Results 1 to 14 of 14

Thread: How much attention to do you pay to literary awards?

  1. #1
    Registered Usher vili's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Location
    here. in my head
    Posts
    138

    Question How much attention to do you pay to literary awards?

    With the Booker Prize announced yesterday, and the Nobel Prize for Literature being awarded tomorrow, I thought it might be a good opportunity to ask everyone how much attention you pay to literary awards.

    Do the books and names shortlisted or awarded in any way influence your reading habits? Do you rush to buy the award winning novels, or do you perhaps just make a mental note about them? Do you buy a book more probably if the cover reads "Winner of ..."? How many literary awards are you aware of?

    I am of course interested in all this also because I am running a website dedicated