certainly guaranteed a paperback edition of his or her book,sales abroad, a possibleincreased advance from the publisher,and fees for personalappearances, signings and media interviews. Althoughmany authors probably found the latter somewhat double-edged,in generalterms the rewardswere very welcome,and these camein additionto thesubstantial prize money itself. The financial rewardssometimes had a big impacton the subsequentcareer of an author. For example,after winning the Bookerin 1981, SalmanRushdie wasable to quit his job asan advertisingcopy-writer in orderto concentratefull-time on writing.

Clearly,seen in theseterms the Bookerand similar awardshave been no badthing. As for literatureitself, however,my argumentin the chapters which follow will be thatwhile fearsabout the encroachment of the businessethic into the world of literatureare not recent,the successof the BookerPrize has added a newedge to the debateand has helped to blur thedistinction between two completelydifferent types of evaluations: thosebased on aestheticprinciples and those based on the demandsof the market. 13

The rise of the novel in the EighteenthCentury and the backgroundof bourgeoisliteracy which brought it to thefore havebeen wen documented. Sincethat time howeverthere have been many significant changes, both in the methodsof productionand in the marketingof novels. Oneof the mostimportant changes to occurin Britain, for example,was the demise in the 1890sof thethree-decker novel, and this undoubtedlyhad an effect on both the marketfor fiction andon thesort of fiction which waswritten.

Socialand economic factors continue to influencethe productionof the novel today. In theTwentieth Century however, economic factors have usuallybeen linked to the supposeddecline of the novel andof writing in generalrather than to anynew flourishingof talent. Q. D. Leaviswas one of severalcritics earlier this centurywho arguedthat mass literacy and a massmarket for all typesof fiction hadled to a fragmentationof the readingpublic, a fragmentationof the novelinto genresand sub-genres, to a declinein readingtaste, and to a fall in the standardof fiction writing. It hasalso been argued that in thesecond half of theTwentieth Century especially,increased disposable income and the rise of othermore diverse formsof leisurepursuits such as television, have in turn led to the creation of a literatepublic which rarelyreads.

Howevereconomic factors may be saidto haveinfluenced fiction in a moredirect way, andthis, I shall argue,is relevantto the rise of business sponsoredliterary awards.During the 1960sand Seventiesseveral importantstudies were carried out on the relationshipbetween literature andsociety, and on how social,political, andeconomic factors had influencedthe role of thewriter in society. JohnHall in 19797 quoted

7 See HALL,J., (1979),The Sociologyof LiteraturgLp6l. Interestinglyliterary awardsfeature neither in Hall'sassessment of importantnew sources of patronage,nor in his discussionof literarygatekeepers. This may be due In part to the fact that prizeswere not particularlynew evenin the late 1970s,but it is surelyalso indicativeof the ratheralarming rate at whichthe numberof awards beganto increasejust afterthis period. 14 statisticsused in Findlater'searlier study The Bookwriters.Who Are :Eba? Theseshowed that in 1965,that is, threeyears before the setting up of the BookerPrize, fifty percent of writerslived off earningsfrom a secondjob, andonly forty-fourper cent of thosewho madea living from literatureearned more than E500 per annum.Furthermore, two thirdsof writersearned less than E6 a week,and only onesixth mademore than E20. To put this into a broaderperspective, the averagewage per annum for a male non-manualworker at the time wasjust underfl, 500.

If onecompares this evenwith the poverty-strickenworld of Reardon andhis companionsin GeorgeGissing's New Grub Street,or with that of Orwell'shack in the essay"Confessions of a Book Reviewer",it seems clearthat it hadbecome increasingly difficult to makea living from writing alone. Yet only four yearslater when the first BookerPrize was awarded, the winnerwas presented with a chequefor E5,000.

Clearlythen, while the amountof the prizemoney offered by the Booker hasalways been an attractiveprospect, this musthave been especially so in the early daysof the awardwhen the prizemoney alone was worth three timesthe averagesalary. 8

As I shall showin ChapterThree, the financialrewards involved mean that largelucrative business-sponsored awards am alwaysgoing to be attractive,and especially in the absenceof any othercomprehensive financial supportfor youngwriters. However,it may be arguedthat in the future awardssuch as theseare likely to be seento havehad some influenceon fiction-writing itself, andthat this is only to havebeen expected.In particularit is possiblethat prizeswill be seento haveled to

See Chapter One, footnote 24, 15 a standardisationof fiction aswell as to the blurringof differenttypes of evaluation.

Of course,literary prizes are not the only factorswhich mayoperate to bring abouta standardisationand it would be unwiseto suggestotherwise. In Scrutinyfor example,both Q. D. andF. R. Leaviscomplained bitterly aboutthe generaleffects of theapplication of businessethics to literature,

for which theyclaimed an autonomyand, it seemed,a specialmoral force. , In Mrs Leavis'sanalysis of the disintegrationof a homogenousreading

public, shespoke of factorswhich werecontinuing to affectthe literary

sensibilides:

'.. tendencies which, having assumed the form of commercial and economic machinery, are now so firmly established that they have run on their own and whenever they choose.'9

What maybe arguedwith somedegree of justificationhowever is that the

rise of the business-sponsoredaward has led to an accelerationof the

processand extended the degreeto which bothliterature and the evaluation of fiction havebecome coloured by thedominant business ethic. It may be arguedfurther that literary awards have, in the end,not only failed to

increasethe financialsecurity of theauthor, but may actuallyhave made the situationmore precarious. Since a greatnumber of prizeswhich were eitherfounded during the 1980s,or, like theBooker, came to a new

prominenceduring the Eighties,were business-sponsored awards and at root may be saidto havehad the commercialinterests of the sponsorat

heartat leastas much as aesthetic concerns, it can be seenthat this type of

sponsorshipwas possible only aslong as the parentcompany itself enjoyedfinancial security during this period,

9 See LEAVIS,0. D., (1932),Fictoon and the ReadingPublic, Chatto and Windus, London, 1978. 16

While it is easynow to sneerat Q. D. Leavis'sapocalyptic tone, it is worthwhileremembering that the Leavisesand their fellow-contributorsto

Scrutinywere seeking to assertnot only their belief in the importanceof literature,but the centralityof thehuman experience with which it deals. Their fearsfor literaturewere essentially based on a fearthat literature's role as an expressionof thehuman spirit, asa moralinfluence, and as a bearerof ideas,was under threat, as was what they perceivedto be the inherentintegrity of literature.

It was this somewhatidealistic humanist view thereforewhich led them to excoriate the literary establishmentof the Thirties and Forties in the pagesof Scrutiny. At least part of the motivation behind their sustained attack on the British critical establishmenthowever was the belief that this itself was inherently flawed.1 0 However, as I shall show in Chapter

Four, given the degreeto which the Booker Prize'sjudging panels, shortlists and ManagementCommittee were peopledby membersof what appearsto be a homogenousliterary establishment,some of Leavis's criticisms may justifiably be applied here in relation to the Booker.

In fact thereare several concerns originally raised by the Leavises which areof relevanceto theBooker Prize. For example,are we right in any caseto think of literatureas being autonomous, and can fiction-wrifing survivewithout financialsupport in a world which is increasingly dominatedby marketforces? Alternatively, can literature retain its critical forcewhile simultaneouslyreceiving the sort of financialsupport on offer from the businessworld, particularlygiven that the raisond'etre of businesshas to do with profit making?

10E. g. see LEAVIS,F. R., (1932),"The LiteraryRacket", in A Selectionfrom Scrutiny.compiled W F. R. Leavisin Two VolUmes.Vol. 1 Cambridge the .., at UniversityPress, p160. 17 It is my contention here that, as far as prizes am concerned,while

peopleare aware of literaryprizes and of someof thehypocrisy which has attendedthem in thepast, and although they may not havetaken seriously any claimsthat theBooker or any otheraward should be seenas a literary yardstick,they have been largely unaware of thefull impactthat such prizescan have on fiction, andunaware in particularof the extentand weight of the socialinterconnections which underpinthe workingsof such prizes.

Given this, it is my intention in the remainderof this introduction firstly

to outline what the effects of this could be and to examine if there is any

evidence to back this up, and secondly, to discusswhether or not the

Booker is any worse in this respectthan other awards.

I havealready outlined the attraction of lucrativeprizes to authorswho lack otherforms of financialsupport, and have indicated that oneof the dangershere is thatif certaintypes of fiction areperceived to havea better

chanceof winningthan others because they aremore in line with the

valuesof thejudges, then there is a temptationto write 'to order'as it

were. This asI havenoted could be a particulardanger in the caseof youngerauthors who arestruggling financially.

However,although it may soundas if standardisationwould be more likely to occurin theorythan in practice,nevertheless there is, as I shall showin ChaptersFive andSix, evidenceboth of a thematicunity and of the useof relatedword groupsamong the novelsthat havewon the BookerPrize. That said,as I shall showin ChapterFour, the degreeof interconnection of the variouspeople involved with the prize is suchthat it is hardto assesswhether this is theresult of a deliberateattempt to write f prize-winning'fiction,or merelya reflectionof the sharedvalues and 18 common backgroundthat unite authorsand judges alike. Indeed there are severalplaces in the thesiswhere evidence of certain patternsof occurrenceis much less disputablethan the possiblereasons why these should have occurred.

As to the inherentdangers in the businesssponsorship of literature, thesemay be saidto includethe potential for a clashof two differenttypes of values,and for a conflationof thetwo asa result. It is true that the valuesof the businessworld would appearto haveled to the introduction of the conceptof the 'hard-sell'into onebranch of literature,literary fiction, which washitherto largely untouched by suchconcerns. However,as far asthe Bookeris concernedthere would appearto have beensome confusion from theoutset as to whatconstitutes strictly literary values,and specifically concerning what constitutes'middlebrow, and 'literary' and 'highbrow'fiction. Arguablyhowever this may be saidto be true of the literaryestablishment in Britain asa whole.

Relatedto this,the combination of conflatedvalues and aggressive marketingmay be saidto havethe potential to affectlanguage, and, specifically,to affectthe use of terminologyemployed to denotevalue judgements,including the words,'best' and'good. If prizes are only hype,if influentialhype nevertheless, then one hasto be awareof

particularand specific interpretations of the word 'good' whenused in relationto fiction. In additionone further potential danger is that in effectivelypromoting writing, asit were,to order,prizes help to undermineand perhaps to erodethe traditionalmimetic function of fiction.

In orderto assessfully eitherthe impact or the influenceof an award suchas the BookerPrize during the 1980s,and the extent to which social

valueswere substituted for aestheticones, it is clearthat the prize andthe 19 evaluationsof fiction whichemerge from thecontext of its judging panels mustbe studiedin relationto thebroader context. This is not simply becauseart is only a constituentpart of a largersocial structure, but also since,as Tolstoy argued, the formationof literarytastes and values is dependenton moregeneral values about life. I shall arguein ChapterFour that it is particularlyimportant to relatethe assessmentsof successive BookerPrize judges to thebroader social context since as Schuecking

clearlyillustrates, it is possiblefor a smallbut influentialstratum of society firstly to make,then to havewidely disseminated,its own standardof 'good'in relationto literature,and one which may involve a 'misreading' of thetext. I shallargue in ChapterFour that it is the culturalnorms of oneparticularly influential social group which arevery muchin evidence in the workingsof the BookerPrize during the 198ps.

If it is true that the novels which won the Booker were more

representativeof the dominantethos of a smallbut influentialcultural minority thanof British fiction asa whole,then it figuresthat it is likely that writerswho wereeither from outwith this contextor whosework did not fit with the valuesof this grouphad a raw dedl. I shall arguethat this is borneout by the evidenceof the 1980sshortlists. Not only were writersin sucha categoryunlikely to be shortlistedfor the BookerPoze in any case,and particularly not if theywere published by a smaller publishinghouse, but within thelimited contextof the marketfor serious fiction, they thenhad to competewith shortlistednovels which had the benefitsof maximumpublicity andexposure.

In addition,the difficulty for the youngnovelistý in gettingpublished andof gettinghis or her work noticedin suchan environmentmeans that writersfrom outwith the shordistsare likely to havebeen doubly disadvantaged, triply so if oneconsiders that the novelswhich appeared 20 on the Booker shortlists were usually those which were most likely to be

reviewed in any case.

While it is hardto provethat the Booker actually changed people's opinionsof whatconstituted merit in relationto fiction, its powerin other areasis indisputable.If, asI shalldemonstrate, the prizemay be seento

havebeen able to greatlyincrease the sales of novelsby an authorwhose work may not in fact havebeen representative of fiction asa whole,then it mustbe saidto havebeen extremely influential indeed.

Howeverit is not only certaintypes of authorsthat arelikely to have

I_been at a disadvantage,for under the circumstancesthe readermust be said to have lost out too. The commentsmade by the critic D. J. Taylor in relation to the dishonestreviewing in Britain as a whole may be said to apply to the novels which were shortlisted for the Booker and which were hyped-up as a result:

'.. the reader who buys books on the strength of reviews is likely to feel vaguely swindled, less able to appreciate the really good stuff. ' 11

Given the provenability of the Bookerto sell largenumbers of books andthe muchhigher level of socialinterconnection among the judges, shortlistedauthors and Management Committee members of this prize than amongthose in otherliterary prizes of the period,this prize may be saidto havebeen likely to disruptthe receptionprocess of fiction, andmore so thanother awards at the time. This is because,in its potentialfor increasingthe salesof oneauthoes work abovethose of another,and for disseminatinga non-representativeevaluation of 'good' in relationto fiction andone at that which waslikely not to havebeen based on aesthetic considerations,the BookerPrize had a greaterpotential to do this thanthe

TAYLOR, D. J., (1989), A Vain ConceilaBritish Fiction in the 1980s. Bloomsbury, London, p86. 21 other awards,and thus to further disadvantageyoung writers from outwith the literary establishmentof the south eastof England.

This then is a brief outline of the argumentscontained in the chapters which follow.

The thesisis dividedinto threeparts. Part 1 (ChaptersOne and Two)

coversthe background to thefounding of the BookerPrize and the history

of the awardfrom 1969-1989.In additionI shall alsolook hereat the growthof the prizein relationto the generalrise in numberof business

sponsoredawards during theEighties. In ChapterTwo I shall makea detailedcomparison between the BookerPrize and a controlgroup of other

awards.Part 2 (ChaptersThree and Four) deals with the economic backgroundto the developmentof this newtype of patronage,and then

with the socialinterconnections which linkedjudges, Management Committeemembers and shortlisted authors during this period,and with

what implicationsthe latter had in relationto theintegrity of thejudges' assessments.In Part3 (ChaptersFive andSix) I shall examinewhat evidencethere is, firstly, of linguisticlinks, andsecondly, of similarities in the treatmentof particularthemes, among the novelswhich won the

BookerPrize during the 1980s.I shall alsodiscuss in more detail issues relatingto standardisation.

I shall begineach part of the thesiswith a btief introduction,and

conclude each part with a summing-up of the main points discussedin

eachsection, Following theend of Part3 howeverI shall offer a general conclusionto the thesis. 22

PART I

A Short History- of the Booker Prize. and a Comparison th--Oth Awards. -Wi er 23

'Vulgar', Robin Troke-Nuttal pronounced. 'What? ' 'This idea of novels becoming part of some kind of horse- race. t 'Oh but surely, Robiný it can do nothing but good. Confer a kind of seal of approval on the . Like the Prix Goncourt. ' 'Only a nation as simplistic as the French want seals of approval. English novelists don't need that kind of cheap display. '

SIMON BRETTý

The Booker Bookl

1 BRETT,S., (1989).The BookerBook: A-NoDL Sidgwickand Jackson, London, p7. 24

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

In this part of the thesisI shall examinethe backgroundto the founding of

the Booker Prize. In ChapterOne I shall look at the existing situation as

regardsliterary prizes in the period prior to the founding of this award and

then I shall give a brief history of the prize from its inception till 1989.

In ChapterTwo I shallexamine the Booker Prize against the background of the generalrise in thenumber of newand financially lucrative business- sponsoredawards during the 1980s.I shall attemptto addressthe issues of why andhow this phenomenoncame about, and of why the Booker Prizewas able to maximiseits impactduring this period. I shall alsomake a detailedcomparison of the Bookerwith severalother awards which existedduring this periodto seeif therewere any significantdifferences in the structure,the rulesor thejudging procedurewhich would help to explainthe BookerPrize's remarkable success. 25 CHAPTER ONE

The Best of Both Worlds: A ShortHistory of the BookerPriZe. and an Assessmentof its CurrentStatus.

'to what excited her much more about the announcement [of the founding of the Booker Prize] was the thought that now some objective valuation might enter Into the world of letters. No longer would she have to piece together her literary opinions from the vagaries of conflicting critics; soon there would be a prize which would give an authentic imprimatur of success to its winner.. ' 1

As this is the first chapterof the thesis,I wish to takethe opportunity hereto lay the foundationsfor furtherinvestigation in laterchapters. Thus I shallconcentrate on giving thereader a historicalbackground to the BookerPrize, and also on addressingthe following questions.How and why wasthe prize set up; whathas been the actual valueof the prize to its benefactorsand beneficiaries (and indeed who has benefited);and, finally, what hasbeen the actual statusof the awardas opposed to its 'received' statusand where may thetwo be seento havediverged?

I wish to look first of all at thecontextual issues which servedas a backdropto the foundingof the BookerPrize in 1968,and in so doing I shallexamine the socio-political context.

Whenthe Booker Prize was officially launchedin October1968, among the reasonsgiven for thesetting up of the awardwere that theexisting prizes,which totalledaround fifty, were 'puny,2 and that they suffered from a lack of publicity.

At this point in Britain therewas already a numberof literary prizesin existence.These included the W. H. Smith,award which had been

I BRETT,S., (1989),The BookerBook, A Ngyel.Sidgwick and Jackson, London, p6. 2 See Booker'soriginal press release for the prize. 26 founded comparatively recently in 1959, and which was worth E1,000.

The latter was unusualhowever, for generally it was true that prizes were of fairly insignificant monetaryvalue. What awardssuch as the

Hawthomden and the JamesTait Black did offer, however, was a limited degreeof prestige.

In 1964 a meeting was held by the Society of Young Publishersat the premisesof Book League (later to be known as Book Trust).

Its avowed purposewas to discussthe situation with regard to literary awardsin Great Britain. The three speakersat the meeting were the publisher Tom Maschler,the writer PenelopeMortimer, and the journalist

Kenneth Allsop, then Literary Editor of the .

At the time, the authorof an articlein The Bookselle which gavea report on the proceedingS3noted that interest in the matterwas such that 'two roomswere packed' and that therewas 'standingroom only'. In retrospectthis meetingseems to havemarked the beginning of something of a sea-changein the approachto literary awardsin this country,and it is illuminatingtb comparethe suggestions regarding the creation of a new awardas they appear in thearticle with whatactually happened when the

BookerPrize was set up severalyears later. ThusI shall refer to the article in somedetail.

First to speak was Tom Maschler of Cape4. Maschler, as the author of the article reports, put it to the audiencethat they were there to discuss literary awards,to seeif they found the existing situation with all its flaws acceptable,and if not, to decide what improvementscould be implemented. He alluded to the fact that this matter had been discussedby

3 "UnnoticedLiterary Prizes: plea for a new majornational award", The Bookseller. 7th November1964, ppl966-1970. 4 Maschler'sfather Kurt gave his nameto the Kurt Maschler/EmilAward for illustratedchildren's books. 27 the PublishersAssociation a decadeearlier but that it had 'decidedthat nothing could be done.'

He then went on to questionwhat the functions of a literary prize should be. Thesehe outlined as being, firstly, a meansof showing appreciation be for a writer, secondly, to aid the writer financially, and finally, it was to hoped, to enhancea writer's reputation and increasehis salesas a consequence.Maschler suggestedthat if a prize were 'really meaningful' it could help other'worth-while' books and indeed books in general:

'.. if notice were taken of it in the right Way.16

Maschlerraised the issue of the generalinadequacy of thethirty-five existingawards in relationto theirinability to helpwriters to be financially independent.His own recommendationfor any new prize wasthat it shouldoffer a substantialamount in prize money,and he suggestedthe sum of E5,000.It shouldalso be 'anonymous'that is, the nameof the prize shouldnot in any way indicatethe sponsor as this:

'.. would militate in the long run, against the prize being influential. ' 7

He believedthat existing prizes lacked the amountof publicity which he envisagedwould be necessaryif the public wasreally to takenote of a prize. Thus,among his otherrecommendations for a new awardwere that an 'occasion'should be createdfor the awardsceremony in orderto attract televisionand press coverage, which would in turn provide 'free publicity'.

5 "UnnoticedLiterary Prizes: plea for a newmajor national literary award", Iba Bookseller,7th November1964, ppl966-1970. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 28

It is clear that much of the aboveprefigures the workings of the Booker

Prize. Maschler at this point however was of the opinion that the sponsors should be the publishersthemselves. Although he recognisedthat it would be possible to get sponsorshipfrom outside, the writer in The Bookseller notesthat Maschlerbelieved that:

'.. the - essential thing was that the money subscribed should be given with absolutely no strings attached, ' 8

This was a view re-iteratedby Allsop in his address.

PenelopeMortimer, who spokeimmediately after Maschler, re-stated muchof whathe hadsaid, however she also suggested that as far as a new awardwas concemed:

'The whole idea was not just to give somebody 15,000, but to raise the status of books and to make the whole thing dignified and important to those who read books.' 9

Significantly,Mortimer did not believethat the prize shouldwork asan incentiveto writers,to spurthem on to writing 'good'fiction, but rather that it shouldbe awardedretrospectively 10 to a bookwhich was recognisedto havebeen important, irrespective of how manycopies it had sold.

Allsop, asa pastwinner of the JohnLlewellyn RhysPrize, was well- placedto criticisethe existing system. He too warnedof the dangersfor any new prize of receivingsponsorship from business,and suggested that links with sponsorswould inevitablyhelp to definethe type of novel

8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 In fact the Booker Prize was a retrospectiveaward until the rules were changed in 1971, See below. 29 which would win 11. However, he recommendedthat there should be some associationwith, though not sponsorshipfrom, the universities.

It is interestingto tracethe similarities between the projected new award andthe BookerPrize as it wasestablished several years later. Implicit, andsometimes explicit, in all threespeeches was the belief that thenew prize, were it to becomea reality, shouldhave 'dignity', 'prestige,and 'importance',and that it shouldbe for'serious'fiction, and theseare terms which arestill frequentlystressed by the organisersof the BookerPrize. However,given the natureof the manycriticisms that havebeen made of the BookerPrize over the years, it is perhapsespecially ironic thatmany of the dangersinherent in the settingup of large,lucrative awards for fiction werediscussed at this early meeting.

Overall, it seemsthat thosepresent at the meeting were greatly in favour of a new award being instigated. However, if the Booker Prize were in any way the manifestationof this desireto createa new prize, then it took another four years before the workings of this new award were set in motion. Furthermore,in the meantimemany of the original recommendationswere shelved, and warnings as to the perils of business funding ignored.

In 1968Booker McConnell Ltd wasa multinationalgroup worth E28 million andwith interestsin sugar,rum andengineering. 12 At this point in time its interestswere based mainly in the Caribbean,in Guyana,however during the 1960sthe companyhad begun to diversify, and,increasingly, to concentrateits businessinterests in the U. K. The setting-

11 Accordingto the article,Allsop referred here to the examplesof the newly- foundedColumbia, Heinemann and CorgiAwards. 12 See originalpress release for the BookerPrize. Comparethis with 1989,the twentiethanniversary of the prize,when Booker Pk; was worthover F-2billion and employedover 20,000people worldwide. Its interestshad expanded considerablyand they includedagriculture, fisheries and healthcare products. Britishbrand names included Allisons the Bakers,Health Care and Family Choice. 30 up of the Booker Prize in 1968,then, may be seenin terms of the company'swish to signal a larger presencein this country.

As part of this processof re-location and diversification the company had set up a subsidiary called Booker Books which dealt with writers'and artists'copyrights. This particular area of diversification, however, had proved to be far more lucrative than the parentcompany had ever imagined, and by 1968The Tim 13article predicting the announcement of the launch of the literary prize put the total revenuefrom Booker Books

14that year at around E100,000, Among the writers whose copyrights

Booker Books heldl 5 were Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming and John and PenelopeMortimer.

The official Bookerline on the settingup of theprize was given by the formerchairman of thecompany, Sir MichaelCaine in his "Preface"to Prizewriting,a compilationof work from pastwinners of the BookerPrize which waspublished in 1989. Herehe statesthat, having made a considerableamount of moneyfrom the copyrightsof authorssuch as these,the companyhad:

,Jelt a corresponding obligation to promote the living word and to encourage authors. 116

This reasonfor Booker'sinvolvement with the prize is confirmedby

Martyn Goff, the prize'sadministrator since 1970. In his "Introduction" to Prizewriting,17 Goff statesthat the chairmanof BookerBooks andthe managingdirector had begun:

13The Time (Diary),18th July 1968, , 14Currently known as BookerEntertainment, 15This also includedfilm thoughnot theatrerights. 16See Prizewriting:An OriginalCollection of by PastWinners to -Wrifings Celebrate21 years of The BookerPrize. Hodder and Stoughton,London 1989, p2. 17 Ibid.,pl 3. Goff,the ChiefExecutive of BookTrust, was formerlya bookseller, and novelist. 31

I.. to think of ways of showing their appreciation for this success in the form of establishing bursaries, scholarships or prizes. '

It wasalso at this time,he notes,that Tom Maschlerand Graham C. Greene,respectively the chairman and managing director of ,were, co-incidentally, looking for sponsorshipfor a major new literary prize 'thatmight oneday rival the Prix Goncourt. The two representativesof thepublishing company thus approached Booker McConnellLtd, andit wasas a resultof this that the BookerPrize came into being,originally with the Publishers'Association involved asco- sponsorand provider of the administrativesupport for the award.

It hadtaken four yearsto get a new prize off the groundwhich roughly correspondedto thatoutlined in 1964. In the meantimethere had been a numberof factorswhich probablymade for an environmentmore sympathetictowards the settingup of a new award. For onething, the numberof literaryawards had increased in anycase from thirty-five in 1964to 'almostfifty' in 1968,and this can be seenas a slow but steady generaltrend towards the settingup of newprizes.

In termsof the socio-politicalcontext, by 1968there had been a number of eventswhich hadadded more weight to the argumentsof thosewho, like PenelopeMortimer, wished to seea literaryprize which would be a tribute to the writer'srole in society. In the autumnof that yeartanks from the WarsawPact countries had rolled into Czechoslovakiain orderto crush Dubcek'sexperiments in 'socialismwith a humanface'and with this move camea crackdownon thosewriters who wereexplicitly againsthard-line

SovietCommunism. In January1968, seven months before the tankshad 32 enteredPrague, the Russianwriter Yuri Galanskov had been sentencedto sevenyearshard labour for anti-Soviet activitiesl8-

The West however was not immune from censorshipof its own.

Although 1968 saw the official end to censorshipin the theatrein Britain, the summer of that year also saw the trial on the grounds of obscenity of the novel Last Exit to Brooklynl 9- Thus it could be said that by this time there was additional moral justification for the setting up of any new prize which would highlight the role of the author in society.

In addition,in economicterms the settingup of theprize wasgood news for publishers,for by the springof 1969when the first BookerPrize was awarded,the publishingindustry was in themidst of a recessionand ready to welcomeany new marketingstrategy which hadthe potentialto increase sales.

Thusit canbe seenthen that these combined factors made the period

1968-1969one which wasripe for the introductionof a new award.

It wasafter some speculation in thepress that the BookerPrize was finally launchedofficially on 3rd October1968, and the inauguralprize awarded in April 1969. Initially, asit wasunder the wing of BookerBooks rather thanthe parentcompany, the awardwas to be known as The Booker

Prize'. Howeverwhen the parentcompany took over responsibilityfor the prize as a corporateventure in 1974,the prizebecame, for a time, The BookerMcConnell Award'before reverting to its original,and arguably moremarketable, name in 1986.20

18 See"Review of the Year",in TheTimes, 31 st December 1968. 19 One of the counsels for the defence was 0. C., novelist, and husband of Penelope Mortimer. 20 SHAKESPEARE, N., (1986), "Boosting up with the Booker", The Timeg, 23rd August, 33

In the pressrelease issued on 4th October 1968,it was reported that the sponsors,while realising that the E5,000 prize money was a'generous reward'for any author,hoped:

;... that his real success [would] be a significant increase in the sales of his book. ' 21

and that this would have a knock-on effect both for other shortlisted authors and indeedfor writers in general. The pressrelease also alluded to the contemporarypolitical situation in 1968 and strove to relate the foundation of the prize to this situation in expressingthe hope of the sponsorsthat in future, writers should:

'... not need to be censored, imprisoned or labelled outrageous and controversial before hitting the headlines. '22

The British literary world, then, finally got its new award, five years after the meeting at the National Book League's premises. In the meantime however some rather curious shifts in attitude had taken place among those involved in instigating the award. For one thing it seemsthat Maschler had managedto overcomehis initial distrust of certain aspectsof business sponsorshipin the interim. Otherwise his stamp was all over the prize, including the sum which he had originally suggestedas being a suitable amount for the prize money having been adoptedby the Booker.

In addition,it doesseem rather odd that BookerBooks, who had allegedlywanted to rewardauthors as a resultof their own successin the copyrightbusiness, should have chosen a prize which, from the beginning,wished to style itself as an awardfor'serious' or highbrow fiction, for the BookerMcConnell subsidiary had enjoyed success with authorswho werepopular, 'low-to-middle brow' writers ratherthan

21See original press release. 22Ibid. 34

'highbrows'. While authors such as Christie, Fleming, and Dennis

Wheatley were able to sell books, they had few literary pretensions.

In the end one has to be cynical about the reasonsfor Booker's eventual choice of venture. It seemsinevitable that this was swayed by the fact that, of the three options which the company had considered,it was always more likely that a prize such as the one Maschler had outlined would reap more in the way of publicity for the sponsorthan either a scholarship fund or bursary scheme. That said, however, even Booker could not have foreseenthe level of publicity that the prize was to generate in later years. What the final choice signalled neverthelesswas that business concerns such as value for sponsorship 23, which I shall examine in more detail in the next chapter,were to feature large from the outset.

The first prizeceremony was held at DrapersHall in April 1969,where

DameRebecca West, one of the panelof judges,presented a chequefor E5,000and a trophy to the winning novelist,P. H. Newby.

Overnightthe BookerPrize became Britain's most lucrative award for fiction in the U. K. andthe first awardof its kind, both in so far as it introducedto prizesin this countrythe ideaof theliterary awardas means of providingfinancial independence for the author,and also in that it was the first time that a companyhad given an amountof this magnitudeto sponsora literary award24. Eventhe W. H. Smith,which at this point was the only awardin any way comparableto theBooker in termsof prize money,offered only a fifth of the latter'stotal. That said,sponsorship for

23 See Sir MichaelCaine's comments, Prizewriting, p2. 24 Infact, in 1968the average weekly wage for a male,non-manual worker was justover C29, and for a manualworker C16.5. For women the figures were C15.4,and E9.7, respectively. See New Earnings Survey. 1968, Department of Employmentand Productivity, H. M. S. 0., London,1970, Table 43, p68. In real termsthen the current value of theaward, at E20,000,is worthonly about half the valueof the prizeIn 1969, 35 the Booker award was guaranteed,in the first instance,for a period of sevenyears only. Thecompany however reviewed its positionin 1975 and sponsorshipwas extendedfor another sevenyears.

In 1968 the rules of the prize statedthat the Booker 25 would be awarded

'to the best novel in the opinion of the judges', and that the novels I submitted were to havebeen published in the period betweenDecember st

and November 30th the following year. Any novel by a British,

Commonwealth,Southern Irish or South African citizen which had been

published first in Britain betweenthese dates was eligible. Publishers

were originally allowed to submit only two novels from their lists, though

the judges were free to call in 'any others.

The shordistof novelswas to be announcedbetween four andsix weeks

prior to the winnerbeing chosen in orderto increasepublicity and, signfficantly, given the repeatedefforts to comparethe Booker with the Prix Goncourtso that:

'.. the sort of speculation so beloved In France will be possible In Britain for the first time. '

Overthe years the rulesof theprize have undergone several significant

changes.In December1970, it wasannounced that in future the awarding

of the prize would takeplace in the autumninstead of the Spring. Also, from 1971the administrationof the awardwas taken over by the National Book League,later to be known asBook Trust.

In 1975,as mentioned above, the sponsorsreviewed their financial commitmentto theprize. While BookerMcConnell decided to continueits

financial supportfor anotherseven years, some changes were made. In

25 See originalpress release. The pressrelease does not indicatewhether or not the originalrules stipulated, - as they do now,that the publisherof a novel which was shortlistedhad to spenda certainamount on publicisingthat book. 36 particular it was noted in the media at the time 26that the company was unhappy about certain aspectsof the running of the prize, and, having 27 renewedits financial commitment,it announcedin March 1975 that the be period of qualification for a novel publishedprior to the award was to extended,and also that the number of novels any one publisher could submit would now be increasedto four.

Later in 1975, following a shortlist which consistedof only two novels, the rules were further changedto ensurethe inclusion of a minimum of three novels in future. In 1978 the prize money was doubled to f. 10,000, and the following year, in what, according to Martyn Goff, was one of the most significant changesto the rules, the practice was abolishedof informing publishersin advanceof the identity of the winner in order to allow them to re-issuea novel. This move was intended to heighten speculation as to who would win.

1983saw the first femaleChairman of thejudges, something which Bookerhad deliberately tried to encouragethat year, and the yearafter, the prize moneywas again raised, this time to E15,000.Co-incidentally, this increasein the amountof prizemoney offered occurred the same year as a new award,the Betty Trask,was founded, and the latter alsooffered a sum of E15,000to the winner28.

From 1988,the ruleson judgesbeing able to call in novelswere changed. This followed the decisionby thejudges in 1987not to call in any, a move,

takenin responseto the strategyfrequently employed by publisherswhich

26 E. g. see TREWIN,1., (1975), "Booker Prize assured for sevenmore years". The Ti(Ijes,23rd January. N, B. Trewinlater went on to becomea memberof the ManagementCommittee for the prize. 27 See "BookerPrize to allowmore time for entries",The Times.7th March 1975. 28 By the late Eightiesthe BettyTrask was BritaiWsmost lucrative single categoryaward i. e. it wasalways for a workof romanticfiction. This award currentlyoffers E26,000in prize money,E16,000 of which goes to the winner and E2,000each to a maximumof five runners-up.However the divisionof prize moneymay be alteredfrom year to year. SeeChapter Two. , 37 involved them submitting someof their less accomplishednovels, secure in the knowledgethat the judges were more than likely to call in their

strongertitles. In this way they sought to maximise the potential number

of submissionsfrom their company's lists.

In 1989therefore, the maximumnumber of novelsany onecompany

could submitwas three, though past winners did not countagainst this. Thus,if, duringthe year, a companyhad published a novel by a previous winnerof theprize, it couldsubmit this and threeothers, plus it could havesome additional tides called in. Thepublisher could alsosubmit an

additionalfive novelswhich he or shewished to draw to thejudges' attention,though since 1988 these had had to be accompaniedby a 29 statementexplaining why thepublisher thought them worthy of note. Fromthese extra submissions the judges were now obligedto call in betweenfive andfifteen booksand, as before, they could alsocall in any novelwhich hadneither been submitted or listedbut which theybelieved

shouldhave been.

As ChapterTwo is concernedwith theBooker Prize in relationto other

prizes,I shallleave detailed analysis of thestructure of the Management Committeeand of thejudgingprocedures until then. Sufficeto say that this is a two-tiersystem with theManagement Committee appointed by BookerPlc, andthe judges in turn appointedby the Management

Committee.The day-to-dayadministration of the prize is carriedout, for the most part,by Book Trust.

Having dealtwith the issuesof how andwhy the prize was setup and with the structureof the award,it is necessaryto look at someof the issues

raisedby the prize,and specifically, at the questionof who hasactually benefitedfrom it.

29 See APPENDIX2. for rulesfor the 1989Booker Prize. 38

In terms of its ability to sell novels the statusof the Booker during the

1980s was unchallenged. It has beenestimated that salesof P. H.

Newby's novel Somethingto Answer Fo were increasedby around 1,500 copies as a result of winning the Booker Prize in 1969.30 However, by

1980 Margaret Forster31 estimated that winning the prize that year could boost salesby up to 9,000 copies.

It was in the early Eighties that the Booker Prize beganto develop something of the statusof a phenomenon,and for reasonswhich I shall discussin more detail at a later point. Co-incidentafly the impact of the

Booker on sales 'mushroomed'. David Lodge has said of the Booker that in the 1980sit:

'... suddenly developed the power to make any book that won it a bestseller,, 32 andthis ability of theprize helped to furtherconfirm its statusas phenomenon.

Evidenceof the Booker'sincreasing ability to sell novelsas the decade progressedcan be found in the salesfigures for J. M. Coetzee'snovel andTimes of MichaelK. This novelwas estimated to havesold around 40,000more copies than would normallyhave been expected, purely asa resultof its havingwon the prize in 1983.33The prize's positiveeffect on salesis evenmore conspicuous in thecase of Anita Brookner'snovel Hotel du Lac which won the following year.

30 See SHAKESPEARE,N., (1986),"Boosting up with the Booker",Jh2 Times. 23rd August. 31 See FORSTER,M., (1980),"Secrets of a GlitteringPrize", The Sundu Emu, 26th October. 32 Quotedin ADAIR,T., (1 992), "The Prizeof Fame",Scotland on Sunday,29th November. 33 See ROSENTHAL,T. G., (1984),"Life and Timesof the 1983 BookerPrize". The Bookseller,18th February,pp581-583. ,- 39

Rupert Lancaster,the publicity director for Brookner's publisher, Cape, showed in a 1985 article in The Bookseller how salesof Brookner's novel went up by an astonishing 10,000copies in one week, following the announcementthat it had won the Booker Prize.34 Lancasteesarticle however also provides figures which show persuasivelythat the prize was having an ever-increasingeffect on salesduring the 1980s. In the period from having won the prize up to the Decemberof 1984, 's

1981 winner Midnight's Children had sold a total of 18,000 copies in hardback. The 1982 winner, Schindlees Ark. had sold 39,000 copies

(excluding salesin Australia), and the 1983 winner, Life and Times o

Michael K. 44,000 copies. However Hotel du Lac which was the most recent winner had sold 50,000 copies over the sameperiod, and between the Decemberof 1984and the publication of Lancaster'sarticle in April the following year, he recordsthat it sold an additional 19,000 copies. [See Fig. 1.1

In addition, Lancaster'sarticle also points to the prize's ability to boost the salesof other novels on the shortlist and of previous works by the winning author, and this is entirely as the sponsorsof the prize had intended things to be.

Clearly the Booker'sability to sell novelshas been good newsfor author, publisherand bookseller alike, as well asbeing a vindicationof the prize as a marketingdevice. Furthermore,in additionto increasedsales for the winning author,the prize moneyalone has always been enough, technicallyat least,to allow him or her to be financiallyindependent. The prize hasalso added to the statusand media-profile of writer, publisher and sponsoralike. Moreover,the mediaattention which surroundedthe awardhas meant that very often,if only for a brief period,fiction in generalhas become a topic for discussion. 34 LANCASTER,R., (11985)."Up for the Cup [The effectof the Bookerprize (sic)onsalesofHotelduLac", TbeB kseller.13th April, ppI1604-5. 40

Ultimately, however, the main beneficiariesof the award have beenthe sponsors,who for a relatively small financial outlay covering the prize money, funding of the presentationdinner, and the administration, have ensuredthemselves a significant amount of Tree'publicity in the way of television coverageof the ceremonyand a high level of attentionin the press.

In these respectsthen, the Booker Prize may be said to have successfully fulfilled its original aims and to have brought benefits to those involved.

In addition therecan be no doubt that the Booker achieveda remarkable level of public awarenessin a comparatively short time. However, many of the supposedbenefits of the award have in fact been double-edged,and, at the end of the day, the only group for whom the benefits have been unequivocal are the sponsors,for questionssurround the positive influence of the prize on all the otherslisted above as beneficiaries.

For example, whilst the increasein salesbrought about by the Booker has benefited author, publisher and bookseller in the short-term, the author, as a result has often had to cope with pressuressuch as those from an inquisitive media which are the lot of the minor celebrity.

Furthermore,the long-termbenefits of prizesto the publishingworld in generalhave been debatable. In an environmentwhere independent houseswere increasingly being elbowed out by largermedia corporations, the BookerPrize during the Eighties arguably intensified the focuson a novel'spotential to be a bestseller,and may in this respecthave made it moredifficult for certainpublishers to justify takingthe decisionto back a novel which did not appearto havethis capacity.Thus the traditionof publishersusing revenue from the salesof morecommercially successful titles to subsidiseworks which wereof a moreliterary nature,a tradition, 41 which was already under threat,was possibly underminedfurther by the existenceof prizessuch as the Bookerwhich appearedto demanda certain commercialpotential even in thearea of literaryfiction.

In addition,while I shallexamine some of the practicaleffects of the

Bookeron thewriting of fiction in moredetail in ChaptersFive andSix, in generalit may be arguedthat the Booker, in tendingto go to oldermore establishedwriters, in realterms actually made it evenmore difficult for emergingwriters to getnoticed.

The periodof mediainterest in fiction generatedby theaward furthermorehas in realitybeen all too brief, andit hasbeen argued that in theevent the Bookerand related awards have tended to increaseinterest in 'thebook' at theexpense of booksin general.Moreover, although the prizehas provokeddiscussion about fiction, it hasnot automatically followedthat it hasfostered a discerningattitude towards literature per se.

All too oftenduring the 1980sthe typeof publicity which the prizewas affordedin the presswas that which focusedmore on the personalityof the winning authorand on his or her personallife thanon the meritsof the winning novel.35

Finally, in a situationwhere there is a limited marketfor literary fiction, the Bookerand related awards arguably have increased sales of a few novelists'work anddetracted from the salesof othernovelists whose work may havebeen of equalmerit but who havenot receivedanything like the samelevel of publicity asthose fortunate enough to be on the shortlistsof literary prizes. In generalterms therefore, as I shall discussin

35 In this respectthe prize'sown publicitymay be saidto be rathersuspect. E. g. see the 1989and 1992promotional leaflets where the namesof the authorsare printedin a mannerwhich makes them standout morethan the titles of their work. This is especiallytrue of the 1992leaflet where the writersnames are printedin whiteagainst a turquoisebackground, making them stand out muchmore strongly than the blackof the titles,particularly if viewedfrom a distance. 42 more detail in ChapterThree, the Booker Prize and related business- sponsoredawards may actually havemade the financial position of the writer moretenuous.

Though many of theseobjections could be raisedin relation to any commercially-orientedliterary award,they are more justified in relation to the Booker Prize during this period becauseof what I have shown to be the extent to which the prize was able to increasesales of fiction. For ultimately the significance of the Booker Prize has beenits efficacy as a marketing device.

As for othercriticisms which may be directedat this awardspecifically, sincethe inceptionof the Bookerand especially during the 1980s,the prize hasappeared not just to engender,but to positivelycourt controversy,and this wasundoubtedly a majorfactor in the prize'sreaching a new level of famein the 1980s.

As to the other reasonsfor the prize's new level of successor notoriety

in the Eighties, Martyn Goff suppliesfive possible answersin

Prizewritini!. 36 These are: the amount of money offered by the award,

although as he notes, by 1989 it was no longer the most lucrative award in

Britain; the controversieswhich have arisenover the years in relation to

certain aspectsof the award; the choice of judges; the composition of the

ManagementCommittee; and, finally, the changein the rules which

preventedthe identity of the winner being known in advance. In the end,

he suggests,it is probably a combination of all thesereasons.

Goff howeverfails to takeinto accountseveral other significant factors

suchas the fact that from 1981there was live televisioncoverage of the

awardceremony, and this clearlyhad some impact on the public's

36 See Prizewriting, ppl 1-13. 43

awarenessof the prize. Furthen-nore,although Goff attemptsto play

down the scandalsthat have always besetthe prize by pointing to a

controversy surroundinganother award, 37 controversy has actually aided

the prize in increasingthe amountof media coverageit hasreceived and in

getting it talked about. In fact, it was one particular controversy in 1980,

when the favourite 'novel Earthly Powers was beatenby

William Golding's novel Rites of Pass=, that actually resulted in the

decision being taken by the BBC to televise the awardsceremony live. -38

Many of thecontroversies which havesurrounded the awardare directly traceableto thecontentious nature of the sponsors'original aims. By the

sametoken, to a largeextent it is thesewhich haveensured the prize's successas a marketingdevice, though in thelong-term they haveprobably militatedagainst the prize being taken seriously as a gaugeof literary excellence.

Goff notes in Prizewriting 39 that of all the rules it is the Booker Prize's

aim to reward 'the best novel in the opinion of the judges', that has caused

the most problems over the yearssince it has inevitably raised questionsas

to how and on what grounds the term 'best'should be applied. Perhaps

given the backgroundof the prize and its original aims, it was inevitable

that commercial and aestheticconsiderations should vie againsteach other

from year to year. It may be arguedadditionally that given the power of

marketing during the Eighties it was inevitable too that this would become

even more a characteristicfeature of the award during the decade. Indeed,

the result of this as Goff notes, was an unconscious 'see saw' effect during the 1980sin terms of the type of novels which won. These, he 37 1.e. The SundayExpress Book of the YearAward. See Prizewriting,pl 1. 38 Burgessnot only refusedto attendthe ceremony,but openlycriticised the winnerin the media, See also MOSLEY,P., (1988),"Looking at the Booker: LiteraryPrize as MediaSpectacle", Channel of Communication:Papers for the Conferengegj HigherEducation TesIchers of English,ed. PhijiDHobsbaum. PaddyLyons. Jim McGhee,HETE-88 at the Departmentof EnglishLiterature, Universityof Glasgow,1992, for furtherdetails. 39 See EdLgAdfiM p 17. 44 says,tended to veerfrom bookswhich met theapproval of the literary puristsand those which pleasedthe booksellers,which he noteswere any booksthat have the potentialto sell. It is certainlypossible to discerna swing between'popular' and 'literary'choices in the list of the Top Ten BestsellingWinners of theprize from 1980-1990.[See Fig. 1.]

Perhapseven more contentious however has been the statementin the original pressrelease for theaward that one of the hopesthat the sponsors hadwas that the newprize would: '.. help to narrow the all too frequent gap between artistic and commercial success.140

This is confusing,for thereis a substantialgap between the aimsof the writer or artist andthose of the businessman.Nevertheless the media duringthe Eighties also displayed a tendencyto conflatethe two. An exampleof this may be foundin an articleby PatriciaMiller in TheLondon IllustratedNews which wasfeatured in the promotionalleaflet for the 1989

BookerPrize. HereMiller is quotedas saying: 'The Booker Prize for fiction has become the ultimate accolade for artistic endeavour of any sort in Britain. The Booker is it; the glory, the television coverage, the leap in sales and of course the f15,000 in prize money.141

it seemsstrange that a prizewhich supposedly set out to promoteartistic achievementhas clearly encouraged a conflation of aestheticand commercialideals, and under the circumstancesit is not surprisingthat the

BookerPrize has continued to be seenas little morethan a mediacircus with little or no relevanceto contemporaryfiction. This view of the prize hasbeen encouraged by the repeateduse in themedia of bettingmetaphors in relationto the announcementsof both theshortlisted authors and of the

40 See originalpress release. 41 See promotionalmaterial for the 1989Booker Prize. 45 winner. It appearshowever that this was a trend which was welcomed by the organisersof the award during the EightieS42.

The tendencyto conflate values,however, can be explained in terms of the relative statusof certain valuesin a given context 43, an issue which I shall discussin greaterdetail in Part 2 of this thesis. This would account for Booker's decision to reward the successof the low-to-middlebrow authorswhose copyrights it heldby sponsoringan awardfor a moreup- marketgenre of fiction. For example,given that the receivedstatus of highbrowfiction is undeniablyhigher than the alternative,and assuming that the company'sreason for becominginvolved with sponsorshipof a literary prizewas in largemeasure to do with enhancingits prestige,it was naturalthat it shouldhave opted to sponsoran awardfor what was receivedto be the moreup-market of the two. With regardto the issueof commercialconsiderations posing as judgements of aestheticvalue, the statusof the latter,especially within thecontext of a literary prize,is receivedto be the higherof the two. Thereforea connectionis made betweenthe two in which commercialsuccess is initially comparedto, then becomessynonymous with, aestheticmerit. This alsoties in with the conceptof prestige by associationwhich I shall discussin more detail in the nextchapter.

The very successof theBooker Prize during the Eightiesraises questionsas to its long-termeffects on the processesof evaluating, marketing,and even on the writing of fiction. I shall discussthe implicationsof thelatter more fully in ChaptersFive andSix. The price the Bookerhas paid for its successat sellingnovels may be saidto have

42 See also Mosley(op. cit. ) wherethe authorrefers to this tendency,and suggeststhat the organisersencouraged it In an attemptto increasethe sense of anticipation. Sincethe late 1970sbookies! odds have been offeredon the shortlistednovels, and a run downon thesebecame a centralpart of the live televisioncoverage of the ceremonyduring the 1980s. 43C. f. also DYER,R., (1990),"A Star is Bornand the constructionof authenticity",in Stardom:Industly of Desire(ed. Gledhill Routledge,London, 1991. 46 beena lack of anyclear aesthetic standard, and one result of this hasbeen thegeneral lack of credibilityfor theaward as a sign of artisticmeriL In fact therampant commercialism and media hype of theprize during the 1980s,which maybe saidto havebeen even more noticeable than now wasparalleled by an evengreater lack of credibilityfor theprize at that time.

To sumup, it may be saidthat Maschlerand his fellow-speakersin 1964 wereextremely foresighted in beingable to envisagea prizewhich could capitaliseto sucha greatdegree on publicity,as, in fact, the Bookerhas done. What they did not foresee,however, or choseto overlook,was that the level andnature of publicityitself couldhave an effectnot only on the receivedstatus of the prize,but also,potentially, on the natureof the fiction submittedfor it, andpossibly on thereceived standing of fiction in general.

Theseare all issueswhich will be discussedin later chapters.However, in the nextchapter I wish to look at the BookerPrize in relationto other literary awardsand in particularat how it compareswith severalof the large,business-sponsored awards which wereset up during the 1980s. 47

CHAPTER TWO

'Better Than All the Rest?'- A CQml2arativeStudy of the Booker Prive in Relation to Other Awards.

,I can see the day coming when there'll be a separate prize for every book that's published. Best First Novel about a graduate housewife living in Camden Town with two young children and a cat and an unfaithful husband who works in advertising. Best travel book by a man under twenty-nine who has been round the world using only scheduled bus services and one pair of jeans. 'l

In this chapterI shall look at the BookerPrize in relationto both the generalcontext of literary prize-awarding,and to the specificchanges which took place in the prize-awarding system during the 1980s.

The chapteris dividedup into four sections.In the first sectionI shall look at the historicalcontext of prizesand at the ethosbehind them in the periodprior to the late 1970s.Then I shall examinethe reasonsfor the rise in the numberof awards,and in particularof thoseawards sponsored by business,during the 1980s.In the secondsection I shall examinethe conceptsof valuejor sponsorship andprestige by association tosee how businessethics are applied in practiceto fiction awards. In the third sectionI shall makea detailedcomparison between the Booker and, firstly, a control groupof severalother British awards,then with some prestigiousoverseas awards. Finally in the fourth sectionI shall look at what someof the implicationsare with regardto the Booker's statusin relationto otherawards.

I shall now examinethe historicalcontext of prizesin this country.

I LODGE,D., (1984),Small World - an AcademicRomance, Secker and Warburg,London, p170. 48 I- THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Although a numberof Europeanprizes including the Prix Goncourtwas set up around the turn of the century, the earliest British awards were the

Hawthomden Prize and the JamesTait Black Memorial Prize. Both of these were set up in Scotland at the end of the First World War, and they founded each continue to this day. Thus when the Booker Prize was like there was already a number of prizes in existence. However awards the Hawthomden and the Black offered very little in the way of financial in gains for the author, either in terms of the prize money or terms of guaranteeingincreased sales. What they did offer was a certain amount of prestige for the winner.

During the 1970sand 1980s,however, the situationin Britain beganto changeas regards literary prizes. While therewas a gradualrise in the total numberof awardsduring the 1970s,this wasnothing in comparison to the increaseduring the 1980s,2 particularlyin business-sponsored awards,and indeed, prize-awarding in generalat this time became somethingof a phenomenon.

As for the part played by the Booker in the rise in number and growth

in popularity of business-sponsoredawards, the influence of the latter

cannot be said to have been a major factor in the founding of new prizes,

since if this were the casethe question would then arise as to why more

businessesdid not follow suit and establish their own awards during the 1970s.

2 1.e. in the periodfrom 1968to 1988the numberof awardsin Britainjumped from'almostfifty to 184.[See Booker McConnell's 1968 press releaseto announcethe settingup of the prize,and also "Guideto LiteraryPrizes, Grants and Awardsin Britainand Ireland",Book Trust and Societyof Authors, London,1990, piii. ) Althoughtaken overall, this amountsto an averageincrease in the numberof awardsof around6.7 per cent per annum,in realitythe increasewas not so straightforwardlyincremental. 49 In fact the reasonsfor the growth in the number of new business- sponsoredawards are more complex than this. To the extent that the

Booker Prize may be said to have had any influence in the overall trend, this was probably limited to that of being an example to other companies of how to set up an award and of how best to reap the benefits of this kind of sponsorship. That is, once it becameclear what the advantages for a sponsorcould be through the very high profile which the Booker gained and maintained throughout this period, the prospect of setting up an award was probably more attractive to other companies.

The generaltrend probably owed a greatdeal more to the influenceof social,economic, and political factors. In addition,in orderto understandfully how this trendcame about one must alsolook in some detail at the issueof patronage.I shall leavean in-depthdiscussion of this issuetill the next chapter.For the momenthowever I wish to concentrateon what the likely benefitswere for businesseswho decided to becomeinvolved in the sponsorshipof literary prizesduring the 1980s.

From the point of view of potentialsponsors, literary awardsclearly had manyattractions. In returnfor a relativelysmall outlay to cover the cost of the ceremony,prize money,judges fees and administration,the promoterhad the potentialto maximisepublicity for the companyor product,and this was in additionto any otherbenefits which prizesalso carriedwith them3. Prizesthus became, as neverbefore, legitimate expenditurefrom a company'soverall budgetfor publiCity.4

3 E. g. the variousschemes run by A. B. S. A. [TheAssociation for Business Sponsorshipof the Arts],such as the BusinessSponsorship Incentive Scheme (BSIS),administered by A. B. S. A. on behalfof the Departmentof National Heritage. This scheme,which was popularround the late Eightiesand early Nineties,offered to matchfirst time sponsors'donations on a C1for C1basis, and offeredsimilar, though reduced, levels of additionalfunding to businesses alreadyinvolved in sponsorshipof the Arts. A. B. S. A. is an independentbody which advises sponsors as to how to go aboutassessing a sponsorshipprogramme, and on the best ways to maximise sponsorshipobjectives. In additionto the above,the organisationalso offers Governmentendorsement in the form of engravedplaques for all companies 50

The rise of businesssponsorship of literary awardsduring this period and the fact that this wasseen to be acceptableowed much to the general increasein the level of businessfunding for the arts. This was a policy encouragedby the ConservativeGovernment of the time, which consistentlytried to refuteany suggestion that the responsibilityof centralgovernment included a moral obligationto engagein a wide-scale funding of the arts. However,undoubtedly, once it had gained momentum,the sponsorshipof literary awardsbecame something of a trendin itself.

The implicationsof this increasein businessfunding for literary awards werefar-reaching. Company sponsorship brought with it concerns previouslyconfined to the world of business,and concepts such as value for sponsorshipand the importanceof the winning novel'sbeing 'bankable'were now appliedwithin the contextof literature,and, more importantly,within the contextof 'serious'or'highbrow'flction which hitherto had beenlargely untouchedby the 'hard-sell'approach.

As a result of the large amountsof money now on offer from the

businesssector in the way of sponsorship,prizes arguably now became

more akin to rewards'for servicesrenderedthan token recognitions of

merit. Furthermore, implicit in the idea of 'literary prize as reward'was

the suggestion that the reward was given, at least in part, for a writer's

contribution to the attempt by a company to increase its prestige by

association, in this casevia an associationwith literature.

involvedin sponsorshipand receptionsheld aroundthe countryby the Minister for NationalHeritage. 4 C. f. A. B. S. A. 's own definitionof sponsorship: '"The paymentof moneyto an arts associationfor the purposeof promotingthe business'sname, products, or services. SponsorshipIs part of a business!s generalpromotional expenditure. It can encompassa senseof corporateor social responsibility".' 51 By the mid-Eighties, the proliferation of awards had grown out of all proportion. The sheernumber of prizes alone led to criticism from several quarterson the grounds that the whole system of prize-awarding was being underminedand that the statusof individual prizes was being tarnished.5 Competition betweenprizes themselvesand between the companieswhich sponsoredthem increasingly becamea feature of literary awards during this period6, and in this ever more competitive arena,new sponsors,in addition to offering even larger sums of money, frequently tried to find new areassuch as non-fiction, where as yet awards had less of a foothold, in order to make more of an impact.

During this period,then, the whole rationaleof literary awardsbegan to change.It beganto look asif the point of literary awardswas to offer largesums of moneyin orderto draw attentionto a sponsor.In addition to new prizesbeing set up for categoriesof bookswhere awards were lesscommon, as the public becameincreasingly indifferent to this proliferationof prizes,some existing awards such as the Whitbread underwentmajor changesin their structureand administrationso that the impact they madecould be maximised.

Some older awards, 7 unable to competewith the newer, more financially weighty prizes, often found a way round this by accepting sponsorshipfrom the businesssector. Many companies were only too happy to enter the world of literary prize sponsorshipvia this route, for,

5 The American sociologist and publisher Irving Louis Horowitz, writing of a similar proliferation of awards in America during the 1980s, suggested that the rise in the number of prizes had'devalued the whole systemof prize-awarding, and he referred to it as a'plague of good tidings!. See HOROWITZ, 1. L., (1987), "Publishing and Prizing", Book Research-Quarterly, Winter 1987-1988, ppl 8-21. 6 See CONNOLLY, J. (1987), 'Cashing in where Booker pioneered". Ib. Q Jim, 20th April 1987. Also The Times Literaty SUpplement, 20th March, p296. Furthermore, as business sponsorship of awards increased overall during the 1980s sponsors themselves became award winners. C. f. the A. B. S. A. Awards, run in conjunction with . 7 E. g. the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. 52 ironically, at the end of the day, it tended to be the older, less commercial awards, which retained any degreeof credibility in terms of being seenas literary yardsticks 8.

During the last three or four years of the Eighties, criticism surrounding the proliferation of awards and the suitability of certain winners to bear the tag of 'best' co-incided with the decision by some companiesto pull out of their sponsorshipcommitments. Although there are several reasonsfor this, it may be interpreted,in part, as a being the result of a growing awarenessin businesscircles that the associationsfostered by such prizes no longer brought the desiredlevel of prestige. That is, in businessterms, sponsorshipwas no longer'cost-effective'.

SPONSORSHIPAND'PRESTIGE 11-'VALUE FOR BY ASSOCIATION'

I now wish to look more closely at the conceptsof valuefor sponsorship and prestige by association. The information here is based largely on the replies to the questionnairedetailed in Section III below.

In all I received over fifty replies, however, the replies given were often less detailed than the questionnaireactually required, and thus there are a several instanceswhere the information given in this chapter is necessarily less detailed than I would have wished. While the replies to the questionnaireswere being collated it soon becameclear that, overall, the sponsorsof non-literary book prizes were much more forthcoming on issuessuch as finance of awards and other non-aestheticconcerns than the sponsorsof awards where artistic credentials were at stake.9 This is

13See Connolly (op. cit.) and Horowitz (op. cit.) on the relative status of older awards. 9 E. g. in response to question 7), Booker's representative's reply was simply: 'We do not reveal the cost. See letter from Anne Riddoch to Sharon Norris, 23rd January 1992. A number of those who responded to the questionnaire, especially those who sponsored awards for literary fiction either refused directly to give financial details, or if the refusal was not explicitly stated, financial details were noticeably absent, as in the case of the Whitbread Awards. 53 interesting, for it seemslikely that the reluctance of some literary award sponsorsto divulge financial details of their prize has again to do with the relative statusof values in a given context. This is an issue which I touched on briefly in the previous chapter, and it is linked with the concept ofprestige by association.

Probablythe main impetusfor businessesto becomeinvolved with literary awardsponsorship was, as it still is, an attemptto gain prestige by association,for whateverthe currentstate of fiction andthe actual statusof the novelistin society,the fact is that the statusof literatureis still receivedto be high. Ironically, this is probablybecause the arts are not easilyquantifiable in materialterms. Therefore,in being 'above' purely materialconcerns the arts,including literature, are perceived to representsomething more essential, and by extension,quality.

In additionto the kudosof an associationwith literatureper se, however,there was alsoprestige to be gainedfrom being seento be a benefactorof the arts. That said,however, sound business principles requiredthat sponsorsattempted to maximisethe potentialgains for their financial outlay,or valuefor sponsorship.

In termsof what constitutesvalue for sponsorship,one sponsor,who wishedto be nameless,when asked as to how one might go about assessingthis, suggestedthat a possible'rule of thumb'might be to divide the total amountof moneyspent on the awardby the numberof referencesin the pressto the awarditself andto the company. In a coveringletter sentwith the questionnairedetailed below, I put this

suggestionto David Grantwhose company William Grant and Sons

sponsorsthe annualGlenfiddich Awards for writing and broadcastingon food and drink. Grantrefers to this point in his reply to the questionsset. While he statesthat the companydoes not: 54

'.. measure the successof the Glenfiddich Awards by the column inches.. those column inches are important in ensuring that the Awards are successful.$10

The company's aims in sponsoringthe award are to establish links with the trademedia, and also-

'.. in one way and another [to] encourage people to consume our brands. ' 11

The annualceremony is alsoseen by the companyas an opportunityto marketitself. It consistsof a champagnereception held at the Savoyfor over sevenhundred guests, including 'restaurateurs and otheropinion- formers'. Naturally,Glenfiddich is alsoserved to the guestsand cases areoffered as part of the prize. Grantsays:

'Our objective is to make as many of thesesort of people as possiblefeel as warm as possibletowards our company and the brands which we make.' 12

Allan Schiach, Chairman of another whisky company, Glenlivet, which

sponsorsthe Macallan/Scotland on Sunday Award for a Short Story, 13

also seesthe point of sponsorshipas being not so much to increasethe

total number of people who drink whisky, but rather to increase his

company's share of the market. However Schiach, in addition, seesa

literary prize as the meansby which a company may extend its share of

the market in a specific direction. That is, it may be used to target a 14 specific social class .

10See letterfrom DavidGrant to SharonNorris, 27th June 1992. The GlenfiddichAwards consist of elevenset categories,plus specialcategories and an overallwinner, similar to the Whitbread's'Book of the Year'. II Ibid. 12 Ibid. Grantand Sons'emphasison the role of the ceremonyin achieving their sponsorshipaims echoesMaschlees sentiments in 1964about the importanceof havinga ceremonywhich would be'an occasion'. 13Schiach is also a screenwriterand has been Chairmanof the Writers!Guild of Great Britain. 14 For example,Schiach says a companywith a more exclusivebrand may wish to attracta particularsocial grouping, say, the ABC1class. By associating their brandwith somethingelse, in this case literature,which is likelyto be 55

Both thesecompanies, then, may be said to have clear aims as regards the purpose of their sponsorshipand what they expect in return. Both in operate on a principle of prestige by association,and although the case

of the Glenfiddich Awards prestige doesnot come via an association

with literature as such, the company neverthelesstakes great care to

ensure associationsare made with quality. For example, in addition to

the quality of the books that win, the sponsorswish to underline the

quality of their hospitality. Grant also notes that great care is taken to

ensure that the standardof the audio-visual presentation at the ceremony

is high. This is clearly important given that members of the media are

present and that the company wishes to attract favourable publicity.

Althoughneither of theseawards was founded during the 1980s,the principlesat work in thesetwo examplesmay, nevertheless,be said to shedsome light on the generalmotivation behind a sponsor'sdesire to involve itself with an award,and the underlyingobjectives of businesses.

III -A COMPARISON OF AWARDS

I now wish to makea comparisonof the BookerPrize with other

awards.

Althoughthere are still a greatmany awards in existence,there are aboutfifteen really significantprizes in Britain. By this I meanliterary awardswhich arelikely, throughthe prestigethey afford, or by the

amountof prize moneyon offer, or both, to havea significantimpact on

attractiveto this samegrouping, and by generatingpublicity for the companyin its associationwith this,the companyattempts to ensurethat this particular socialclass will rememberthe nameof the companyor of the brandwhen it next comesto buy whisky. 56 on the subsequentcareers and salesof the winning writer. From these I chose five awards with which to comparethe Booker Prize, and each of these was in existencefor at least part of the 1980s,when the publicity machine for the Booker was at its height. However it was also necessary to look briefly at two foreign literary prizes of some status, for theseare two awards with which the sponsorsof the Booker have repeatedly attempted to cultivate comparison. They are the Prix Goncourt and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Beforegoing on to privilegethese awards however, I wish to discuss briefly the methodologyused in orderto makethis comparison.A questionnairewas drawnup coveringsignificant areas of prize structure andmethods of awarding.This wassent out to over eighty prize- awardingbodies, and it consistedof the following nine questions:

1) When andwhy did your company/organisationdecide to sponsorthis award? 2) How long did it taketo plan things(i. e. from the initial idea till the first awardwas made)?

3) Why did you chooseto awarda prize for this particulargenre of writing? (i. e. fiction/shortstory etc, as appropriate).

4) Who in your company/organisationis responsiblefor planning, liaising with thejudges etc?

5) JudgingProcedures - Who appointsthem, how are they chosen,is it the samepanel every year or doesit change?Does your company/organisationset any criteria for what it thinks shouldbe consideredto be prize-winningwriting, or is this left entirely to the judges?

6) Do thejudges read all the shortlistedworks themselves,or do they 'get peoplein' to sift throughand sort out a final list?

7) Exactly how muchmoney is involved in total i. e., planning/ administration,prize moneyand publicity, andany other costs (e. g. feesfor judges)?

8) What happensat the prize ceremony?

9) What does your company/organisationsee as its aims in sponsoring this award - is it entirely to do with increasedpublicity or are there any other considerations? Furthermore, why did you choose to become 57 involved with financingan awardfor writing as opposedto, say,a sportingevent?

My guidelinesfor choosingwhich prize-awardingbodies should be approachedwere very looseas I wishedto build up as detaileda picture of literary awardsas possible. My generalcriteria, however, were as follows: the bestknown prizes; the mostlucrative; other prizes which havecropped up repeatedlyin the courseof my reading; thoseawards which werereferred to by othersponsors whom I contacted;prizes which arenot especiallywell-known, but which arenevertheless relevant in termsof havingbeen won by someof the peopleinvolved with the BookerPrize; 15and, finally, prizeswhich may be neitherwen-known nor awardedto literary fiction, for examplethe GlenfiddichAward mentionedabove, but which areuseful for the purposesof illuminating certainaspects of theprocesses involved in prize-awarding.

The five prizeswith which I shall comparethe Booker arethe W. H. Smith Award, the GuardianFiction Prize,the JamesTait Black Memorial

Prizefor Fiction, the SundayExpress Book of the Year Award, and the Whitbread,generally held to be the Booker'snearest rival. Together theseprizes represent those awards which were in existencebefore the foundingof the Booker,those which havecome into existencesince, and thoseexisting prizes which haveundergone some degree of re- structuringduring their history. I shall now briefly privilege eachof theseawards before going on to examinethe structureof eachprize in detail, whereI shall focuson why eachof the prizeswas originally set up, on thejudging systems,and on the aims of the sponsorsas stated.

The WhitbreadPrize has often beenportrayed as beingthe Booker's mainrival. It is certainlytrue that in termsof thelevel of publicityit

15 E. g. The MilesFranklin Award which is relativelyunknown outside Australia, but whichwas won by the 1988Booker winning author, Peter Carey. 58 attracted during the Eighties it was nearerto the Booker than any of the other British prizes which I examined, though certainly not equal in this respect to the Booker. However, it is not strictly accurateto talk about

'the Whitbread Award'in any case,since there are five category prizes plus the overall Whitbread Book of the Year Award.

Whitbread Plc has sponsoredthe Awards since these were established in 1971, however the awardswere substantially re-structured in 1985 16.

Since then the administration and promotion of the Awards has been handled by Kallaway Ltd, a professional arts consultancy. Each of the five category awards is currently worth E2,000 and the Book of the Year

Award is worth L2 1,000.

The W. H. Smith Award, which is currently worth E10,000,was, as the name suggests,founded by the retail and distribution group W. H. Smith in 1959. It was the first award to offer prize money which amounted to a four-figure sum, and in this respectthe W. H. Smith may be said to be similar to the Booker Prize ten years later. 'Mat is, it was a prize which broke new ground in terms of what was an acceptablesum to offer in prize-money. However, unlike the Booker and the Wbitbread Awards there is no stipulation as to what type of book is eligible and past winners have included volumes of short stories, poetry, biography, a collection of essays,and various novels.

'Me GuardianFiction awardwas founded in 1965by W. L. Webb,then Literary Editor of the paper. Webb wasalso Chairman of the first panel of BookerPrize judges in 1969. Until 1991,the awardwas worth f: 1,000 for one book. Thereafter,it wasexpanded, and the total prize moneyis

16As to why the Awardswere relaunchedin 1985the official publicityfor the Whitbreadstates that this occurred: '.. in orderto achieve[their] objectives more effectively.. '. Priorto 1985there had been inconsistencyboth in the numberof categories, and in whatthese categoriesactually were. 59 now E3,000,with the winner receiving E2,000, and two runners-upE500 each.

The JamesTait Black Memorial Prize is an annual award. There are two categories,one for fiction andone for biography,and I shall concentrateon theformer. It is oneof the oldestexisting literary prizes in Britain, andwas founded in in 1918in memoryof one of the partners of the Scottishpublishing company, A. & C. Black Ltd. In 1979, however,the awardswere supplemented by the ScottishArts Council, andeach category is currentlyworth E1,500.

The final awardwhich I wish to examineis the SundayExpress Book of the Year. This prize is of particularinterest since it was set up in direct responseto the BookerPrize. 17 Sinceits inceptionin 1987,this prize hascarried a hefty sumin prize money,and, in commonwith the Booker, it is currentlyworth E20,000.However, as with the Guardianaward, this prize alsorewards runners-up and here E1,000 each is given to threeof them.

I shall now discussthe structure of each award, starting with the Booker

Prize. Here, I have found it necessaryto turn once again to the

"Introduction" to Prizewriting in order to supplement some of the answers given.

The structureof the BookerPrize is suchthat the answersto questions4) and5) arelinked. The role of the ManagementCommittee, which is appointedby BookerMe andcontains three Booker directors,is: " 'Jo choosethe judges eachyear and amend the rules as necessary. a

17C. f. MartynGoff notesof the BookerPrize that: 'It has led to a numberof otherprizes'. See Goffs "Introduction"to Prizewriting -a Collectionof Writingby PastWinners to Celebrate21 Yearsof Booker -The Erjz&,Hodder and Stoughton,London (1989), p23. 18See letterfrom Anne Riddochto SharonNorris, 23rd January1992. 60

The ManagementCommittee changesgradually over a period of time,

and the theory behind this is that although each of the members has the power of veto when it comesto choosingjudges, individual prejudices

are eventually flushed out.

Martyn Goff, in the "Introduction" to Prizewriting, gives more details

aboutthe selectionof judges.19

When the ManagementCommittee has its first full-scalemeeting to

arrangethe prize 20,which usuallytakes place in February,its first duty is to choosea Chairman.Great care is evidentlytaken to ensurea

'balanced'panel of judges. Thereis a setpattern from yearto year concerningthe constitutionof thejudging panel,and this usually includes:

1..an academic,a critic or two, a writer or two, and the man-in. the-street.' 21

Usually thejudges meet on threeoccasions, firstly in April to learn

what their dutieswill be, thenagain in Septemberto draw up a shortlist, andfinally on the day the announcementis madein orderto decideon the winner. The BookerPrize is unusualin that thejudges are required

to readall the submissions,and these can total up to one hundredand

twenty works.22

19 op. cit. 20 He notesthat there is a shortmeeting just afterthe awardsceremony every year in orderto discussall aspectsof the ceremony,including the television coverage. 21 Ibid. pl 8. However,the lattercategory of judge,which was introducedin 1976in responseto criticismthat the prizewas becomingtoo rarified,has includedLady Wilson and the actressJoanna Lumley, as well as the Labour MP, Ted Rowlands. 22 Goff, in Prizeyyriting(p20], talks of howboth he and Sir MichaelCaine have madeattempts to cut downthe numberof novelswhich the judges haveto read by trying to get publishersto submitonly those novelswhich: '...they believeactually have a chanceof beingshortlisted.. ' Goff noteshowever that this has been'in vain',due to the pressuresput on publishersfrom authorsand agents. 61

In additionto their official dutiesthere is someevidence to suggestthat, from time to time, the ManagementCommittee gives some guidelines to the panelof judges. The criteriawhich they appearto setseem to reflect an interpretationof 'bestnovel' basedon longevity of appeal.23

With regard to the company'scontinued aims in sponsoring the award,

Anne Riddoch,who answeredthe quesdonnaireon behalf of Booker Plc, referredme to Sir MichaelCaine's "Preface" to Pri7ewritin jj,. 24

I havealready noted Sir Michael'sexplanation for the company'sinitial involvementwith the prize in ChapterOne. However,he also gives further reasonsfor the group'scontinuing commitment. They are, briefly, that the prize'ssuccess and pursuit of excellencereflect the successand the striving for quality which characteriseBooker's business interests,and that the companyis proudof the prize which provides:

'.. a focus of recognition to our shareholders,employees, customers, and the communitieswe serve', and this reinforces:

'...tbe corporate identity of a diversiried group.125

23 See THWAITE, A., (11987),"Booker 1986", Encounte Vol 68, 37-38, , pp and also FORSTER, M., (1980), "Secrets of a Glittering Prize", , 26th October, and TAYLOR, A., (11994),"Prize fight: Inside the Booker", Scotland Sunday (Spe=Eg, 16th October. Thwaite Forster Taylor, on , and all former judges, have suggested that the Management Committee exerted some influence, in so far as they were told to vote for a novel which would still be read in years to come. In Forster's case the judges apparently were asked to look for a novel which would still be read in fifty years'time, while by 1986, Thwaite's panel of judges was asked to look for one which would still be read In twenty years!, as was Taylor's eight years later. However, Riddoch's response to this is that: 'The committee does not seek to influence the judges in any way. The judges! views you quoted were derived, I should think, from informal guidance given on request by the prize's administrator, Marlyn Goff, who sits in on the judges! meeting.' See letter from Anne Riddoch to Sharon Norris, 23rd January 1992. 24 See Prizewriting, ppl -2. 25 Ibid. 62

Furthermore, Booker Plc's commitment to physical health, through its health care and food products, is reflected in the Booker Prize, for this, according to Sir Michael Caine, is evidenceof the company's parallel commitment to mental and spiritual health. 26

The final reasonhe gives for the group's continued involvement with the prize is that the style of managementemployed therein accords with the overall managementstyle favoured by Booker in its businesses. That is, the Booker Prize's specialist ManagementCommittee, ultimately responsible to the parent company, reflects Booker Plc's smaller, specialist companies,all run independently,yet all under the umbrella of the parent company.

I now wish to turn my attentionto the otherprizes in the control group.

The original aimsof WhitbreadPlc in sponsoringthe WhitbreadAwards arestated as havingbeen to:

'. encourageand promote the skills of writers, to stimulate a greater interest in good amongsta wider public, and to promote book salesin gencral.927

Thejudging systemfor the awards,which arerun in conjunctionwith the Booksellers'Association, is unique. Thejudgesare appointedafter consultationbetween Whitbread and Kallaway. Eachof the categoriesis judged by three'assessors' who arealways writers, booksellers,or literary critics, 28and the categoryaward winners are announcedin

November. Thereafterthe winner of eachcategory goes on to be

26 Ibid. 27 Ratherthan replydirectly to the questionnaire,the administrators,Kallaway Ltd sent officialpublicity material, which covered most of the questions. See the publicitymaterial under 'A BriefHistory of the WhitbreadLiterary Awards". 28 See KallawayLtd's publicity material for the prizeunder "A Brief Historyof the WhitbreadLiterary Awards". 63 consideredfor the overall Whitbread Book of the Year Award, and this is judged by a panel made Up 29 of one member from each of the rive

categories'panel of assessorstogether with:

'.. four to six people distinguished in other fields but who have an evident interest in literature. ' 30

Thejudges for eachof thecategory awards are not requiredto readall of the submissions,and this is wherethe Whitbreaddiffers markedly from the BookerPrize. Instead,submissions are sifted by representatives

of the Booksellers'Association, and each of thejudges is then sentcopies of fifteen to twentydifferent books from which he or sheis expectedto makeup his or her own shortlist. The publicity materialstates that: 'There are no over-riding criteria for judging except thosewhich are self-imposedby the panelists.'31

The collectionof shortlistsis thencirculated to the otherjudges and thereafterthe official shortlistsand category winners are decided. Judges arenot underany obligationtherefore to madall of the entriesfor their category,though apparently some do. 32

As for the overallBook of the Year Award, eachof thejudges on the

extendedpanel makes his or her choiceof winner without consultation with any of the others. The resultsare known in advanceby the winner, and thereis no formal sitting of the panelexcept in the caseof a tied

result. 33

29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., "Judging procedure". Past 'guest' members of the overall panel have included the former BBC Political Commentator, John Cole, and Michael Howard, the current Home Secretary. (See "Programme for the Whitbread Book of the Year Presentation Dinner, 21 st January 1992"). 31 See Kallaway Ltd's publicity material for the Awards, under "Judging rocedure". 2 Ibid., "Judging procedure". 33 The reader will note that it is possible for a novel to win both the Novel category and the Book of the Year Award, and it was perhaps to be expected that the novel would dominate the overall Award. However, this has proved not to be the case. In fact the breakdown of winners of the Book of the Year Award from 1985 to 1993 (inclusive) was: three novels, three biographies, one first novel and one volume of poetry. 64 Among the currentobjectives stated by the companyare to:

-encourage and promote good English literature, -position Whitbread as a prominent sponsor of literary excellence... -make a broad range of English literature more accessible to the British public -provide a prestigious event for entertaining opinion formers, local and national government representatives, business peers, and valued clients. 134

Theseaims aresaid to complementWhitbread's other areas of sponsorshipsuch as its CommunityInvestment programme and the company'ssports sponsorship projects.

The original aimsof the sponsorin settingup the W. H. Smith Award seem,from the informationavailable, to havebeen rather vague. It is said to havebeen founded at a time when: I be for ....people seemed to consciousof the need a renewedeffort at encouragingliterary talent.035

Likewise, no one categoryof book is exclusivelyeligible for the award. The main criteria for a winneris that it has: '...in the opinion of three independentjudges,... made the most outstanding contribution to literature in the year under review.136

This prize differs from both the Bookerand the Whitbreadawards in that it doesnot acceptsubmissions. Books are called in by thejudges who are appointedby the sponsors.The judging panel,like the Booker ManagementCommittee, changes gradually over a period of time.

The brochurewhich detailsthe extensiveW. H. Smith Arts programme statesthat the group:

34 Ibid.,"The Objectivesof the Awards". 35 See promotionalbooklet, W H. SmithLiterary Award". 36 Ibid. 65 '... aims to provide a service to the community... which reflects and enhances its core businesses..Its primary method of doing this is by making available an appropriate arts sponsorship programme. 137

One other notable feature of the W. H. Smith Award is that although originally the prize tendedto be presentedtowards the end of the year, since 1979, the organisershave chosento presentit in the Spring. Thus it differs from the majority of the larger, more commercially oriented prizes whose ceremoniestend to take place towards the end of the year in order to capitalise on the traditionally good salesperiod in the run up to

Christmas. In this respectthen the W. H. Smith Award may be said to be less gearedtowards increasing salesthan either the Booker or Whitbread.

In 1965the criteriaset for the GuardianFiction Award by W. L.

Webb werethat the winner shouldbe a work of fiction, by a British or Commonwealthwriter which shows'promise,and originality'. Books of shortstories are also eligible. The awardis judgedby:

'.. the regular round-up of fiction reviewers who change infrequently and one-by-one,and by the Literary Editor. '38

The newspaper'sfour regularfiction reviewersmake a selectionduring the yearof novelsor shortstories which may be contendersfor the award. A list is thensent to the Literary Editor in October. The four, plus him or her, thenread their own choicesand those of the others again,and through consultation by telephoneor letter, they arrive at a winner,

Although it is not an official rule of the prize, in the pastthere has been a tendencyto avoid awardingthe prize to someonewho hasalready won a major award and a 'slight bias' towards first books. 39

37 See promotionalbooklet, W H. SmithLiterary Award". 38 See letter from Tim Radford to Sharon Norris, 27th November 1991. 39 Ibid. 66

Unlike most of the larger awardsthere are no fees for the judges.

As for the aims of the Award, the judges and the prize's founder, W. L.

Webb, who until his deathlast yearwas still closelyinvolved, see it: I ...as another way of encouraging new or newish authors, who tend to get little attention In the press of publications clamouring for attention. t40

The JamesTait Black MemorialPrizes, are unusual in that the will of

JamesTait Black'swidow stipulatesthat thejudge for both categories shouldbe: 'The Professorof Literature of Edinburgh University. '

Traditionally this hasbeen interpreted to meanthe RegiusProfessor in the Departmentof EnglishLiterature. 41 The Fiction Prizeis given to the

'bestwork'in eachcategory published during the calendaryear, and the winner is usuallyannounced some time in February.

This awardis significantin that while it is a prize which is slight in monetaryterms compared with the Bookeror the Trask, 42it neverthelesscarries a greatdeal of prestige,and severalpast winners of the Booker Prizehave also won this award. [SeeTable 1.]

40 Ibid. 41 While this chair was vacant for a number of years during the 1980s other members of the department helped out, with additional support from the Professor of Mediaeval and . Now however, with the appointment of a Regius Professor in the Department of English Literature, he, in conjunction with the administrative staff in the department, Is partially responsible for the award. The overall responsibility however lies with staff from the University's Information Office. See letter from Professor Ian Donaldson to Sharon Norris, 16th April 1992. 42 The Betty Trask Award, which was founded In 1984, Is currently worth' P-6,000more than the Booker Q.e. E26,000 in total), however, given that the money is divided among the winner and several runners-up In what appears to be a rather arbitrary manner, in actual fact the Booker Is worth more to the winner. 67 The final British prize which I have chosen to focus on is the Sunday

Express Book of the Year Award. Ibis was set up by Graham Lord, then

Literary Editor of the paper,in order:

'To counter the perniciousinfluence of The Booker Prize, which had so often beenwon by booksof little interest to the average intelligent reader.'43

Like the Booker, the structure of the Sunday Express Award consists of a ManagementCommittee, which in this caseis overseenby the Literary

Editor of the newspaper,plus the judging panel. The panel changes annually except for the presenceof the Literary Editor.

A nominationspanel selects a shortlistconsisting of a maximumof twenty novels. The judges then read these and select the winner. Their remit is to find a novel which is: tot literate, but 't'44 ...stylish, also compulsively readable.

I now wish to turn to the foreign awardwith which the Booker is most often compared,the Prix Goncourt,and to the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Prix Goncourt,like the JamesTait Black Prize,has the status affordedby age,for the AcademicGoncourt which awardsthe Prix was set up in 1903. The main impetustowards the founding of this prize was a desireon the part of the Goncourtbrothers that their memoriesshould live on.

43 See letterfrom GrahamLord to SharonNorris, 7th May 1992. N. B. D. J. Taylorsees this prizeand its aimsas beingan exampleof the'anti- intellectualism'which prevails in the literaryreviewing world. See A Vain ConceitoBritish Fictionin the 1980s,Bloomsbury, London, 1989, p9l. 44 Ibid. 68 The Prix is judged by the samegroup of people from year to year, and the amount of money offered, Fr50 (0), is really only a token gesture these days. In fact most winners do not even bother to cash the cheque.

This prize, therefore, unlike the Booker, cannot guaranteethe winner any level of financial independenceon the basis of the prize money alone.

Nevertheless,the novel which wins the Prix Goncourt is likely to sell between 150,000 and 500,000 copies, which is well beyond the aspirations of any Booker winner.

'Me Nobel Prize for Literatureis the mostprestigious award of all, and the most lucrative. In commonwith the four otheroriginal Nobel Prizes, it wasfirst awardedin 1901,and it is currentlyworth aroundE680,000.

The awardswere set up in accordancewith the will of Alfred Nobel. However,the will is extremelyvague and thus contentious, since it is opento interpretation.It statesthat the prize for literatureshould go the the person:

'... who shall have produced the most important work of an ideal tendency.' 45

As it is not clear exactlywhat Nobel meantby this it is usually interpretedto mean'striving for the good of mankind,for humaneness, commonsense, progress and happiness'.

The awardingbody for the prize is the Royal SwedishAcademy, whose existencepre-dates the prize by over a century. From theeighteen membersof the Academy,who areelected for life, a Nobel Committeeis selected,consisting of five ordinarymembers and oneco-opted member,

45 STAHLE,N., (1978),Alfred Nobel and the NobelPrizes (third. revised edition).The SwedishAcademy. 69 plus a secretary. This Committee is elected for three years, however it may be re-elected. 46

In order to be consideredfor the prize for literature, which like all the other Nobel awardsis dwardedannually, a writer must receive nominations. These usually total betweenthree and four hundred.

However, given that nominations are very often duplicated, this usually ends up as being betweenone hundred to one hundred and fifty names.

It is unusual for a Nobel laureateto have been nominated only once.

By May or Junethe recommendationsof the Committeewill havebeen given to the Academywho arenot, however,bound to follow them. The final decisionis takenin Octoberafter a secretballot of all eighteen membersof the SwedishAcademy. The decisionmay not be madeif thereare any lessthan twelve of the eighteenpresent, and the winner musthave at leasthalf of the votescast.

The Nobel differs from the majority of literary prizes,including the Booker,in that it is usuallyawarded to an authorfor a body of work.

Nobel'swill statesthat the winning authormust, during the previous year,have 'conferred the greatestbenefit on mankind'. However,this is usuallyinterpreted in sucha way as to avoid giving the awardfor recent work aloneor for any onework, and this modeof interpretationhas possiblyadded weight to the award,while lesseningthe potentialfor contention.

The Booker Prizeclearly differs from otherprizes in the control group in a numberof respects.Given its success,those who organizethe award

46This systemof judgingis similarto that of the AmericanPulitzer Awards, whichwere set up almostten yearsafter the Nobel. 70 may be said to have found out early on the secret of how to capitalise on its financial backing and how to maximise value for sponsorship,for unlike several of the awardsin the control group, the Booker has not undergone any significant changesin its administrative structure since the early Seventies. Unlike the JamesTait Black and Whitbread Awards it is a single category award, given for a work of fiction. Unlike the

Guardian, which is open to a book of short stories, this is always a novel. 47 Nor is the prize one facet of a larger overall sponsorship commitment, as is the casewith the Whitbread and W. H. Smith 48 awards .

All of this createsan aura of exclusivenessfor the Booker Prize,49 and this auraof exclusivityis increasedby thejudging system,since the judgesfor the Bookermeet more frequently 50 and on a more formal basisthan thoseof the otherawards. This in turn suggestsa more serious-mindedapproach to thejudging of this prize, an imagewhich the sponsorshave consistently tried to encourage.

A comparisonof the variousjudging systemsinevitably raisesthe issue of consistency.Although on the onehand the fact that the Booker Prize, unlike the Smith,is awardedexclusively to a novel and on an annual basis,would seemto makefor moreconsistency in judging from year to year, the W. H. Smith Award keepsthe samejudging panelfor a number of years,and this may be saidto balancethings out to someextent. The

47 In theoryif not in practice. E. g. see Alice Munro'sThe BeggarMa which was shortlistedin 1980,and, of course,Schindlees Ark. 48 The SundayExpres is also Involvedin the sponsorshipof sportsevents. 49 Nevertheless,publishers, subject to certainrules, at least get the chanceto submitnovels for the Booker,which is not the case with the Smithor Guardian awards. See ChapterOne. 50 Theyalso get paid more. Evenif the 1983estimate of E1,000has not alteredsince then, [see RYLE,J., (1983),"Novels of the year wait for judgement",The SundayTimes, 25th September]the judgeswill still be receivingfar more moneythan the judgesfor any of the other awardsin the controlgroup. Arguablythough, given that they also haveto read as many as one hundredand twentynovels, they may be saidto deservethis. 71 Guardian Fiction award may be said to be potentially more consistent in its standardof judging insofar as there is not a rapid turnover of the reviewers who judge the prize. However, if keeping the samejudging panel is a criterion for consistency,then theoretically at least, the most consistent prize of all in terms of judging is the JamesTait Black insofar as it is judged by the sameindividual from year to year.

In spiteof the attemptsby somecritics to portraythe Whitbread

Awardsas in someway a rival to the BookerPrize, this is clearly not the case,and for a numberof reasons.In the first place,strictly speakingany comparisonmade would haveto be betweenthe Booker andthe WhitbreadNovel categoryaward. Howeverfinancially thereis a huge gapbetween the two, with the Novel categoryaward worth only one tenth of the Booker'stotal prizemoney. Evenallowing for the fact that the Whitbreadis a multi-categoryprize however,the systememployed by the categoryjudges in orderto comeup with a shortlistis substantiallydifferent from the BookerPrize! s systemof judging.

As far as salesare concerned, while theseshow evidence of a significantimpact made by theWhitbread Book of the Year Award at least,the salesof the winning booksare still significantly lessthan would normally be expectedof a Bookerwinner. 61 As with the BookerPrize, publisherswhose authors are contenders for the WhitbreadAwards are requiredto spenda set amountof moneyon the promotionof eachbook.

However,in contrastwith the BookerPrize, the publishersdo not haveto

51 See KallawayLtd's promotionalmaterial for the Awards,under "The Achievementsof the Awards". E.g. NicholasMosley's novel HopefulMonsters sold 2,000copies in thirty-sixhours after being shortlistedand a fresh 5,000 copieswere re-printedwhen it won the Bookof the Year Award, PaulSayer`6 Ihe Co s of Madnesssold 2,000copies before being shortlisted, 3,500 betweenbeing shortlisted and havingwon the Bookof the Year,and 15,000 after havingwon (C. f. with salesfigures given for the Bookerin ChapterOne). 72 agree to this until after the winner of each category has been announced.52

In 1969 when the Booker Prize was set up perhapsthe really significant thing about it was the sum of money on offer to the winner. 53 A decade earlier the W. H. Smith Award had offered a similarly ground-breaking sum to the first winner, however, unlike the Smith, the Booker has gone all out to maximise salesby awarding the prize during what is a

traditionally strong period for salesof fiction. Furthermore, the W. H.

Smith has not up-graded its prize-money as frequently or by as much as

the Booker.

It is misleadingto suggestthat the BookerPrize represents the

British equivalentof the Prix Goncourt,though the readerwill note from ChapterOne that this is a claim which is frequentlymade, and, that it is a

comparisonwhich BookerPle itself hasconsistently tried to foster. Any attemptto equatethe two prizes,however, is inappropriate,for the comparisonhas only limited validity. For one thing, unlike the Booker, the decisionto found this awardwas based purely on personaland not

commercial,motives. In additionthere is a greatdifference, both in the

amountof financial supportoffered by the sponsorin eachcase and also in the level of salesusually guaranteed to the winner of eachprize.

It is ironic that the two areasin which the Bookerand the Prix

Goncourtmay be saidto be comparableare in the ability of both prizesto

52 1.0. it only appliesto the categorywinners, not to the publishersof the novelson each individualcategory shortlist. 53 See ChapterOne. 73 by arouse controversy 54, and in the domination of both prizes the literary establishmentin each country.55

The Nobel is clearly an altogether different type of award from the itself Booker. The age of the Royal Swedish Academy and of the prize probably adds to its status,however this is also due to the apparent seriousnessof purposewith which the membersof the committee go about their task. Commercial concernshave no part to play in the decisions of the committee. Furthermore the presscoverage of the Nobel tends to be less frivolous than coverageof most other awards.

Unlike mostliterary awardsthe Nobel is known world-wide andis generallywell-respected. Furthermore, unlike virtually any other award, and in accordancewith the will of its founder,it attemptsto takeinto considerationthe long-termeffects fiction can havefor the good of humanity. Thusit may be saidthat the Nobel Prizefor Literature emphasisesand promotesthe moral/ethicaldimension of literature.

IV - IMPLICATIONS

As far as the relationshipbetween the Booker and other awardsis

concerned,although interest in the BookerPrize may be said to have

tailed off somewhattowards the end of the Eighties,56 with every

54 E. g, compare the 1960 Goncourt winner Vintila Horia's denunciation of the French prize with the attack made by the 1972 Booker winner on the sponsors of the British prize. 55 In France the juries of the Prix Renaudot, Interallie, and Goncourt all tend to consist of authors who vote for a winning novelist with whom they share a publisher. This is borne out by the domination of the thre ? prizes by publishers Grasset, Le Seuil, and Gallimard. See RYLE, J., (1983), Novels of the year wait for judgement", The Sunday TIMes, 25th September. 56 See CONNOLLY, J., (1989), "My own little list of Booker disaffection", Me IkD_qs_,21 st October. Also, in 1992 television coverage of the Booker ceremony was very nearly not networked, and the decision to broadcast the ceremony live in Scotland was taken at the last minute and arrived at primarily because of an unexpected change in BBC Scotland's scheduling. 74 successiveincrease in the prize money it offered, it probably helped to raise the stakesfor the rest. Many business-sponsoredprizes in particular do appearto have tried, subsequently,to compete with the Booker by substantially up-grading the amount of prize-money on offer.

However,as I havealready noted, the timing of the Booker's remarkablerise to a newprominence in the early 1980sand the subsequentdecline in mediainterest in this prize and in awardsin general towardsthe end of the decadetends to argueagainst the Booker having beenthe solecatalyst in the overallrise in the numberof awards.

Although it may be arguedthat the Bookertook sometime to establish itself, particularlyin termsof its effectivenessas a marketingdevice, the rise in the numberof awardsprobably occurred largely as a resultof a combinationof social,economic and political factors,some of which I havealready looked at briefly, which createda situationgenerally conduciveto the settingup of new awards.

It shouldalso be notedfrom Horowitz's commentsquoted above, however,that the rashof new andlucrative business-sponsored prizes which broke out during the 1980swas not confinedto Britain. Thus at leastsome of the reasonsfor this new phenomenonmust be seento have beenrelated to more global trends. While it is not the purposeof this presentstudy to examinethese universal trends further, in ChapterThree

I shall discussin moredetail how certainsocial, political and economic factorsin Britain at this time influencedboth the settingup of the new literary awardsand the ability of the Bookerto maximiseits impact within sucha context. 75 CONCLUSION TO PART 1

I now wish to summarisethe findingsin ChaptersOne and Two above, and to look at some of the longer-term implications.

I haveshown in ChapterOne how the BookerPrize came to be setup.

In additionI havealso indicated how someof the difficulties createdby the awardrelate to the initial aimsof the sponsor.In particularthe twin aims of increasingthe salesof novelsand of rewardingaesthetic merit may be saidto havecaused problems insofar as these have encouraged the conflationof aestheticand commercial ideals.

To the extentthat this prize may be saidto haveany influence,firstly, on salesof booksand thus over what novelsare read,and secondly, in termsof literary evaluationsemanating from this contextbeing adopted as standard,then it hasthe potentialto leadto future confusionas regards the evaluationof literary merit. For if, within the contextof the prize, literary credentialsand commercial appeal are held to be synonymous, then within any situationwhere the evaluationsof fiction madewithin the contextof the prize areseen to hold weight, it is likely that sucha confusionwill be further disseminatedand received as a standard interpretationof 'good' in respectof fiction. One thinks here,for example,of Bookerwinners being adopted as school texts as a result of their havingwon the prize.

This is oneproblem area associated with the BookerPrize. However,it may be arguedthat the very natureof commercialsponsorship in general

makesthe conflationof idealsinevitable in all prizesof this nature.

Nevertheless,the fact that suchmutually antagonisticideals were

explicitly statedto be the goalsof the sponsorsin settingup the Booker 76 Prize may help to explain why this has been a characteristic feature of this one prize in particular.

Thus the apparently conflicting aims of this prize as statedby the founders of the award, the controversy generatedby the Booker, possibly as a result of this, and the level of increasedsales which the prize is able to guarantee,set the Booker Prize apart from other awards. So too does the much higher level of media coveragegiven to this prize than to any other. However, as I have noted in Chapter Two above, there are also some inherent features of the structure of the Booker which help to set it apart from the rest.

If the Booker Prize may be said to be unique in certain respects,then in other areas,and in particular in terms of what may be taken to be the implicit commercial aims of the sponsor,the Booker may be said to display many of the typical characteristicsof the new and aggressively- promoted wave of literary awards which aroseduring the 1980s. This is true even though, as I have noted, the prize was founded over a decade earlier.

If onelooks at the generalpicture, it is clear that the increasein the numberof literary awardswhich beganin earnestduring the 1980s,and specificallythe increasein large,business-sponsored awards, has some far-reachingimplications, both for prizesand for fiction itself. In the first placethe proliferationof awardshas helped to changethe whole ethosof literary prize-awarding,making it more aggressive,more commercial,and more competitive. Also, asHorowitz suggestsof the similar situationin North America,this very proliferation of awardshas actedto devaluethe systemas a whole. 77 As far as the situation in Britain is concerned,this devaluation may be said to have operatedat severaldifferent levels. For one thing the sudden surge in the number of awards during the Eighties inevitably called into question the basesof the value judgements made, especially since these seemedto vary from prize to prize. Some rather ridiculous situations aroseat this time concerning the evaluation of 'good' and 'best' from one prize to another. In 1985, for example, 's novel The Good

Terrorist. Wasdeemed by the judges of that year's W. H. Smith Award to have made 'the most outstandingcontribution to literature'. However, it was not consideredto be 'the best novel'by the judges of the Booker for which it was also shortlisted.

Even the oneshortlist of six or sevennovels had the potentialto cause problems,as Hennione Lee, oneof the Bookerjudges in 1981,noted. 57 Judgesfor any givenprize for fiction wereoften faced,as indeedthey still are,with manydisparate types of novel, andhad to makespecious valuejudgements as to which genrewas'best'. The Americanwriter Gore Vidal hasaptly commentedon the difficulty of havingto prioritise in this way:

'Imagine having to choosebetween Huckleberry Finn, and Cr'mc and Punishmen One is Is '58 . an apple, one quite plainly a coconut.

The situationwas even more complicated when, as in the caseof prizes suchas the W. H. Smith,the categoryof book awardedwas very wide, or, asin the caseof the GeoffreyFaber Memorial Prize, the categoryof book to be awardedwas rotated every otheryear.

57See LEE, H., (1981),"The BookerPrize: Matters of judgement",ThQM= Literary 5upplement, no. 4100, p1268. 'My greatest difficulty, and the source of my deepest uncertainty about the value of the whole undertaking was in having to compare works of such entirely different kinds.' 58 Quoted by John Ryle in "Novels of the Year Wait for Judgement", Me Sunday BM, 25th September 1983. 78 Such a situation highlights the very arbitrary nature of prize-awarding.

Therehas been a conspicuouslack amongmost prizes of any clear standard,and herewe may draw furtherparallels with F. R. Leavis's criticismsof the reviewingestablishment in Britain earlierthis century. It seemsthat in any casethe basesfor theevaluations made and the value judgementsthemselves, furthermore, have often beenof lesser importancethan the tensionand sense of anticipationcreated by the judging processor the receptionof thefinal decision. Also, in viewing booksprimarily in termsof their ability to win awardswhatever that may mean,such as, for example,a novel'scommercial viability, prizesmay be said to haveencouraged the tendencyto treatliterature as a product. They may alsobe saidto haveled, effectively,to a kind of literary reductionism,determined in this casenot by the principlesof any literary theory, but by the ethicsof the businessworld andthe demandsof 'literary prize as spectacle.'

What may alsobe saidabout business-sponsored awards is that as a result of these,increasingly, 'hard-sell' techniques have, as I havenoted above,come to be appliedto 'serious'or 'highbrow'novels (or at any rate to 'middlebrow-read-as-highbrow'novels), where formerly this type of marketingapproach and level of promotionwas reserved for lowbrow works or'bestsellers. Perhapsmore importantly here, as time hasgone on, furthermore,this trendhas increasingly come to be perceivedas being acceptableby the literary establishmentitself. Prizesare arguably as much a part of the world of fiction-writing currently as the manual typewriteronce was.

As for the definition of 'serious'or 'highbrow' fiction itself, in effect the Booker hashelped to redefinethese terms by subdividingthem into fictions those which havepurely aestheticappeal or thosewhich in 79 addition have commercial credibility, and to have helped to create the concept of the '(apparently) highbrow novel as bestseller'. I mention the

Booker Prize in particular here, for it may be said to be more culpable in this than other awards,since, as I have shown, during the Eighties its organiserswere especially keen to be seento be promoters of 'serious' riction. 59

In additionto a redefiningof 'serious'and 'highbrow' and the possible creationof a new 'middlebrow-read-as-highbrow'genre of prize-winning fiction, both of which may be saidto havearisen out of the sponsors' desireto be associatedspecifically with fiction receivedto havea certain status,prizes have, in addition,led to a misuseof value-relatedterms suchas 'good"and 'best' andthus to a bastardisationof language.For, as I haveshown above, 'good' fiction hasoften beeninterpreted to mean somethingquite differentand quite specificfrom prize to prize. Thus, eachaward may be saidto haveeffectively created its own definition of

'good', as it were, 'in its own image', andultimately eachof these definitionsmay be said to boil down to, 'that which is appropriate'for the given prize.60

It is apparentthen that the largeincrease in the numberof business- sponsoredprizes in itself, andthe natureof that particulartype of sponsorship,have had a numberof effectsboth on the prize systemand on otherareas related to aestheticjudgements. Given that someof these potentiallydetrimental effects were mooted in 1964,the questionremains as to why Maschler,Greene et aL werewilling to overlook someof their own reservationsin their enthusiasmto set up a new award. While some of theseeffects may indeedhave been unavoidable given the natureof

59 E. g. see Sir MichaelCaine in Prizewrifin MartynGoff in the , pl, and also same,p23. 60 As far as prizesin generalare concerned,for a large numberof awards, 'good' has cometo mean,'that whichmarkets itself well.' 80 business-sponsorship,the question arisesfurther as to whether or not the

drive towards business-sponsorshipitself was unavoidable. I shall now

go on to discussthis point in somedetail in ChapterThree. 81 PART 2

Pgtronage. Business-sponSorship. aLnd Social Faclors Affecting lhe Evaluation Fiction -of 82

'We shall proceed from Sklovskij's words at the end of his foreword: "In the study of literature I am concerned with the investigation of its inner laws. To give a parallel from industry, I am not interested in the situation on the world cotton market, or in the policy of trusts, but only in the kinds of yarn and the methods of weaving.. "

Even today the "method of weaving" is, of course the center of interestq but at the same time it is already apparent that we may not disregard the "situation on the world market" either, since the development of meaning - in the non-figurative sense as well - is governed not only by the progress of textile technology.. but at the same time by the market, by supply and demand. The same is valid mutatis mutandis for literature.

This opens up a new perspective for the history of literature. It becomes possible for the history of literature to take into account at the same time both the continuous development of literary structure furnished by the constant reshuffling of elements and the external interventions which, though they are not the vehicles of development, nevertheless determine each of its phases.. - JAN MUKAROVSKY,

"A note on the Czech translation of Sklovskij's Theory o Prose ', from The Word and Verbal-Art. 1

'In the realm of taste..the first task of anyone who wishes to really get down to the truth is the discovery of points of origin. Who is the active agent behind it all? i. e., whence comes a particular taste? Who are the propagators? What is it that enabled it to assert itselr. ' LEVIN SCHUECKING,

The Sociology of Literary laste -

1 MUKAROVSKY,J. (1977),'A the Czechtranslation Sklovskii's , noteon of Theotyof Prose",The Wordand VerbalArt. Russianand East European 13. translated by Jobn-Yale Butbank PeterSteiner. Yale -Studies and edited and UniversityPress, New Havenand London,pp139-140. 2 SCHUECKI NG, L., (1966),The-SociologygLLiterary Taste, (2nd edition), Routledgeand Kegan Paul, London,p104. 83 PART 2: INTRODUCTION

In this part of the thesisI wish to look at externalfactors which influence how the continuedexistence of fiction and the receptionthereof, and at these

relateto theBooker Prize.

In ChapterTwo I referredin generalterms to the role playedby social,

economicand political factorsin therise of business-sponsoredliterary awardsduring the 1980s.In ChapterThree I shallexamine these in more detailwith particularreference to Governmentpolicy at the time asregards artsfunding. I shall discussthe historicaltradition whereby writers have beenreliant on patrons,and I shallpose the questionof whetheror not it is

accurateto seebusiness sponsorship merely as a TwentiethCentury extensionof this.

In addition,I shallexamine the reasonswhy, duringthe late Seventiesand

early 1980s,there was a perceivedneed among some of thoseinvolved with literaturefor financialbacking of somekind, andif therewas any

justificationbehind the argumentsof thosewho opposedthe moveamong

literary professionalstowards an embracingof businesssponsorship.

Furthermore,I shall discusswhether patronage of onekind or another inevitablyinfluences the nature of the work produced.

In ChapterFour I shallgo on to examineissues relating to the reception

contextprovided by thesuccessive Booker Prize judging panelsduring the Eighties. I shall discussthe issueýof whetherit waspossible for those involvedto havejudged the shortlistednovels purely on aestheticmerit, (as

far asthis is possiblein anycase), given the unusuallyhigh level of social interconnectionswhich linked thejudges, authors and Management Committeealike. Finally, I shallquestion whether or not the combined

influences,of patronageon writing, andof socialinterconnections on the

receptionof f iction, inevitablylead to a distortionof the processinvolved in 84 the reception of novels and thus to the disseminationof a receivedstandard of 'good' fiction which may not be representative.

Ultimatelythe underlyingtheme in this partof thethesis as in Part I is that it is necessaryto studyissues relating to the BookerPrize within the wider context. 85

CHAPTER THREE

'... the history of literature is in large part the history of the But benificence of individual princes and aristocrats ... that means that the person supported is in receipt of support and, consequently, must not forget his duty of gratitude. ' 1

1 have shown in Part 1 that although there are many financial rewards to

be reapedfrom the Booker Prize, some of the other supposed'benefits' of

the award may be said to be lessclear cut. In particular, it has been argued

that in the long term prizes such as the Booker help to compromise the

statusof fiction and to throw into questionthe artistic autonomy of the

writer. However, any discussionof the negative effects of prizes such as

the Booker must take into accountthe fact that historically the author has

virtually always been dependenton someform of private funding, and that

in the past this was usually in the form of support from a wealthy patron.

It wasonly towardsthe end of theVictorian periodthat the writer was ableto rely on salessufficient to providehim with an income. Eventhen theremust have been a largevariation between the mostsuccessful writers andthe majorityin termsof how well theywere able to live. It could be arguedthat the businesssector during the 1980smerely began to Jrflla

vacuumwhich hadexisted for sometime asregards the financialbacking of

writers. However,if this is true,it mustalso be acceptedthat the vacuum

had increasedfrom thelate Seventiesonwards as theGovernment sought to side-stepany responsibilityit hadformerly beenassumed to havein relation to the funding of the arts.

1 SCHLIECKING, L., (1966),The Sociologyof LiteMly Taste. (2nd edition), Routledgeand Kegan Paul, London,p1O. 86 While it is easyto criticise this move away from large scalepublic funding

on the part of the ConservativeGovernment which came to power in 1979,

in real terms the level of funding on offer prior to the late Seventieswas a

relatively recentinnovation, and as such perhapsdestined inevitably to last

only for a short period.

Furthermore, as JeremyPaxman notes, the truth of the matter was that by this point in time consumptionof the arts had outstrippedthe ability to pay for them.2 Thus even if had not beenofficial Governmentpolicy to deliberately cut down on arts funding it would probably have begun to be perceived as an economic necessitysooner or later.

In total the sort of largescale state funding which for a while wasable to be takenfor grantedwas only availablefrom thelate Forties until the late Seventies.Its arrivalco-incided with theelection of a LabourGovernment in the post-warperiod and its declinewith the adventof a Tory Government in 1979.

Justprior to the endof thewar the role of centralgovernment in funding the artshad been reviewed, and the Arts Councilset up in 1945. A moodof changewas sweeping the countryas the war drew to a closeand this led in time to thefoundation of theNational Health Service and to greatchanges beingwrought in theeducation system. This moodof changerepresented a generalre-appraisal of theresponsibilities of centralgovernment. in retrospecthowever it seemsthat MacMillan'sapothegm: ',., you've never had it so good'

2 PAXIMAN,J., (1991),Rends in HighPlaces: Who RunsBritain Penguin, London, p309. , 87 might well have beencoined in referenceto the situation relating to arts fundingover the threeshort decades which ensued.Indeed, it wasunlikely everto be 'so good' again.

Oncepublic fundingfor thearts became more freely availableit was certainlyeasy to slip into whatPaxman calls a'welfare-statisf mentality. The fact of thematter was however that there was little historicalprecedent for 'no-strings-attached'funding on this scale,and given this and the

economicand political situation during the Seventiesand Eighties it was probablydoomed from birth.

Schueckingnotes that in the pastthe aristocraticpatron often intervened to 'correct'the work of his protege.Indeed this was not only acceptedbut

acceptable.The writer howeverwould havehad little choicein this. A sourceof fundingwas required if he wereto be ableto continuewriting, free from financialworries, and thus the situationarose whereby the non-

specialistpatron was able to influencethe work of thefinancially dependent

writer. In fact, literarypatronage, with its tensionbetween the requirements of thepatron and the desireof the authorto write in a particularway, and the extentto which theformer has modified the latter hasbeen an essential factorin determiningthe nature of literaryworks. It hasalso been essential in determiningtheir reception in the shortten-n and for creatingthe literary

tasteof a particulargeneration.

In termsof determiningsubject matter too, the influenceof the patronon the writer of the pastwas very evident. For example,works tendedto deal

with the socialmilieu andissues which weremore directly relatedto the patronrather than to the writer.3 If therewere exceptions to this, whena

patronencouraged a writer to develophis skills accordingto his own will,

3 E. g. Schueckingcites the exampleof the poet'senthusiasm for the Danish kings in the Old Englishtext Beowulfas being evidenceof the likely sourceof finance. See Schuecking,pplO-11. 88 generally speaking,for a writer to tackle themesoutwith the social stratum of the aristocraticpatron, or to go againstthe wishes of the patron meant running the risk of forfeiting financial support,and clearly the writer would in not have wished to jeopardisehis livelihood. Furthermore, a time of

limited literacy he would also have forfeited his potential audience.

The patronof the pastthen, was, in effect,the'aesthetic arbiter', and the

writer andpatron each fulfilled the other'sneeds. Nevertheless, as Schueckingremarks: '.. how often.. must some difference of view between the two have poisoned the whole relationship between them. '4

The importantpoint in anydiscussion on the compromisingof the

supposed'autonomy of literature'by literaryawards is that we shouldbe clear asto how andin what sensewe understandthe term 'autonomy'. Furthermore,it shouldbe recalledthat historically the authorhimself has

rarelybeen autonomous in thefinancial sense.

I havecited thelate Victorianperiod as oneduring which the authorwas

alloweda level of financialand artistic freedom hitherto unknown. However,some degree of financialand aesthetic independence was possible

amongElizabethan dramatists, who, as a resultof therebeing a wider, if not

yet working class,audience for dramawere able to rely more on box office

receiptsand less on thepatronage of individuals. Evenso the actorstill earnedmore at this time thanthe writer. As a result,although a wider audiencehad been attracted in partby the fact that it wasnow ableto seeits own socialclass and experiences being recorded on stage,some dramatists

suchas Kyd, inspiteof the popularityand influence of their work, neverthelessdecided to revertto to the olderclassical style sincethis was morelikely to attractaristocratic patronage.

Ibid.plO. 89

Schueckingnotes that for somethis adoptionof a morestilted style would havebeen temporary, and would havebeen viewed primarily asa stepping-

stoneto financialsecurity. Once this wasachieved the writer, theoretically, would thenhave been able to devotehimself more freely to the sort of work which pleasedhim but which would havebeen less likely to find support from an aristocraticpatron. In thecases where this happened,financial securitymay be saidto havebrought artistic freedom to somewriters. For othershowever there was a choiceto be madebetween the two.

Giventhat the authorof the pastwas financially dependent on the patron, his positionmust always have tended to be fairly precarious.In spiteof any qualmswhich the individualwriter mayhave had about compromising his

own aestheticideals in orderto suit the wishesof his patron,it is true to say that the notional'freedom' of the writer hasalways been rather more difficult to exercisein practice.Moreover any realfreedom in themodem sensewas late in coming.

Thusit is clearthat historically writers and artists have been prepared to go

alongwith the requirementsof a patronin orderto be financially secure,and that sometimesthis hasbeen necessary as a temporarymeasure. Furthermoreit seemsclear that notions of artisticintegrity andof the

autonomyof the writer wereprobably a luxury to the majority of authorsof the pastwho hadno othermeans of financialsupport.

Theemergence of a financiallysecure and therefore more self-confident author,and one who hadat leastsome social standing, may be tracedback

to the rise of themiddle classes in theNineteenth Century and to the expansion,then fragmentation, of the readingpublic. Hereafter,the patronageof thewealthy aristocratic individual was replaced by that of the 90 publisher, by what Schueckingrefers to as the 'collective patronage'of subscriptionlibraries, and by a largerbook-buying public.

As people generally becamemore literate and a reading habit was established,so the techniquesof massproduction and massdistibution led to cheaperbooks and a market which could cater for an increasing diversity in taste. The demandfor novels increasedand thus more writers were able to make at least some sort of living.

The emergenceof theauthor as a figure of somesocial standing however wasalso due in part to theinfluence of Romanticismand its stresson the individual creativegenius of the writer, andto the rise of ,with its preferencefor 'truthto nature'rather than an adherenceto any classical paradigm.The increasingstatus of thewriter duringthis time thereforewas linked to a growingperception of the writer as 'truth-teller',and, by extension,as moral arbiter. While this wascertainly clearly influencedby Romanticism,it alsoseems, paradoxically, to havebeen linked to some extentto thefact that,during this headyperiod of industrialisation,the writer did not do 'worlein the senseof the mechanisedlabour which a growingpercentage of the populationwas now involved in. Thus he was now seenas being somehow above the purely mundane concerns of daily life.

Schueckingsuggests that themore respectable status of the writer during this periodwas also linked to the developmentand growing awareness amongthe generalpublic of theoriesof personalitywhich stressedthe importanceof the individual andof the individual'sexperience. it is certainlytrue thatthe latterwas to havea greatinfluence on the development of the modemnovel andon someof themost significant experiments with form. 91 As a result of all thesefactors combined,the statusof the writer changed.

Prior to this he was in a similar situation to other artists, in that by and large all were viewed primarily as providers of entertainmentand decorationfor the wealthy and influential and thus as being of relatively low social status.

Now, however, the author beganto be seenas embodying truth, honesty and profundity, and thereforeto be worthy of respect.

The fragmentationof thereading public which led to a stratificationof fiction has been well recorded. However Schueckingsuggests that one additionalreason for this andfor theelitism which resultedwas that the writer himselfbegan to believein this idealisedview of his role in society.

I havetaken some time to outlinecertain aspects of the historyof aristocraticpatronage since the growth in independenceof the writer andits relationto the changingmodes of patronagewhich madethis possibleis clearlyof relevanceto thediscussion of thepotential effects of patronage affordedby literaryawards. For example,the comparativelyrecent rise in the statusof the writer is importantto the issueof literary awardssince these aresupposed, in additionto anyfinancial benefits which they might offer, to be a meansof enhancingthe prestige of the author.

Althoughthe notionallyhigh statusof the authorwhich is re-affirmedin awards,is, asI havenoted, recent, it hasnevertheless been influential in determiningwhat is appropriatein termsof the writer'sexpectations in relationto his socialstatus and influence. It may be arguedthat prizesseek to bolstera ratherout-dated image of therole of the authorin society,and to furtherpromote a kind of artisticelitism. That saidit is certainlytrue, asI haveshown in ChapterOne, that someof the early publicity for the Booker

Prizeattempted to stressthe role of the writer in societyby drawingparallels with authorsin EasternBloc countrieswhose lives werepotentially under threat. 92

In generalterms, it is certainly true that in the century from 1868 to the founding of the Booker Prize in 1968 the economic situation of the writer had undergonesome profound changes,and it could be said that these changesamounted to one major reasonwhy it was felt to be worth re-stating

the importance of the writer's role in society. In Gissing's New Grub be S= for example, where the action is set in the 1880s,it is seento (if just) possible for a young novelist to make enoughmoney to live on only

5 from fiction-writing alone. By the 1960showever, according to

Findlater's figures quoted earlier, only a very small percentageof writers

actually made a significant part of their income from writing.

Theremay be saidto havebeen a varietyof reasonsfor this, includinga

generaldecline in the readinghabit, however some of the underminingof the economicsecurity of the authorand of his socialinfluence may be said to havearisen directly out of a changein boththe natureof the patronage

which wasavailable and the relationshipbetween author and patron.

The reliance on patronageof any sort inevitably carries with it inherent

risks. Where publishers or subscriptionlibraries were the main source, the

difficulty came when it was no longer possibleor economically viable for

either to continue their support. Thereafterthe erstwhile beneficiaries of this

support had to adapt themselvesand their fiction accordingly, for it is clear

that the withdrawal of patronagehad an effect on the size and the nature of

work produced subsequently.

5 E. g. See Gissing'shapless novelist's Reardon's defence of the three-decker noveland of the circulatinglibraries: '...how is it possibleto abandonthe threevolumes? It is a questionof payment. An authorof moderaterepute may liveon a yearlythree-volume novel -I meanthe man who is obligedto sell his bookout and out and who gets from one to two hundredpounds for it. But he wouldhave to producefour one-volumenovels to obtainthe sameincome; and I doubtwhether he could get so manypublished within the twelvemonths. And herecomes In the benefitof the libraries;from the commercialpoint of viewthe librariesare indispensible,Do you supposethe public wouldsupport the presentnumber of novelistsif each book had to be published? A suddenchange to that systemwould throw three-fourths of the novelistsout of work.' GISSI NG, G., (1 89 1), NewQ rub Street, and with an introductionby BernardBergonzi Penguin,London; 1985,-(edited p236. ,ý 93 If both the economic statusand the social influence of the writer had declined in real terrns by the 1960s,nevertheless, the received standing of the writer in society and of fiction was still sufficiently high for an associationwith both to be of somevalue to businessesin terms of prestige.

This was no bad thing, for by the 1980sthe Conservative Governmenfs assaultboth on the morale and on the funding of the arts had done much to undermine the confidenceof all thoseinvolved in creative pursuits.

In fact, while the natureof the activity involved probably meant that the withdrawal of funding had less of an impact on fiction-writing than in other areasof the arts,6 neverthelessthe loss of confidence acrossthe board was important. For in this hostile pofifical climate questionswere raised as to the nature and purposeof the arts and as to their role and value in modem

British society. Furthermoreit constitutedan attack on the assumedright of the arts to consider themselvessufficiently 'different' and of sufficient inherent value to justify financial aid.

Even if it had not beena deliberatepolicy of the Government at this time to cut back on arts funding in general,there were neverthelessspecific reasonsin the late Seventiesand early Eighties why any demandfor funding on the part of the writer would not have been met with a sympathetic ear.

These relate to the failure of two high-profile but ultimately ill-judged schemeswhich had receivedGovernment funding in the mid-Seventies.

One was the ill-fated &w Review, the other, the setting up of the New

Fiction Society, which had beenintended to function as a sort of highbrow

Literary Guild. Alas, both of theseschemes went sadly awry. At one point the New Review was subsidisedto the tune of E5 per copy and overall the

6 N. B. MichaelHolroyd noted in 1982that only two per cent of the Arts Council budgetthat year wenttowards literature. See HOLROYD,M., (I 982), "Prizeor patronage:how writerssurvive", The SundsUTimgs, 14th February. 94 review receivedhalf of the total amountgiven by the Arts Council to literary periodicals. 7

As for theNew Fiction Society,which, co-incidentally, was directed by Martyn Goff, in spiteof its initial aim to promoteliterary fiction, in theend financialpressures and lack of subscriptionled to its becoming,more or less,merely another middlebrow book club. However,as John Sutherland records,the level of subsidywas such that from October1974 to January 1977:

'...it had sold 13,000 volumes at a cost of 160,000 to the Arts Council. It would have been cheaper to buy the novels at full-price from a bookshop and give them away to passers-by at Piccadilly. '8

As a result,says Sutherland: s.. 'the period of restraint' which the Arts Council annual report for 1975-1976 foresaw effectively put out of any consideration the imaginative schemes of literary patronage which had been shown to work elsewhere. '9

Thusin additionto thechanging economic and political climatein the

Eighties,the fate of both theseschemes and the 'publishingcrisis' which hadled at variouspoints in the Seventiesto a cut-backin the outputof novelsmeant, firstly, that it wasmore likely that any new sourceof patronagewould be welcomedby the literary world, and,secondly, equally likely that attemptsmade to solicit public fundingwould be greetedwith hostility. Sutherlandhimself noted in 1979that:

'A prize system remains, as a last and insignificant link between wealth and literature. 0 0

7 See SUTHERLAND,J. A.,(1979), Figtion and the Fictionlndu§ljy, The Athlone Press,,London, Chapter 7. 8 Ibid. ppl45-6. 9 Ibid, p147. 10 Ibid. p130. 95 In one sensethen it is easyto seewhy any financial support on offer from

the businesssector would have beenwelcomed and why by the mid-

Eighties at least theremay have beenless resistance among arts professionalsto funding of this order. As far as literature was concerned, the increasein the amountof money being offered by awards,if not in the number of awards themselves,had some precedentin the W. H. Smith

Award, the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Awards.

Furthermore, it is easy to seewhy thosewho had previously been less than enthusiasticabout supportof this kind were perhapsready to lay caution aside. If 'books were different! as the pro-Net Book Agreement lobbyists had argued,then at a time when the statusof literature was perceivedto be under threat,some action had to be taken to re-establishthis.

In a sense,both those who arguedin favour of new lucrative awards at this time and those who were againstthem on the grounds that they would be likely to have somesort of influence on the fiction itself may be said to have beenfuelled by a common conviction that literature was important.

Thusthe issueof financialsupport for writing may be seento be an issue of moraleas much as anything else. Giventhe reluctanceof the central governmentto look uponthe arts in generalas being in any way 'a special case',it could haveseemed, as far asbooks were concerned, as if high- profile business-sponsoredliterary awards,paradoxically, were one of the few optionsavailable to re-assertthe validity of the writer andindeed of literaturein an increasinglymaterialistic society. Paxmanconfirms a reluctanceon thepart of the PrimeMinister herself to seethe artsas having any specialright to funding,and he recordsthat:

'Committed to reining back public expenditure, Margaret Tbatcber saw no reason why the arts should be Immune from the cuts wbich faced almost all government departments in the early eigbties. 'l 1

11 Paxman,(Op. cit. ) p298. 96

To an extentthe moves made by thegovernment to absolveitself from any fast commitmentto supportingthe artsout of public funding,and instead to increasefunding from the businesssector, may be saidto havebeen the resultof a very real awarenessthat public spending had to be curbed. This wasan understandableview for any Governmentto hold afterthe high- spendingyears of the Labouradministration of the mid-Seventies,and the subsequenteconomic difficulties in Britain, andthe artswere not the only areato feel the effectsof swingeingcuts. However,the moveaway from a commitmentto fundingthe arts out of thepublic purse may alsobe saidto be a reflectionof a certainIdnd of philistinisinwhich wasprevalent at the time.

Increasinglyduring the Eighties there was a prevalenceof the view that

"value"meant the ability of anythingor anyoneto makemoney. This meant that the artslobby in particularfound itself in a tight comer. However,the apparentdecline in theperceived status of the artswhile theGovernment attemptedto promotethe cause of scienceand technology did not percolate too far down, andit did not, for example,prevent businesses from seeking prestigefrom an associationwith the armsuch as via the sponsorshipof literary awards.

It is possibleto seethe rise of the phenomenonof the Booker Prizein the Eightiesand of this type of patronagein generalas being in someway a reflectionof a general'spirit of the age'. The Bookerwas certainly well- placedto takeadvantage of the generaltrend at this time in favour of businesssponsorship of literary awardssince it had beenestablished for morethan a decadeand it did seemto epitomisethe new ethosof funding that the Governmentwas keen to encourage.If oneaccepts this argument, then,given that the Eightieswas a decadewhen the powerof marketingwas supreme,it wasnatural that the BookerPrize, itself a prime exampleof 97 astutemarketing, should have benefited from this and,additionally, that it shouldhave attempted to maximiseits impactin the faceof competition.

Indeedin oneway thewhole prize-awarding syndrome and the introductionof this degreeof competitionin an areawhere it hadpreviously seemedinappropriate may be takento reflectthe 'zeitgeist'of the Eighties, wheresociety in generalwas becoming more competitive. However in. 70= Sociologyof Literaa Taste,Levin Schueckingdismisses the argumentthat thereis evera'spirit of the age'. Insteadhe arguesthat modemsociety is so diverseand so stratifiedthat therecan be no one 'spirit of the age', merelya collectionof spiritsof the age.

Althoughhe argueswith specificreference to the statusof novelsreceived to be 'classics'because they seemto representsome 'spirit of the age', Schuecldng'sargument can also be appliedto the rise of literary awards during the 1980s.According to Schuecking'stheory this trendwould have to be seennot in termsof its beinga reflectionof a general'spirit of the age',but only as a reflectionof the valuesof thosein societywho had the powerto influence.Thus Schuecking would probablyargue that it was questionablewhether society as a wholehad a devaluedperception of the arts duringthe 1980s,or that therewas necessarily a groundswellin public opinion towardsextending business sponsorship of awards. Nevertheless accordingto his view it would only havebeen necessary for a small influentialgroup to feel this way for a changeto havebeen effected.

Certainly,as I haveindicated, it wasclearly the policy of the Government at the time to disengageitself from responsibilitytowards the fundingof the artsand, in addition,to scorean ideologicalcoup in attemptingto change the perceptionof whereits dutieslay in this area. In addition,however, therewere many willing potentialsponsors from the businesssector ready to takeon the role of benefactors.Furthermore, the powerof marketingat 98 this time was at a peak. Thus peoplecould be encouragedto buy novels and to 'buy' businesssponsorship. As I have noted, the prestige of literature and of things literary was, in general,still high enough to afford prestige by association.

The Government'sdesire to decreaseits own commitment to funding, therefore, may be said to have beenmatched by a willingness on the part of the private sector to engagein the sponsorshipof awards as a viable means of promoting a company,and, in addition, the desire on the part of some of the beneficiariesof Tbatcher'seconomic policies to spendnewly-disposable income on well-promoted novels which were at least received to be 'good' fiction.

Therefore,rather than seeing the developmentof the literary award syndromein the 1980sin termsof a generalsurge of opinionin one particulardirection, it is perhapsmore accurate to seeit asthe combination of severaldifferent interests, each with a commongoal, andthis was sometimesinterpreted thereafter as being the 'spirit of the age'. The fact that sucha movecame about was due to the powerof the groupsin whose interestsit waseither to engagein sponsorshipof this kind or to promote the causeof literary awards.Here however the amenabilityof the literary world itself mustalso be seento havebeen a factor.

In general the end result of the new political mood of the Eighties, in terms of businesssponsorship of the arts, was that more organisations vied for less money overall. This had far-reaching results. For one thing the

Governmenfs repeatedstressing of the importance of businessand managementskills and of 'cost-cutting' was now on display in the behind- the-scenesmoves to appoint new membersto the boards of arts organisations. It could be seenin the composition of the Arts Council and in the nature of the appointmentsmade to the directorshipsof certain 99 museumsand galleries. JeremyPaxman quotes Lord Goodman,then

Chainnan of the Arts Council, who on severaloccasions during the Eighties:

I... was asked for suggestions for arts appointments. I'd put forward names, and then they were, I'm afraid, ruled out because they weren't the right political colour. '12

While asPaxman notes the political case is a hardone to prove,what the majorityof appointmentsclearly did havein commonwas that they wereall successfulbusinessmen. It is truethat thevalue of appointingthose with businessand management-gained skills to the boardof the Arts Council,for example,had always been recognised in the past,however businessmen now beganto accountfor a muchhigher percentage of boardsthan ever, andin addition,these were people not formerlynoted for their sympathies towardsthe arts.13

The changingethos with regardto the perceptionof artsfunding which wasencouraged by Governmentpolicy is alsoclearly illustrated in the massiveincrease in revenuefor A. B. S. A. In 1976this organisationhad had an incomeof E500,000.Only twelveyears later this hadincreased to E30million.

Paxmandifferentiates between the two typesof sponsorship,the one which the Arts Councilhad previously been able to offer, andthe sort now on offer from the privatesector. It was,he says:

'.. the difference.. between disinterested long-term policy and the short-term needs of the market. '14

12 Ibid. P300. 13N. B. Paxmannotes that: 'Thereseemed to be a viewthat not only werethe sWillsof the entrepreneur universallyapplicable, they werealso in somesense superior to the wisdomof academicand welfare-statistprofessionals! lbid. p300. 14 Ibid. p306. 100 Somewhatsurprisingly perhaps,as Paxmanrecords, Lord Goodman, on his retiral from the Chairmanshipof the Arts Council thereafteragreed to become Chairman of A. B. S. A. This was a decision which he rationalised he on the groundsthat it was a good idea for the Arts Council to have what calls a 'court of appeal'. However it was a decision which he later came to body regret, since, as he himself later argued,the very existenceof such a lobby probably encouragedthe Governmenesline of persuadingthe arts to look elsewherefor funding.15 In addition, it further undermined the belief that it should in any way be taken for grantedthat the statehad a duty towards funding the arts.

In additionto thesedoubts however, there seems to havebeen a growing realisationon the part of Lord Goodmanthat the aimsof the two organisationswere mutually antagonistic.

If therewere ever any doubt that theultimate aim of virtually all formsof business-sponsorshipis market-oriented, or that A. B. S. A. was less

concernedwith aestheticideals than with promotingand boosting the prestigeof the companiesinvolved, the organisation'sown guideto the tax implicationsof artssponsorship and the requirements of the Inland

Revenue,which Paxmanquotes extensively from, helpsto dispelthese onceand for all. Accordingto this publicationthere should always be a legitimatebusiness objective, and any notion of a contributionbeing a

charitabledonation should be disregarded.It says,in relationto the scheme

wherebyA. B. S. A. wasto matcha company'ssponsorship expenditure on a poundfor poundbasis:

'It is important that advertising Is seen to be the sole objective of the payment. If it is considered to be for a dual

15 R. e. the powerof A. B. S. A. to pull in sponsorshipduring the Eighties, Goodmanis quotedby Paxmanas sayingthat it: '.. changedthe relationshipbetween the Arts Counciland its clients. Whereas previouslysupplicants might have been told that the moneywas not availableone year, but mightbe forthcomingthe next,'now they'retold [says Goodmanjto go and beg for the moneyfrom otherpeople'. Ibid. p306. in 101 purposep i. e. that of advertising and benefitting the body question (or conceivably satisfying a personal whim of a director) the whole expenditure may be disallowed. '16

It is interestingtO remember that this is the organisationwhich awardedthe 1985 Booker Ceremonythe accoladeof Best Single Event of that year.

If it is inevitable,given their mutuallyantagonistic aims, that businessand artisticvalues conflict with oneanother in sponsorshipof this order,there hasalso been an apparentambiguity in the aimsof businesssponsors themselves.On the onehand an associationwith the artsis soughtafter becausethe companyengaged in sponsorshipdesires prestige from this and this is possiblein partdue to the fact thatthe artsare perceived to be not easilyquantifiable in termsof marketvalues. On the otherhand, that very prestigeclearly has a marketvalue, for asI havealready noted in Chapter Two, it is possibleto talk in termsof 'valuefor sponsorship'.

The resultof the changeswhich took placein the systemof fundingfor

the artsduring the Eighties,whether indeed such a changewas inevitable or

not, wasthat therewas a generalchange in attitudein termsof what was requiredand what wasacceptable. It wascertainly no longerpossible to be

complacentabout Government funding. Suchfunds as were available

were,and still are,usually given on a competitivebasis, and themremains a greatdeal of cynicismabout the wholeprocess among those involved in the

arts.

Indeed,in theend, perhaps the mostsignificant result of thesechanges hasbeen the declinein the moraleof thoseinvolved, and particularly since

whateverthe argumentsfor or againstbusiness sponsorship, even where financial aid is offered,it usuallyamounts to no morethan 'pump-priming'

16 Ibid. P307. 102 money. Thus it makesthe long-term financial position of the majority of beneficiariesno lesstenuous.

I haveargued here that the beneficiaries of patronageare bound to the demandsof the patron,or thatat very leastthe dependent nature of the relationshipin someway influencesboth the natureof the work and, possibly,how the artist viewshis work.

As far as literature is concerned,business sponsorship was clearly not going to be a long-term solution to the problem of financing the author.

Ultimately this type of patronage,as with all financial backing from the businesssector, holds good only insofar as the economy is robust and the companiesinvolved continue to enjoy financial security, and, importantly, while they are still able to seereturns for their investment.

I havealready noted the practical difficulties involved in giving financial aid to writersand that sponsorship in any casemay be of lessimportance herethan in otherareas of artsactivity. However,if one wereto think aboutgiving financialsupport according to the needsof the writer, this would probablyinvolve somekind of longer-termaid in the form of bursariesor allowancesto enablethe writer to "buy time" to write. If financial backingwere to be givenaccording to needfurthermore, then such supportas wasavailable would be mostlikely to go to the writer who has not beenpublished for sometime, or to theyoung writer trying to establish himself at the beginningof his career.

It is clearhowever that noneof this offersthe samepotential for maximisingpublicity for a businesssponsor as, for example,the Booker ceremonyat the Guildhall,and therefore this would be lesslikely to appeal to a potentialsponsor. This is somethingthat the organisersof the Booker 103 Prize undoubtedly recognisedin deciding to chooseto sponsora literary awardrather than a bursaryscheme.

As far as the Booker Prize in particular is concerned,this award, especially during the Eighties, tendedto go to authorswho were already establishedin their careersand thus less likely to be in need of financial support than younger novelists starting out on a writing career. In fact the averageage of winning authorshas always tended to be high. Therefore the argument that the sponsorshipoffered by this prize has allowed young authorsto get on in their careeris not particularly valid. It would seemfrom this thereforethat the organisersof this award seethe purposeof literary awardsmore in terms of rewarding merit rather than offering financial support to the most deservingcases.

This however may be one areawhere the alms of the sponsorand the natureof the sponsorshipoffered have influenced the natureof the prize and of the prize-winnersand shortlisted authors themselves. For, in the faceof recessionit is surelyonly to be expectedthat it will be awardswhich are alreadywell establishedor which havethe backingof a largecompany which will be ableto continue.Thus, when faced with the difficult economicenvironment and the decline in both thepopularity and the cost- effectivenessof literaryawards which occuredas the Eightiesprogressed, it would clearlyhave been a priority of thosewho continuedto be involved with the business-sponsorshipof awards to makesecure the returnsfrom their financialoutlay.

It is perhapsnot surprisingtherefore that a conservatismwas evident in the BookerPrize during the 1980s.In a situationwhere there was less moneyavailable overall and competition was stiff. any businesswhich offeredsponsorship to an artsventure at this time would probablyhave beenmore likely to supportthe activity or artistwhich wasmost likely to 104 ensurethe fulfillment of its own aims. While all of this is perfectly defend understandablefrom a businesspoint of view, it makesattempts to business-sponsoredliterary awardsby thosewithin the literary world less tenable.

Prizessuch as the Booker,in additionto not havingincreased the long- term financialsecurity for authors,arguably have also not increased substantiallythe statusof thewriter in society.At least,the writer's role as artist andcritical forcewithin societyhas not beentaken any moreseriously as a resultof therise in thenumber of commercially-orientedliterary awards.

As with Lord Goodman'sretrospective doubts about the benefitsof A. B. S. A., the very successof the Booker during a period when there was less funding available than before probably underminedthe argument of those who sought to claim that funding of the arts in general both could not and should not be the responsibility of the private sector. Any weakening of this argumentand a strengtheningof the opposite view would make it very difficult to imagine that the changingethos as regardsthe funding of the arts could ever be halted, or that the level and nature of the arts funding which had been availablefor a comparatively short period after the SecondWorld War could ever again be a possibility. Thus prizes such as the Booker may be said to have completedthe ideological coup instigated by the Thatcher Governmentin relation to the generalperception of the responsibility of central governmenttowards the funding of the arts.

While all formsof patronagewould seemto havetheir down side, businesssponsorship differs from the moretraditional forms of financial backing,and certainly from the sort of fundingpreviously on offer from centralgovernment, both in its scale,and insofar as it is lesslikely, because of the natureof the patronand of the patron'sbusiness, to be a long-term 105 commitment. Furthermore,while the whims and moods of aristocratic patronsmay have led to the termination of the relationship with the artist on occasion,insecurity is probably more par for the course with business sponsorship. This is not least of all becausearistocratic patronagehad more to do with the enhancementof the prestigeof the individual and also with the enthusiasmof the genuine'amateur' than with the need to be 'cost- effective'.

While the readinessof someof thoseinvolved with literature to embracesponsorship in the fonn of thenew business-backedliterary awardsis understandableup to a point, giventhe history of patronageand the natureof both sponsorand sponsorship offered, it wasnaive to assume that therewould be no detrimentaleffects on the work producedor on the way literaturewas viewed. In addition,awards such as the Booker,in beinggeared primarily to sellingnovels, have arguably increased the tendencyto view literatureas a commodity.The winning authoralso becomesinvolved in the largerprocess of promotingthe sponsor.

The conflationof aestheticand commercial merit thusmay be said, ultimately,to havearisen out of the basicincompatibility of the business world andthat of literature. However,if businesssponsors have often shownthemselves to be unawareof andinsensitive to the peculiarnature of the arts,nevertheless there may also be saidto havebeen a basicnaivety on the part of the literaryworld aboutthe natureof business,and the likely demandsand long-tenn effects of commercialsponsorship. 106 CHAPTER FOUR

Fictiom

'Today the triumph of the social-personal.. principle is And if is the complete ... the club not narrowly exclusivep system of relations by which it controls the organs and institutions through which the currency-values are established and circulated is comprehensive and complete. 'l

In this chapterI shall examinethe extent and nature of the interconnections which existed among thoseinvolved in the Booker Prize during the 1980s and the extent to which it was dominatedat this time by membersof the literary establishment.

I shalllook at whatthe implicationsare of therehaving been such a high level of socialinterconnections. I shall argue that while it is impossibleto provethat thejudgements made about fiction from within this contextwere influencedby socialfactors, and while it is impossiblein any casenot to be subjectiveto someextent when attempting to assessartistic merit, neverthelessthe nature and the extent of the connectionsthat existedwas suchthat it mustat very leastcast doubt on theability of thejudges to have beendisinterested.

In addition,bearing in mind Levin Schuecking'srejection of the 'spirit of the age'theory in relationto the 'classic'status of novels,I shall examine the degreeto which a groupsuch as the Booker coterie may be saidto have the powerto influencethe reception of novels.

Probablythe most significant differences between the Bookerand those awardswith which it wascompared earlier were not thosecovered by the questionnairein ChapterTwo, but wereinstead the prize'sability to

I LEAVIS, F. R., (1951),"Keynes, Spender and Currency-Values",in A b9glection. from Scrutiny.compiled by F. R. Leavisin Two Volumes.Cambridge at the UniversityPress, 1968,Vol. 1, p196. 107

generatepublicity, the controversywhich has surroundedthe Booker, and,

aboveall, theextent to whichit hasbeen dominated by membersof the literary establishment.

It is not surprisingwhen seen either as a promotionalmove or asan attemptto establishthe prize'scredentials as one which attracted'the top people',that the shortlistand judging panelfor the first Booker award

includedsome very well-knownand well-established literary personalities.

If onelooks at thejudging panelfor 1969,it is a very distinguishedgroup. In additionto RebeccaWest who, at seventy-seven,was a 'grandedame' of the Englishliterary world, therewas the Chairman,W. L. Webb,then

Literary Editor of The Quardian.David Farrer,a directorof the publishers Secker andWarburg Ltd, thepoet and academic Stephen Spender - already a C. B. E. andfellow-academic Frank Kermode, with whom Spenderhad co-editedthe periodical Encounte

The shordistedauthors included Iris Murdochand Muriel Spark,both of whom were alreadyestablished as writers. Spark,who hadbeen awarded the 0. B. E. in 1963and who wasa Fellow of the Royal Societyof

Literature,had published her mostfamous novel The Primeof Misa Jean

Brodietwo yearsearlier in 1967. Murdochtoo wasalready respected both as a writer of fiction andas a philosopher.Nicholas Mosley wasfrom an aristocraticif somewhatinfamous background.

AlthoughBarry England,Gordon Williams and the eventualwinner, P. H.

Newby, did not go on to enjoythe degreeof celebrityassociated with some of the shortlistedauthors from morerecent times, Newby for onewas alreadyan 'establishment'figure, beingController of the Third

Programme(later Radio Three), and having previously won both the 108

Atlantic and die SomersetMaugham Prizes in the 1940sand the Yorkshire Post Award in 1968.2

In the long term however,as this patterncontinued, the implicit message was, and still is, that thosebest qualified to judge and assessthe fiction submitted for the shortlists were academics,critics and fellow-writers, and in fact no real concessionhas ever beenmade to the ordinary readeror book-buyer.3

Oneother precedent was set in 1969.There was no oneon eitherthe shortlistor indeedon the panelof judgeswho wasparticularly young, and this hasremained a featureof theprize throughout its history.

Furthermore,there was, even in 1969,a very strongpro-Establishment bias,and specifically 'pro' theacademic, literary andmedia establishments ascan be seenabove, and this too is somethingthat hascontinued throughoutthe prize'shistory. In addition,even in 1969common membershipof certainclubs was in evidenceamong the personalities involved.

Overthe years it seemsthat the many interconnecting links between shortlistedauthors, judges, and members of the ManagementCommittee panels,both in termsof their commonlinks to otherbodies and their

2 He laterwent on to becomeManaging Director of BBC Radioand had beena universitylecturer in Cairojust afterthe war. 3 This patternseems to havebeen determined in largemeasure by the first Chairmanof the panelof judges,W L. Webb(who was also one of the three judgesfor the 1993 "Bookerof Bookers"competition). Webb noted in a 1993 articlethat BookerMcConnell's then literaryadviser, Lord Hardingeof Penshurst, had wanted: '.. a leaveningof show-bizcharacters among the judges- the odd film-star,or a couple of RollingStones... '. HoweverWebb had: '... insistedthat we hadto havejudges with real literaryauthority, which eventuallyI got..'. See WEBB,W. L., (1993),NThe Booker of Bookers*111, In The Times,21 st September, 109 monopolising of the shortlists andjudging panels of the Booker, have combinedto justify claimsof a'Bookercoterie'.

Of course,canards, coteries and cliques are nothing new to the British literaryworld, 4 andin theTwentieth Century alone there have been several suchgroups which at timeshave seemed to wield a disproportionatelylarge influence. The BloomsburyGroup and the Audenset were amongthose famouslysavaged by theLeavises in Scrutinyhalf a centuryago. However,there are several factors which combineto makethe literary world in this countrypre-disposed to coteries.

One is that the geographicallocation of the various literary organs is rooted firmly in the south east. The headquartersof most publishing houses are in London, and it is here too that the BBC has its television and radio headquarterswhere the majority of arts and literary programmesare produced. London moreover is where most national newspaperswhich carry review sectionsare situated,and this is particularly important. Thus traditionally peoplewho are connectedto the world of literature, including novelists, have tendedto congregatein the south east.

The informationcontained in APPENDIX 1 illustratesthe point that both the shortlistsand the judging panels of the BookerPrize have been dominatedthroughout the history of theprize by membersof the literary establishmentand that very oftenthere have been social ties betweenthese people. However,while it is understandablefrom the point of view of prestigethat the shortlistsshould have been peopled by 'experts'in the literary field, this situationclearly has implications as regards the reception of novelssubmitted for the prizeand also regarding the supposedly representativenature of the textswhich won.

4 However,Helen Fielding argues that recentlythey havebecome more powerful than anytime sincethe 1930sand 1940s. See FIELDING,H. (1991),"You scratchmy hardback",The SundayTimes, 27th October. 110

For example, Schueckingwrites that:

'What happens in this intellectual field does not differ greatly from what happens in the realm of natural science: an endless variability of creation Is influenced in definite directions by a certain selection. For this selection we rind of importance in the past the circumstances that it proceeds from the literary interest of groups in the possessionof economic and social sources of power, on which the creative artists are dependent. '5

If he is right, then in relation to the Booker Prize, the question arises as to

what happenswhen the:

',. groups in possessionof economic and social sources of power'

includethe authorsand judges themselves?

I wish to postulatethat in this instance,given the level of social

interconnectionsand the common background shared by a majority of those

on the shortlistsand judging panelsfor the Booker,the receptionprocess becomesdistorted. I shallexpand on this later. First of all it is necessaryto providea basicmodel of how thereception process operates.

Clearly, no work of fiction exists in a vacuum. Every novel originates

from, is published in, and then is disseminatedwithin a specific context.

There are severallayers of context. Firstly, there is the given social and

artistic context within which the writer operates. Secondly, there is the

specific context into which the novel as, simultaneously,creative work and commodity, is received. It is likely that any reading of the novel, if it is to correspondto any great extent to the writer's intended meaning, will take into account the fast layer of context and also the audiencefor whom the author originally wrote the text.

I &humkiu, pi 8. ill

Thereis, in addition,one further layer of context,and that is the wider universalcontext into which anywork is received.This will includeall potentialreadings of thenovel at homeand abroad, both in the presenttime andin thefuture.

While someof the originalintended meaning may subsequentlyget lost in the readingsof thenovel which are made from outwith the specific chronologicalperiod, social situation or geographicallocation from which the novelhas emerged, new and insightful meanings and interpretations may neverthelessarise. Furthermore,re-readings of the textsmay emerge in the meantimewhich will takeinto accountand be influencedby new knowledgeof eventsat thetime whenthe novel waswritten.

Hereafter, for the sake of convenience,I shall use the term super- context to refer to this universalcontext, and I shall usethe more general term,context, to includethe socialsituation from andinto which the novel emerges.

Within both the original contextualsituation and the super-context however,there may be saidto be any numberof smallercontextual sub- groups. Thesemay include,for example,the sub-context of the panel of judgesfor any givenprize. The natureof thereading a text receivesfrom

within any one of thesesub-contexts will, in turn, dependvery much on the identity of that group.6

Togetherthe independentcontextual sub-groups form the overall receptiongroup for the novel. Togethertheir variousreadings of the novel will combineto helpshape a receivedstandard reading of the text which may be influential,for example,in sellingthe novelor in determining 6 C. f. TolstoVsassertion in Whatis An?, thatthe valuewhich we giveto any work of art will dependvery muchon our general'life values!. 112 whether or not and how it is studied as an academictext. Taken individually however eachreading of a novel by a contextual sub-group may not be representativeof the receptionand interpretationof the text made by a wider audience,and this is relevantto the issueof the influence of literary prizes.

If, for example,an experimentalnovel is hailedas formal anda thematic breakthroughby an academicsub-context, nevertheless the novel is likely to receivea lessenthusiastic and positive evaluation among an audienceof moregeneral readers. The academicsub-context here represents numericallyonly a smallpart of theoverall audience and its views,and in beingat variancewith thelarger overall audience may be saidto thatextent to be unrepresentative.

That said,however, some individual sub-context groups may be saidto be extremelypowerful, and to wield a degreeof influenceout of proportion to their actualsize. In this instancethe sub-context reading may be ableto assertitself aboveother readings of the text. It is at this point that the balancein theprocess of receptionmay be tippedin favourof oneparticular group,and this, as Schueckingnotes, will ultimatelydepend on how powerfulthat groupis andon whatdegree of influenceit has.

If, for example,a contextualsub-group which offers a particularreading of a novel is ableto influencethe choice of novelsstudied at academic institutions,or alternatively,which novelsare promoted or reviewedin the literary press,then clearly, in this case,the readingmade by that groupis likely to carryconsiderable weight. In this caseit is likely too that this particularreading will be disseminatedamong a muchwider audiencethan would usuallybe the case. 113

The sub-contextof the Booker Prizejudging panelsduring the Eighties may be said to have beenhighly influential in that, as I have shown earlier, the prize during this period had the ability to massively increasesales.

Furthermore,however, it also carried with it extra weight insofar as the level of salesof shordistednovels on its own probably indicates that the

Booker's seal of approvalappeared to the generalreader at least to be worthy of respectas a literary yardstick. Certainly the prize was promoted, and indeed promoted itself, as such.

However,the disproportionateinfluence of this awardmay be saidto have beenrather suspect and for a varietyof reasonssome of which I have alreadyalluded to. Not leastof theseis thefact that theconnections which existedbetween those involved and the conservatism apparent both in the machineryof theprize and also in thechoice of winner,suggest that there may havebeen an unconsciousprocess of pre-selectionin operation.

Theremay in fact havebeen a moreconspicuous form of pre-selectionin operationin anycase. It seemsthat thenovels which managedto reachthe shordistof the prizehad usually been reviewed in the literary pressprior to this. Giventhat only a very smallpercentage of novelspublished in any given yeargets reviewed, then this maybe saidto amountto a form of pre- selection.One has to ask,furtbermore, especially given that a largenumber of Bookerjudges were reviewers, what criteria governedthe decisionto reviewcertain novels and not others?It certainlyseems that first novelsand novelsfrom younger,less well-established authors were less likely to be reviewed.

The reviewingnetwork in Britain hastraditionaUy bad a very poor reputation,and in the pastit hasbeen accused of dishonestyand lack of intellectualvigour. This wasespecially so duringthe 1930sand Forties 114 both Orwell when reviewers were criticised by, amongothers, the Leavises, andGrahame Greene.

incestuous, The reviewing network in addition hastraditionally been very and this has formed much of the basisfor recurrentaccusations of dishonestyand for the low reputationof reviewers and reviewing in the Enemies Promise, past. Cyril Connolly noted in his autobiography, of that theselinks often extendedback as far as public school, then continued through to university, (usually Oxbridge), and extendedthereafter into the world of literary criticism. Indeed,it was the substitution of social values 7 for literary onesin reviewing which particularly incensedthe Leavises.

F. R. Leavis saw the main areasof interconnectionamong critics such as

Connolly, who was one of thoseattacked in Scrutiny, as being, in addition to school and university, the , the BBC, and membership of clubs.

As far asthe BookerPrize in the Eightieswas concerned, a high percentageof thejudges were critics or literaryeditors8, and were likely to haveknown personallynot only theirfellow judges,but alsothe shortlisted authors.I now wish to examinein moredetail the 'Establishment credentials'ofthose people involved with the BookerPrize during the 1980sand the otherareas of interconnectionsthat existed between them.

in particularI will focuson: the numberof university-educatedauthors and judges,and especially those who wereOxbridge educated, (although here I havehad to limit myselfin themain to undergraduatecareers at Oxbridge

owing to the very greatnumber who went on to graduatestudy at either

university);the sharedpublishers and agents; whether or not they had other

7 E. g. see LEAVIS,0. D., (1939),*The Background of TwentiethCentury Letters",in A Selectionfrom Scrutiny.compiled by F. R. Leavisin Two Volumes, Cambridgeat the UniversityPress, 1968, Vol. l. 8 See also Table 2. for the interconnectionsbetween the judgesof various awards. 115 recognised 'Establishment!honours such as C. B. E. or F. R. S. L.; whether they had a backgroundin academicteaching and may have already had establishedlinks with a publisher as a result; whether or not the authors or the judges in questionhad won other literary prizes; and finally, whether they had in common membershipof clubs and other associationssuch as

PEN and the Society of Authors.

In compilingthe tablesin APPENDIX11 hadto rely heavilyon what biographicalmaterial was available. Thus where there is a blankin the tables,this is usuallyindicative of a lack of availableinformation. Although my focusso far in the thesishas been the BookerPrize from 1980-1989,in orderto examinewhether the situation became more or lessEstablishment- orientedduring this time I haveexpanded the periodcovered by the tables.

now refer the readerto APPENDIX I-

It is clear from close examinationof the data provided in APPENDIX 1 that certainconclusions may be drawnand I shallnow attemptto address these.

It is clear that a very large percentageof both the shortlisted authors and of the judging panelswere Oxbridge educated,and that there was a particular bias towards Oxford. On closer examination it will be seenthat from 1969 till 1979, including 1974 when Nadine Gordimer and Stanley Middleton were joint-winners, four out of the twelve winners of the Booker Prize were

Oxbridge-educated.This compareswith six out of the eleven winners for the period 1980-1990.

In addition it can be seenthat during the 1980sthere was a trend towards the winnersbeing, or havingbeen, professional academics. This is apparentin the backgroundsof J. M. Coetzee,the 1983winner, who was 116

Professorof Literature at the University of CapeTown, and also in the case

of Anita Brookner, the 1984 winner, who was formerly an Art History don.

It was also in evidencein 1986when the winner was , again

formerly a professionalacademic, and was similarly apparentin 1987 in the

caseof PenelopeLively, who not only lectured in Modem History prior to

becoming a full-time writer, but who is also married to a Professorof Politics. 9

The sarnebias towards winning authors who wereor who had been

professionalacademics was not apparentin the 1970showever.

In termsof thejudging panels,it canbe seenthat in the periodbetween

1980-1989,just overfifty per centof judgeswere Oxbridge-educated as comparedwith aroundsixty percent between 1969-1979. In the latter half of the 1980showever, as can be seenfrom APPENDIX 1, another influentialgroup arose from thecombined ranks of thejudges and shordistedauthors in theform of thosewho hadconnections with the

Universityof EastAnglia, eitheras students or lecturers,or as both, andin particularthose who hadconnections with theM. A. coursein Creative Writing run by this University. 11is coursewas supervised by Malcolm

Bradbury,who wasChairman of the panelof judgesfor the Bookerin 1981, andwho laterbecame a memberof theManagement Committee for the prize.

In theyear that Bradbury was Chairman of thejudging panel, one of his formerstudents at theU. E. A., IanMcEwan, was shortlisted for his novel TheComfort of Strangers.Some critics at thetime suggested that this came aboutprimarily because of McEwan'sconnection with Bradbury,and that furthermorethe shordist itself had been expanded especially in orderto allowMcEwan's novel a place.However, although one of theother

Jack Lively,Professor of Politicsat the Universityof Warwick. 117 membersof thejudging panel who wrote about the judging procedurein

1981 did note that Bradbury had arguedvery strongly for the inclusion of the novel on the shortlist, the 1980 shortlist had also consistedof seven novels.10

Bradbury himself was a shortlistedauthor in 1983 for his novel Rates o

Exchange In the intervening year the U. E. A. was again representedon the panel of judges, this time by Loma Sage. Sage,who had been Assistant

Lecturer in English Literature at the U. E. A. in the 1960ssubsequently went on to becomeDean of the School of English and American Studies (in 1985).

In 1984David Lodge,then Professor of EnglishLiterature at the University of ,was shortlisted for his novel SmallWorld. Lodgewas againon the shordistin 1988with his novelNice Work, andin 1989was Chairmanof the panelof judges. However,Lodge too had a U. E. A. connection.In 1977,seven years into Malcolm Bradbury'sProfessorship, Lodgehad been Henfield Writing Fellow at the U. E. A. In addition, duringthe 1960sboth men had been lecturers in theDepartment of English

Literatureat the Universityof Birmingham.Birmingham's Professor of Englishat that time (from 1962-1973)was Richard Hoggart, who had also sat on the Booker'spanel of judgesin 1970. FurthermoreHoggart also went on to hold an HonoraryProfessorship at the U. E. A. in 1984.

The influenceof the U. E. A. wasparticularly strong in the late 1980s,and this culminatedin thewin in 1989by anotherformer student on theCreative Writing M. A. course,Kazuo Ishiguro. Ishigurohad also beenshortlisted in 1986when his novelAn Artist of the EloatingWodd was favouriteto win.

10Brian Aldiss. SeeAldissýs article "Bell's, Booker and Candle"in The Guardian, 9th October 1981. 118

In 1989, in addition to the Chairman'sconnection with the U. E. A. (and with Bradbury), Ishiguro's fellow-shortlisted author, Rose Tremain, who had beena judge for the prize only one year before, and two of the judging panel, also had connectionswith East Anglia. Tremain was a lecturer at the

U. E. A. that year, as was another of that yeaes,judges Helen McNeil, and McNeil's fellow-judge Maggie Gee,had beenCreative Writing Fellow there. Furthermore,the ManagementCommittee for the prize in 1989 included ProfessorBradbury.

In addition,in October1989 the University of EastAnglia's Centre for Creativeand Performing Arts wasthe venue for a celebratoryweekend held to mark twentyyears of theBooker Prize. Tlis eventwas funded jointly by Booker and the U. E. A.

Evenauthors who maybe saidto fit lesseasily into the categorisations abovefollowed thepattern to someextent. The 1982winner Thomas Keneallyhad in his time beenboth a lawyerand a professionalacademic.

In addition,although the 1985winner Keri Hulmemay haveseemed an unusualchoice both in termsof her noveland of her own background,she too hadspent some time at universityin New Zealandthough she did not graduate,and she had also worked as a televisionproducer, thus providing her with the mediabackground so belovedin Bookercircles. 1 I

Oscarand Lucinda, Peter Carey's novel which won in 1988,had been expectedto win andwas the favouritewith the bookies. Carey's backgroundwas less'typically' Booker and had less of the 'Establishment credentials'referred to earlier. However,he too hadhad experience in the media,both from a careerin advertising,and from writing film scripts.

11As itself The BonePegpia tippedto described to the novel , was win and was as a'publishingsensation'in an articlein The Booksellerin March1985. Given that this was a full six monthsbefore the shortlistwas announced,and that the predictionappeared in a trademagazine, it tendsto belie,at leaston a commercial basis,the argumentwhich says that the 1985winner was a most unlikelychoice. 119

The threeauthors that I havementioned above, moreover, are from Commonwealthor formerCommonwealth countries, and it may be that a degreeof tokenismworked in their favour. In theperiod between 1980 to 1985it can beseen that there were three winning novels from the Commonwealth.This comparesexactly with the numberof

Commonwealthwinners in theperiod 1970to 1975. Howeverthis is slightly complicatedby therehaving been two winnersin 1974,and also by the fact that althoughSalman Rushdie, the 1981winner, was born.in India, he wasnow generallyconsidered to be a British author.

Hulme,additionally, may have been the token'Commonwealth woman

winner',and thus comparable with NadineGordimer in 1974. This all does seemsto addcredence to theargument that some degree of tokenismwas at work, for it is interestingto notethat, as with the numberof Common- wealthor SouthAfrican winnersoverall, the numberof femalewinners in this categorywas exactly comparable.

Overall, if one looks at the statisticsrelating to women's involvement in the prize, thesesuggest a typically Establishmentbias against females on the shortlists and judging panels. However, on an individual basis, some women appearto have beenextremely successfulat'playing the system'.

Again referringto APPENDIX 1, in theyears 1969-1989 there was not oneinstance where the shortlist was comprised solely of womenwriters. In 1976, (andagain in 1991), the shortlistwas comprised entirely of male writers. On only five occasionsout of twenty-onewas there a higherratio of womento men.[See Table 3. ] On the otherhand, there were eleven shortlistswhere men outnumbered women writers. 120

Ile total overall percentageof shortlistednovels written by women during the period coveredby APPENDIX I is just over forty-one point five per cent, that is, forty-nine out of a hundredand eighteennovels. The percentageof women who won the prize over the period was even lower, at thirty-eight per cent. This representseight female winners out of twenty- one, or, taking into accountthe tied result in 1974,eight out of twenty-two [36.3%].

Wherematters of judgementwere concerned, there was a similarly lower percentageof womenthan men. Thatis, womenaccounted for thirty-eight point five percent, or thirty-sevenout of an overalltotal of ninety-six judges. In an appallinglack of equalityand perhaps the mostglaring exampleof the prize'santi-female bias, in theperiod from 1969-1989only two judging panelswere chaired by women.

In 1983Fay Weldontook the chairwhen Booker, apparently egged on by CarmenCaUfl, the founderof ViragoPress and then on the Management Committeeof the Prize,made a concertedeffort to go all out to appointa womanChairman. This wasalso a year- therewere another four - when womenoutnumbered men on thejudging panel. In 1987it wasthe turn of P. D. James,who on paperat leastmight be assumedto be masculine.

Womenwere also in shortsupply on theManagement Committee,

As for the threeexamples of writersgiven above, Keneally and Carey could be said,moreover, to havebeen more likely to win in that they had alreadybeen on theshordist in previousyears; Carey in 1985for his novel

1113omhacker,and Keneally in 1972,1975,and 1979. It cannotbe saidto havebeen an unofficial 'rule!that a novelistwas more likely to win if he or shehad been on the shortlistof the prize in previousyears as there would be manynotable exceptions to this,including ,Timothy Mo, andDavid Lodge. Howeverof the list of Bookerwinners in the 1980s, 121

Keneally, Amis, Lively, Carey and Ishiguro had all beenshortlisted before.

Moreover, Carey and Ishiguro were alone in not having been shortlisted in the 1970s,and in eachcase in having beenshortlisted on only one occasion prior to winning the prize.

It is clear, particularly from my use of asterisksin APPENDIX 1, that a certain conservatismmanifested itself in the shortlists as regardsthe continued reappearanceof certain names,and the number of novelists shortfistedmore than once would appearto provide further evidence that the prize was slantedin favour of alreadyestablished authors. From an overall total of a hundredand eighteennovels shordistedfor the Booker over the years from 1969-1989,sixty-three [over fifty percent] were by novelists who had already been on the shortlist.

There were twenty-four novelists in this category, of whom Iris Murdoch was the most conspicuous,having been shortlisted six times. Indeed,

Murdoch is reputedto have askedher publishersChatto and Windus not to re-submit her namein the future and it is important in this context to rememberthat it is the publisher and not the novelist who decideswhether or not to submit a novel for the prize.

As far asthe re-appearanceof novehstson the shortlistwas concerned, thirty-sevenpoint five percent [nine out of twenty-four]of thesewere women.

If them was a recunrnce of certain nameson the shortlists, it can be seen that there was also a regular exchangebetween shortlists and judging panels, with novelists often going on to be membersof the panel. Some fifteen peopleacted in both capacitiesand theseincluded Malcolm

Bradbury, David Lodge and , who have also chaired the panel. Furthermore Antonia Byatt, RoseTremain, Nina Bawden, Marina Warner, 122

Peter Ackroyd, Paul Bailey, and Bradbury had all sat on the judging panel

efore bein shortlisted.

In the caseof Tremain, her novel Restorationwas shortlisted in 1989, only one year after she had sat on the panel of judges, and the question arisesas to whether or not she had 'insidee knowledge of what the judges would be looking for.

Therewas also a markedrecurrence of namesamong the publishersof Booker winners,with someindividual publishing companies such as Cape, Faber,and Chatto and Windus in particularbenefitting a greatdeal from the prize.

Together,up to 1989,Cape, Faber and Chatto and Windus supplied thirty- six out of a total of onehundred and eighteen shortlisted novels, including nine winners. Thoughthis maybe explainedin partby the fact that eachof thesepublishing houses had a substantialfiction section,or indeedwas exclusivelya publisherof fiction, in 1981alone there were three novels publishedby Capeout of a total shortlistof sevenbooks. It is particularly noticeable[See Fig. 1.1 thatfrom 1979there was a swatheof authorsfrom the samecompanies on the shortlistsevery year.

As I havealready noted in ChapterOne, Martyn Goff in Prizewriting, creditsTom Maschlerand Graham C. Greene,then respectively Chairman andLiterary Editor of Cape,with theidea of suggestingthe setting-upof the prize to BookerMcConnell, and it is Capewhich hadboth the highest numberof winnersand of shortlistednovels over this period.

It is alsoclear from APPENDIX I that a numberof judgesand shortlisted authorshad connections with publishingcompanies, notably Ion Trewin, who laterwent on to becomea memberof the BookerManagement 123

Committee, the 1986Chairman of the judges Anthony Ilwaite, a director of Andre Deutsch,and the 1982shortlisted author Alice Thomas Ellis who was both published by Duckworth, and marxiedto the company Chairman,

Colin Haycraft. Sheherself had worked at Duckworth as Fiction Editor, and she is credited as having 'discovered'her fellow shortlisted author in 1982, Beryl Bainbridge.

Therewas a strongbias evident in boththe shortlistsand the judging panelsof theBooker Prize during this periodtowards authors and other figuressuch as professionalacademics who werealready established in the literary world. It is alsointeresting to notefrom APPENDIX I that very often eventhose j udgeswho werenot ostensibly'literary figures'had won otherliterary prizes, for examplefor autobiography.12

The strong Establishmentbias of the prize is also reflected in the number of shortlisted authorsand membersof the panels of judges who were or who becameFellows of the Royal Society of Literature. What is particularly striking about this is that very often an author was made an

F. R. S. L. within a year of first being shortlisted for, or winning, the prize, and there definitely doesseem to have been a correlation here between the timing of the tWo.13

Therewere many shortlisted authors, judges and members of the

ManagementCommittee of theprize who workedtogether in thepast. The

Lodge-Bradburyconnection may be the mostapparent, but therewere also hadbeen Encounte severalpeople who associatedwith , andanother sizeablegroup which hadbeen linked in thepast with the literary sectionsof both The SundayTimes and The Observe aswell as with the Statesman.

12 Relatedto this, it is also note-worthythat therewere certain prizes which a great numberof the peopleon both the shortlistsand the judging panelshad won, and this is mostevident with the SomersetMaugharn Prize. See Table2. 13 Seethe examplesof both KazuoIshiguro and Ian McEwan. 124

In additionit is alsoevident from theinformation in APPENDIX I that therewas a threadlinking variousshortlisted authors and judges who had written literary critical books about eachother's work.

There were also many authorswho were membersof the sameclubs, and the most popular of thesetended to be the Garrick, Savile, Beefsteakand the Athenaeum,with White's and Pratt's also rating highly. Professional writers' groups, such as PEN and the Society of Authors were also common meeting grounds.

As I mentionedin ChapterThree, none of the authorswho won the prize in the Eightiesmay be saidto havebeen either young or unknown,and of the winnersduring this period,William Goldingand KingsleyAmis in particularwere already well-established in theircareers.

I now wish to discussthe implicationsof the abovein relationto the processesof receptionand evaluation made from within this context,and to the supposedly 'representative'status of Booker-winning novels.

It is clearthat in themain the elements which linked the variouspeople involvedwith theBooker Prize during the Eighties were little differentto thoseidentified fifty yearsearlier by F. R. Leavisas existing among the reviewingnetwork.

Given both thenature and the extent of theconnections between those involvedwith the Booker,one is certainlyjustified in talking of a Booker coterie. The questionarises however as to how representativethis group andits evaluationswere of the wider audience. 125

As far as the successivejudgements of 'best novel' were concerned,the inference from APPENDIX 1 is that'besf usually meant a novel which had been written by someonefairly experiencedas an author, and almost certainly by someoneknown in advanceto the Panel. Moreover, 'good' fiction was likely to meanfiction written for, and probably, by, people with a high level of education.

As regardsthe presenceof womenon the shordistsand judging panels,the implicationshere are that while womenwere considered to be ableto write 'good'novels according to this receivedunderstanding of 'good, they were not in a positionto judgein a formal sensewhat constituted'good' fiction.

The natureand level of interconnectionsamong those involved with the prize duringthis period,furthen-nore, were such that, while it is not possibleto provethat the evaluations made were based on socialrather than on aestheticconsiderations or at beston a conflationof the two, it seems highly likely that this would havebeen the case.However, it could be arguedthat in theconservatism which was in evidenceboth in the choiceof shortlistedauthors and judges and in theirjudgements and, furthermore, in the anti-femalebias of theprize, the Booker did no morethan reflect the valuesof the wider literaryestablishment in Britain.

Therewould appearto be somevalidity in this argument.For example, HelenFielding, writing morerecently on the interconnectionsthat exist amongBooker-shortlisted authors and judges suggests that it is:

'.. in the review sections of the fashionable literary press.. that thoughts of connections are apt to raise a smile@,14 and shegives the exampleof J. G. Ballard andMartin Amis's mutual'back- slapping' in reviews.1 5

14See Fielding.(Op. cit. ) 15 Ibid. Shecites Amis on Ballard'sHullo America: 126

The 1989judge Helen McNeil, commentingin an articleon both the incestuousnature of the reviewing network and the mutual 'back- scratching'which occurin the literaryworld asa wholerecords that:

you don't necessarily realize that X is Y's best friend, but you recognise that YhAj friends... to that extent, I've become more sceptical about reviews of, as it were, received 'good' writers. "616

McNeil also criticises the reluctanceof critics to review the work of 'less well regarded'writers. She saysthat the assumptionappears to be made by the reviewer that no novel by an authorin this categorywill deservea decent review. She notes, furthermore, that some of the less favourable reviews of one of the shortlisted novels that year, RoseTremain's Restoration, had been written before the novel had beenshortlisted, and she says:

"'.. it did flit through my mind, would they have thought this if had written the same novel. "117

Thusthere does seem to be a parallelhere between the valuesof the

Bookerand those of the literaryestablishment as a whole. Howeveras far asthe literary media in generalis concernedthere is someevidence to suggestthat it hasbecome more aware of the undesireabilityof mutual 'back-scratching'inrecent years. In 1992The SundayTimCS decided to rethinkits policy on reviewingfollowing the resultsof a surveydone in conjunctionwith theThe Spectatorthe previousyear. The surveyfound that in the list of the onehundred most reviewed books, the authorsof one in threeof thesehad reviewed other writers on the list. 18

...All we know for certain is that the novels he will write could not be written, could not even be guessed at, by anyone else"', and Ballard on Amis!s Other People: "'Powerful and obsessive...Kaf ka reshot in the state of psycho."' 16 McNEIL, H., (1990),"Judging the Booker", The-Women's-P-ressBookclub Catalogue. Jan-MarchA99O. Women's Press, London. 17 Ibid. 18 In an attempt to find out what the present situation was I tried to contact the current Literary Editor of the The Sunday Times. However he did not reply. 127

If the Booker Prize of the 1980smerely reflected the values of a literary establishmentwhich was traditionally regardedas being highly incestuous and pre-disposedto to coteries,then, accordingto the argument above,it should not be regardedas being especially sinister or unhealthy. However, the degreeof influence which the prize had at this time challengesthe validity of this argument. Furthermorethe question arisesin any case as to how representativethe literary establishmentas a whole was. Even if the

Booker Prize did no more than reflect the values of the literary establishment

in general,it could neverthelessbe criticised on the grounds that it

perpetuatedan existing set of valueswhich were in themselves

unrepresentative.

Moreover, given the publicity which surroundedthe Booker Prize at this

time, given the prize's proven influence on sales,and given too the presence

on the judging panelsof a substantialnumber of professional literary critics,

it could be said that the prize in the Eighties potentially had not only the

power to perpetuatean alreadyexisting imbalance,but had, in addition, the

power to extend this further. In other words this amounted to the power to

disseminatea received standardof 'good' which may have been neither

representativenor for that matterbased primarily on aesthetic

considerations.

Given the cachetwhich the prize hadfor mostof this period,however, it

probablymattered little to a substantialnumber of thosewho boughtthe shortlistednovels whether these were of any literary merit or not. As such, Schuecking'sstatement on the receptionof 'classic'novels seems singularly

applicablehere. He writes: 128 'To the belief that good wins throughv the critic can offer only the sceptical reply that that which wins through will thereafter be regarded as good. '19

Whetheror not thebases for theevaluations made within thecontext of the Bookerjudging panelsat this time maybe saidto havebeen suspect, they were,nevertheless, as I havestated, widely disseminated.In view of this theBooker Prize of the 1980smay be said to havebeen one example of a highly influentialsub-context group whose influence was such that it had the powerto distortthe wider receptionprocess.

Above all it wasthe ability of theprize at this time, againwhatever the basesof its supposedlyliterary evaluations, to increasesales, that madethe Bookera forceto be reckonedwith. Howeverif themachinery of the prize may be saidto havehelped to influencethe receptionprocess of fiction in favour of onespecific group of novels,it couldalso be saidto have restrictedthe potential for otherfiction to makean impact. In a limited marketfor fiction of this kind, in successfullypromoting certain novels which werealready more likely to havebeen reviewed and therefore to sell, andin consistentlyfailing to acknowledgeauthors and fiction from outwith the mainstream,such as regionalnovelists, the Bookermay be saidto have doublyweighted the oddsagainst the latter.

Thusit canbe seenthat it waspossible for this prize to haveinfluenced salesof fiction, andto havethe evaluations of fiction madefrom within the contextof its judging panelswidely disseminated,when the basesof these evaluations,firstly, may havehad little to do with literary merit, and, secondly,may havehad little claim to beingregarded as representative.

19 See Schuecking, (Op. Cit.) p58. 129

CONCLUSION TO PART 2

I have shown in the precedingtwo chaptershow social, political and economic factors combine to affect the receptionand disseminationof fiction. In addition I have examinedthe way in which economic and political factors may influence the continuedexistence of fiction. To this extent it must thereforebe clear that the phenomenonof the Booker Prize in the 1980sshould not be studiedin isolation, with no attempt made to relate either the developmentof the prize!s influence or its inner structure to the broader picture.

It is clearfrom ChapterThree that thereliance on any form of patronage hasits own pitfalls. Thesemay includethe risk of directintervention by the patronin orderto influencehow thewriter goesabout his work or the inability to survivewhen that patronage is withdrawn. It is clearhowever that businesssponsorship differs from moretraditional forms of patronage in a numberof ways. Theseinclude the scale of funding involved,and the aimsof the companyin sponsoring.

Given thatthe latter have to do with maximisingpublicity from the companyinvolved, sponsorship of this kind is usuallyhighly conspicuous, tendsto be moreconservative in thatit goesto moreestablished artists and events,and in thecase of the BookerPrize, tends also not to be availableto thosewriters who aremost in need.

T'husthe argumentthat largebusiness-sponsored literary prizesserve a usefulpurpose in giving a much-neededboost to fitnanciallystrapped writersis only of limited validity. Furthermore,in attemptingto affirm the socialstatus of the writer, prizesin reality probablydo more to confer a celebritystatus on the winningauthor than to encouragea seriousappraisal 130 of him or her as an artist. Nevertheless,for reasonswhich relate to the sponsor'sdesire for prestigeby association,prizes such as the Booker usuallymake much of theimportance of thewriter's role in society.This canbe seen,for example,in boththe early and more recent press releases for this award.

In seeking to 're-affirm' the role of the author, however, the organisersof award such as the Booker appearto desirefor the author a statusand role which have long beenout-of-date, and which relate more to Victorian perceptionsof the writer than to the reality of the current situation.

Furthermore,while it may be arguedthat there is nothing wrong in attempting to regain somelost territory for the writer in tenns of prestige, the preferred statuswhich the Booker Prize in particular seemsto want to claim for the writer smacksof elitism.

This ties in with ChapterFour, where I have suggestedthat the common background and social interconnectionswhich link judges, shortlisted authors,and ManagementCommittee members for the Booker Prize justify its being labelled a coterie. The Booker is the Establishmentprize, and may be said to be elitist in a social senseat least. In conferring on an author the accoladeof 'winner" it extendsto him or her the invitation to become part of that elite.

Furthermore,given that the Booker-shortlistednovels are usually those which arereviewed, which is not a significantpercentage of all novels publishedin a year,given the prize's ability to influencewhat booksare boughtin Britain, andgiven, further, that thereis at very leasta tremendous scopefor the substitutionof socialconsiderations for aestheticones, the Bookermay be saidto havepotential to disruptthe receptionprocess of fiction andthereby to furtherperpetuate elitist values. 131

While it may be arguedthat as the Establishmentprize the Booker merely reflects the valuesof the Establishment,it can be seenfrom the level of sales it guaranteesand the publicity it receivesthat this prize's ability to maximise the disseminationof such valuesis unrivalled.

Having arguedin the two precedingchapters that social, economic and political factors may affect the receptionand continuedsurvival of fiction writing, and that all fon-nsof patronageare likely to have an effect on the work itself I now wish to turn in the final part of the thesis to the literature itself. I shall argue amongother things that the sharedvalues of those involved with the Booker Prize are reflectedin the novels selectedfor the shortlists. 132 PART 3

Evidence of Standard isation-i n At Noyels whiich Won the Booker Prize, 1280-1989. 133

'The sphere of social phenomenon to which literature belongs is composed of many series (structures), each of which has its autonomous development. These are, for exampleý science, politics, economics, social stratification, language, morality, and religion. Despite their autonomyv however, the individual series influence one another... Therefore, none of them must be made dominant a priori over the others...but neither should the basic Importance and special character of a specific function of a given series (in the case of literature it is the aesthetic function related to the literary work as an aesthetic object) be overlooked, because if it were completely suppressed, the series would cease to be itself (for example, literature an art). ' JAN MUKAROVSKY,

"A note on the Czech translation of Sklovsk1j's :[heory of Prose Ill

I MUKAROVSKY, J., (1977), "A note on the Czech translation of Sklovskifs Theo[y Pros Thg Word Art. Yale Russian of , and-Ved2al and East European Studies 13. translated and edited by-John Burbank gnd Peter Steiner. Yale University Press. New Haven and London, pp140-141. 134 PART 3: INTRODUCTION

Havingstated in theIntroduction to this thesisthat themost important concernfor theliterary specialist was the extent and scope of the effects which the BookerPrize may be saidto havehad on fiction-writing itself, I now wish to examinethis issuefurther with detailedreference to the novels which won the prize duringthe 1980s.

In the two chapterswhich follow I shalllook at onearea in particular whereit seemsthat thefiction mayhave been affected, that is in respectof an apparentstandardisation among those novels which won. I shall examinetwo differentaspects of standardisation.In ChapterFive I shall addressthe issueof standardisationas regards the useof language,and in ChapterSix I shallexamine what evidence there is of standardisationin relationto similaritiesin thetreatment of a commontheme.

In ChapterFive I shalluse the methodsof key word analysisin orderto establishwhether there are similarities between the winning novelsin the useof key words. In orderto get a clearerpicture of what patternsare evidenthere however, I shallcompare the patterns of frequencyof occurrenceof wordsamong Booker winners with the patternswhich exist amonga controlgroup of four othernovels chosen at random.

In ChapterSix I havechosen to focuson certainaspects of the themeof suffering. I shall focusnot so muchon therecurrence of this very broad theme,but on the similaritieswhich areevident in theway in which certain typesof sufferingappear in thesenovels, and the way in which sufferingis depictedvia whatI havelabelled 'motifs of suffering'. I shall attemptto identify a numberof recognisablemotifs which appearin severalnovels and to illustratethat the recurrentuse of suchmotifs suggeststhat standardisationexists here too. 135 CHAPTER FIVE

'Unless spontaneity enters at some point or anotherý literary creation is impossible, and language itself becomes ossifledOO

Until now I have concentratedmainly on the socio-historical context of the Booker Prize. Now, however, having raised the issue of homogeneity in the previous chapter,I wish to examinethe effects which a prize dominatedby the literary establishmentmay be said to have on fiction itself.

My methodologyin this chapterhas involved the useof a key word analysisof severalimportant scenes chosen from eachof the Bookernovels selected.However, in orderto haveas clear a pictureas possible of what linguistic links may existamong the Bookertexts, I havealso chosen a control groupof four novelswhich did not win the prize with which to compareresults from the first group.

The four Bookerwinners which I havechosen from the 1980-1989period are,Anita Brookner's Hotel du Lac, KingsleyAmis's ne Old Devils,

PenelopeLively's 1987winner, Moon Tiger, and,lastly, Kazuo Ishiguro'sThe Remainsof the Day. In choosingthese four texts,I have beeninfluenced by thefact thateach of themmay be saidto be representative,certainly in termsof the backgroundsof the authors,of certaincharacteristics of theprize which havealready been identified.

All of the first threeauthors arc Oxbridge-educated, All but Brooknerhad had a history of prize-winningbefore going on to successin the Booker.

Again, all but Brooknerhad been on the shordistbefore. Finally, all but

I ORWELL,G., (1946),"The Preventionof Literature",The CollectedEssays. Journalismand Leitersof GeorgegMell-4.10 FrontOf Your Nose. 1945-50. edited by SoniaOrwell and Ian Angus,Secker and Warburg,London, 1958. 136 Ishiguro were formerly University dons. However, Ishiguro may be said to representthe 'newEstablishment' bias of the prize towardsthe Universityof EastAnglia.

Althoughthe novelsin thecontrol group were chosen largely at random, eachhas a particularinterest for this study. 'sMone and Muriel Spark'sA Far Cry from Kensingto wereboth notableabsentees from Bookershortlists, in 1984and 1989respectively, and in eachcase this createdsomething of a stir.

Even thoughJames Kelman's novel, A Disaffection,was shordisted for the 1989prize, it appearsnot to exemplifyany of the 'typical' characteristicsof Bookernovels, either in the backgroundof the author,or in the themeof the novel. It is not only a Scottishnovel, (thoughin many respectsit is more'European' than any novel on the shortlistin recent years),but it is alsoone which dealswith, or showsan awarenessof, working-classexperience.

JohnMortimer's novel Summer'sLease. is of specialinterest in that

Mortimer wasone of the first authorswhose copyrights were held by BookerMcConnell after they decided to diversifyduring the 1960s.Like many of Mortimer'snovels and plays, this novel wassuccessfully adapted for television,and it is unlike any of theothers here in that, althoughit is highly literate,it is unashamedlya'popular' novel. This may be said to be underlinedby the fact thatthe novelis, to someextent, an exampleof that mostpopular of literary genres,the detectivenovel,

Thereare two questionswhich I wish to addressin this chapter. Firstly, do similaritiesin the useof vocabularyexist from oneauthor to another amongthe Bookertexts chosen, and if so,what kind of simflarides? 137 Secondly,do novelsin the BookerPrize-winning group differ significantly from the novels in the control group in this respect?

I shall now look at the novels which have won the Booker Prize, and first of all I will consider Anita Brookner'snovel Hotel du Lac.

The central characterin this novel is Edith Hope, a writer of romantic fiction. Edith has beenforced to spenda period of 'exile' at the Swiss hotel of the title since she hasjilted the man she was supposedto marry. The reasonfor Edith's presenceat the hotel is not explained until well into the novel. As the narrative progresses,it becomesclear that Edith has many conflicting emotions with regard to relationships. One of the reasonsfor her inability to go through with the marriageto Geoffrey Long has been her love for a married antique dealer,David Simmonds. Edith also realises, however, that although shemaybe wishes for commitment and love within a partnership,such a relationship may well be only an ideal, and may never happen.

Thereis a furthertension for Edith betweenbeing an independentcareer woman,and being in a relationshipwhere such independence may be impossible,even though the relationship itself may be fulfilling in other ways. During the courseof her stayat the hotel,Edith receivesa proposal of marriagefrom oneof theother guests, a Mr Neville, and as a resultof this andof hercontact with the additionalguests at the hotel,she is forced to reconsiderher choices.

Brookner's techniqueis to createan atmospherewith words, as if painting a picture with a range of tones. Throughout the novel, and especially in Chapter One, many words are used which suggestEdith's sadnessand her inability to expressher feelings. A key word used to develop this theme is 'grey', and there are other words which am closely 138 related. In fact 'grey' is used throughout the novel as a kind of leitmotiv, in order to suggestmuted emotion. It is clear that Edith's relationship with Neville is doomed,from themoment he first appearsas:

$...a tall man in a light grey sult. '(p55)

I wish to examine three important scenesin this novel in order to assess what the key wordsare. The first of theseoccurs on pp25-29where Edith haslunch with her agent,Harold Webb.

This sceneis essentialto thenovel as a wholein thatit is herethat Edith's views on relationshipsare revealed. These are made clear through a discussionof thefable of the tortoiseand the hare,and its relationto Editws fiction. Edith wishesto believein theunderlying message of the novelsshe writes;however she acknowledges that in reallife, menprefer glamorous womento 'mouse-like'creatures like herself.

Thereare several important word groupshere. Wordsdealing with separationand loneliness are important, as they areelsewhere in the novel.

'Gone'is repeatedthree times within elevenlines (p29), 'going' twice, and 'leavel,Iseparation, 'lonely', 'lost', 'abandoning'and the emphatic phrase

'neverto return'all feature. Thereare also words expressing sadness and theseinclude 'upset'(twice), 'alas','consolation', 'imploringly' and

'regretting'. Also 'tortoise'andhareboth occur frequently.

Edith andNeville go on two outingsand it is while theyare on the second of thesethat Neville proposesmarriage (ppl57-170). On the earliertrip up a mountain(pp90-102), the clarity of vision affordedby high altitudeand fine weatheris reflectedin the useof moreforceful wordsand those suggestiveof positiveemotions, and this is contrastedwith the second outing,a boattrip acrossthe lake. Here,both emotions and weather are 139 clouded, and this is indicated in the words, 'mist', 'grey' (again) and 'veil'.

Neville's smile is described,as ever, as being 'ambiguous', and the weather and the slow passageof the boat add to Edith's feelings of being

'cut off. This feeling is further conveyed by the words 'desolate',

'hopeless', and 'deserted',and in the phrases 'no hope' and 'lost bearings'.

Neville's actual proposalof marriageis characteristicin its use of very formal vocabulary. He talks about 'arrangements'when discussing marriage plans and the word is echoedby Edith, perhapsin a linguistic prefiguring of how any future marriagewould work. Most telling of all is the way in which Neville approachesthe subject. He is only 'I= controlled12at this point, and more important is the mental picture Edith has of him. The words usedto describehim here suggestduty and responsibility, and theseinclude 'fastidious', 'careful' and the phrase which describeshim as the sort of man who 'would inevitably have a fine library'.

Neville doesnot expresslove for Edith or evenak her to marry him but says:

11 think you should marry me Edith. ' (p163)

It is significantthat whenthe word 'love'does finally appearit is introducedby Neville, but in relationto thematerial things which he hasto offer, and to which he is'sure'Edith will be attracted(p164).

The useof the passiveform throughoutthe novelis indicative of Edith's powerlessnessin the faceof strongsuggestion from others,and herethe use of 'should'again indicates Neville's 'control', and also suggeststhat, if

My emphasis. 140 she were to marry him, Edith would be controlled by Neville, albeit subtly. 3

The final scenewhich I wish to look at from this novel is very short. In just over half a page (pI83), Edith discoversNeville emerging from

Jennifer Pusey'sbedroom and realisesthat if she were to marry him, she would receiveno real emotionalcommitment. The vocabulary which

Brookner has previously usedto evoke a senseof muted emotion and dulled communication is again brought into play here, though this time, in part, for ironic purposes,for Neville literally wishes not to be heard.

The key words, 'silently' and 'dim' which are both recurrent throughout the novel, occur here with 'anxious not to awaken or alarm' referring to

Edith, and 'concentratedon making no noise, in one last reprise of vocabulary suggestingdulled emotion. Once more Neville is 'controlled' and 'ambiguous',and it is at this point that Edith finally realises why. In spite of his attention to her in the past 'he had felt nothing' while she had unambiguously 'wept' on the boat.

In PenelopeLively's Moon Tige Booker in , which won the 1987,the centraltheme is thatof historyas memory. The maincharacter in the book,

ClaudiaHampton, has formerly beena writer of popularhistory. Now she lies dying in a hospitalbed. Claudiaannounces in the first sentenceof the novel:

'I'm writing a history of the world.. ' (pl)

However,she makes it clearthat it this will not be a chronologicalhistory, for, shesays:

'There is no chronology inside my head', 3 This is furtherreinforced by the assumptionNeville makes that Edithwill write underthe nameNeville if they marry(pl 65). 141 and, moreover, it 'irritates' her (p2).

The novel proceedsfrom the 'pre-history' of Claudia's childhood to the

'Crusades'of the SecondWorld War, then on to the presentday.

However, as memory doesnot function chronologically, so her history flits betweenthe different stagesof her life, guided more by the potency of the memories, and by which of theseshe wishes to cover over, than by linear time.

Again,I shallconcentrate on threeincidents in the novel in orderto look at key words. Oneof theseoccurs in whatis the thematicand structural centreof the novel,Claudia's time in Egyptwith her lover Tom, while anothercontains a revelationabout her childhood. Firstly, however,I wish to examineClaudia's explanation of. andjustification for, the courseher history is PThere to take,and this appearson pp2-4. areplenty ... Charmouthbeach in 1920].

Key words here,as throughoutthe novel, are 'history' and 'chronicle',

(and 'chronicler' and 'historian), 'kaleidoscope','kaleidoscopic', and 'ammonite'.

The words 'tendency', 'narrative', 'colour, 'self-centred', 'nurse',

'curled' and 'blue', which each appearonce, are of some significance in

that theseare words which reappearfrequently and at regular intervals

throughout the novel, often at crucial points. Sometimesthe words are

changed slightly, however, either in senseor in form. Thus 'blue' (p4)

becomes 'blues' (p75) and 'blue-green' (p 198), while the word 'nurse!,

used here to indicate a child-minder, occurs elsewhereat crucial points in

the novel4 but in referenceto nursesin a hospital.

E. g. p1l,and pl 30 whereClaudia miscarries Tom's baby. 142

The secondkey sceneI wish to examineis on pp75-79. In this scene,the Moon Tiger, an insectrepellent, bums while Claudiaand Tom makelove, and afterwardswhile they lie awake,talking.

The two words, 'Moon Tiger, appearsix times here, three of these within six lines of each other, at the beginning of the scene. These two words however first appearin the novel on p5O,where Claudia, watching a television programmeabout the SecondWorld War years later remembers the smell of the Moon Tiger. In the sceneset in Egypt, the smoky coil, which glows in unison with Tom's cigarette,becomes emblematic of the passingof time, and by the end of the scenethe Moon Tiger is:

',, almost entirely burnt away.'

Although the words'Moon Tiger' do not appearagain after this scene,the word 'cigarette'recurs more frequently throughout the novel thanvirtually any othernoun.

Otherwords which appear(pp75-79) and which arerepeated throughout the novel are the colours'green, 'red' and 'grey', thoughof the three,the colour'red', which appearstwice, (pp75-76)is the most commoncolour in the novel, again,like 'blue'appearing often in compositeforms suchas

'blood-red'(p 17). In fact, 'red'is oneof the most frequentlyrepeated adjectivesin the wholenovel, appearing over twenty times.

The word 'innocent'appears three times here, (p77) and againthroughout the novel, asdoes the phrase'apportioning the blame'. Claudiafrequently wondersabout the point of sufferingin history andrails at God for this.

Tied in with this, thereare many phrases throughout the novel implying a senseof guilt. 143

Tom confessesin this sceneto a fear of 'largedogs' and the word

'dogs',along with 'red',is one of the mostrecurrent in the novel. Again, this word often appearsas part of a compositeword, suchas 'hang-dog'or 'dog-tired',and togetherwith the related'Labrador, 'Spaniel'and 'Fox terrier'appearsmore frequently than most. 5

The word 'egocentric'reappears as Tom describeshis adolescence, during which time he sayshe becameless so. 'Egocentric'is a word usuallyused in connectionwith Claudia!s lover in later life, Jasper,and the two menare implicitly contrastedhere via this word.

Oneother word which appearstwice here(p77) and which is important throughoutthe restof the novel is 'mother, as arethe two words 'Home Counties'.

Thefinal scenewhich I wishto examinefor linguisticcontent occurs on ppl37-138, andit describeswhat haspreviously only beenimplied in the novel,that is, that Claudiaand her brotherGordon have had an incestuous relationshipin their youth. This is hintedat in a scenewhich, though occurringlater chronologically,is describedat an earlierpoint in the novel.6

In the earlierscene (p74), while Tom andClaudia are on a trip to the tomb of a pharaoh,the subjectof incestarises. The phrase'thefaint stir of interest'prefigures the useof the word 'incest'in the following line.

Similarly on p138,after the brotherand sisterkiss, the word 'incest'does not appearas such but is notablefor its absence,and is suggestedby the quasi-Joycean'in=-like' only two paragraphslater (p13 8).

5 E. g. see pages 31,42,43,43,51,72,77,86,97,98,102,169,170 and 174. 6 1.e. thus underlining Claudia's view on chronology and memory, 144 The kiss betweenthe siblings is describedin the following terms:

'his tongue between her lips, her mouth opening.. ' (p138).

In the sceneat the pharaoh'stomb, Claudia is suddenly 'erotically possessed'at the sightof a pictureof thepharaonic couple (who are siblings) on the tomb, and thereaftershe and Tom kiss:

'his tgngue searching her mouth.. ' (p74).

The 'erotic possession',described in the scenefrom her childhood,is suggestedby the frequentrepetition of- 'slow, quick, quick, slow', andby: 'body body (p137). to ....again thigh to thigh

"Ibigh' is a sexualword throughoutthe novel,and, in the secondkey scenementioned above, Tom:

'.. lays a hand on her thigh' (p76).

I now wish to look at KingsleyAmis's novel, The Old Devils, which won the BookerPrize in 1986.This novelis setin Walesand is abouta groupof friends,recently refired, who arecoming to termswith the onslaughtof old age. Most of themfind this difficult, and part of this is dueto the fact thatthere are still somepainful memoriesfrom the past. The catalystfor the actionin the novelis thenews that Alun Weaver,a hack writer anda philanderer,and his wife Rhiannon,are coming back to live in Wales.

The first sectionof ChapterOne (pp I- 10)is the first of threescenes which I wish to examine.Here, Malcolm andGwen Cellan-Davies have 145 just receiveda letter from the Weaversannouncing their intention to return to Wales.

There are severalkey words and word groups here, the most noticeable of which is the pairing 'no/not', and the large number of words which end with 'n't', for example, 'wouldnT, 'can't', 'haven't'. The first page has a description of a gesturewhich the rather sour Gwen makes:

'., when she was putting something to someone, often a possible negative view of a third party' (pl), andthis setsthe tonefor muchof thevocabulary in this section. Relatedto thesenegative terms is the frequentoccurrence of the words 'down'and 'lower'.

Wordsindicating location make up a significantgrouping here, and this underlinesthe specifically Welsh setting of the novel. Wales' appearsin the very first sentenceand Wales, or the idea of Wales,is a greatunifying themein the novel. Thereare many Welsh or Welsh-soundingplace names heresuch as'Llanelli'and the fictional 'Mynydd Tywyll'. 'Welsh'also appearsfrequently, both as a descriptivenoun and alsoas the language.

Given the themeof old age,it is perhapsnot surprisingto find a large numberof termswhich dealwith the passingof time. Theseinclude'a long time ago' (p3), 'thirty-five years'(p3), 'not now' (p7), 'two minutes' (p6) andmany others. Relatedto this is thehigh incidenceof numbersand quantities,for example,'one' (pl), 'a few' (p2), 'two, (p4), and 'sixty- one' (p5), andthese again indicate an increasingawareness of age.

Thereis a strongcorrelation between these words andword groupsand thosewhich recurin a laterscene, (pp237-241), where Alun and Charlie's wife neglectto pickup Charliefrom the local pub at Birdarthurand instead 146 make love outside. Charlie is terrified of the dark, and in attempting to

return to the houseon his own, becomesso disturbed that it is necessaryto

caUhis brotherVictor in orderto calmhim down.

From the beginning of the sentence'rhey arrived back at the cottage..'

(p237), to the paragraphwhich ends 'finally Victor arrived' (p241), there is

again a very high incidence of 'no', 'not' and words ending in 'n't', though

there is no corresponding recurrenceof 'down' and 'lower'. Neitheris

there a stresson place names,though unavoidably and less noticeably at

this advancedpoint in the novel, the namesof severalcharacters appear

frequently. There is again a high occurrenceboth of phrasesreferring to the

passing of time (e. g. 'still' (p239); 'then' (p238); 'lately' (p238)) and also

words indicating numbers and quantities (e. g. 'two' (p237, p239); 'fifteen'

(p238); 'two hundred' (p239); and 'several times' (p240)).

The final scenewhich I wish to examineis centralthematically and structurallyto the novel,coming as it doesalmost exactly in the centreof the book.

HereMalcolm andRhiannon, who hada relationshipin the past,go on a

day'souting. Malcolm presentsRhiannon with a whole list of factsrelating to the dateof a previousvisit to the spotwhere they stop. Rhiannon

pretendsthat shetoo remembersthe detailsof a day which hasobviously

meanta greatdeal to Malcolm. The truth of the matteris, however,that she is unableto rememberanything, and suddenly her duplicity becomes

obviousto Malcolm (p167). Frommid-way down p167until the endof the

chapter(p169), Malcolm is, first of all, bitterly disappointed,then attempts to comfort Rhiannon,who by this point is in tears.

The passagedeals with thetheme of rememberingand of not beingable to remember,and the words 'remember','remembered' or 'remembering'are 147 repeated,in total, eight times. The senseof current ability being compared with past potential is underlined by the frequent use of 'still' and 'now', and also in 'could' and 'would'. Again the words 'no' and 'not' recur frequently and also there is a stresson words indicating location, including place names. Numbers and quantities are also in evidence again in 'a few',

'twelfth', 'twice, and in the date '17th June 1867' (p167).

In additiona groupof wordsand phrases expressing emotional states, particularlysad feelings, is noticeable.These include 'sorely missed', 'helplessly','disappointmenV, 'unashamed intensity' (all p167), 'feelings, 'hopeless','worry', 'wretchedly'(p168) and 'pleasure'and 'dreamily'

(p169). This groupof wordsis morein evidencehere than in the other passages,and thereis alsomore description here. Furthermore,direct speechis interspersedwith shortparagraphs of narrative.

Thusit canbe seenthat thereare more striking links betweenkey words andgroups of wordsin eachof the threepassages here than in the previous novelsmentioned, in thatcertain groups are constant in eachpassage.

The final Bookerwinner which I wish to examinefrom the period 1980- 1989,is KazuoIshiguro's novel, The Remainsof the Day.

The narratorof thenovel is Stevens,formerly butler to Lord Darlington of DarlingtonHall, andnow servingout the remainingyears of his life the Mr Farraday.Mr Farraday, American,, under new owner, an - encouragesStevens to takethe car andgo on a motoringtrip. Thus,the butlerdecides to usethe opportunityto visit a fonner colleague,Miss

Kenton,who is now marriedand living in the WestCountry,, As the novel progresses,however, it becomesclear that the main reasonMiss Kenton left DarlingtonHall her love for Stevens. was unrequited ý: ,-ý-- 148

In this novel,which is setin 1956,it is probablytrue to saythat the way languageis usedas a whole,for examplethe use of circumlocutionin order to indicatethe stuffinessof thenarrator, is moreimportant than the recurrent useof individual wordsor phrases,though it is true thatcertain phrases do recurthroughout. The generalpatterns in the author'suse of language howeverare usually more noticeable in passagesof narrativethan in those of directspeech.

The first scenewhich I wish to examinecomes in threeshort paragraphs on pp28-29,and its importancelies in thefact that it introducesStevens' ideason whatmakes a greatbutler. This themeis crucialto the novel,not only in that it is somethingabout which theusually reserved Stevens seems to feel strongly,but alsoin that it is Stevens'attempts at perfectionin this areawhich haveeffectively cut him off from his feelingsand, above all, from his ability to love.

'Great'and 'greatness'are repeated several times here, as they am throughoutthe novel. Stevens'recalls' discussions on the topic in the past, ('recall'being a preferredverb throughoutthe text), which took placein the

'servantshall', andduty-related vocabulary dominates the passage.This includesthe words 'profession'and 'professionals',which togetherwith

'professionalism'recur throughoutthe novel, 'servants,'butler', which, predictably,appears several times, and the word 'employee'which occurs severaltimes here. The word 'understand,used here, recurs throughout the novel andis oftenused ironically, since this is the one thing that Stevens cannotdo.

The secondcrucial scene I wish to examineoccurs (pp103-109) when Stevens'agedfather, also formerly a butler, takesill and dies. Stevens, however, carrieson attendingto the delegatesat the confýrcncewhich is 149 taking place at the Hall, and there is a contrastmade throughout this passage,between his concern for Dupont, a guest who has sore feet, and his unwillingness to pull himself away from dudes to attend to his dying father.

There is somesuggestion of emotion on the part of Stevens,and this is conveyed in the repetition of the phrase'all right'(pI05). The fact that

Stevensdenies three times that there is anything wrong, and by extension denieshis feelings for his father, implies a Biblical allusion.7 That this parallel is intendedis suggestedby the conversationtaking place in the background,where a Belgian clergyman usesthe word 'heretical' twice.

Throughoutthis novelthere is a high numberof words andphrases indicatingregret, and in this passagethe phrase'I'm sorry' is repeated throughoutto underlineStevens' unexpressed regret at the deathof his fatherand his remorseat his own behaviour.The contrastmade between the plight of Dupontand that of Stevens'father is furtherhighlighted by the contextin which the phraseoccurs. While Miss Kenton uses'I'm sorry'to expressher condolencesat the deathof Stevens'father,(p106) Stevens himselfuses the phraseto apologiseto Dupontfor his lack of aid. In additionthe phraseis alsoused by thebutler (p107) to expresslack of comprehensionwhen one of the gueststeases him.

The word 'good're-appears in this passage,and is usedseveral times in the dialoguewhich takesplace between Stevens and Dupont (pIO7).

Throughoutthe novel,Stevens' attention to duty is illustratedby the use of the word 'immediately'in thatit is linked with the buder'sability to fulfil his dutiessatisfactorily. In this passage(plO7), his senseof failing is

7 1.e. Peter'sdenial of Christin the NewTestament. The name'Stevens! itself suggestsan ironicallusion to Stephen,the first martyrof the Christianchurch, the implicationhere being that Stevensis supposedto be seen as a martyrto duty. 150 expressedin his admissionto Dupont (p107) that'assistanceis not avaable'.

The final scenewhich I wish to examinehere takes place (pp232-240) when the ageing Stevensmeets up with Miss Kenton, now Mrs Benn, in the tea lounge of a hotel in the West Country. ['Going in through the door.'.. (p232)] In a manner not dissimilar to Brookner's technique in

Hotel du Lac, the words 'grey' and 'gloom', and the stress on the fact that there is poor light and bad weatheroutside are all usedto expressemotional states.

The fact that emotions are touchedupon, albeit obliquely, justifies the recurrence of the words 'surprisingly', and 'strangers'since elsewhere in the novel Stevens'inability to cope with spontaneitymeans that 'surprises' are often accompaniedby a senseof 'alarm'.

Throughoutthis passage,as elsewhere in the novel,phrases such as 'turn back the clock' (p239),and 'for a long time (p238), re-introducethe theme of the passingof time. Thereis a frequentjuxta-positioning of pastand presenthere, and as with KingsleyAmis's novel, specifically of past capabilitieswith thelimitations that accompany old age.

Again, asbefore, this is a high frequencyand variety of wordsrelated to duty, and theseagain include 'professional','professionalism, and 'work'. Although the word 'personal'appears several times here,Stevens avoidsthe issueof emotionalcommitment, and thus the implied 'close relationship'between himself and Mrs Bennis expressedin termsof a 'closeworking relationship'(p234).

The word 'immediately'again occurs (p235), as doesthe verb,'recall', i anda senseof culpabilityis expressedin Stevensrepetition of i he phrase 151 'forgive me' and in the appearance,yet again, of 'I'm sorry'. 'Good'

(p235 and p237) and 'kind' (p239, p240), also recur and Mrs Benn's phrase 'some trivial little thing' (p239) mirrors Stevens'use of 'quite WYW' (P5).

Ishiguro's overall theme, and his use of recurrent phrasesto suggestthe passingof time 8 show similarities with The Old Devils, and as I have mentioned there are similarities betweenBrookner's technique and

Ishiguro's ways of suggestingsadness and unexpressedemotion in the final scenewhich I have looked at above.

I now wish to turn to the four novelswhich did not win the Booker

Prize. As it wasincluded on the shortlistthe yearIshiguro's novel won, the first novelwhich I shallconsider here, though chronologically it occurs at the endof the periodcovered, is JamesKelman's A Disaffection.

In 1984Kelman's novel The BusconductorHines had beenone of those originally submittedfor theprize. However,the Chairmanof the panelof judgesthat year,Richard Cobb, had singled out the novel without actually namingit in his afterdinner speech, and criticised it for its useof the vernacular.Here in A Qisaffectionthe same use of Glaswegiandialect meansthat the issueof languageis givenan extradimension.

PatrickDoyle, thecentral character in A Disaffection,has gradually becomecynical about life in general,and specifically about being a teacher. In particularhe is cynicalabout the teacher's role as authorityfigure in a societythat he seesto be basicallycorrupt and immoral. Doyle acknowledgesthat he takesthings too seriously,but he feelsalienated from the majority of the peoplewith whom he hascontact. He is in love with

8 In the first paragraphof the novel,for example,Ishiguro'(p3) rather cleye suggeststime runningon throughthe use of a progressionof phrasesimPlYing ever-increasinglengths of time. Thus,'some days' proceedsto'five or six days', then 'a fortnight,and finally'five weeks% 152 Alison Houston, a teacherat the school where he works however, Alison is married. Doyle frequently debatesin his own mind, firstly, whether or not he really is in love with her, and secondly,if so, whether or not it would be appropriate to confront her. Towards the end of the novel he does, finally, manageto broach the subject.

At the beginning of the book, Doyle, who has clearly felt this way for some time, finds a set of electricians'pipes round the back of the local Arts

Centre, and thereafterhe startsto make plans to changehis life. Playing on the pipes takeson a quasi-spiritualsignificance for Doyle, in that this somehow managesto put him in touch with his feelings. In time, however, he realisesthat the pipes are no substitutefor human contact.

In the first passageI havechosen to examine(pp 1 -6), Doyle's disaffectionis outlinedbriefly, thenthere is a descriptionof him finding the pipes,and the fact that this seemsto havea positiveeffect on him. His feelingsfor the groupof teacherswith whomhe hasbeen out drinking are thendescribed, and in particularhis feelingsfor Alison. Therethen follows a passageof dialoguebetween Doyle andAlison ashe drivesher home.

After this, he goesback to his own flat with the pipes,and decides to go to bed. The sceneends with him lying awakein in bed,thinking abouthis fellow teachers.

The most frequentlyrecurring words here are 'pipes',19miled'and

'smiling', 'fucking', 'something','nothing' and 'anything, and 'happy' and 'happiness'.There is also frequentuse of the words 'warm' and 'warmth', and 'cold', and 'coldness'(p5), firstly, in relation to the lack of heatin the flat, thenin relationto the lack of emotionalwan-nth. 'Glanced',

'nodded','stared', and 'shook'are all importanthere and they recur throughoutthe novel, the latter usually in thecontext of Doyle or Alison shakingtheir heads. 153

This passageis extremelyimportant both thematically and also since the appearanceof the word 'pipes'initiates a recurrentuse of alliterationon 'p', usually,though not always,at the beginningof words.9 Wordsbeginning with 'p' area centralfocus of Doyle'sthoughts and his own nameis, at times,transformed in his mind to 'P for Pat' (e. g. p 109).

In the secondscene which I wish to examine(p37), the importanceof wordsbeginning with the letterp'is reflectedin oneof Doyle'sfrequent musingson the Pythagoreans.Furthermore, not only does'Pythagorean' beginwith 'p', but the Pythagoreansthemselves reduced everything, includingnames, to numbers(p37). ThusDoyle's initials becomereduced to:

'16: 4 based on the twenty-six letter roman alphabet.. '

Kelman'suse of languagein this novelis notablefor the awarenessit displaysof the musicof spokenlanguage 10, and,in particular,of

Glaswegianspeech. There is a developmenthere of the themeof the sound andof the appearanceof words. Doyle believesthat certainconsonants, as they appearin names,are essential for survival. The 'n' soundat the end of names,which is apparentin theChristian names of the supplyteacher,

Norman,and that of Alison, aswell asin the surnameof Milne, Doyle.s headmaster,appears to him to be necessaryfor survival in the world.

Patricksympathises with Desmond,a colleaguewhom he usuallydislikm in that his nameends with a V. This, Doyle believes,is as unfortunateas having a namewhich endsin V, suchas Patrick (pp36-37).

9 This can be seen,for example,on pp4-5. 'The Vip-escould be lookedup-on as a surrogatepet. Even betterl A surrogate childl Or wife for god sakel In fact thesevery 2iges representedthe wholewide world. Withthese Vipes in tow anythingwas possible. Nayl P_robable.' 10 E. g. see the'music'of the letterbox beingflapped by the policeman(p58) and of his fatheeswhistling sounds (pl 18). 154 Inspiteof early hopesthat the pipes could become a surrogatepet, child, or wife, Doyle realises(p157) that:

',,. playing the pipes was not a substitute for sex. '

He remains pre-occupiedby Alison, and eventually, after leaming that he is to receive a transfer to anotherschool, he arrangesto meet up with her, as usual, in a bar. The final scenewhich I wish to look at here is the meeting which takes betweenthem (pp228-236).

Here,Alison allows him to touchher handfor thefirst time. Sheseems to be fairly confusedabout her feelingsfor him, however,she tells Doyle that shedoes not want to havea relationshipwith him sinceit would be too 'complicated'(p230). Doyle acceptsthis andfinds himself trying to make her feel better,as she seems upset. They sit closeto oneanother, then Doyle makesthe mistakeof askingAlison if sheloves her husband.At this point shedecides it is time theyleft. Outsideshe tells him the questionwas unfair, andshe worries that the peoplein the barwill haveoverheard their conversation.However, she still allowsDoyle to hold her and to kiss her forehead.Then, refusing a lift, shetakes a taxi home,leaving Doyle wonderingif he shouldfollow in his car.

Words which recur hereinclude 'smiled', 'something I 11,'head' and

'forehead',the phrase'shook his (or her) head',and againthe verbs 'nodded','grinned' and 'gazed'. Thereis also a recurrenceof 'tomato juice'as, onceagain, Doyle attemptsto impressAlison by not drinking. 'Cigarette','smoke', 'crazy' and 'daft' all recur.

The fact thatDoyle basdiscovered the pipesto be no substitutefor sexis reflectedin theuse of languagehere. This can be seenboth in the absence of the word 'pipes'and in the fact that wordswhich were previouslyused

Alisonis describedas being'somethingspecial'(p4)., 155 to refer to the pipes are now usedin relation to Alison. Thus, where earlier he carried a pipe under each 'elbow', here he puts his hand on the side of

Alison's 'elbow'. Likewise, where before he took the pipes back to a

'cold' flat, here he standsout in the 'cold' with her. Furthermore, alliteration tends to fall on words beginning with V rather than with 'p', and, for example, 'smile'although it appearedin the first passageabove is far more frequent here.

However,it is not all progress.Where before Alison wasseen to be

'noticingeverything' (p2), at thebeginning of this sceneshe does not even 'notice' Doyle (p228).

There are significant new elementsin this passage. 7ouchis repeated very frequently here, as is the word 'hand, and neither of these figures in the initial passage.Other significant new elementsare the repetition within the passageof 'sorry' and 'I'm sorry', and the repetition of phrases which

Alison usesto tell Pat that she doesnot want to go out with him. 12

Thereis a recurrencehere of the words'fucking' and 'fuck', but these are lessfrequent here thanelsewhere. 'Fuck', 'fucking, and 'fuck off appearthroughout the novel,and the appearanceof 'fuck off usually signifiesDoyle's attempts to veeraway from particularlypainful thoughts. Indeed,it is a repetitionof thesetwo wordswhich endsthe novel (p337).

However,the function of 'fuck' and of 'fucking' overall, is that they effectivelyprovide a linguisticunity in the text. The wordsrecur throughout,in the midst of shifts of emphases,and movesfrom narrativeto direct speech,and although'fuck'figures frequentlyin Kelman'swork, its presencehere helps to underlinethematically Doyle's lack of 'a fuck'.

12E. g. c. Ult wouldjust makethings so complicated'and'It wouldmake UýWa so complicated(p230) and JW= are alwaysso complicated'(p233). Also'Ldgat MfW21to have a relationship.with ye (p230),and Tdont . want a relationshipwith Me' (p232);also, 'I just can'thave a relationshipwith ya' andliust can't (p232). Finally,'I'm not going to hilve a relationship_with.W (p235). 156

The appearanceof suchlanguage in this novelhowever probably did not increaseits chancesof winningthe BookerPrize. The sameis true of the languageof Martin Amis's Money.

Here languageis usedto reflect the themeof the book, which is the pornography of money. In a materially oriented society, nothing has any inherent value. Money, however, is essential,since it buys instant gratification of all appetites. The languageof the novel reflects this in that it is fast-paced,throwaway and immediate,and this immediacy is strengthenedby the high proportion of direct speech. Amis's narrator,

John Self, furthermore, lacks a formal narrative style. He is spontaneous, confiding, explicit about his faults and his obsessions.

Languagealso helps to conveythe senseof dislocationin the novel. Self'slanguage is colloquial,yet it is a colloquialspeech which belongsto no oneplace and is a mixtureof AmericanEnglish, cockney, and Self's own highly individual slang.

Tle highly complexplot of Moneycentres on theattempt by ex-tv commercialdirector Self to getfunding in Americafor his new film, originally to be titled "GoodMoney". Self flits backand forth from

Londonto New York, while at the sametime indulginghis obsessionwith pornography,and attempting to trackdown his nubile,money-fixated lover, SelinaStreet. The plot of the film, is basedon incidentsin Self's life. However,Doris Arthur, the lesbianscreenwriter brought in to dramatisethe scenario,presents a travestyof SeIrs original idea. At this point, Self draftsin the servicesof Martin Amis, a writer who lives nearby, to re-writethe screenplay. 157 Central to the action of the novel is the youthful figure of Fielding

Goodney, a producerwhom Self has previously met on a trip to Los

Angeles. Goodney constantlyurges Self to spendever-increasing amounts of money on expenses.However what Self does not realise is that all the time Goodney is actually defrauding him of his own money. This is possible becauseof Self's surname,which Goodney gets him to countersignon official documentsrelated to finance.

I wish to look at three passagesin this novel, firstly, Self's visit to a brothel on Third Avenue (pp98-101),then (ppl3l-136), SeIrs meeting with his beautiful friend Martina Twain, and, finally, (pp373-379), the scenewhere Self and Amis play a gameof chessprior to Self s 'suicide attempt.'

In the first passage,Amis teasesthe reader by usingvocabulary that can be readsubliminally as sexual. For example,the readeris encouragedto makethe assumption that Self anda prostituteare talking aboutsome sexual act whenSelf asksher:

'Yeah, do do? Use blow-dry well what you .... the after the towels or what? 1' (P99)

In fact they are talking abouthow to dry hair, and the word 'rug, usedto mean'haie,isone of the mostfrequent in this passage.Ile reader howeveris clearly meantto think of 'blow-job' when reading'blow-dry', and certainly 'blow-job'featuresthroughout the novel up to this point.

An importantword grouphere, as elsewhere in the novel, is thosewords. which imply two of anything, Theseinclude 'two',

'double-fisted','second', and 'both, and the word 'Twine' in the song that Self humspre-figures his latermeeting with MartinaTwain, whose surnamealso has connotations of, doubles. 158 Given what is in manyways a highly misogynistictext, it is interestingto look at the wordsused here to describewomen. Theseinclude 'sex- stewardess','women', 'girl', 'chicle, 'heft-dispenser', 'unit', and 'bimbo'. Oneof the generalfeatures of the text is that womentend to be

referredto purelyin termsof theirsexual function, and this is clearlyrelated to Amis'smessage that in a materialisticsociety, everything becomes a

commodity,even women. 13 'She-she',the nameof one of the prostitutes, is the mostrepeated word in this passage.

Alcohol, anotherof Self'smany addictions, is describedseveral times here

and is usually referredto by the word 'drink'. Liquid in general,however, is suggestedin the words 'cordially', 'brothel','whine', and 'bargirl'.

Evenin a brothelSelf cannotforget money, perhaps especially not here,

andvocabulary to do with moneyfeatures largely in this passage.Money-

related words include 'dough, 'wallet', 'money',and 'Pricey', and the closelink betweenmoney and sex is reflectedin the descriptionof a girl as a 'cashier'.

One of the wordswhich recursconstantly throughout the book is 'handjob',seen here on p98. 'Handjobs'are seenthroughout as the

ultimateinstant gratification (see also p314). UsuallySelf supplieshis own.

In the secondpassage, Self meetsup with MartinaTwain, andthe cultural 'tone'of the novel is allowedto develophereafter. Above all, the word

which is indicativeof this is 'aesthetics'which recursseveral times hem (pp130-136).This word alsoallows Amis to comparethe two disparate valuesystems of Martinaand John. Self'sunderstanding of the word is

13 E. g. In a storytold to arouseSelf, Selina describes herself on top of an unnamedman as havingbeen: I I'mjust (p74). ... a cock, a cock' 159 related only to cosmeticdentistry, whereasMartina's is related to art and literature. Linked to 'aesthetics'is the word 'beautiful', used firstly to describeMartina, then Selina, then Ossie,Martina's husband. The word

'dog', which is introducedhere is important in that it ties up with the later use of the word by Goodney,and also with constantreferences to Othello.

One of Amis's themesthroughout the novel is that literature, ar4 and culture in generalare necessaryfor any meaningful relationships, and Self decidesin this scenethat it is time he readmore. The sensitivity which

Twain brings is reflected in the recurrenceof the phrase'loved one, and in the repeateduse of the words 'smile', and 'laugh', and it is noticeable that words used to describewomen in this passageare generally more respectful, though 'chicks' appearsagain (p 136) as does 'rape', the latter being a recurrent themein the novel.

Self'sthoughts constantly return to Selina,whom he suspectsof infidelity, and the words 'faithful', 'unfaithful' and 'hyperunfaithful'are important here. In addition,'known, 'unknown',and 'unknowing' are all repeated.

In this passagetoo, however,there are constant sexual undertones. Even Selfs desireto expandhis knowledgeis expressedin sexuallysuggestive terms.14 Linked to this is the recurrenceof the word 'money.

In thefinal passagewhich I havechosen to examine(pp373-379), Self Martin Amis, in and thecharacter, engage a chessmatch. - The most frequentlyrepeated words hereare 'knight', 'pawn' and 'king', howeverit is anotherchess term, 'zugzwang', which, althoughnot especiallyfrequent here,is thematicallycentral. Self, throughoutthe novel, hasbeen 'forced to

14E. g. '...if you'resmall and the thing you evade Is big (haveyou everhad this dream?), thenthe only place to hideis a placewhere the bigthing can't fit' (pl 35). 160 move'15, theimplication being that everyone in a materialisticsociety is, and the word 'move'itself is alsofrequent here.

Words which indicate a double nature again recur. Thus, 'double' appearsfrequently and Self andAmis arein a sense'doubles' of eachother. The doppelgaengertheme has been introduced earlier in thename of

Martina's Alsatian dog, Shadow,and in this passagethe two participants in the gameof chessare seen in contrastwith eachother, one white, one black, though the word 'black' is more frequent here than 'white'.

Otherthemes which havebeen important earlier are reprised here through the recurrenceof certain words, and the most important of theseare

'beautiful' and 'money'.

The word 'dog',which wasalso introduced earlier is essentialhere. Self hasmentioned his 'tinnitus'on severaloccasions, (e. g. p99) and in this passagethe characterAmis suggeststhat what Self heardas 'new mandog' whenhe punchedGoodney was in fact'inhumandog'. 1 r, Here then there is a repriseof the O&Ilo motif.

In A Far Cjý! from Kensin2L=,which is setin 1954,Muriel Spark skilfully intertwinesseveral recurrent themes, and, as with her earlier

Booker-shordistednovel Loitering with Intent,there is a high level of interconnectionamong the characters in the novel. Inevitablyboth of these characteristicallySparkian traits are reflected in the recurrentuse of certain words andphrases.

15The characterAmis's translation of 'zugzwang'. 16 E. g., see Qjhello Act V, sc.l. Neverthelessthe misheardphrase is linked thematicallyto Selfsrebirth' afterfalling dead drunk on to rose bushesin the wakeof Martina'sdinner party, and alsoto Self seeinghis fate as beingin some way linkedto that of Martina'sdog (seep337). 161 Spark'scentral characterand the narrator of the novel, is known only as

'Mrs Hawkins'at the start of the book. She is one of the many tenantsof

14 Church End Villas, Kensington, and she works for the publishing company, Ullswater Press. As the novel progresses,so too does Mrs

Hawkins. She begins to be called by her first name, 'Nancy', she loses weight, and she also startsa relationshipwith William, one of the other tenantsin the house. However, Nancy also managesto lose severaljobs on account of her criticism of the hack writer, Hector Bartlett, whom she labels a'pisseur de copie'. It is this phrase,above all, which provokes outrage and it is the sourceof much comedy in the novel.

Bartlettis the prodigyof the successfulnovelist Emma Loy, andas a result of Loy's intervention,Nancy is sacked,firstly from herjob at Ullswater Press,then from her nextpost with the publishersMacKintosh and Tooley.

The interconnectionof charactersin the novelhowever ensures that Mrs

Hawkinsgains alternative employment each time throughher contacts. However,these interconnections have a sinisterside, and it transpiresthat the loathsomeBartlett has links with oneof her fellow residentsin Kensington,Wanda, the Polish seamstress, and alsowith her employerat MacKintoshand Tooley. Indeed,it turnsout that Bartlettis indirectly responsiblefor the Polishwoman's suicide.

The threescenes in the novelwhich I wish to examinein moredetail are, firstly, HectorBartlett's initial appearancein the novel (pp45-50);secondly (pp141-145), the scenewhere Nancy comes home to discoverthat Wanda hascommitted suicide, and, finally, the scenewhere Nancy encounters Bartlett againafter a gapof thirty years(ppl 88-189). 162 The most striking featureof the first passageis the repetition of the phrase

'pisseur de copie',17 and its shortenedform 'pisseur' (p49). Spark's techniquethroughout the novel can be seenin the constantrepetition, in one form or another, of certain phrases. Here, for example, she repeatsthe phrases:

was a clear day in June', and:

'.. it was a Monday', l 8 which originaflyoccur on p46.

In this passage,there are several words and phrases related to religion, which is a constanttheme throughout the novel. Theseinclude 'church', (P46,twice), 'Kyrie' and 'Kyrie Eleison, (p46, p47) and 'souls' (p45).

Wordswhich suggestnuance and insinuation are used frequently here. Theseinclude 'implication' (p45), 'suppositions'(p45), discern'(p46),

'impress'(p48), 'presumed'(p48), and 'influence'(p48), and they all tie in with the themeof the passage,which is Bartlett'sattempt to get an introductionto Martin Yorlesuncle through Nancy. The themeof nepotism is alsostressed by the frequentrepetition of the names'Hector B artletV,

'EmmaLoy', 'Martin Yorkand 'S. T. York, and Bartlett's wish for an introductionto S. T. York is contrastedwith Nancy'sactual introductionto Hugh Ledererthe previousday.

Throughoutthe novel Sparkfrequently uses the verbs'call 'and 1mccV, andboth featurein this passage.Nancy's intended destination is her office, andthe word'office'is repeatedfxquently here. Indeed,office-related 17 E. g. p45[twice], p47, p48, and p50, In fact'Pisseurde copie'and the word f isseuein totalare repeated more than thirty times throughout the novel. 8 E. g. see: '..this fresh Monday morning in June'(p47), and: '..my fresh June morning' (p48). 163 vocabulary recurs throughoutthe novel. There is also a group of words which arerelated to literary matters,including 'writer', 'writers', 'publishers,'published', 'authors' and 'literary'.

Alliterationis frequentthroughout the novel. In additionto what it adds to the sound quality of the proseit also functions 19as a reminder of certain themesand points up certain characteristicsof thosewho appearin the novel. In this passage,as throughout, there is a repetition of W, and here it helps to draw attention to the word 'writer'. 20 However, there is also frequent repetition here of W, and, less frequently, of 'p', V, T,

's', 'h' and 'th'.

The secondscene which I wish to examine occurs on pp 141-143. Here,

Nancy receivesthe news that Wanda Podolak has committed suicide. A contrast is made betweenWanda's 'handbU' with 'the pape s inside', and

Nancy's 'bn I with the 'slip of =r I in it (see p142). Other recurrent words here are 'letters', 'suicide', and 'policeman' and there are references to religion once again in 'Catholic' (p 142), 'priest' and 'devout. Theword

Isoul' again appears,in Eva Carlin's reference to Wanda as a 'poor soul'

(p 142), and this is echoed in her husband's'poor thing' (p 143).

The words 'othee,'room' and 'motive' or 'motives'are repeated severaltimes, as arethe phrases'fished out too late' (e. g. seep 143)and 'unsoundmind', (p142 and p143).

'Know' is a preferredverb throughoutthe novel and 'knew' appears severaltimes here as does'known'. Here too, as throughoutthe novel, the narratoris very preciseabout time, andthis can be seenin the phrases: 19 Spark'sawareness of soundin her prosemay also be seen in the focus on idiosyncrasiesof certaincharacters' speech. For example,ivy, the Ullswater Presstelephonist makes her'n's soundlike'd's, 'so that namesounded like dame' (p45),and Sir AlecTooley frequently repeats the phrase'In fact'(p72). 20 On p46, moreover,there is alsoassonance and a visual half-rhymein: 'His WrlingWfthed.. 164

'It was nearly eight o'clock' (p141) and,

'At about seven o'clock' (p141).

Alliteration on W throughout this passagereinforces the senseof loss since it is the first letter of Wanda'sname, and this is also in evidence in the third passageI wish to look at.

In the shortfinal chapterof thenovel, (ppl88-189) which takesplace thirty yearslater, Nancy is now marriedto William, andis on holiday in Tuscanywhen she meets up with HectorBartlett. The alliterationon the 1w'in the first sentencehere again helps to remindthe trader of Wanda's death21, however,there is alsoalliteration on Y, 'th' and on V in this passage(p188).

The word 'voice'is recurrenthere, as it is in the previouspassage, and the office-relatedvocabulary which is commonthroughout the novelis againseen here in the referenceto Bartlett'slaugh as being:

',.. like a typewriter' (p189).

The word 'telephone'appears yet againhere (p188), and telephonesare importantfeatures throughout the novel. This is linked with the recurrence of the verb 'call'.

Again thereis preciseattention to time in this passage(p188).

21 E. g. 'Laterthat year (i. e. in 1954).whenve. Were planning thewedding, I lay ayyakefor a.While, then droAsilyfalling asleep I thoughtho. W Mfanda could make my dress,until I rememberedshe yLas dead' (pl 88). 165 Thematically, thereis a referring back to the opening pagesof the novel in

the first paragraphhere, where Nancy lies awake thinking about her life.

This is reinforced by a repetition of 'a far cry from Kensington', the phrase

which gives the novel its title, in the last sentenceof the novel on p 189.22

Perhapsinevitably there is also one final appearanceof the phrase ? isseur de Copie'(p 189).

JohnMortimer's novel Summer'sLease was first publishedin 1988.23

The storycentres on thePargeter family who rent a villa in Tuscanyfor

threeweeks during the summer holidays. Inspite of the idyllic setting however,during the course of their holidaythe watersupply is cut off anda murdertakes place. Molly Pargeter,whose idea it wasto cometo Tuscany, setsout to discovermore about the owners of thevilla, the Kettering

family. In the processshe finds out that Fosdyke,the man who was murdered,was Sandra Kettering's lover, andthat the murderwas a crime of passioncommitted by Sandra'shusband, Buck Kettering.

I will look at threecrucial incidents in the novel,and the first of these occurson pp155-158.Here, Molly hasjust discoveredthat her husband

haswritten a postcardto oneof his formerclients, Marcia Tobias, and she confrontshim with this in the eveningwhen they are both aboutto go to bed.

Thereare two imageswhich areused throughout this passage.These are,that of a legalcross-examination, with Hugh, a divorcelawyer, for

oncein the witnessbox, andthat of Molly as a diva singing an aria.

The first imageis reinforcedby the useof the words 'client' and 'clients',

'case',and 'cases,by 'justice', 'lawyer', 'truthfully', and also by the

22 1.e. the phraseoriginally occurs on p6. 23 SummeesLease won the now-defunct Glasgow Herald People's Prize in 1989. 166 phrases'he hadtold the truth (pl.57), 'Thewhole truth and nothingbut the truth' (p158), I swear'(p158), 'guilty as charged'(p159), and 'entirely innocent'(pl. 59). Similarly, the words 'divorce',and 'divorced'appear throughoutthe passage.

The operatictheme is prefiguredearlier in the novel,and reprised hereafter in the frequent referencesto Puccini's Turandot. Here the theme is suggestedin Mortimeesdescription of MoHy as:

',. a commanding figure in her white night dress.' (p156), and is even more obvious in the sentence:

'The room with its high ceiling, and the long curtains ' (pI58)- seemed to encourage such afias ..

Similarly, there is a repeateduse of the word 'voice'.

The words 'sleep'and 'smile' are repeated several times here, in eachcase relatingto Hugh. 'Courage'is an importantword hereas elsewherein the novel. It appearstwice, firstly describingMolly's'attacle on Hugh (pl56), and again,when Molly accusesHugh of not havinghad the 'courage'to be unfaithful.

in additionto wordsand phrases which arequoted from Hugh's postcard,there are repeated references back to the typedlist left by Ketteringin the book on Pierodella Francesca. In that list Kettering's statedobjective was to have:

T. lost and gone forevert and in this passagethe word 'gone'appears twice (p156). 167 'Bedroom', 'house', and 'household',all apPlar on p 156, and are linked thematicallywith 'hotel bedroom','flat', and 'maisonette',which appearon p158.

The othermost recurrent words in this passageinclude lunch', various forms of the verb 'do',commonly with a sexualimplication, (see p 158), and'nothing',which appearsseveral times as Hugh strivesto deny any sexualimpropriety with Mrs Tobias(ppl58-159). The emphatic 'absolutely'(pl. 59), 'entirely' (pl57 and pl.59), and 'of course'(pl. 57, pl.58 twice, andp159), are also used several times.

The verb 'know' is frequentthroughout these pages (e. g. p 157),as are the words 'occasionally','dreadfully', (both p156), 'paid', (pI57), and the phrase'nothing in particular'(p 15 8).

In the secondscene which I wish to examine(pp234-243), Molly's two eldestchildren, plus the visitorswho arrivedthe previousnight, decideto play a gameof charadeswhile theadults watch. This sceneis centralto the novel in that duringthe gameMolly realisesthat theUmentioned in the typedlist wasBill Fosdyke,the deadman, and that he wasprobably murderedby Buck Kettering.

The most frequentlyrecurrent words here are 'charade'and 'charades', 'mother', 'house'.the colours 'black' and 'white,, 'husband','syllable',

'bed', 'lover', 'candle',and 'two. Again there are referencesto the opera Turando is , andthere a anotherquotation of the phrase:

'... lost and gone forever', as well as a further referenceto 'KennethClark's book on Piero, 168 The final scenewhich I wish to look at is Molly's confrontationwith Buck Kettering(pp275-281), and there are many similarities between this

passageand Molly's earlierconfrontation with her husband.The word 'postcard',which appearsseveral times in the first passageis usedhere to refer to the reproductionof "TheFlagellation" which Ketteringkeeps in his room (seep276, p278). As in the earlierscene, this confrontationtakes placein a 'bedroom'(p278), and again here there are frequent occurrences of the words 'room' and 'house'.Also in commonwith the first scene,

thereis frequentrepetition of theword 'nothing'(p279; p280, six times), andagain the colour'white'is usedin relationto Molly, with regardto her 'sensible&hitQ shoes'(p280).

Hugh's 'don't be ridiculous'in the first scene(p155), is echoedin , Molly's useof the phrasehere (p280), and again the emphaticphrase'of

course%previously used by Hugh,is usedtwice hereby Molly (p278). The word 'smile',which is frequentin theearlier passage as Hugh attempts to avoid Molly's ire, alsorecurs here (p276, p277, p281). Similarly, Kettering,like Hughearlier, is seensitting:

'., on the end of tht bed' (p278, p281).

Here too thereare again frequent allusions to soundand hearing, and perhapsby implicationto opera.These are discernible, in the recurrenceof

the word 'voice', (p275 and p277), and in 'sound'or 'sounds'(p276 and

p281). However,there are also several allusions to paintingand to the visual, for examplein'the Picros'(p276and p277), "The Flagellation"

(p276), 'the KennethClark book on Piero' (p279), and in 'paintings'

(p275, p280, p281). 'pictures',(p276 twice), 'picture' (p276). 'art gallery' (P276),and 'a work of art' (p278). Furthermore,verbs in this passage very often havevisual connotations,and theseinclude 'watching',(p275),

'looked', 'seemed',(all p276), and 'appeared'(p278). 169 Legal vocabularyis againemployed here. This can be seenin'evidence' (p275), 'the truth untold' (p277),'accusing' (p276), and in 'honest'(p276 and p277),and 'honesty' (p277). Furthermore,there is a repriseof the 'lost/found'theme in the wordswhich Molly saysto Ketteringconcerning his wife:

'I wonder how she felt when you foul]d out about her and Bill Fosdyke.. ' (p279).

and once again thereis a repetition of the phrase:

I JUJ and gone forever.. ' (p279).

The words 'brandy', and 'water', which are frequent throughout the

novel, are also recurrenthere and there is also frequent repetition of the words 'understand' (p278, twice; p280, twice; p281), and 'understood' (p278). 24

I shall now examinein moredetail what evidence there is to suggesta patternin the repeateduse of key wordsand word groups.

It is difficult to know exactlyhow to interpretthe above. In the first place,them are limitationsto thetype of informationwhich this kind of analysiscan provide,and the only way to proveconclusively the existence of links betweentexts is to subjectthem to detailedstylometric analysis.

However,even allowing for the limitationsof an analysisof this kind, certainpatterns do emerge.At its simplest,this meansthat theream several key wordswhich occurin morethan one text. Someam commonto texts in both groups,some occur exclusively in the textsfrom the Bookergroup, and someexclusively in controlgroup texts.

24 Herethe themý of thedetective novel Is pickedup, notonly In the actual presenceof Mollyat themotel, but also in thephrases, '-she felt whatshe had not bargained for, realdanger, and not the second handfear of detective stories' (p275), and: "Shelied, not wanting to alarmhim by herpowers of deduction'(p277). 170

There are several words which may be regardedindisputably as key words and which appearin more than one of the texts considered. Theseare the words 'grey', 'lost', 'gone', 'dog' or 'dogs', and the phrase 'I'm sorry.

For example, the word 'grey'is common to the Brookner, Lively and

Ishiguro texts. 'Lost'is a key word in both the Brookner and Mortimer novels, and so is'gone'. Dog'or'dogs'is common to the Martin Amis and Lively novels, and 'I'm sorry' to the Kelman and Ishiguro texts.

Words which areof slightly lesssignificance, though still important include 'voice'which is commonin the Sparkand Mortimer texts,and the word'hopeless',which appearsin Hotel du Lac andin The Old Dgvils

Taking theseseven examples as a groupit canbe seenthat whereany one of theseoccurs exclusively in textsfrom onegroup only, thenthere is a slightly higherrate of occurrenceof key wordswithin the Bookergroup thanwithin the controlgroup. Of theseven examples given however, four of theseappear in onetext from eachgroup.

Thereare, in addition,several words which appearin key passages selectedfrom morethan one text but which haveless claim to beingkey wordsas such since they are of moreimportance, either thematically or in termsof their rateof occurrence,in onetext thanthe other. Of thosekey wordswhich occurin the textsfrom onegroup only, a slightly larger percentageof theseare exclusive to theBooker-winning texts than those thosewhich occuronly in novelsfrom thecontrol group,

An exampleof this is the word 'cigarette',which is a key word in the selectedpassages from Lively's novel andwhich appears,though as lessof a characteristicfeature, in Kelman'snovel. The word'mother'is common to the Lively andMortimer texts, but againit is moreof a key word in - 171 Moon Jj= sinceit appearsthroughout the novel as well as in the selected

passages. 'Know'is a common verb in the Spark novel, and, to a lesser

extent, in the Mortimer and Martin Amis texts. The opposites'black' and

'white'both appearin the Mortimer and the Martin Amis texts, and usually

together, though 'black'is the more common in the Amis while'white' is

more frequent in Mortimer's novel.

In additionto theexamples given above there are some words which appearas key wordsthroughout certain novels but which for somereason do not figure in the passagesselected. Examples of theseare 'blue', which links the Lively andB rookner texts, and 'cold' which links B rooknerand Kelman'snovels. Furthermore'fish' or 'fished'is commonin the

Brookner,Kelman and Spark novels, while'mythical or 'mythological'is commonin both Lively andBrookner's novels.

It is possibleto simplify the aboveby usingthe lettersA andB to refer to occurrencesof key wordsin the Bookergroup and control grouptexts respectively.In otherwords the occurrenceof key wordsin a Booker grouptext canbe indicatedby theletter A, whilst the occurrenceof a key word in a text from thecontrol group can be indicatedby the letter B. 7bus in the caseof the indisputablekey words, 'grey', 'lost', 'gone', 'dog'. and the phrase'I'm sorry',plus the slightly lessimportant use of 'voice' and

'hopeless',the patternwould be as follows: AAA, indicatingthe occurrence of 'grey' in threeout of the four Bookertexts; AB-, AB-, AB; AB, indicating that 'lost', 'gone,'dog'. and 'I'm sorry' all occurin onetext from each group;BB, indicatingthat 'voice' is a significantword in key passages from two novelsin thecontrol group; and AA, indicating that 'hopeless'is an importantword in two of the Bookertexts.

In the caseof wordswhich arekey wordsin selectedpassages from mom thanone text but which aremore characteristic of onetext thanthe other, 172 underlining may also be usedto indicate where the occurrenceis stronger.

Thus in the caseof the words 'cigarette'and 'mothee which appearin the

lively and Kelman texts and the Lively and Mortimer respectivelythe

pattern of occurrencemay be representedas follows:

AZWAll; AB

'Know', which featuresin three'B'group texts,the Spark,Mortimer and Martin Amis shouldbe representedas BIBB, while'black', which appears in both theMortimer and Martin Amis novelsbut which is morecommon in the Amis, may be representedas BB. 'White'which alsoappears in both of thesetexts may be representedas RB.

In terms of the words 'blue', which appearsfrequently throughout the

Lively and Brookner texts, 'cold', which appearsin the Brookner and the

Kelman, 'fish' or 'fished', which appearsin the Brookner, the Kelman and

the Spark, and 'mythical/mythological' which appearsin the Lively and

Brookner novels, but not in the key passagesof any of these texts, the pattern would be:

AA; AB; ABB; AA.

Takenoverall, in termsof the occurrenceof singlewords or shortphrases within the texts,out of the sixteenexamples given above, exactly half occur in novelsfrom bothgroups. Of thosewhich occurexclusively in novels from onegroup, the overallrate of occurrencein all sixteenexamples of thoseappearing exclusively in the Bookergroup exactly matches that of wordswhich appearexclusively in novelsfrom the control group,

Thereis, however,a slight variationafforded by the appearanceof words or short phrasesin more than two texts. The words 'grey', 'know' and 'fish' or 'fished'come into this category,and herethe patternAAA, I113B 173 and BBB shows a slight bias towardsrecurrence in the control group novels.

Where the investigation is limited to the indisputablekey words and doe's not extend to any other variationson this, there is evidenceof a marginally more restricted use of vocabularyamong Booker texts, but it is hard to hold this up as conclusiveevidence to support the theory of linguistic homogeneity. Taking all three different types of occurrenceinto consideration,the evidenceis fairly inconclusive, but there is a slightly higher occurrenceof key words among the Booker group novels except for in the caseof words which appearin more than one text but which are more dominant in one of the texts than in the others. Generally speaking, this type of occurrenceis more likely to happenin control group texts than in

Booker-winning texts. However, where words in this category appearin one novel from eachgroup, the word is of more significance thematically or in terms of frequency of occurrencein the Booker texts.

In generalterms then there is someevidence to suggesta slightly more restricted vocabulary or strongersimilarity in patternsof word occurrences in the Booker texts than in the control group novels but this is by no means conclusive. However, this may in itself be of some significance with regard to the supposedlyrepresentative status of Booker-winning fiction.

Thereis oneother aspect to the issueof patternsin the useof language which must be considered. It relatesto those patterns which occur in the use of cognate or related word groups from text to text. It is here that evidence for the existenceof a linguistic unity within the Booker group is most convincing.

If oneallows for a comparisonof basicword groupsthere is a clear patternwhich occursin severaltexts in the useof vocabularyconveying 174 feelingsof loss,sadness and regret. This word groupappears in the Brookner,Kingsley Amis andIshiguro novels, and also, though to a lesser extent,in the Kelmannovel which wasalso shortlisted for the Booker. The patternis quite striking.

In addition, Kingsley Amis's novel and the Ishiguro text also show similarities in their use of many phrasesto indicate the passingof time, and by implication, the ageing process. While a characteristicfeature of Spark's novel is the scrupulousattention given by her narrator to exactly locating the time of incidents in the novel, here there is a difference of emphasis,for in

A Far Cry from Kensingto the purposeis to draw the attention of the readerto the punctiliousnessof the narrator rather than to suggestthe approachof old age and death.

To conclude,the occurrenceof individualwords and phrases gives So"W backingto theclaim of therehaving been a linguisticunity amongBooker- winning novelsof the 1980s,though in fact this is slight. Wherelinguistic unity is moreapparent however is in the relationshipswhich exist between textsin the useof wordswhich arevery similarthough not exactlythe same and which conveyvery similar meanings.What this also suggests, furthermore,is a thematiclink betweenthe Booker novels which is not apparentin thecontrol group texts. In the ChapterSix I shall investigate whetherthis suggestionof themadclinks is indeedbome out by a more detailedexamination of the texts. 175

CHAPTER SIX

'Nothing dreadful is ever done with, no bad thing gets any better; you can't be too serious. ' This seems to be the message of the Forties from whicht alas, there seems no escape, for it is closing time in the gardens of the West and from now on an artist will be judged only by the resonance of his solitude or the quality of his despair. 'l

In this final chapterof thethesis I shallexamine whether or not thereis evidenceof thematiclinks amongthe novels which won the BookerPrize during the 1980s.I shallargue that thereare indeed thematic links, but that the recurrenceof individualthemes is of lessimportance than the similarities in the treatmentof these.

I havechosen to focusin particularon the treatmentof the themeof sufferingand for a varietyof reasons.In the first placethis is a theme which, giventhe natureof the novelas a literaryform, might be expectedto occurfrequently in the novelswhich won duringthe 1980sand this is indeedthe case.Given thatit is a commontheme, however, then one would want to look for notablesimilarities among the novelsin termsof the specifictreatment which this themereceives in orderto addweight to any suggestionof standardisation.

In The Riseof thQNove Ian Watt, writing of the emergenceof the modem novel in the EighteenthCentury says that:

'... literary traditionalism was first and most fully challenged by the novel whose primary criterion was truth to Individual experience - individual experience which is always unique and therefore new. '2

1 FromCyril Connollyslast editorialfor Horizon,December 1949/January 1950, quotedin BRADBURY,M., (I 988),"Closing Time in the Gardens',or What happenedto writingin the 1940s*,No- Not Bloomsbuly,Columbia University Press,Now York. 2 WATT,1. (1957),The Riaeof the Novel-Studies In Defoe..Fielding JQ13d Ricbardson,Chatto and Windus,London. 176

In addition,Watt says,the basic premise of the novelis that it is:

a full and authentic report of human experience.. 'o 3

If the novel is thereforeexpected to provide a credible picture of human

experiencethen it is only to be expectedthat it shoulddeal with human sufferingfor it is an experiencewhich is commonto us all.

In additionto this, our expectationsof thenovel are probably also colouredto a largeextent by our knowledgeof the NineteenthCentury

novel, andin particularby ourknowledge of novelsfrom the Realist tradition. Perhapsthen our expectationshave also been influenced by this movement'sinsistence on 'truth to nature'which as regardsthe novel was often interpretedin termsof an author'sattention to morbid detailsof privation.

Given that the novelhas traditionally been seen as the literary form most

suitedto an in-depthinvestigation into the wholerange of human experience,it seemspredictable that thereshould be instancesof suffering in all thesenovels since a full andaccurate account of humanlife would be quite likely to includean accountof humanity'in extremis'. Furthermore, asregards our expectationsof how sufferingought to be depictedin fiction, theseare likely to includethe expectation that sufferingwill be depictedwith someattention to detailboth in respectof thecause of sufferingand how it is experienced.In additionit is alsolikely that our expectationwill be that the experienceof sufferingwill be depictedvia a realistnarrative mode.

It is importantto bearthese basic points in mind.

Ibid. p33 177

The first notable thing about the novels which won during the 1980sis that from the beginning of the decadetill the end, it is possibleto discern a distinct shift in the way suffering was depicted. As the decadeprogressed suffering was increasinglydepicted more in emotional and mental terms than as physical hardship.

While this distinction may seemto be somewhatartificial in that in fiction as in life the two are often inseparable,I shall argue that emotional and intellectual suffering as they appearin the later winners do so at the exclusion of other forms of suffering, while in the winners from the early

Eighties physical and mental suffering usually accompanyeach other.

The ten novelswhich won theBooker Prize during the 1980swere: William Golding'sRites of Passagewhich won in 1980;Salman Rushdie's

1981winner Midnigbt'sChildren; the 1982winner, Thomas Keneally's Schindler'sAdi; J. M. CoetzeesLife andTimes of Michael K which won in 1983;Hotel du Lac which won in 1984;the 1985winner, The Bone

People.by New Zealandauthor Keri Hulme; the 1986winner, The Old Devils. by KingsleyAmis; PenelopeLively's Moon Tiger. which won in 1987;Oscar and Lucinda. which won in 1988,and, finally, The Remainj of the Day by KazuoIshiguro, which won in 1989.

It is possibleto divide thesenovels into two distinct groupsaccording to how the treatmentof sufferingis dealtwith in eachcase. The first group may be saidto be comprisedof thosenovels which won during the period from 1980-1983,plus the 1985winner; the secondto be comprisedof thosenovels which won in 1984,and during the years 1986-1989.It will be seenfurthermore that eachgroup consists of exactlyfive novels.

In addition,in theearlier winners there seems to be a link betweenthe prevailingphysical interpretation of sufferingand the attemptsmade by the 178 authorsin questionto dealwith deeperuniversal issues such as the problem of evil. By contrast,the novels from thelatter period very oftendeal with issueswhich havelittle significanceoutwith the context of the narrative,and it may thereforebe arguedas a resultof this thatthe earlier winners have morepotential resonance than those from thelater period. 4

In the novelswhich won duringthe early Eighties there are often graphic descriptionsof physicalsuffering and a generalconcentration on unattractiveaspects of physicallife. In Golding'snovel for examplethis may be seenin the frequentand graphic references to the stink of excrement (p4O),to sea-sickness(p 11) including the memorable picture of Colley vomiting thensliding in it while wearingTalbot's oilskins (pl6), to Talbot'sdiahorroea and colic, (p62),and to the very animalnature of sexual encounters.

Nevertheless,in Ritesof Passaw,Schindler's Ark. in Coetzee's1983 winner Life andTimes of MichaelK, in Midnights Children,and in the 1985winner The BonePeople. the functionof this focuson detailed descriptionof physicalprivations is linked to the discussionin the novelsof moreuniversal themes. It is thecase, for example,that very often the themesof physicalhardship and suffering within thesenovels are constructedand depicted in sucha way asto providea particular backgroundagainst which moralchoices have to be made. It is this feature of the textsin additionthat makesit possibleto arguethat the winnersfrom the early Eightieswith thepossible exception of Anita Brookner'sHotel du I..u havea deeperresonance than the novels from thelater periodwhich tendto be muchmore introspective and self-referential.

4 However,it couldalso be arguedthat the apparentI 'authenticityIn the treatmentof the themeof sufferingIn the earlierwinners is itself a convention.'C. f. RobertElliot on honestyand 'authenticity'in the so-calledConfessional Poets. ELLIOT,R. C. (1982),The LiteralyPersona. University of ChicagoPress, - - Chicagoand London. 179

This use of detaileddescriptions of physical suffering to provide a

backgroundwithin which moral choicesare to be made may be said to be

reflected in a particular way in the novels from the first group in that it is a

central featurehere for the physical suffering of one characterto effect a

moral changeon another,often influencing directly the latter's future

actions. In Golding's novel for example the spiritual 'volte-face' of the

main characterwhich is of central importancein the text, is effected by

meansof the physical indignity enduredby his fellow-passengers,and in

particular by the haplessParson Colley. It is the effect of reading Colley's

journal and in finding out what mental and physical pain he has had to

endure that helps bring about the changein Talbot.

In Thomas Keneally's 1982 winner Schindlees Ark too the suffering of

one characteris shown to have had a major effect on the subsequentactions

and moral choices of the central character. In this casehowever, the

characterisationof the sufferer, an unnamedlittle girl, is never fully

realised, but acts, rather, as a symbol of the atrocities which surround Schindler.

The specificincident which bringsabout the change here takes place when Schindlerand his mistressare out riding in the hills aboveCracow.

Looking downon thecity theywitness the clearing of the ghettoby Nazi

stormtroopersand they are particularly distressed at the sight of a little girl

in red who linesup with the otherswhile all mannerof brutalitiestake place abouther.

Keneallydescribes the incident in the foRowingterms. - 'His eyes slewed up Krakusa Street to the scarlet child. They were doing it within half a block of her: they hadn't waited for her column to turn out of sight Into Joserinska... While the scarlet child stopped in her column and turned to watch, they shot the woman beneath the window-sill in the neck, and one of them, when the boy slid down the wall whimpering, jammed a boot down on his head as If to hold it still and put 180 the barrel against the back of the neck - the recommended SS target - and fired. ' (p142)

Schindlerhimself clearly sees this incident to havehad a majoreffect on his subsequentactions and Keneally writes:

"'Beyond this day" (Oskar) would claim, "no thinking person could fail to see what would happen. I was now resolved to do everything in my power to defeat the system. " I (p147)

In Coetzee'snovel Life andTimes of Michael it is the sufferingof the centralcharacter which effectsa changein someoneelse. HereMichael K's physicalpain and his refusalto give in to thedictates of thesystem cause the youngdoctor at the Kenilworthdetention centre to questionhis views. However,implicit throughoutthis novelis the suggestionthat it is primarily the readerwhom the authorwishes to move. Neverthelessthe relationship betweensufferer and witness in this novelis highly problematical,and I shallrefer to this in moredetail at a laterpoint.

In Hulme's 1985 winner, although all three central charactersam scarredboth physicallyand emotionally at the beginningof the novel and accruemore scars as the narrativeprogresses, it is the sufferingof the child,

Simon,which is of centralimportance in the text for it is this which initially bringsthem together and suffering acts thereafter as an instrumentfor change.

In fact the characterof Simonis inextricablylinked with physical suffering. His arrival in Joe'slife is occasionedby a shipwreckin a storm, andhe haspreviously been physically maltreated by his captorson the boat. Furthermore,his arrival at Kere'stower comes about as a result of his havinginjured his foot. As the novelprogresses however, the intensityof the child's pain andof thebeatings he receivesfrom Joeincrease with the growingawareness of the two adultsof the needfor radicalchange in their 181 own lives. In the end it is the near fatal beating of Simon by Joe which acts as the catalystfor this.

In the aftermath the two adults go on journeys of self-discovery. In each casetheir experienceof illnessand extreme physical suffering bring about both a releasefrom long-termguilt anda deeperlevel of self-awareness. Thus their sufferingis shownto be essentialfor their future happiness.In this novel then Simon'ssuffering, as with Colley'sin Rites of Pas= is seento haveboth sacrificial and redemptive qualifies.

It is difficult to discussSalman Rushdie's Midni2ht's Children in the samevein asthe othernovels from the first group. This is partly due to novelist'seschewal of formal realism. Nevertheless,the patternof one individual'ssuffering affecting another is alsopresent in this novel,even thoughit is lessconspicuous than in the othertexts from the first group.

The dominant surreal fabulism of the novel meansthat the characterof

SaleernSinai, who is the narrator of the text, may not be read in the same way or to the sameextent as an atoning figure as, say, Colley, or the characterof Simon in Hulme's novel, or even for that matter of the little girl in Schindlees A. NeverthelessRushdie's narrator himself is the sufferer, and he constantly asksthe readerto sympathise with his physical defects, such as his grotesquenose and his patchy skin, and with the fact that he is literally disintegrating.

If it is difficult to readthe characterof Rushdiesnarrator in the same way as the charactersin the otherwinning novelsfrom the period,and if this is due to Rushdie'schoice of surrealismover realism,it is nevertheless true that impactand response am still the aimsof the novelist. As with

Coetzee'snovel however,it is primarily the readerwhom Rushdiewishes 182 to respondto the sufferingdepicted, and it seemsthat the desiredresponse here is outrage.

Rushdie'snovel is perhapsmost effective however when the authorturns momentarilyfrom thedominant of thenovel to employa more directly realistnarrative form. This switchis usedto particulareffect in the last third of the bookwhere various wars involving Pakistanare described5, andit canbe seenon p343. HereSaleem, Sinai brings the autobiographical detailsof his life up to datebefore describing the war betweenIndia and Pakistan.Thus he tells thereader:

'I am free of Snotnose and Stainface and Baldy and Sniffer and Mapface and washing-chests and Evie Burns and language marches, liberated from Kolynos Kid and the breasts of Pia Mumani and Alpha-and-Omega, absolved of the murders of Homi Catrack and Hanif and Aadam Aziz and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, I have shaken off five-hundred-year old whores and confessions of love at dead of night, free now, beyond caring, crashing onto tarmact restored to innocence and purity by a tumbling piece of the moon wiped clean as a wooden writing-chest, brained Qust as prophesied) by my mother's silver spittoon. '

Immediatelyafter this thefollowing paragraphappears:

- On the morning of September 23rd, the United Nations announced the end of hostilities between India and Pakistan. India had occupied less than 500 miles of Pakistani soil; Pakistan had conquered Just 340 square miles of its Kashmirl dream. It was said the ceasefire came because both sides had run out of ammunition, more or less simultaneously; thus the exigencies of international diplomacy, and the politically. motivated manipulations of arms suppliers. 16

Rushdie'schoice of narrativestyle is linked with his purposein the novel, is In it which to challengethe reader. using , the writer, in effect, is asking is the readerto confrontthe question of which the moresurreal - the almost nonsensicalnarrative of SaleemSinai, which at leasthas its own internal

5 E. g. see p326, and pp342-344. 6 See also pp35-36 where Rushdie again juggles the comic with the serious, and the real with the surreal to great effect when describing the British massacre at Amritsar. 183 logic, or the 'real'world, where people are killed, territory invaded, then hostilitiesceased, all apparentlyarbitrarily?

I have illustrated the fact that physical suffering as it is depicted in these textsis very oftenlinked with theoverall moral purpose of the writer. Furthermoresuffering is usuallydepicted in sucha way by the authorin orderto helpprovide a credibleenvironment within which thecharacters may operate,and thus to makemore credible the moral choices faced by the characters.Nevertheless, credibility in the depictionof physicalsuffering in itself doesnot alwayslead to a morecredible text overall. In fact, the heightenedrealism in the textsfrom thefirst groupin somecases actually provesto be counter-productivein termsof creatinga crediblenarrative overall.

It is not alwayspossible in anycase to view the novelsfrom the first groupas straightforwardlyrealist. With regardto William Golding's1980 winnerfor example,while this novelowes much of its credibility as a narrativeto therealistic and highly detailedaccounts given of thephysical environmenton boardship, there is neverthelessa greatdeal of symbolism in this novel. For example,Golding relies on the traditionalliterary symbol of the ship asa metaphorfor thehuman soul in orderto underlinethe spiritualtheme of thetext. In addition,in alludingto the killing of an albatrosshe is ableto makeironic parallelswith the spiritualand moral themesof Coleridge's"Rime of the AncientMariner".

Thuswhile the physicalworld of a ship in the early NineteenthCentury, including the sufferingof thoseon board,is credibly depictedin this novel, neverthelessthis is subordinateto the moral aspectof the novel. Realism hereis thusimportant primarily in that it allowsthe authorto showhis charactersas having 'real' choicesin a'rcal'world. 184

Onemajor difficulty with this novelhowever is the questionof whether the intensityof the writing, the author'sskill in structuringthe novel, and the particularsituation chosen to highlightthe moral dilemma do enoughto justify to the readerthe weight which theauthor intends the spiritualtheme to have. Thusthe general sense of credibilityderived from authenticdetail may be saidto work againstthe overalleffect in the narrativeas Golding's themeis developed.For while theearly depiction of Talbot andof Colley's habits,and indeed of theship itself, work well, this,combined with the reader'strust in Talbot'sinitial assessmentof Colley provetoo strongto withstandfully the shift in emphasiswhich takes place in the latterpart of the novel.

Thus the last sectionof Ritesof Pas= discomfitsthe readerboth in termsof themeand in thatGolding is revealedto havedeliberately set out to subvertthe reader'sexpectations. While theforce andstructure of the narrativeprobably do succeedin carryingit through,the centralcharacters areless than sympathetic. Ultimately the credibility of the earlierchapters andthe generally repellent nature of muchof thematerial in the laterpart of the novel makefor a text which is fascinatingand admirable, but onewhich hasno real claim on theemotions.

Problemsof credibility alsoarise in Keneally's1982 winner and heretoo the realisticdepiction of physicalsuffering sometimes compromises the credibility of the text asa whole. The authorstates in the Prefacethat he hasemployed 'the devices of a novel'in orderto relatehis accountof Schindler'swork to savethe lives of Jews,however he alsostates that he has'attempted to avoid all fiction', asthis would debasethe record. This apparentconfusion pre-figures some of the stylistic difficulties which Keneallyhas in thetext, andhelps to accountfor someof the difficulties the readerencounters. 185

One of thesemay be said to be the difficulty the readerhas in knowing how to 'read' the characterof Amon Goeth. The need to employ the device of characterisation,that is, a device of fiction-writing, in the description of a real person,and the numbing effect of some of the details of Goeth's actions combine at various points in this narrative to make for a suspension of belief, making the real seemunreal. Thus Goeth's brutality often beggarsbelief, such as at the hanging of the engineer Krautwirt and of a young boy caught singing a'communist' song (pp236-238). Yet in spite of this at other times in the text he is depictedin such a way as to make him appearto be almost Re a monsterin a children's story; his physical presenceand reputationconsistently terrify, but the reader often has cause to ponder whether he is not, in fact, the stuff of fairy-tales.

It is certainlytrue that much of thematerial here is itself barelycredible at times,such as the pictureKeneally presents of Goethtaking pot-shotsat Jewsfrom the balconyof his villa at the Plaszowwork camp,and of his offering to give a referenceafter the war to HelenHirsch, the maid who he beatsso brutally. However,Keneally's main problemis that he is faced with the twin difficultiesof havingto depictfully Goeth'sbarbarity, and with the needto communicateto thereader at what level it is possible,and indeednecessary, for theurbane and civilised Schindler to relateto sucha man,even if it is only in orderfor him to be ableto useGoeth for his own purposes.

Problemswith theoverall credibility of the text arisein both Coeuce's novel andin the text wherephysical suffering is most graphicallyportrayed, that is, Hulme's 1985 winner, The Bone People.

In Coetzee'stext this comesabout largely due to the failure on the part of the authorto adequatelyflesh out the characterof K. It is the author's intentionhere to showhow a repressiveregime affects those at the bottom 186 of the socialscale. However,laudable as this may be, it nevertheless createsproblems in thetexts, for Michaelis inarticulate.This is underlined by the fact thathe hasa cleft palate.As a result,Coetzee is forcedto detail Ks sufferingsalmost exclusively in termsof physicalprivation.

While Coetzeewrites convincingly as he seeksto depictthe hardshipand pain encounteredby thecentral character, nevertheless, credibility is lost sincein the faceof all mannerof reversals,physical and emotional, Ics only responseis passivity. Indeed,this responsebecomes more characteristicas the novelprogresses. Therefore, while the descriptionsof Michael'sdescent into anincreasingly animal-like state, where he deprives himself of his body'snecessities to thepoint wherehis gumsbleed and his stomachdisintegrates, are convincing enough, they evoke little emotional responsein the readerother than serving to repelhim.

An additionalconsequence of thelack of developmentof the characterof

Michaelis that asthe actionprogresses the writer is forcedto resortto using the doctoreffectively as an interpreterin orderto conveyto the readerthat

K's actionsshould be viewedin existentialterms. The effect hereis oneof proselytising,where the author,through the characterof the M. 0. appears to beg for the reader'ssympathies. Unfortunately this is counter- productive,and the resultis that thereader is inclinedto switch off.7

In The BonePeople too, thereare inherent structural flaws in the novel which are exacerbatedby the realistic nature of earlier descriptions of physical suffering. The main problem however relates to the issue of the justification for Simon's suffering, for the author effectively undermines the credibility of the text as a whole by encouragingthe reader to put aside

I D. J. Enrightcomments on Coetzee'searnestness in an articleIn The Times LiterarySupplement, 30th September1983,1037a, where he accuseshim of being too 'meaningful'. 187 some of the strong reactionswhich sheherself has evoked earlier in the novel in responseto this character.

The work gains much of its senseof authenticity from its unflinching descriptions of Simon'sinjuries and from the author's generalsensitivity to the issue of child abuse. For examplewhen Kere remembershow she found Simon after the final beating by Joe, the child's appearanceis describedas: 'The bloody swollen mask on the floorg broken nose and broken jaw. And the horrible indentation in the side of his skull where he had been smashed against the door frame. ' (p314)

However,the credibility of thetext asa whole is compromisedby the endingof thenovel where the authorpresents the readerwith a tableauof love andreconciliation. This is hardto acceptin view of the graphic depictionof suffering,particularly that of thechild, in theearlier chapters. The lack of credibilitytherefore comes about in part asa resultof the vividnessof the earlierdescriptions, and it appearsat the endof the novel that the writer wishesthe readerto seethe suffering of the child, in retrospect,as having been justified. 8

Hulmecommits the cardinal sin for a writer of failing to takeher characterand her readersemotional responses seriously. Thus the overall credibility of The BonePeople which thewriter hasearlier established via her ability to win sympathyfor thechild, is effectivelydissipated at theend of the novel,where the authorgives in to the structuralimperatives of the text which requireher to find a resolutionof somekind which will unite die threecharacters at all costs.

8 The authorherself refutes this however. See JudithDalo's article "The Bone People(Not) HavingIt BothWays' in Landfall,156 (December1985), pp413- 428. This articlealso notes that the novelhas sometimesbeen readas an allegoryof The NewTestament, with Joe, Kereand Simonas the Holy Family. Althoughthis is againan interpretationthat the authorherself refutes, it has the attractionof helpingto explainto someextent Simon's suff oring, and also his quasi-mysticalarrival in Joe'slife. 188

Thus it can be seenthat the detailedand credible descriptionsof physical in pain in the novels which won the Booker earlier in the 1980sdid not itself guaranteeoverall credibility in the texts. I have noted the difference between the novels which won the Booker Prize in the first part of the decadeand those which won from 1986on plus the 1984 winner with regard to whether suffering appearedprimarily as physical hardship or was depicted more in terms of emotional or psychologicalpain. I have also noted that within the novels where physical suffering was graphically depicted this was often usedto provide a mom credible context within in which moral choiceswere made. In addition I have noted that the earlier issues winners from the Eighties the authorsoften dealt with wider which

had significance outwith the action of the texts themselves,

FurthermoreI haveremarked with regardto the groupof winnersfrom

the earlierperiod that therewas a discerniblepattern whereby the physical

sufferingof onecharacter often acted as a spurto the main characterin termsof his or her subsequentactions or moralchoices. In Midnight's Childrenand Life andTimes of MichaelK however,as I havenoted, it is

the physicalsuffering of themain character which is meantto act on the

readeras a spurto action. I now wish to look at the novelsfrom the second groupto seewhat patternsexist from novel to novel,if any.

I havenoted that the novelswhich won the Bookerin 1984,and from 1986-1989inclusive are more self-referential than the winners from the

earlierpart of the decade.This self-referentialityfurthermore may be saidto be reflectedin the fact thatin Hoteldu Lie, MoonTige andThoOldDevils the centralcharacter. or in the caseof Amis'snovel, one of the central

characters,is a writer. In Hotel du Lac, the centralcharacter, Edith, Hope, fiction. In Moon Ti ClaudiaI lamptonis is a writer of romantic ge , a writer of popularhistory, and in The Old Devils Alun Weaveris a writer and broadcasteron Welshculture. It is certainlytrue, in addition,that in these 189 three novels, as in Oscarand Lucinda and in The Remainsof the Day, the sufferingexperienced by themain characters is largelyof a non-physical nature.

The sourceof Edith Hope'ssuffering in Hotel du Lac is locatedin her lack of choiceand fulfilment in relationships.Edith swingsfrequently from a realisticassessment which at time borderson pessimism,of her chancesof finding the sortof relationshipwhich sheboth wants and needs, and a belief that thepain in herrelationship with David is mitigatedby the happinessit bringsher. Thusher choice, as she sees, it is stark. Either she cancontinue in a relationshipwith theman she loves and accept that this will neverinvolve anything more permanent than snatched, once-a-month meetings,or shecan have the security afforded by the sort of union Neville offersher but forfeit love in theprocess.

Throughoutthis novelhowever, Edith's readinessto accepteither one of thesegrim alternativestems from a basiclack of belief that anythingmore satisfyingis eitherpossible or deserved,and indeed this seemsto be linked to the fact thatEdith is shownto havehad complicated and unfulfilled relationshipswith bothof her parents,but in particularwith her mother.9

Thereis muchintrospection in this novelas the centralcharacter tries to sort throughhow shefeels, what her future is likely to hold, and at what point if at all, sheshould think of surrenderingher hopesfor happinessas regardsher relationshipswith men. Shewalks, shecries, she writes, and shereflects. However,she is alsohelped to cometo somesort of understandingof herselfthrough her relationshipswith the other guestsat the hotel. Neverthelessthey too arealso shown to experiencesuffering primarily in termsof psychologicalpain. Thus,although Mme do

Bonheuil'sdeafness is a reasonfor her to be pitied by the others,this is

E. g. see her conversationwith Monica,pp 145-6. 190

seento be more significant in the role deafnessplays in her emotional

isolation. Similarly, even Monica's eating problem is essentially a neurotic

illness, and such pain as Neville is preparedto admit to comesfrom his

wife having walked out on him.

However,if sufferingin this novelis depictedalmost exclusively in terms

of mentaland emotional pain, Edith herself is neverthelessaware of the perils of introspectionand this awarenessis a sourceof irony in the text. For example,she is irritatedby the Puseys'fussing over small incidents

suchas Jennifer finding a spiderin herroom. On hearingthe shrieks (p78), sheassumes that someonemust have had 'a heartattack'. In a later incidentwhere Mrs Puseythinks there has been an intruderin her

daughter'sbedroom, Edith againassumes that somethingserious of a physicalnature has occurred such as:

'.. some sort of accident or illness.' (p137)

Both Hotel du Lac andMoon Tige maybe saidto epitomisecertain featuresof the Booker-winningnovel of the secondhalf of the Eighties. They eachshare many similar characteristics as well asboth having been written by women. Therefore,since these two novelshave much in common,I shall dealwith Lively's 1987winner MQon Jige firstbefore looking in detailat Ile Old Devils.

Thereare several references made in Lively's novel (asin Amis's) to illness. Howeverillness, including the terminalillness of the central character,is importanthere as it is in Brookner'snovel andelsewhere in the winnersfrom the later periodprimarily insofaras it symboliseschange, loss andisolation, and it is lessimportant as a physicalstate. Thus althoughthe novel beginswith ClaudiaHampton in hospitaldying of bowel cancerand althoughthere are several additional occasions when Claudia is takenill or injuredincluding a seriouscar accident and a miscarriage,there is seldom 191 any mention madeof actual physical pain in the text. As with Brookner's central characterhowever, the main sourceof Claudia's suffering is the memory of a pastrelationship and in Moon Tiger the relationship has ended becauseClaudia's lover hasbeen killed during the SecondWorld War.

Although there are severalthematic links betweenthis novel and Hotel du

Lag, one of the most important is the theme of loss which pervadesboth novels. In Moon Tj ger. in addition to her lover Tom, Claudia's father, mother, brother, and indeedClaudia herself all die during the course of the novel, and she also losesTom's baby. As regardsTom, while Claudia is unlike Edith Hope in that sheis beautiful, her relationship with him is unique, she realises,in that he is the only man she has ever been able to make happy (pl20). Thus her loss is all the more keenly felt.

This like Hotel du Lac is a highly introspectivetext, and aswith the

Brooknernovel this introspectionis underlinedby the recurrentuse of first personnarrative, for examplein Claudia's'history of the world', and in Tom's diary.

Althoughthe 1986winner, Kingsley Amis's The Old Devils is a more obviouslycomic novel than the Brookner, and certainly than the Lively text, heretoo the charactersare not immuneto suffering. This is againdepicted primarily in mentaland emotional terms and in this novel is seento haveits rootsin an awarenessthat old ageand death are fast approaching,and with these,isolation. While it is possibleto forgive the wrongsof the pastand to be reconciled,death, however, isolates for ever.

Although The Old Devils is a much less introspective novel than Hotel du

" Moon Tige or The Remains-ofthe My, the fear of death is universal and it underpinsthe regret and remorsewhich all the charactersfeel about certain aspectsof the past. It also underlies their general over-indulgence, 192

particularly in drink, and their wistful reminiscencesabout times long gone.

In this respectthe novel is closelylinked thematically to Hotel du Lac. to Moon Tiger andto KazuoIshiguro's novel The Remainsof the Day

Physicalpain andillness are usually described in oneof two waysin 331Q Old Devils. Infirmity is, at times,a sourceof comedy,and this may be seen,for example,in the frequentreferences to Malcolm'sbowel movementsand the difficulty he haswith these.In this instancehowever the problemis not seriousor life-threatening.More frequentare the

instanceswhere illness is seento symboliseisolation, and where infirmity is depictedas foreshadowing death, and as leading to a senseof disorientation.

This is illustratedin thescene where the men stop off from a day trip to

visit an old friend,Billy Moger. Billy is clearlyvery ill andthe menare shockedby his appearance,particularly since he usedto be keenon sport.

On leavingthe house it strikesCharlie that:

'.. at no time had he seen the Billy Moger lie used to know. ' (P105)

Illnessand death thus lead to confusionand to a senseof dislocationand disorientationfor thosewho areleft behind. Charlie'sown phobiaof the

dark mirrorsthis andis surelymeant to be readas being symptomatic of the deeperfear of deathwhich eachof themfeels.

In an importantscene towards the end of the novelillness is againlinked with the senseof disorientation.Alun discoversa photographof a beautiful younggirl (p255)in the Pumphreyshouseand this turnsout to be an old photoof AngharadPumphrey. However this is difficult for Alun andsome of the othersto believe,for Angharadnow usesa walking stick andlooks 193

significantly older than the other wives since she has been ill. 10 Illness then

also symboliseschange.

The two central charactersin Carey's 1988 winner have in common the

fact that they have both sufferedin similar ways. In addition to the loss of a

parent at an early age,1 1 an experiencewhich they sharewith Lively's main

character,both Oscarand Lucinda havehad the experienceof being treated

as a misfit or an outsider. Oscar is the'Odd-Bod'at Oxford, while Lucinda

scandalisesconservative small-town Australia by wearing bloomers. Both

are effectively alone in the world, and for Oscar this is especially the case

once he arrives in Australia. Again, as with the rest of the novels in this

group, suffering in Oscar and Lucind manifestsitself primarily in terms of

isolation, estrangementand loss.

Oscar and Lucinda's sharedaddiction to gambling, furthermore, is also

related in large measureto their sharedsense of alienation, and lack of

social skills. In gambling they eachare able to feel the confidence which eludes them in their daily life. 12 For Oscar, gambling, ironically, gives him what God cannot. However his idiosyncratic if not speciousinterpretation

of 'God's will' meansthat he attemptsto justify his gambling in terms of its being a metaphor for faith (p261).

The link betweenthe sense of alienationand the compulsionto gamble howeveris seenmost clearly in Chapter64 of the novel in relationto

10 See p32. 11 The absent parent is a common theme in the novels from the second group, For example, in addition to being present in Oscar and Lucinda it may also be seen in Brooknees novel, and In The Reýnaln2of thg Day, It Is often linked with the motif of the suffering child, See below. 12 In fact this is true of virtually all of the characters who fit Into the roles of outsider or emotionally paralysed person (See'motifs of suffering! below). Claudia, Lively's main character, is alienated but what she lacks in relationships she compensates for in her intellectualbrilliance and beauty. Similarly Edith Hope uses her writing to compensate for the lack of close relationships, and even Colley's preaching in Rites of Passaw may be seen as an attempt to alieviate isolation. See GINDIN, J. (1988), William Golding, Macmillan Modem Novelists, Macmillan, Basingstoke. 194

Lucinda. Here Lucinda is feeling particularly alienatedhaving only recently returned to Australia. There has beentrouble at the glassworksin her absenceand morale is bad. As a woman and as the owner she is not made welcome there when she visits. Her senseof isolation is complete when, on returning home, she realisesthat her one close friend the Rev. Denis

Hasset,is to be given a parish elsewhere.Walking through the streetsof

Woollahra, her despairmakes her feel that she is going mad. She goes to the mansewhere Hassetused to live but finds no one there except the child of the new occupants(p295), and she feels:

'.. unlaced and not connected. '

By contrast,after having decided to go to a Chineselottery, shefeels herselfto be integrated,and although she initially runsthrough the whole gamutof emotions,eventually she gains some semblance of self-confidence (p298). As a result,by theend of theevening when she is firmly ensconcedat the cardtable, she is describedas no longerfeeling:

'.. lonely, and she was not frightened or Shy.11 3

In KazuoIshiguro's novel The Remainsof the Day the themesof regret, lossand isolation appear again, as do thoseof the absentparentand of unexpressedgrieL

It may be arguedthat this narrativealso follows the patterndescribed

-abovein relation to the first group of novels where the suffering of one charactereffects a changeon the actionsof another. Hem it is the buder

Stevens'awareness of the unhappinessof his former colleague Miss

Kenton (now Mrs Benn) which makes him confront his own situation.

However, in this novel it is not the physical suffering of one character which affects another,but rather emotional pain. Furthermore, the point at' the end of the novel is that there is nothing left for Stevens, 71cre is little

13 See p299. 195

opento him in theway of possiblechanges to be madeor moralchoices to be taken. He hasrealised what is truly importantat too late a stagein his life. Thushe is facedwith the prospectof old age,illness and eventual deathand this is paralleledalso by theapparently inevitable loss of any opportunitiesfor happinessin thefuture and of thelimited happinesshe has hadto date,for it is clearafter their meeting towards the end of thenovel that he will not seeMrs Bennagain.

Tbussuffering is againlinked primarily to the maincharacter's sense of isolationand remorse, and to a retrospectivesense of grief for his dead father andfor theloss of his own chancesof love. Furthermorethere is moreof a senseof total lossin this novelthan in someof the others. Where ClaudiaHampton is ableto cometo somesense of reconciliationwith the eventsof the pastas Moon Tiger progresses,and Oscar and Lucinda are to someextent able to easefor eachother the pain of isolation,Ishiguro's main characterrealises all too latethat there is no chanceto makeup for his lack

of closeemotional commitment in thepast. His fatheris long deadand the womanwho onceloved him is now married. As he contemplatesthe full extentof his isolationand the prospect of deathat the end of the novel,

Stevensrealises that he doesnot evenhave the chancewhich his former employerLord Darlingtonhad to formally admithe was wrong. Evenif he

had,he realisesthat having devoted himself to a life of self-effacementand the serviceof hisbettershis viewswould not matteranyway. Ironically, havingsacrificed all for duty. all that Stevensnow hasleft is duty.

I havecommented above in relationto the novelswhich won the Booker Prizein theearly part of the 1980sthat the ability to seesuffering in physicalterms and to depictthis, sometimes in very detailedand graphic

descriptionsdoes not necessarilymake for a mom credibletext overall. In fact, I haveargued, this aspectof the first five textswhich I consideredis sometimesone of thefacets of thenarratives which helpsto unden-ninethe 196

work as a whole. In generalterms, the novels in which sufferingis depictedmainly in mentaland emotional terms are more recognisable as a

genreand very ofteneven the depiction of mentalanguish or of deep emotionhere is, in itself, lessthan convincing.

Thus whateverlinks mayexist between the ten novelswhich won the BookerPrize during the 1980sin termsof thematicand linguistic similarities,and in spiteof the fact thatsuffering of onekind or anotheris

prevalentin all of thenovels, as a groupthey lack emotionalauthenticity. Indeedthis may be saidto be anotherway in which the ten novelsare linked. Evenin 1980Margaret Forster, one of that year'spanel of judges, notedthis lack of emotionalauthenticity when she singled out Anita Desai's shortlistednovel ClearLight 9111-ý It was,she said:

I.. the only novel of the whole 60 [snbmissions] which moved me. 114

In' the novelswhich won duringthe later Eighties it seemsto be the case that this lack of credibilityis oftenlinked to an inability on the partof the writer to producecredible exchanges between the characters in thenovels. This may in turn be linked to a generallack of awarenessamong the authors concerned.

In PenelopeLively's 1987winner Moon Ti ge the novel hasmore than onenarrator, but it is ClaudiaHampton's voice which is the one most frequentlyheard. Problemsoccur in this narrativewhichever voice is dominanthowever, and there arc particularproblems when dialogue is used. For example,even in themost emotionally authentic section of the novel,when Claudia! s relationshipwith her lover is described,the dialogue

14 FORSTER,M., (1980),"Secrets of a GlitteringPrize", The SundayTime 26th October. , 197

doesnot ring true. On p76 of thenovel the following exchangeoccurs

betweenTom and Claudia:

'Tom stirs. Claudia murmurs, "Are you awake? " "I'm awake". "You should have said. We could be talking. " He lays a hand on her thigh. "What should we talk about? "'

Within an intimatecontext it seemsodd that Tom doesnot merelyreply "Yes" in answerto Claudia'squestion. Throughout this novel the dialogue soundsinauthentic, and while Lively wishesto showher centralcharacter to be pedanticat certainpoints in thetext, the stilted speech at variouspoints elsewherein thenovel calls into questionthe generalability of the authorto authenticallyreproduce dialogue. 15

A similar problem concerningauthenticity arisesin Ishiguro's text where

the flatnessof the dominantnarrative voice and ungrammatical

circumlocution could in one sensebe said to make for a less credible

narrative.1 6 As with Lively's text the difficulty here presentsitself when

we consider to what extent the voices of the narrator and the author should

be regardedas being one and the same.

In Ishiguro'snovel however the solecisms audible in the narrativevoice are constantthroughout the text, andthis encouragesthe rcaderto assumethat

theseare in fact intentionaland employed by the authorto suggestcertain

characteristicsof thenarrator. This interpretationis givenweight by the fact

that elsewherein the text, includingin his conversationswith otherpeople,

15 Seealso Claudia!s retortto her loverin laterlife, Jasper(p64), 'I do not see howyou can be so majesticallyegotistical as to placeyourself In total detachmentfrom your antecedentsJust because you find your father inadýquate.' This is not onlyvirtually impossible to say,but soundsridiculously pedantic and inauthentic. 16 This pointwas raisedby HowardJacobson as Chairmanof the studiopanel duringthe 1989coverage of the Bookerceremony an BBC Zs "The Late Show". 198 the narrator, Stevens,is shown to be pompousand circumlocutious in his speech.

If there are somegeneral patterns in the treatmentof the theme of sufferingin the BookerPrize-winning novels from this periodrelating to whetheror not sufferingis depictedprimarily in physicalor emotionalfintellectualterins and that in generalterms they lack credibility, thereare nevertheless more specific traits which link the novelsfrom both groups. Theserelate to what I shallhenceforth label 'motifs of suffering', by which I meanimages used to depictsuffering which arerecurrent in novelsfrom boththe earlyand the later group. It is the recurrenceof these that givesclaims of thematicstandardisation extra weight.

Thereare several easily identifiable motifs which occurin novelsfrom both groups. Theseinclude the motif of thesuffering child andthat of the enwtionallyparalysed person. Thelatter co-incides with the motifs of isolationand of theoutsider. Othermotifs includethe motif of thebereft, and the tortureof theguilty, andto a lesserextent, the motif of independenceversus relationships which occursalmost exclusively in relationto womencharacters.

I shall now look at thesein moredetail.

The motif of thesuffering child canbe seento be depictedeither in terms of physicalor emotionalsuffering, and sometimes both. It occursin Carey'snovel, particularly in relationto Oscar,and especially in his attemptsas a child to copewith the deathof his motherand with his father's often severetreatment of him. Howeverit alsooccurs in relationto Lucinda andagain particularly after the death of herfather. 199

It occurstoo in Life andTimes of MichaelK. andMichael suffers particularlyin havinga cleft palatewhich both makes him deformedand causeshim problemswith his speechand general ability to communicate.It

alsooccurs in Hoteldu Lac,and especially in ne BonePeople, where it relatesto bothJoe and Simon. Similarlyit recurs,though to a lesserextent, in Moon Tiger.in relationto bothClaudia and to her daughterLisa, neither of whom haveexperienced much parental love. The motif of the suffering child is discerniblein additionin Schindler'sArk whereKeneally suggests

while recountingdetails from Oskar'searly life thatalthough the young Oskarwas materially privileged, relationships were often strained between his motherand his fatherand this wasdifficult for the youngSchindler to bear.

The motif of theoutsider is presentin Golding'snovel in relationto Colley, andis alsopresent, though less realistically pursued, in Midnight's Cbildreli. Both Colley andSaleem. Sinai are'different! and both of them arediscriminated against. This motif occursagain in Life audTimes o MichaelK. In the 1985winner all threecentral characters am outsiders,for Simonis the mute,long-haired fair-skinned child of a Maori step-father, and Kere the asexualartist who buildsher own homein a tower. Joe, furthermore,is an outsider,partly becausehe haslost the securityhe formerly hadin therelationship with his wife andchild, and indeedmuch of this character'sfrustration comes from the fact that alonewith a Pakeha step-childhe feelsthat he doesnot fit in. In fact this is shownto be a major contributoryfactor in his violencetowards the child.

Thereis alsoan implicit suggestionin Moon Tij! c that ClaudiaHampton is an outsider,since she, like Kere in The BonePeonle is 'too clever for her own good. In addition,both Oscarand Lucindain Carey'snovel are misfits - he, the'Odd-Bod'whois simultaneouslyboth religious and a 200 compulsive gambler, she,the single female owner of a glass factory who wearsunorthodox clothes.

There are somemotifs which are relatedto eachother and which occur in severalof the novels.These include the motifs of the isolated andof the emotionallyparalysed person. Theseare both applicable to someextent to Colley in Ritesof Pas=, certainlyto K in Coetzee'snovel, though the characterhimself seems largely unconcerned and unaware of this, to Edith

Hopein Hotel du Lap,and to Kerein The BoneEwpk. They arealso applicableto someextent to Claudiain MoonTj ge whenTom diesand she no longerhas a closerelationship with her brotherGordon, and they are easily applicableto Lucindaat variouspoints throughout Carey's novel.

A particularly important motif in relation to the majority of winners from the Eighties is that of the bereft. This is relevantto some extent to Michael

K after his mother dies and he finds himself unable to leave the hospital. It is certainly true of Edith Hope, primarily in relation to her affair with David, but also in that she is bereft of any kind memoriesof her late mother, and in that, as the novel progressesshe grows increasingly aware that her chance of a relationship which is both loving and permanentmay have gone forever. It is true both Kere Joe in Bone People, Claudia of and -The and of in Moon Tiger, and it occurs, though to a lesserextent, in The Old Devils where the awarenessof deathand of loss are prevalent throughout the novel.

This motif alsoappears in Oscarand Lucinda, at leastin relationto the early lives of the two centralcharacters which arecoloured by the lossof a parent. It alsooccurs, though less importantly, in The RCmains_ofthe Day, where,years after the event,Stevens relives his experienceof bereavement on the deathof his fatherand realises furthermore that his chanceof a relationshipwith Miss Kentonis now goneforever. 201

Also cognatewith the motif of the bereft is that of the torture of the guilty.

Edmund Talbot, Oskar Schindlerand the Medical Officer in Coetzee'snovel are all affected,sometimes even motivated,by guilt. Similarly as the narrative progressesin Hotel du Lac it becomesclear that Brookner's heroine is still experiencingguilt over her treatmentof Geoffrey Long although sometime has elapsedsince shejilted him. As the novel builds to a climax this involves Edith reliving theseevents and also in confronting her guilt about what was to be the day of her wedding.

In The BonePeol2le Kere feels tremendous guilt regardingher own role in Joe'sfinal beatingof Simon,and she is torturedalso by memoriesof her last meetingwith her family. Joefor his part is constantlytroubled by guilt relatingto his abuseof Simon,while Simon,typically, blameshimself for Joe'sbeatings.

In KingsleyAmis's novel it is Petermore than anyone else who remains troubledby guilt, in this caseat his pasttreatment of Rhiannon,while in Midnight'sChildren the narratorSalcern Sinai constantly takes the blame for eventswhich havehappened in thepast, such as the break-upof the Sabarmadfamily.

7he torture of theguilty motif alsorecurs, though to a lesserextent, in

Moon Tiger andin Oscarand Lucinda. In the latter text howeverthis is usuallydepicted as being as much to do with Oscaesguilt in relationto failing to live up to God'sexpectations as with his guilt in relationto other people. Thereis remorseand an understatedguilt throughout Ishiguro's novel, but this becomesmore explicit whenStevens contemplates his treatmentof his father,of the Jewishservant girls whom he had dismissed and,ultimately, of Miss Kenton. 202

The motif of independenceversus relationships is of somesignificance thoughit occursless widely thanmost of the othermotifs sinceit is used almostexclusively in relationto womencharacters. It appearsin Hotel du L&Qand to someextent in hj=-Tj=, thoughClaudia is preparedto marry Tom. In Ishiguro'snovel furthemore, the character of Miss Kentonis also facedwith a hardchoice though here there is an additionaldifficulty in that sheis not sureif shewill everhave the possibilityof a relationshipwith Stevens.A slight variationon themotif occursin this novelin relationto Stevens'responses to thecall of duty andthe attachments he hasto people aroundhim.

Another variation on independenceversus relationships can also be seenin The BonePopk. Here,however, Kere's choice is not betweenthe prospectof career-relatedindependence and the potential for erotic love, but ratherbetween solitude and independence, the value of which shein any casehas begun to question,and her love for andsense of responsibility towardsSimon and Joe. For eachof the charactersto whom this motif appliesin any of the novelsa dilemmaarises from an awarenessof the conflicting naturesof their deepestwishes.

Althoughthe motifs identifiedabove occur in novelsfrom both groups, someare more recurrent in onegroup than the other. Thus the motif of the bereftoccurs more frequently in thelatter group than in the former. The predominantlyfemale modf of independenceversus relationships also occursalmost exclusively in novelsfrom thesecond group, that is, in HQ.Wj du Lag, MQonTige in The Remains Day, , and of the thoughas I have notedthere is alsoa slightly modifiedversion of this motif in The Bone

People. It may alsobe relevantthat all but oneof thesenovels was written by a woman. The tortureof theguilty motif howeverappears in both groupswith equalfrequency. Generally spealdng though the frequencyof 203 theserecurrent motifs is morenoticeable among the novelsfrom the second groupthan in thosefrom the first.

The questionarises here as to what extent thematic links might be expectedto occur in any group of texts. If, for example, we take the group of novels which formed the control group for the key word analysis in

Chapter Five, it might be regardedas being significant that there is a murder, a suicide and an allusion to an attemptedmurder in three out of the four novels. If, in addition, we comparethe patternsof occurrenceof these motifs in Booker winners to their occurrencein the control group of novels used in ChapterFive, then it is clear that some of the motifs also appearin the control group texts as well as among the Booker winners.

In SumMeesLease. for example,Molly may be considemd to exemplify the motif of independenceversus relationships. She deliberately isolates herself from her husband,having discoveredthat he has been having regular lunch appointmentswith Mrs Tobias, and her quest to discover the identity of Fosdyke'smurderer is in large measurean attempt to assert herself as woman in her own right, independentof her husband.

Moreover, Duck Kettering to someextent could be seento exemplify file torture of the guilty motif, though this is less pronounced, and Hugh

Pargeteris to some extent an enwtionally paralysedperson even though by the end of the novel he and Molly have reacheda new understandingand are communicating better.

As far as the other three novels are concerned,however, few if any of the motifs would seemto be presentin Money, or for that matter in A Far CU

From Kensineton, though to some extent there is a suggestionof the motif of the bereft in the latter following Wanda Podolak's suicide. 204

Nevertheless,in A Disaffection.the main character Doyle is certainly entotionallyparalysed, isolated, and an outsider. Moreover,Doyle's disaffectioncomes in partfrom a senseof guilt at beingmore privileged thanmost other people from his background,including the restof his own family. He is furtherdistressed by this sincehis experienceof higher educationand the relativesecurity of hisjob havenot madehim happy,nor doeshe feel fulfilled. In fact,Doyle's emotional paralysis comes in part from beingcaught between two cultures;a working-classculture, with its strongwork ethic,and the middle-class culture of idealsand aspirations whosevalues he feelshe hastaken on in becominga teacher.

The generalpicture here is of sufferingas being recurrent in oneway or anotherboth in the controlgroup of textsand among the Bookerwinners. However,the patternsor motifs of sufferingappear to be proportionately higherin the Bookerwinners than in the others.This may be seenas furtherevidence of a thematicstandardisation.

The inferencewhich maybe drawnfrom the aboveis that wherein the previouschapter it lookedpossible that some similarities in the frequencyof certainwords and groups of wordsmight be a reflectionof somedeeper homogeneity,this is in fact bomeby an examinationof thematicsimilarities andhow theseare treated in the Bookertexts. In addition,general patterns which existedamong the controlgroup texts and the four Bookertexts consideredin the previouschapter in the useof certainwords and word groupsseem to be borneout alsoif oneconsiders thematic concerns.

Thereis onefurther area worthy of notehere. This relatesspecifically to PeterCarey's 1988 winner Oscarand Lucinda. and to the links betweenthis novel andHulme's 1985 winner in respectof the depictionof suffering. OscarHopkins shares with thecharacter of Simonin Hulmes novel a fear of the sea. However,not only do the two characterssuffer from 205 thalassoPhobia,but in eachcase the root of the fear is the same. Doth Oscar andSimon fear the sea because it remindsthem of deathand in eachcase too the phobiahas its originsin earlychildhood. In OscarandLucinda as with mostnovels from the secondgroup, the fear of deathis of great importance.Oscar's mother's clothes were thrown into the seaafter she died,and when Oscar thinks about the sea it:

',. smelt of death to him. " 7

It is interesting to comparethis with The Bone Pe Ple here Simon's fear of the seais alsoexpressed in termsof smell. For Simon:

'The smell of the sea was the smell of blood. 'l 8

This is particularly interestinggiven that Carey's earlier novel

Illywhacke which was runner up to Hulme's novel in the 1985 Booker

Prize shows many similarities with Rushdie's 1981 winner both in its structure and in some of the depictions of suffering. In Illywhacke as in

Midnidt! s Children the main characteris to a large extent a metonym,for a developing country and similarities betweenthese two novels extend furthen-noreto the nature of injuries that Herbert Badgery, his son Charles and daughterSonia sharewith SaleernSinai and the Brass Monkey.

Charles, like Saleem,suffers a blow on the head which causeshim to become deaf, and Sonia, like Salecm'ssister, also goes through a phaseof religious fanaticism, though in the caseof Sonia this results in her disappearingdown a mineshaft.

It may be that this indicatesa form of standardisationin Carey'swriting in that this authorwrote in a specificway which showedsimilarities with earlierwinning novelsin thehope that this would offer him a betterchance of winning the BookerPrize. It is certainlytrue, as noted

17See Oscar Lucinda, 6. and pl - 18See The BonePagpla, pl 10. 206 in 1986,19that in the past the early submissionsfor the prize included a significant number of novels which showedan element of standardisation insofar as they correspondedto recognisablegenres of novels which had previously won.

Howeverwhat it couldindicate in additionis a form of pre-selection,or standardisation,on thepart of thejudges for theprize. Ibis aspectof standardisationis of specialinterest here as there seems to be momevidence of thematicstandardisation as the decade progressed and it is alsotrue asthe previouschapter'shows, that the winningnovels displayed more evidence of standardisationin respectof theuse of languageas the decadewent on. In additionI haveshown in ChapterFour that the judging panelsbecame morehomogenous and that there were increasing numbers of judgeswho weresocially connected to their fellow-mcmbersof thepanel. Thusit could be thatit wasthis homogeneitythat was reflected in theconservative choicesof thejudges.

It could be alsobe arguedhowever that the apparent conservatism reflects somegeneral trends in fiction duringthis period. Ibis wasa point raised by the Australiancomputer linguist ProfessorJohn Burrows when I submittedto him for commentsome of theinitial findingsof the preliminary researchfor ChapterFive. In the eventnothing in Burrows'work had a direct bearingon my own. Neverthelesshe too suggestedthat perhapsthe recurrenceof word groupsdealing with the themesof death,loss and bereavementwas no morethan a reflectionof the generalelegaic tone which he believedwas evident to an outsiderin thenovels and films which were 20 comingout of Britain at thattime. Howeverhe notedthat this did not explainwhy thesame clegaic quality waspresent in the BookerPrize.

19 See THWAITE,A., (1987)."Booker 1986', Encounte Vol. , 68, pp37-38. 20 See letterfrom Prof.John Burrowsto S. Norris,3rd Febuary1994. 207 winning novels which had originatedin countries other than Britain where this tendencywas not otherwiseapparent.

This tendsto suggestthat there was also a form of standardisation apparentin thewinners of theBooker Prize during the 1980swhich wasthe resultof a pre-selectionon thepart of thejudges.

I shouldlike to turn, finally, to theissue of narrativemodes of winning novels,for if it is truethat standardisation became mom apparentin respect of the similaritiesin the useof word groupsand in the treatmentof themes asthe decadewent on, it is alsotrue that the choices made by the panelsof judgesalso became more conservative in respectof the narrativemodes. I indicatedearlier in my outlineof thebasic argument of this chapterthat our expectationsof the noveland of thedepiction of sufferingtherein in general termsprobably include an expectation that this shouldbe depictedlargely in termsof a realistnarrative mode.

Certainlythe novelswhich won in 1984and from 1986-1989employ moretraditional narrative styles than the novelsin the first group. The two novelsfrom the secondgroup which may be saidin any senseto be experimentalnarratives are Carey's Victorian pastiche Oscar Ind Lucinda and PenelopeLively's Moon Ii However,Lively's experimentationis limited in that sheexperiments not so muchwith the style of the narrativeas with thechronology of theevents related. This servesto back up Claudia!s contentionthat 'historyis not chronological'.

In the novelswhich won in the early Eightiesand in 1985,Golding's novelis experimentalinsofar as it experimentswith re-creatingthe language and indeedthe form of earliernovels. 'Ibis contrastswith the more 'modem'thematic pessimism of the novel,particularly in relationto the unsympatheticand indeed dystopian picture which Golding presentshere, 208 as elsewherein his work, of life lived in an environment where people are forced to live in close proximity to one another. Thus Talbot writes on the last pageof hisjoumal:

'With lack of sleep and too much understanding I grow a little crazy, I think, like all men at sea who live too close to each other and too close there by to all that is monstrous tinder the sun and moon' (p278).

Hulme's novel is more audaciousin its narrative form than many of the other novels which won during the 1980s,mixing passagesof first and third person narrative with song-lyric, and also mixing past and present tenses. In addition there are severalpassages particularly at the beginning of this novel, which are more akin to poetry than to prose.

With regardto an increasingconservatism among the judges, if the emphasison physicalsuffering in thefirst groupof novelsis paralleledby a moreinnovative use of narrativeoverall, it is alsotrue neverthelessthat the only wholly experimentaltext in termsof its narrativeform is Rushdie's novel. AlthoughRushdie's eschewal of formal realismin this text arguably givesthe materialof the novelheightened impact, not only wasUs the only explicitly anti-realisttext to win duringthe Eighties,but thereappears to havebeen a strongbias against this typeof non-realistnarrative thereafter. While the merit of Rushdie'swriting wasrecognised in 1981. by 1988the

Chairmanof the Panelof judges,Michael Foot, expressed a distastefor'the modemcult of magicalrealism'in his after-dinnerspeech.

To sum up, it is possible to make a distinction between the winners from the early Eighties and thosefrom 1984 and 1986-1989inclusive in terms of whether suffering is primarily experiencedas physical or intellectualised pain. In addition it is also possible to discern recurrent modfs of suffering in the winning novels from both the early the later group of winners. The secondgroup of novelshowever may be saidto displaymore of the featureswhich werecharacteristic of BookerPrix shortlistedfiction of this 209

period, and thesenovels may be said to form more of a homogenousgroup.

They are characteristicallynon-controversial, largely self-referential,show

little awarenessof life other than as experiencedwithin the narrow confines

of the social environmentin which the charactersoperate, and, as I have

already noted, three out of the five novels have a writer as the main or a

main character.

This lack of awarenessof therealities of physicalsuffering in the novels from thesecond group which is implicit in the lack of credibledialogue in the novels,may be seento reflecta moregeneral lack of awarenessamong the winning authors,though Taylor for oneargues that this was a characteristicfeature of British fiction asa whole duringthis period.21

21TAYLOR, D. J., (1989).A Vain Conceit-,British Fiction In the 19 Bloomsbury,London, e. g. pp15-16. 210

CONCLUSION TO PART 3

In the two chaptersabove I have shown that there is evidenceof standardisation,both in respectof linguistic links among the texts and in respectof similarities in the treatmentand depiction of the themeof suffering.

In ChapterFive I showedthat the links betweentexts in respectof the use of languageis lesspronounced in termsof therecurrence of individual key wordsthan in the useof relatedword groups.Indeed there was little differencebetween the Booker-winning texts and the novelsin the control group in respectof key words.

This in itself maybe of somesignificance in thatit is possibleto argue that thefact thatthere is no greatdivergence from the patterndisplayed in the controlgroup texts among the Bookerwinners adds further weight to claimsmade about the representativenature of Booker-winningfiction. On the otherhand however, it couldbe argued that the lack of any characteristic patternsin the useof key wordsamong the Bookertexts is significantsince it throwsinto questionthe ideathat Booker winners of the Eightieswere in someway specialor distinctfrom othernovels of the period. Thus, ironically, onemight saythat if thesenovels are in any way

'representative',it is insofaras theyrepresent the run-of-themill, and are not fortnally, linguistically,or eventhematically innovative.

If the fact that Bookerwinners from this perioddid not differ markedly from othernovels in the useof languageis assumedto be indicativeof a generalresemblance between Booker novels and other texts, then our attentionmust return to theselection and pre-selection processes outlined in ChapterFour sincethis would thenseem to imply that the fact that these 211

novels becamebestsellers and their reception as 'good'fiction probably had

more to do with this than with any inherent featuresof the texts themselves.

I suggestedin ChapterFive that the fact that there was a recurrenceof

groups of words relating to loss and bereavementamong the Booker texts

suggestedthat there would be thematiclinks among the novels that won the

prize during the Eighties, and indeed this was borne out by further

investigation in ChapterSix. I suggestedhowever that this could have been

indicative of a prevalenceof certain themesin fiction as a whole during this

period. However, the fact that the key word analysis showed a correlation

among the Booker-winning novels that was not presentto the sameextent

among the control group texts (which were largely drawn from the same

period) and, furthermore, as Burrows pointed out, the fact that in any case

the elegaic quality which seemedto link thesenovels was presentin novels

which originated both in Britain and from the Commonwealthfurther

suggestsa pre-selectionon the part of the judges. The conservatism

apparenthere in addition may be said to have been reflected in the lack of experimentationwith narrative modesapparent in the winners from the

second group.

I havenoted a thematicstandardisation in respectof the way suffering wasdepicted. In additionto therebeing general patterns in relationto whetheror not sufferingwas depicted primarily in physicalor emotional/intellectualterms, I suggestedthat standardisationwas also evidentin morespecific ways in respectof the recurrenceof mofifs of suffering. FurthermoreI notedthat therewas more evidenceof homogeneityin thewinners from thelatter part of the decadethan in those which won in theearly Eighties,

In addition,while I notedspecific links betweenCarey's two Booker. shortlistednovels and earlier Booker winners from the 1980s,there were 212

also more generalisedlinks and 'borrowings' from earlier sourcesoutwith the Booker-shortlistsamong several other winners. Theserelate to narrative form as well as thematiccontent, and severalinferences may be drawn from this.

The epistolary form which Golding choosesserves to place the text in a tradition which includessome of the most veneratednames in the developmentof the early novel. This may be seento help to establish, as it were, the authenticity of the novel as a written accountfrom the post-

Napoleonic period. In addition however Golding may also be seento be attempting to underline his own credentialsas an author, in terms of displaying both his knowledge of literary history and his skill at pastiche.

In the pastthe BookerPrize shortlists and the early submissionshave frequentlyincluded texts which have sought, either thematically or in their form, to emulatethe Victorian novel in particular,though to a largeextent this hasmirrored a trendwhich wasprevalent in any casein British fiction as a whole. While D. J. Taylor, writing in 1989of British fiction of the Eighties,bemoaned a generallack of experimentation,he also acknowledgedthat fictionswhich harkedback to a previousage in many caseshad more force than novels of the time which wereexplicitly contemporaryeither in form or in theme.22

The winning novelfrom 1988is againof particularinterest here for both thematicallyand stylistically Oscarand Lucinda harks back to the Victorian novel,though the natureof thecomedy in this novel is very muchrooted in the TwentiethCentury. Carey'sthemes include many which were preoccupationsduring the mid-Victorian period including emigration, the

22 SeeJayhr (op. cit.) ppl 6-17: 'Whenever English an accomplishedand specifically novelistdoes emerge-a PeterAckroyd, say, or a GrahamSwift - it is significantthat he movesbackwards. Hawksmoorand Waterlandwere brilliant books, and their brilliancelay In that they usedthe past,and in Ackroyd'scase the languageof the past, to reinterpretthe present.' 213 industrial revolution, and, aboveall, the peculiar intensity and plurality of religiousbelief in Victoriansociety.

In addition, Carey, like Golding, attemptsto 'authenticate'the literary- historical backgroundof the novel by referring to real people and incidents from the period. Thus referencesare madeto the Great Exhibition of 1851 and to the writer GeorgeEliot (asMarian Evans), who is supposedto have been a friend of Lucinda's mother.

However,Carey borrows heavily from onesource in particular,that is,

EdmundGosse's autobiographical novel Father and Son. Although he acknowledgesthis debtat thebeginning of the novel,it is significantthat one of the mostcrucial incidents in the text is borrowedfrom Gosse,and, furthermore,that this relatesto thetheme of suffering. In ChapterThree of

Oscarand Lucinda Oscar's father, like Gosse's,forces his son to spit out a mouthfulof much-covetedChristmas pudding as he believesit to be contaminatedby sin. This is a pivotal scenein the novel, andas in Gosse, it alsoserves here to underlinethe increasing alienation of fatherfrom son andtheir mutualincomprehension.

In additionto the 'borrowing'of this particularincident, the charactedsationof Oscar'sfather owes much to Gosse'sdescriptions of his own father,and the descriptionof Hopkinssenior and Oscaron the beach looking for specimensis againhighly influencedby Gosse.While as I havenoted Carey acknowledges his debtto Gossethere are similarities betweenthis noveland other more recent work. I havealready noted the links betweenOscar and Lucinda and ]Me BonePeol2le,, however there are alsosimilarities with otherworks such as asDennis Potter's Where Adam &Md and thesewere not credited. 214

Carey is not the only winning author to have made use of material from earlier sourcesand the sourceof material borrowed was not restricted to the

Victorian novel, nor for that matterwas it restrictedsolely to British fiction. 23 In addition to Golding's attemptat imitating the style of Fielding or Richardsonthere may be said to be somestylistic links betweenRushdie and, for example, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Furthermore in Coetzee'snovel the writer clearly intendsa parallel betweenthe main characterK and

Kafka's K characters. Hulme's novel has less direct parallels with individual novelists,but The Bone PeWk stylistically may be seento representa pasticheof various streamsof consciousnessfictions, while

Lively borrows themesfrom, among others, Keith Douglas's Alamein to Zem Zem.

Ibis trendmay be seenamong other things as reflecting a tendency amongthe authorsinvolved (andpossibly the judges) to 'play safe'. For while it would be narrow-mindedto suggestthat a writer shouldrestrict his or herselfto wholly 'original'material, firstly sinceJoyce and Shakespeare amongothers show that this neednot be a recipefor lack of innovation,and secondlysince the typesof humanexperience with which literaturedeals am very often thosewhich, like theexperience of suffering,are common to us all, neverthelessin thecase of Careyin particular,little attemptis madeat re-workingthe materialtaken from thesource.

I havesuggested above that evidence of standardisationin respectof the fiction which won the BookerPrize during the 1980sboth with regardto similaritiesin the treatmentof themesand in their lack of experimentationin their narrativemodes, and the conservatismon the part of thejudges appearsto havebeen more prevalent as the decadewent on. It is hardto

23 If this is a form of conservatismin actionhowever, it should,nevertheless be comparedwith the tendencyof criticsin generaland fly leaf 'blurU writersin particularto attemptto authenticatethe valueof new or at leastcontemporary writersthrough a comparisonwith writers from the post whoseworks are received to be'classid. Thus,for examplethe 1989paperback edition of JamesKelman's novelA Disaffectioncompares the authorto Beckettand to Kafka. 215 know exactly why this should have beenthe case. Neverthelessthe increasingconservatism is alsoreflected in the after-dinnerspeeches of the

Chairmanof thepanels of judges.

I havealready alluded to MichaelFoot's comments in 1988,and in ChapterFive I referredto the 1984Chairman Richard Cobb's comments criticisingthe useof the vernacularin JamesKelman's novel 31= BusconductorHines. In fact thespeeches made by the Chairmenin 1984 and 1985are worth examining in detailfor it seemsto be the casethat these two speechesexpress opposing views as to what sort of fiction it was assumedthe BookerPrize ought to reward.

In his speechCobb asserted that the BookerPrize should be for a novel which was: ',, easy to read', 'pleasant', and '.. reassuring.

More controversiallyhowever, he statedthat.

'It is not for the judges in a novel prize to tell the general public what it ought to be reading; but to choose books that people are likely to want to read. In an operation of this kind, one would not go for a Proust or a Joyce - not that I would know about that, never having read either. '24

The following yearthe Chainnan of the panelof judgeswas the fonner Arts Minister NormanSt. John-Stevas.Contrary to what Cobb had said, St. John-Stevas the assertedthat purposeof the prize was: . 1., for It is for not providing a riveting yarn or an easy read ... a major and serious contribution to contemporary English fiCtion. '25

24 Quotedin WALSH,J., (1985),"Will Bookergo by the Book?", The Times,28th September. 25 KEMP,P., (1985),"Winning Ways - The BookerPrize, LWT% The Times Literaly Supplement,no. 4310, p1264. 216

It is clear that the 1985Chairman believed that it was his duty to try and redresswhat he believedwas a tipping of the balancein favour of a more anodyne, or at any rate more commercial,type of fiction as winner.26

The 1984 and 1985winners themselvesdemonstrate mom visibly than most the'unconscious see-saweffect' mentionedby Goff in Prizewriting.

As I have noted in ChapterOne, the 1984winner sold proportionately more copies over a shorter period of time than any previous winner of the prize.

The 1985 winner was the least popular winner of the decadein terms of hardback salesat least. [See Fig. 1.1

Nevertheless,inspite of St. John-Stevas'ssentiments, with the exception of 1985,the winnersof theprize from themid-Eighties on moreresembled the sort of fiction which Cobbhad described than the typepreferred by the 1985Chairman. Furthermore if this typeof winnerhad more commercial potential,evidently this wasderived not from thenovels' being representativeof thematicor formalinnovation, but ratherfrom (or inspite of) their beingintrospective, uncontroversial and self-referential.

26 N. B. see letterfrom LordSt-John of Fawsleyto SharonNorris, 25th June 1990,on the subjectwhere he states: I was whollyconcerned at restoringthe statusof the BookerPrize to a situation, from whichit had slipped,where it was awardedfor a genuineand original contributionto literature.' 217 CONCLUSION 'The Booker is internationally recognised as the world's top fiction prize.. 11

'.. the annual preening and self-aggrandising hype known as the Booker Prize. '2

In drawing this thesisto a conclusion I wish to sum up my findings in the

precedingchapters and to re-addressthe issues originally raisedin the Introductionin thelight of whathas been discussed above.

Throughoutthe thesisI haveargued that it is necessaryto look at the successof the BookerPrize during the 1980sin a broadercontext. In ChapterOne, I lookedat thebackground to the foundingof the prize in respectof the parentcompany's desire to sponsoran award,the historical contextof prizesin Britain in theSixties, and rinally, the socio-polifical contextwhich madefor anenvironment more likely to be sympatheticto the settingup of an awardof this kind.

Thenin ChapterTwo I lookedin additionat the existingsituation as regardsprizes in Britain andat thesort of agendabehind the motivadonof businessesto becomeinvolved in the sponsorshipof literary awards. I lookedspecifically at issuesrelating to the prestigeof the sponsoring companyand to valuefor sponsorship,and I examinedthe generaltrend during the Eightiestowards the settingup of business-sponsoredliterary awards.I alsomade a detailedcomparison of the BookerPrize with several otherawards and noted significant differences in the structureof this award.

As far as thefindings of ChaptersOne and Two areconcerned, it seems clear that all businesseshave aims in the settingup of awards,whether these

THWAITE,A., (1987),"Booker 1986", Encounte Vol. , 68., pp37-38. 2 LAMONT,S., (1989),"in GoodFaith", The GlasgowHerald, 23rd September. 218 areexplicitly statedor not, and,one way or another,these usually relate backto the natureof thecompany and to theaims of the businessworld in general.They usuallyinclude the desire of thecompany to maximise publicity for itself andto addto its prestige.As for the specificaims of the Booker'ssponsor, these included an attemptto signalthe company's relocationof its interestsin Britain andan enhancement of its prestigevia an associationwith literature.

In all business-sponsorshipof awards, prestige for the parentcompany comesabout via anassociation with somethingelse, in this caseliterature, which hasa statusreceived to be higherthan the statusof business.In addition,during the Eighties there were benefits in theway of extra publicity for the sponsorand tax relief to helpinduce companies to become involved in sponsorshipof this kind, for, as I haveshown in Chapter

Three,it wasthe Government'spolicy at this time both to divestitself of responsibilitiesfor the publicfunding of the artsand to attractbusiness sponsorsin its stead.

Given the hardbusiness sense of the sponsorsof the BookerPrize, the settingup of a RussianBooker Prize in 1992and the 1993"Booker of Bookers"competition must inevitably be viewedwith somesuspicion. For example,it is hardto seethe former as anything other than a cynical attempt on the part of BookerPlc to extendits sphereof influenceinto therecently opened-upmarkets of EasternEurope, and ironically the first Russian

BookerPrize proved to be no lesscontroversial than its British relative. In addition3 the winnerof theaward was not generallyconsidered to be representativeof contemporaryRussian fiction. As for the latter,this must surelybe seenprimarily asan attemptby the companyto blow its own trumpetand it is perhapssignificant that it wasRushdie's 1981 winner, that is, a critically acclaimednovel rather than a commercialchoice, which won.

3 See "Booker Shortlist Dismays Russians",The Sunday Times, 12th December 1993,1. p22. 219

AlthoughMidnight's Children figures very low down on the list of best- selling Bookerwinners of the 1980s,the novel'ssuccess in the "Bookerof Booker's"would seemto fit in with the aim of theevent which canbe seen to havebeen to underlinethe company's continued involvement with the artsover a periodof time, and,implicitly, to enhancethe company's prestigefurther therein. However,in giving the prize to Rushdie'snovel thejudges for thatparticular award may also be saidto haveunderlined one of theexplicit aimsof thecompany in settingup the BookerPrize in 1968, which wasto re-affirmthe role of theauthor in a situationwhere he or she was in danger.

Thusif thecharacter of theBooker Prize appears to havechanged somewhatin the 1990s,for examplein thatit wasunashamedly commercial in the choiceof RoddyDoyle aswinner in 1993,and less conservative as regardsthe useof stronglanguage, and if, further,there may be saidto be a new awarenessin thenovels that won in theNineties of life lived outside the experienceof the middle-classintellectuals of the southeast and of social issues,we shouldnevertheless ask whether this in fact representsa substantialchange in approachor whetherit merelyindicates each of these qualitieswas now morecommercially viable than before.

In Part21 discussedthe issue of patronageas a historicalnecessity and relatedthis both to business-sponsorshipand to the supposedautonomy of the author. While I suggestedin ChapterThree that artisticautonomy was inevitablyconditioned by economicfactors and that any form of patronage ultimatelyinfluenced the natureof thework producedat onelevel or another,I notedthat therewas a substantialdifference between the patronageof the individualaristocrat of the pastand the sort of financial supporton offer to the writer throughliterary prizes. I suggestedfurther in

ChapterThree that while theremay have been a growing perceptionof a 220 needfor outsidefunding for thearts in general,the conflationof business and aestheticideals which aroseout of thebusiness-sponsorship of literary awardsmust be seenin somemeasure to be traceableto a naivetyand lack of cautionon the part of thosein theliterary world who werein a positionto decidewhether this fonn of financialsupport should be embracedor not.

The issue of the autonomyof literature also figured in Chapter Four whenI discussedsocial values. I demonstratedthat there was a high level of socialinterconnections among authors, Management Committee members andjudges, and I alsonoted that from theoutset the judging panelfor the prize was dominatedby membersof theliterary and media establishments. This situationmade for an environmentwhere it wasat leastvery likely that socialvalues were substituted for aestheticones. I arguedthat not only did this situationhave parallels with theliterary establishment of the Thirtiesand Fortieswhich the contributorsto Scrutinywere so critical of, but it suggestedthat the literaryestablishment in Britain asa wholehad not changedsubstantially since then. Thus,even if theBooker Prize did no morethan reflect the values of the literaryestablishment, in so doingit neverthelessstill perpetuatedan unhealthyelitism.

In Part31 lookedfor evidenceof standardisationin the novelsthat won the BookerPrize daring the 1980s.While I acknowledgedthe fact that theremay be somegeneral connections among any groupof novels, nevertheless,having noted in earlierchapters that the financialrewards of this prize alonewere a powerfulincentive for any author,I wishedto seeif therewas any indicationthat winning authors had deliberately attempted to write "prize-worthy"fiction.

In ChapterFive I foundsome evidence of linguisticlinks amongthe novelswhich won the Bookerduring the Eighties. This was not particularlypronounced however except in thecase of the recurrenceof 221 similar word groups.The implications of this were,firstly, thatclaims that the novelswhich won the BookerPrize were somehow representative of currentfiction weretrue only in so far as,linguistically at least,the novels werenot significantlydifferent to otherfictions, and, secondly, that the recurrenceof word groupsrelating to lossand bereavement indicated that it waslikely that thematiclinks would alsobe in evidence.In ChapterSix I

showedthat this wasindeed the case, but I arguedthat asfar as the themeof

sufferingwas concerned, it wasless the recurrence of this themethat was significantas the similaritiesin theways in which sufferingwas understoodand depicted by the authorsconcerned. I notedin particularthe recurrenceof certainrecognisable 'motifs of suffering'

I arguedfurthermore that suchstandardisation as was apparent in novels which won hadadditional implications. It couldbe interpretedas being an

indicationthat some authors were intent on writing a type of fiction which they perceivedto havea betterchance of winningthe DookerPrize.

However,it could,in additionbe saidto be the resultof the sharedset of valuesmentioned in ChapterFour.

In additionto thelinks apparentin the treatmentand depiction of sufferingin thesetexts, I noteda generaltendency, both thematicallyand formally, to 'borrow'from earliersources, and in particularfrom the

Victoriannovel. In additionto an acknowledgementof the belief that the novel asa literaryform reacheda high point during the Victorian period,I believethis alsosuggests a commonunderstanding among die shortlisted writers of what the novelis or shouldbe andone which looks back to more realisticand arguably mom conservative forrns than forward to experimental or 'modern'forms.

However,I believethis alsosuggests a sharedset of valuesin relation both to an implictly agreedon canonof 'classic'literature, and also to what 222 oughtto be viewedas being the significant events in history. 711isin turn further suggestsa 'sensiscommunis' not so muchin relationto what have beenunquestionably important events in historyand particular in the history of the British Empire,but alsoin respectof a generalapproach to interpretinghistorical events. It furtherindicates an implicit agreementas to thesignificance of historyas an academic subject and it is perhaps significantin this contextthat a substantialnumber of judgesand authors haveundergraduate degrees in somearea of history.4

I arguedin ChapterSix thatstandardisation in the textswhich won the Bookerduring the 1980smay alsobe saidto reflecta pre-selectionon the part of thejudges, and conservatism on the part of thejudges as regards the choiceof winningnovel certainly became more apparent as the decadewent on. Indeedit seemsthat thejudges at the time chosedeliberately not to rewardcertain authors whose work wasin someway distinctive. Thus GrahamSwift's ,Martin Amis'sMoney, and AlasdairGray's Lana AngelaCarter during few , plus the work of this period,are only a exampleof fictions which in their own way chartednew territory in the geographyof the novelyet which wereoverlooked by successivejudging panels.

To concludethen, in theForties Orwell arguedin his essay"The

Preventionof Literature"5 thata boughtmind wasa spoiledmind'insofar

4 N. B. If one looksover the list of winnersfrom the 1980s, virtually all of them are locatedin a specificperiod of the past. E. g Golding'snovel in the early NineteenthCentury, Rushdie's in the immediatelypost-independence period of Indianhistory, Keneally's in WorldWar Two. Lively'stext is obsessedwith history and the ideaof historyas memoryand the narrativeflits back and forth between differentperiods in the maincharacter's 'history'. The 1988winner is, as I have mentioned,set in the mid-Victorianperiod, and the 1989winner In the Inter-war years earlierthis century. Althoughthe 1983winner from Coetzee,the Brookner novelwhich won the yearafter, Ked Hulme's1985 winner, and KingsleyAmis's The Old Devilswhich won in 1986do not referto the past in sucha specificway, theseare very elegaic:texts which in generallook back to a betterpast, and Brookner'snovel has muchwry comment(e. g. In Chapter2) on the role of the 1new`woman in the Eightieswhich makes the latterseem less than Ideal. 5 ORWELL,G., (1946),"The Preventionof Literature%Tb_Q QQEgghd. Ej0M Journalismgnd Lettersof GeorgeOrwel 4. In FrontoMur NQse.1945-5Q. editedby SoniaOrwell IanAngu Secker Warburg,London, -and , and 1968. 223 as it led to orthodoxy, and that orthodoxy, whatever its root was the death knell for fiction writing in that it went againsteverything that the novel stood for. Nevertheless,I arguedin Chapter Six that it is possible to talk of a 'typical' Booker-winning novel of the Eighties, at least insofar as there were certain featuresof the novels which won, particularly thosefrom the latter part of the decade,that seemedto characterisethe prize at this time.

If, asWatt suggests,the novel is understoodto be the literary form above all otherswhich is mostsuited to anexploration of thehuman psyche and of uniqueand individual human experience, then clearly, insofar as there is any evidenceof standardisationamong the BookerPrize-winners of the Eighties,the BookerPrize should be viewedwith somesuspicion.

Furthermoresome very clear examples of spontaneityand experimentation in respectof fiction seemto havegone unrecognised by judgesof the BookerPrize during the 1980s,and instead compromise choices and uncontroversialfictions held sway, particularly in the secondhalf of the decade.

I haveargued throughout this thesisthat the significance of the Booker Prizehas ultimately to do with its efficacyas a marketingdevice. Insofaras this prize maybe seento havehad the capacity during the 1980sto affectthe receptionprocess via its capacityto sell novelsand thereinto disseminatea receivedunderstanding of 'good'which mayhave had very little to do with an assessmentof literarymerit, this awardmust be seento be significantin any overviewof the literaryhistory of the last threedecades. Furthermore, it will continueto be so aslong asit hassuch a markedeffect on the salesof novels. 224 POSTSCRIPT

'While not the most extraordinary appointment since Caligula made his horse consul, it is undeniably unexpected.'I 'The Booker is by tradition controversial, apart, of course, from the always controversial final choiCe.12

Although the initial quotationabove does not refer to the decision to award

1994 Booker Prize to JamesKelman's novel How Late it Ho3M the -Was. L= it might be said to be equally applicableto the choice of the panel that year as it was to the 1985winner. The reasonfor this is that the Kelman novel's successseemed to belie every piece of received wisdom on the

Booker Prize, and, apparently,to contradict much of what has been said above.

For a startthe novelwas the first Scottishwinner of the prize in 26 years, andwas oneof two Scottishnovels on thatyear's shortlist, along with GeorgeMackay Brown's Beside the Qceangf Time. This wassomething of a record,for throughoutthe historyof the prize only threeScottish authorshad been included on the shortlistsprior to this, andthis included Kelmanhimself in 1989and Muriel Sparkwho hadbeen on the shortlist severaltimes.

Thus it seemedto contradictthe unwritten rule that'regional',in this case

Scottish,novels do not win. FurthermoreKelman's novel wasmore regionalthan most, being firmly rootedin the westof Scotland.

However,the novel wasnot only Scottishin termsof its authorand the locationof the action. It is written in thevernacular, specifically in the

1 HOWARD,P., (1985),The Times,I st November. 2 JAMES,P. D., (1987),Whitaker'87 (An Almangckfor the Year of gur Lord 1987. 119th edition),J. Whitakerand Sons,London, pl 092. 225 languageof working-classGlaswegians, and it dealswith a stratumof society that is not often given a voice in contemporaryBritish literature. It is a novel about a low-life ex-convict called Samuelswho drinks too much, begs, is robbed of his shoesand who fights with D. S. S. bureaucratsto have his blindnessverified in order for him to be able to claim benefiL

The fact thatthis novelwon thereforecontradicts the receivedwisdom on whatkind of a novelthe prize goes to, in thatit is a socialcritique and in that it is largelysubversive in its irony. The charactersin additionare not middle-classintellectuals from thesouth east of England.

The useof the vernacularin itself setthe novel apart from otherwinners sincethis wassomething which seemedfrom the evidenceof pastshortlists to havebeen actively discouraged. Indeed, as I indicatedin ChapterFive, Kelmanhimself was berated by RichardCobb, the Chairmanof thejudges in 1984in his afterdinner speech for his useof the vernacularin J]X BusconductorHines. Althoughnot mentioninghim by name,Cobb referreddismissively to the author'suse of 'Glaswegianpatois', asif the useof the vernacularwas a deviceemployed by Kelmanpurely to insult the judges. Furthermore,Cobb commented, as he hadlacked a dictionary,he had given up readingthe novel.3

It wasnot only Kelman'suse of vernacularlanguage that setit apartfrom that of previouswinners. In addition,he usesfour-letter words throughout the novel andthis angeredsome critics. In his acceptancespeech however, the authordefended his useof working-classGlaswegian speech and of the word 'fuck'. In fact it is clearfrom this speechalone how Kelman's attitudeto what he wasdoing in his writing was subversive.It is alsoclear that he wasattempting to useprose to confrontthe readerwith the bleakness

3 KEMP,P., (1984).'The BookerPrize", The Times LiterarySlipplement, no. 4310, p1264. 226 of everydaylife lived in povertyand the apparent hopelessness of sucha situation. 4

Ibus, language,theme and geographicalorigin made this novel a controversialchoice, at least in that it went againstthe grain of previous winners of the prize, certainly of thosethat won during the 1980s,which as

Philip Howard noted at the time tendedto be a:

'.. safe, compromise, uncontroversial candidate, to which none of the judges violently objects, rather titan to more adventurous, more controversial books to which some of the judges violently object'. 5

How thenare we to view this choiceof winnergiven what hasbeen said in the body of this thesis?

It is true to someextent as I haveindicated in the Conclusionabove that changesdo seemto havebeen afoot with in theBooker Prize since around the beginningof the decade.Certainly there seems to havebeen a more liberal attitudetowards the useof expletivesand this canbe seenin the inclusionof Kelman'searlier novel A Disaffectionon the 1989shortlist, andin the choiceof RoddyDoyle's novel PaddyClarke. Ha Ha Ila as the winner in 1993. Martin Amis, anothercontroversial author who in the past hasfrequently used four-letter words and who hasalso been accused of beingsexist, furthermore, finally got onto the shordistin 1991with his novel Time'sArrow. Amis'sfrcquent and often explicit referencesto sex hadmade him a lessthan likely candidatefor the shordistsof the Bookerin the 1980s.His style furthermoreis not strictly realistand this alsomade him differentto the majorityof 1980swinners.

4 KELMAN, J., (1994). "Elitist slurs are racism by another name", Scotl,-Llnd on Sunday (Spectrum), 16th October. 5 HOWARD,P., (1982), "Curling up withall the Bookers",The TimQs.I 9th October. 227 Thatsaid, sex in itself wasnot a bar to beingshortlisted as the inclusion of Burgess'sEarthly Powers in 1980and D. M. Thomas'snotorious novel The White Hotel proves.However in eachcase the detaileddescriptions of sexmay be saidto havehad moral justif ication within the contextof the work, in the Bqgessnovel in thathis centralcharacter's promiscuous homosexualityis usedby Burgessas an in-roadto oneof the novel'scentral themes,which is anexamination of thenature of goodand evil, morality andimmorality. In Thomas'snovel explicit sexualfantasies are used as a startingpoint for theexploration of thedisturbed psyche of the main character.

Therehave also been slight shiftsapparent in the type of novel which has won the prizesince 1990. The highly popularchoice of thejudges in awardingthe 1993prize to RoddyDoyle's novel was met with lessattempts thanmight havebeen expected to coverover the novel'sstrongly commercialappeal with puff aboutits aestheticmerit and 'serious'in tent andless attempt furthermore to conflatethe two.

However,if it is temptingto seea shift in attitudewithin the prize,and, moreover,to tracea moredown-to-earth, humane and socially awarequality in the winnersof the 1990s,it is neverthelessimportant to keepin mind that suchconcepts and the prize'sbeing awarded to novelswhich displayed thesevalues may have been nothing more than the promotionof ideals which hadbegun to becomemore commercial. In otherwords the prize's stronglycommercial bias may have made it morelikely thatnovels which reflectedthe current market trends would win. For gonewere the heady daysof the Eighties,where Thatcherite materialism was theorder of the day, andin voguenow werevalues which correspondedwith thoseof the (apparently)ecologically conscious, spiritual and 'caring'Nineties. 228 Evenif thesetrends do not reflecta majorshift awayfrom the middle- classvalues of the literaryestablishment, before one dismisses the Kelman win asa freak result,it is importantto examinewhether or not it correspondsat any level to patternsin respectof previouswinners. In the chaptersabove I havenoted some apparent trends in the awardingof the prize andsome of thesemay be applicableto the 1994winner. Thus I shall recapbriefly on whatthese are.

As I indicatedin ChapterFour, it hascertainly been the case throughout

the historyof the prizethat where an authorhas been on the shortlistseveral times,he or shehas a betterchance of winning. Onecan seethis during the

1980swinners in the examplesof KingsleyAmis, PeterCarey and Kazuo Ishiguro. This is not an entirely 'hard-and-fast'rule howeverand writers

suchas Doris Lessingand Muriel Sparkwould seemso far to havebucked this particulartrend, possibly because of the typeof fiction they write. Nevertheless,as a formershordisted author Kelman may be saidto have

hada betterchance of winning.

Similarly, it couldwell havebeen the casethat the organisersof the award

wishedboth to makeup for theinsult to Kelmanin 1984and to be seento be recognisinga majorliterary talent at last,thus enhancing the prestigeof the awarditself andof the reputationsof thejudges. Anyonein any doubt that the latteris an importantconsideration should consider the example of

1989when the Chairman David Lodgewas apparently in two mindsas to

whetheror not to pushfor theinclusion on the shortlistof Martin Amis's novel LondonEields. On the onehand he wassaid to haverisked the wrath of the largelyfemale panel by pushingfor a writer who hadpreviously been consideredto be 'sexist'. On the otherhis own reputationwas at stakeif lie werein chargeof a panelfor a literary awardwhich stroveto highlight the 'bestnovel' in the opinion of thejudges and did not recogniseone of the

mostsignificant talents of theprevious fifteen years. 229

The writer SimonBrett whosecomic novel The BgokcrBook centredon onewould-be novelisfs repeated attempts to win the Bookerwrote a witty but nonethelesspointed article in The SundayMines 6 afterthe shordistfor the 1989Booker Prize was announced. In this he statedthat Booker winnersusually fell into oneof sevencategories which he labelledas "The Right Author for theWrong Book Winner", citing the examplesof Iris Murdoch,Kingsley Amis andWilliam Golding;the "Smallbut Perfectly FormedWinner", citing theexamples of PenelopeFitzgerald and Anita Winnee, "IsWtIt About Time We Had Brookner;the "Well-written , the AnotherOne from the CommonwealthWinner"; the "Non-fictionWinner, of which therehad only beenone to date,that is Schindler'sArk; and finally the "Rushof Blood to the HeadWinnee,, which he suggestedcould be the only possibleexplanation for the successesof JohnBerger and Keri Hulme in 1972and 1985respectively.

AlthoughBretVs tone in the articleis largelyhumorous, his observations arebased on morethan a grainof truth. As I haveshown in ChapterFour, theremay be assumedto havebeen some element of tokenismin the pattern of winning novelsfrom theCommonwealth as Brett himself notes. If there was tokenismhere, then it seems,by extension,that tokenismmay have beenat work in 1994as regards a pro-Scottishbias. Given the dearthof

Scottishwriters in the past,to havehad two on the shortlistin oneyear and a Scottishwinner seems quite a shift. Similarly, this could be the onetoken

'modern'novelabout modern British society,or the tokenworking-class novel.

Otherthan being the Scottishequivalent of the tokenCommonwealth winner, the othertwo categorieson Brett'slist which would seemto

6 BRETT,S., (1989),"In My View,[A SeasonedBooker-watcher Explains How to Identifya LikelyWinner and Whatthe Critics'Praise Means]", The SundayTimas, 24th September. 230 correspondin any way with the 1994winner are the "Right Author for the

Wrong Book" and the "Rush of Blood to the Head" categories. 71at is, either the Kelman win can be seento have been somethingwhich should have happenedfor an earlier novel, or indeedan award for tenacity, or

alternatively the novel was awardedthe Booker Prize by the judges in a moment of madness. In other words it was, after all, a freak win.

I shall refer to the latter in a minute. However them am some additional

considerationswhich should be taken into accountas regardsprecedents.

In a general sensethe very fact that Kelman's win followed that of a highly

commercial novel the year beforecould be said to reflect the pattern noted

by Goff in referring to the winning novels of the Eighties, where a novel

that was likely to have appealedto the critics was quickly followed by one

that was likely to have appealedto the booksellers. However even if

Kelman's novel was a more philosophical work than Doyle's it had already

sold 20,000 copies in hardbackbefore the Booker ceremony, a substantial

amount for any novel, let alone one that was not supposedto be

commercial.

Furthermoretwo otherpointers which areoften overlooked by the

punditsin their attemptsto pick a likely winnerare, firstly, the opinion of the booksellersthemselves, and, secondly, the bookies'odds. As far as the

latter areconcerned the lastminute surge of betson the Kelman,which

substantiallynarrowed the odds,should have been some indication that the

novel had a goodchance of winning. In relationto the view of the book tradeit shouldbe rememberedthat whenthe oneapparent shock win of the Eighties,Keri Hulme's,novel The BoneP=jc occuredin 1985,the book The Bookselle had trademagazine , somemonths earlier carriedan article aboutthe phenomenalsales of the novelin its nativeNew Zealand,and furthermore,had tipped it asa likely winner of the BookerNze. Going by 231 its salesto date,the Kelman novel must have seemedlike a reasonable prospect.

Thusthese are some points to bearin mind beforedismissing the awarding of the prize to How Late It Was. How Late, as a freak result.

It must neverthelessbe acknowledgedthat the subject matter of this novel and the other qualities outlined abovemade it unlike any previous winner of the Booker, and it would be wrong to play this down. In that sense therefore it was a surprisingchoice and one returns to the question of whether this cameabout as a result of a collective rush of blood to the head on the part of the judges.

In theend it is likely thatit wasthe composition and conduct of the judging panelthat year which offers the most likely explanationfor how the Kelmannovel cameto win. If thereis evergoing to be a genuine'surprise' winner,that is, notjust onewhich is disapprovedof in somecircles as beingan unsuitablewinner, but rathera novelwhich by its contentappears to defy all receivedwisdom on characteristicBooker novels, then this is mostlikely to happenwhen there has been some problem with thejudges of the prize or a malfunctioningof thejudging procedure.Again in this respect thereseems to havebeen a parallelbetween the 1994Booker award and that of 1985. In 1985the problemstemmed from the fact that oneof the panel of judges,Joanna Lumley, was unable to attendthe final meetingwhere they wereto decideupon a winner,and in theevent it wasa novel which shewould not havebeen voting for which won.

Thejudges for the 1994Booker Prize had as their ChairmanProfessor

JohnBayley, a literaturedon, married to formerBooker winner lets Murdochand incidentally Chairman of the panelof judgesfor the first ever RussianBooker Prize. The otherjudgeswere RabbiJulia Neuberger.Dr 232 Alistair Niven, literature director of the Arts Council of Great Britain, James

Wood the chief literary critic of The Quardian,and Alan Taylor, the Scottish

literary journalist who had previously beenon the ManagementCommittee

of the Booker Prize during the 1980s.

Although the Booker Prize is, as one former Chairman of the judging panel

has noted, 'by tradition controversial'7,and seemsat times not only to have

engenderedcontroversy but to have gone out of its way to attract it, the

controversy surrounding the 1994award was not solely confined to the

nature of the novel that won. In fact it extendedto the very critical

comments made by one of the judges, Julia Neuberger,concerning both the

novel and the deliberation processesof the judges.

Partly as a resultof this therewas an even higher level of presscoverage

of the awardthan usual. Oneof themore interesting articles written on the subjectappeared in Scotlandon Sundayand was written by Alan Taylor, who had formerly beenthe paper'sliterary editor. 8

In the first placethe article refutes the suggestionthat theremight have beenany deliberatepro-Scottish tokenism at work. Taylor alsocriticises Neubergerfor her commentsabout the winningnovel and alsofor suggesting,wrongly, that therewas only onejudge, namelyhim, who from the startwas strongly in favourof Kclman'snovel. More than this the articlegives a fascinatinginsight into the workingsof the panelas they attemptedto cometo their final decision.While he notesthat althoughthem wassome heavy discussion about the novels which were to be includedon the shortlistand in particularabout the inclusionof GeorgeMackay Brown'snovel Besidgthe Oceanof Ti= andof Abdulrazak-Gurnah's

Paradise,they endedup, he says, with a list that:

7 1.e. P. D. James. See Whitaker'87 (Op. cit. ), pl 092. 8 See TAYLOR, A., (1994), "Prize fight: Inside the Booker Prize", Scotland on Sunday. (Sogctruml, 16th October. 233

I.. none of the judges expressed themselves unhappy with. '

Taylor continually challengesNeuberger's comments about the unpopularity of the Kelman novel within the panel of judges and says that as soon as the judges were given the novel to read:

'Jour judges were highly impressed and remained so throughout all [our] deliberations. '

He noteswith relishthat both the Chairman and Wood in particularwere highly enthusiasticabout the novel. In fact Taylor suggeststhat far from it beingthe casethat only he wasin favourof Kelman'snovel, Neuberger wasthe only judge amongthe five who disRed it, andhe quotesher as sayingof theshordist:

'Apart from the Kelman, I'd be happy enough for any of them to win. '

Neverthelessthe remarkablething about the judging procedureat the final meeting as it is describedby Taylor is that somehow, having eliminated the

Gunesekera,Mackay Brown and Gurnah novels from consideration, and having had two rounds of provisional voting for the remaining three novels where they all had exactly the samenumber of votes, the first non-binding vote for a winner thereafterseemed to eliminate Kelman's novel altogether.

Taylor notesthat it receivedonly one vote while and Jill

Paton Walsh's novels received two each.

Havingcaused Wood to shakehis headin disbeliefwhen he ownedthat he would votefor thePaton Walsh rather than the Hollingliurstif it cameto a contestbetween the two, Taylor thenapparently pulled off a masterstroke of manoeuvring.instead of him voting for anothernovel which would have beenhis secondchoice, Taylor managedto persuadeBayley andWood that, 234 given their initial enthusiasmfor the novel, they should vote for Kelman's

book. As a result of this the Kelman novel receivedtwo extra votes to take

its tally to three, the PatonWalsh receivedtwo, and the Hollinghurst was

effectively eliminated.

What this illustrates is, firstly, how in the past the judging procedurehas

relied heavily on compromisechoices, as Philip Howard noted in 1982.

What it also indicateshowever is how much influence onejudge can have.

Having beena former memberof the ManagementCommittee of the prize it

may be that Taylor had a specialinsight into how the judging process

worked in practice. Whether this is true or not it seemsthat onejudge who

doggedly refusesto give up his original choice of winner may have a very

big influence on the final choice of winner. Thus the selection of Kelman's

novel in 1994, as far as Taylor is concernedat least, may be seento have been less of a compromisechoice than the result of somejudges being unwilling to compromiseat all. In the resulting deadlock the most influential judges proved to be thosewho were able, as it were, to shout the loudest.

It would seemthat this intractabilityon thepart of Taylor resultedin a novel winning which wasunusual in thatit reflectedlife in Britain from outwith the narrowperspectives of the southeast of England. Thus it may be saidthat oneinfluential judge, himself from a non-typicalbackground

(insofaras he workedfor theScottish literary media)was able to smooth the passagefor the winningof the prizeby a non-typicalnovel. 235

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TABLE 1.

BookerPrize Winners.1980-1-989. Who Havfj Won Otber Awards.

1980 WILLIAM GOLDING Ritesof Passaize OtherPrizes: JamesTait BlackMemorial Prize (1980), Nobel Prize for Literature (1983).

1981 SALMAN RUSHDIE Midnight'sChildren OtherPrizes: Arts CouncilLiterary Bursary Award (no dategiven), James Tait Black MemorialPrize (fiction) (1981), E-SU Literary Award (1981) [Both for Midnight'sChildren], Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger(1983), Whitbread Novel Award (1988).

1982 THOMAS KENEALLY Schindler'sArk OtherPrizes: LA TimesFiction Award (1982)[Also for Schindler'sArM.

1983 I M. COETZEE Life andTimes of MichaelK OtherPrizes: CNA LiteraryAward (1977), James Tait Black MemorialPrize (Fiction) (1980),Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (1981), CNA Literary Award (1983)[Also for Lik andTimes- f MichaelK], Prix FerninaEtranger (1985),Jerusalem Prize (1986), Sunday Express Book of the Year Award (1990).

1984 ANITA BROOKNER Hotel du Uc OtherPrizes: NONE

1985 KERI HUME TheBone People OtherPrizes: Maori Fiction Prize(1984), Pegasus Prize (1984) [Both for The Bone Peol2ld.

1986 KINGSLEY AMIS TheOld Devib; OtherPrizes: SomersetMaugham Award (1955),Cholmondeley Award [Poetry](1990),

1987 PENELOPE LIVELY MoonTiger OtherPrizes: CarnegieMedal [Childrens'Ficdon] (1973), Whitbread Childrens' Novel Category(1976), Southern Arts LiteratureAward [Short Stories] (1978), NationalBook Award* (1979). 248 1988 PETER CAREY Oscarand Ucinda OtherPrizes: Miles FranklynAward (1981), NSW PremierAward (1981)[Both for BE laal- 1989 KAZUO ISHIGURO TheRemains of theDay OtherPrizes: WinifredHoltby Award (1982), Whitbread Novel and Book of theYear (1986)[Both for An Artist FloatingWorld of -the .

* This award,which wassponsored by the Arts Council of GreatBritain, folded after only oneyear. TABLE2.249

Judaes for the Booker. Whitbread. Faber. W. H. SIMIth.James Tait Black. and Guardian Prizes. 1980-1989.

1980

BOOKER WilliamGolding - Ritesof Passaga Judges: PROFESSOR DAVID DAICHES C RONALD BLYTHE CLAIRE TOMALIN BRIAN WENHAM

W. H. SMITH Thom Gunn- SelectedPoems 1950-1975 Judges: SIR RUPERT HART-DAVIS JANET ADAM SMITH CHRISTOPHER RICKS

J. T. BLACK (Fiction)* J. M. Coetzee- Wgitingfor theBarbarians

WHITBREAD David Lodge- How Far CanYou Go? Judges(AU categories): NICHOLAS BAGNALL PENELOPE MORTIMER DR JOHN RAE

GUARDIAN x J. L. Carr Month in Countcy -A -the

FABER HugoWiffiams - LoveLife GeorgeSzirtes - TheSlant Doo Judges: COLIN FALCK PETER SCUPHAM CHRISTOPHER HOPE 250 1981

BOOKER SalmanRushdie - Midnight'sChildren Judges: PROFESSOR MALCOLM BRADBURY C BRIAN ALDISS JOAN BAKEWELL SAMUEL HYNES HERMIONE LEE

W. H. SMITH IsabelColegate - The ShootingEarty Judges: SIR RUPERT HART-DAVIS JANET ADAM SMITH CHRISTOPHER RICKS

J. T. BLACK (Fiction) SalmanRushdie - Midni2ht'sCbildren PaulTheroux - The MosQuitoCoas

WHITBREAD Novel: Maurice Leitch - Silver's City First Novel William Boyd -A GoodMan in Africa Judges(All categories): ANDREW BOYLE PENELOPE LIVELY PAUL THEROUX

GUARDIAN - KeDler

FABER J. M. Coetzee- Waiting for theBarbarianS Judges: HERMIONE LEE JOHN BRAINE MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH 251 1982

BOOKER Thomas Keneally - SchindleesArk Judges: PROFESSOR JOHN CAREY C PAUL BAILEY FRANK DELANEY LORNA SAGE JANET MORGAN

W. H. SMITH GeorgeClare - LastWaltz in Judges: SIR RUPERT HART-DAVIS VICTORIA GLENDINNING CHRISTOPHER RICKS

J. T. BLACK (Ficdon) BruceChatwin - 00 theBlack Hill

WHITBREAD Novel: JohnWain - YoungShoulders First Novel: BruceChatwin - On LbeBlack Hill Judges(AU categories): ROALD DAHL PETER GIDDY JOHN GRIGG

GUARDIAN Glyn Hughes- WhereI Usedto Play on the Green

FABER PaulMuldoon - WhyBrovmlee Left TomPaulin - Ile StrangeMuseum Judges: DICK DAVIES HUGO WILLIAMS BLAKE MORRISON 252 1983

BOOKER I M. Coetzee- Life andTimes of Michael Judges: FAY WELDON C ANGELA CARTER TERENCE KILMARTIN PETER PORTER LIBBY PURVES

W. H. SMITH A. N. Wilson - Wise-Virein Judges: SIR RUPERT HART-DAVIS VICTORIA GLENDINNING CHRISTOPHER RICKS

J. T. BLACK (Fiction) JonathanKeates - Allefro Postillions

WHITBREAD Novel: William Trevor- Foolsof Fortune First Novel: JohnFuller - Flying to Nowhere Judges(AU categories): FRANK DELANEY JOHN ELSLEY JANE GARDAM ELIZABETH LONGFORD

GUARDIAN GrahamSwift - Waterland

1RABER ýr'ahami Swift - Shuttlecoc Judges: BLAKE MORRISON VALENTINE CUNNINGHAM 253 1984

BOOKER AnitaBrookner - Hotel du Lac Judges: PROFESSOR RICHARD COBB C ANTHONY CURTIS POLLY DEVLIN JOHN FULLER TED ROWLANDS

W. H. SMITH Philip Larkin - RequiredWAiting Judges: SIR RUPERT HART-DAVIS VICTORIA GLENDINNING CHRISTOPHER RICKS

J. T. BLACK (Fiction) Sun J. G. Ballard - Eml2ire of the Angela Carter - Nights at the Circus

WHITBREAD (1984/85) N. B. system of awarding changed hereafter Novel: ChristopherHope - Kruger'sAin First Novel: JamesBuchan - A Paiishof RichWomen

Judges(All categories): MARTIN AMIS HUNTER DAVIES JOHN HYAMS EDNA O'BRIEN JILL PATON WALSH CHRISTOPHER SINCLAIR-STEVENSON

GUARDIAN J. G. Ballard - Empireof the Sun

FABER JamesFenton - In MemojZýof Wa Judges: ALAN JENKINS CLAUDE RAWSON JOHN LUCAS 254 1985

BOOKER Ked Hulme- The BonePepp&l Judges: NORMAN ST. JOHN-STEVAS C NINA BAWDEN J. W. LAMBERT JOANNA LUMLEY MARINA WARNER

W. H. SMITH David Hughes- The PorkButche Judges: SIR RUPERT HART-DAVIS VICTORIA GLENDINNING CHRISTOPHER RICKS

J. T. BLACK (Fiction) RobertEdric - WinterGarden

WHITBREAD Novel: First Novel: PeterAckroyd - Hawksmoo JeanetteWinterson - OrangesAre Not The Only Fruit

Judges: Judges: EVA FIGES PETER GIDDY PHILIP HOWARD EVA MOORE JOHN MAY ALISON RIMMER

GUARDIAN PeterAckrovd - Hawksmaor

FABER Julian Barnes- Haubert's-Parmt Judges: NORMAN SHRAPNEL ANDREW SINCLAIR ANITA BROOKNER 255 1986

BOOKER Kingsley Amis - The Old Devils Judges: ANTHONY THWAITE C EDNA HEALEY ISABEL QUIGLY GILLIAN REYNOLDS BERNICE RUBENS

W. H. SMITH Doris Lessing- TheGood Terroris Judges: CHRISTOPHER RICKS VICTORIA GLENDINNING PHILIP ZIEGLER

J. T. BLACK (Ficdon) JennyJoseph - Persephone

WHITBREAD Novel: First Novel: Kazuo Ishiguro - - An Artist of the Continent Floatim! World

Judges: Judgcs: ROGER COLE COLIN MORGAN DAVID HOLLOWAY JOY SINCLAIR JENNIFER JOHNSTON ROSE TREMAIN

GUARDIAN JimCrace - Continent

FABER bavid Scott-A QuietGatUrWg Judges: JOHN MOLE IAN HAMILTON MICHAEL LONGLEY 256 1987

BOOKER PenelopeLively - Mooll Tiger Judges: P. D. JAMES C LADY SELINA HASTINGS ALLAN MASSIE TREVOR MCDONALD JOHN B. THOMPSON W. H. SMITH ElizabethJennings - CollectedPoems 1953-1985 Judges: CHRISTOPHER RICKS VICTORIA GLENDINNING PHILIP ZIEGLER

J. T. BLACK (Ficaon) GeorgeMackay Brown - TheGolden Bird. - Two OrkneyStories WHITBREAD Novel: First Novel: Ian McEwan - Ile Child in Time FrancisWyndham - The Other Garden

Judges: Judges: ROGER BOWEN JUDY COOKE SEBASTIAN FAULKS SUSAN HILL ROSE TREMAIN ANTONY TIIORNCROFT

GUARDIAN PeterBenson - TheLevels FABER Guy Vanderhaeghe- Man Descenft Judges: TERENCE KILMARTIN NICHOLAS SPICE MIRANDA SEYMOUR SUNDAY EXPRESS BrianMoore - Thr,colour of Blood Judges: MONICA DICKENS ROBIN ESSER HAMMOND INNES GRAHAM LORD AUBERON WAUGH 257 1988

BOOKER PeterCarey - Oscarand Lucinda Judges: THE RT. HON. MICHAEL FOOT C SEBASTIAN FAULKS PHILIP FRENCH BLAKE MORRISON ROSE TREMAIN

W. H. SMITH RobertHughes - TheFatal Shore Judges: VICTORIA GLENDINNING HERMIONE LEE PHILIP ZIEGLER

J. T. BLACK (Fiction) PiersPaul Read -A Seasonin theWest WHITBREAD Novel: First Novel: Salman Rushdie- PaulSayer - The SatanicVerses TheComforts o Madness Judges: Judges: JOHN HITCHIN MONICA DICKENS MBE NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE PENNY PERRICK FAY WELDON ROGER STRINGER GUARDIAN LucyEUmann - Sweet Desserts FABER MichaelHofmann - Acdmon Judges: ALAN JENKINS JAMES AITCHISON GEORGE SZIRTES SUNDAY EXPRESS David Lodge - Nice Work Judges: KINGSLEY AMIS ROBIN ESSER GRAHAM LORD RUTH RENDELL AUBERON WAUGH 258 1989

BOOKER Kazuo Ishiguro - De Remainsof the Day Judges: DAVID LODGE C MAGGIE GEE HELEN MCNEIL DAVID PROFUMO EDMUND WHITE W. H. SMITH ChristopherHUI -'A TurbulentSeditious and Factious Peonle'- JohnBunyan and his Church Judges: VICTORIA GLENDINNING HERMIONE LEE PHILIP ZIEGLER

I T. BLACK (Fiction) JamesKelman -A Disaffection WHITBREAD Novel: FirstNovel: Lindsay Clarke - JamesHamilton-Paterson The Chymical Wedding Gerondus

Judges: Judges: DAVID COOK HAZEL BROADFOOT JANE GARDAM CATHERINE HEATH VAL HENNESSY JOHN WALSH GUARDIAN Carol Lake - RoseHill FABER DavidProfumo - SeaMusic Judges: NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE DEBORAH MOGGACH PETER PARKER SUNDAY EXPRESS Rose Tremain - Restoration Judges: ROALD DAHL CLARE FRANCIS SUSAN HILL GRAHAM LORD AUBERON WAUGH 259 KEY TO TABLE 2.

C Chairmanof thePanel of Judges. Technicallyalways judged by "TheProfessor of Literatureof EdinburghUniversity", in accordance with Mrs Black'swill. SeeChapter Two above. x SeeChapter Two abovefor detailsof the constitutionof thejudging panel from yearto year, 260 TABLE 3.

SHORTLIST JUDGES year M F [T] MT M F [T] MT 1969 4 2 [6] 2: 1 4 1 [5] 4: 1

1970 2 4>* [6] 1:2 3 2 [51 3:2

1971 4 2 [6] 2: 1 4 1 [5] 4: 1

1972 3 1 [41 3: 1 2 1 [31 2: 1

1973 1 3> [41 1:3 1 2> [3] 1:2

1974t 3 2* [5] 3:2 1 2> [3] 1:2

1975 1 1* (21 1:1 3 1 (41 3: 1

1976 6 0 [6] 6:0 2 1 [31 2: 1

1977 2 4> 16] 1:2 4 1 [5] 4: 1

1978 2 4>*[6] 1:2 3 2 (51 3:2

1979 3 2* [5] 3:2 4 1 [5] 4: 1

1980 4 3 [7] 4: 3 3 2 [5] 3:2

1981 4 3 [71 43 3 2 [51 3:2

1982 5 1 [6] 5: 1 3 2 [5] 3: 2

1983 5 1 (6] 5: 1 2 3>c[51 2:3

1984 3 3* [6] 1:1 4 1 [51 4: 1

1985 2 4>* [6] 1:2 2 3> [5] 2:3

1986 5 1 [6] 5: 1 1 4> [5] 1:4

1987 3 3* [6) 1:1 3 2c [5] 3:2

1988 4 2 [6) 2: 1 4 1 [51 4: 1

1989 3 3 [6] 1:1 3 2 [51 3:2 261 KEY TO TABLE 3.

M Male F Female [T] Total M/F Male/Female ratio

*- femalewinner t- tied result c- includesChairman 262 FIG. 1.

The Best-SellingBooker Winners of 1980-1990*

1) 1982 Schindler's Ark 2) 1986 ne Old Devils 3) 1988 Oscarand Lucinda 4) 1989 ]le Remainsof the Day 5) 1984 Hotel du Lac 6) 1980 Rites of PassUp 7) 1987 Moon Tj tier 8) 1990 Possession 9) 1983 Life andTimes of Michael K 10) 1981 Midnight's Children

* Source,ASH, R- (1991),Top 10 of Everything1992, Macdonald,London. (N. B. Figuresare for hardbackeditions including Book Club sales). FIG. 2. 263

1 1 ig 00 co S CD Go CD 8 -4 -4 :ý -4 -4 -4 -,%A ý -4 (a ob CA) to OD 0) ('A Ab W N - 0 001 -41 cn ., _ ýj Xj Xj Nj ?± 4 xi X X X X CAPE . - XI X -. 7 Lxx I I I " I X1 x x Wx -C. &W. x x x I iX. FABER I Po X x1 o. XI S.E. &W. 1 1 1 1 Xj I NI XI XI X1 HWN - - 1XI I x x I I x x x Hý. I I I x I I x x x x DUCK I I x X1 Ix I k"', DEUT. I 1xi I I I XI I xl I x I I X MAC I I I - l xl ý X1 I M.J. _I XI I I I I x COUL L 1XI I x Iwl I I VIK I I I I x I XI H.&S. I I A 1XI x HUT. x Y/EID. I I I x I x X B.H. I I I I II I I N X WHA J I- . . I I - 1 11 N kL _ 1X I I X I I I GOLL x BLOOM. I IX I IA. IX &R E.&S.

1x i I I I I JHAW. I I ix - I I I I I I METH. I 1X I I I I S.P. I X I d HOG I X I LONG. KEY TO FIG. 2. 264

X- Shortlisting 2,3 - More thanone shortlisting - Winner

C. & W. CHATTO AND WINDUS SE. & W. SECKER& WARBURG H'M. N. HEINEMANN HAM. HAMILTON DUCK. DUCKWORTH DEUT. DEUTSCH MAC. MACMILLAN M. I MICHAEL JOSEPH COLL. COLLINS VIK. VIKING H. & S. HODDER & STOUGHTON HUT. HUTCHINSON WEID. WEIDENFELD & NICOLSON B. H. BODLEY HEAD W. H. A. W. H. ALLEN A. L. ALLEN LANE GOLL. GOLLANCZ BLOOM. BLOOMSBURY A. & R. ANGUS AND ROBERTSON E. & S. EYRE & SPOTTISWOODE J. M. JOHN MURRAY HARV. HARVEST METH. METHUEN S. P. SALAMANDER PRESS HOG. HOGARTH LONG. LONGMAN 265

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NDIX 2 Booker 310 1 ize

Book Trust Book House 45 EastHiU London SW182QZ Telephone: 01-87,0905"

1989Booker Prize for Fiction

Details and rules of the Prize 1 The Prize a The Prizeis worthE20.000. It will be awardedto the authorof the bestfull-length novel,in theopinion of thejudges. that is eligiblefor the Prize.Only in exceptional circumstances.and then onlywith the priorapproval of Booker.may the Prize be split betweentwo authors. b Thejudges will be responsiblefor compilinga shortlistof not morethan six andnot lessthan three of theoutstanding books submitted for the Prize.For inclusion in this shortlista title shouldhave the full supportof at leastone judge in whoseopinion it is a validcontender for the Prizeitself. Management C The panelof judgesis chosenby the Prize Committeeappointed by Bookerand the Prizeis administeredby BookTrust.

Eligible Books English by Commonwealth. a Any full-length novel, written in a citizen of the the Republic of Ireland. Pakistanand South Africa. is eligible. Such a book must be a unified and substantialwork. Neither a book of short stories nor a novella is eligible. Entry of books is dealt with under Rule 3. bA book submittedon behalf of an author who wasdeceased at the dateof publication will not be eligible for consideration. in languageIs C No English translationof a book written originally any other eligible. d All entries must be publishedin the United Kingdom, but previouspublication of a book outside the UK doesnot disqualifyit. The decisionof the judgesas to whethera book is eligible shall be binding, f No entry shall be ineligible becauseits author haswon either the Booker or uny oth%:r prize previously.

Sponsoredby Bookervlc, administeredbu BookTrust 311

3 En(ry of Books a United Kingdom publishersmay enter up to three full-length noveft. with scheduled publication datesbetween I October 1988and 30 September 1989.In addition. they may enter eligible titles by authors who have previously won the Booker Prize. Finishedcopies only may be submitted. b Each publisher may also submit. by t July 1989. a list of up to rive (unher titles. nest should each be accompanied by a justification for the submission of not more than 250 words. The judges will be required to call in not Its$ than 5 or more than IS of these titles. c Entries must be submitted by I July 1,989but if publishers know that copies of an eligible book which they wish to submit will be available between I July 1989 and 31 July 1989they must inform Book Trust by I July and submit copies by 31 July 1989. Six copies of each entry must be submitted to the'Judges of the 1989 Booker PriZC'. C3re of Book Trust andnot direct to the judges. d Publishers are particularly requested to send entries as soon as they are published. Even if some titles are not available until July. it is nonetheless extremely helpful to the judges to receive the other entries as early as possible. C -fbe judges may also. not later than I September 1989 call for any book published between I October 1988 and 30 September 1989. even i(such a book does not appear in 3b. on publishers' lists referred to In that event the publishers will be asked to submit six printed copies of the book to Book Trust. f No book entered by publishers or c4Ued in by the judges will be returned to publishers.

Conditions of Award Any eligible book which is entered for the Prizeshall not qualify for the award unlessits publisher agrees. (i) to spend not less than 91,000on direct, paid for media advertising of the winning book, including a winning posteror showcird, within the three months following the announcementof the award. to contributeL1,000 towards general publicity if the bwk reachesthe shortlist

It is hoped that all shortlist publisherswill useevery meansavailable including saleof return, see-safe,etc., to get shonlisted books into bookshops.

f No entry shall be ineligible becauseits author haswon either the Booker or 3nyother prize previously.

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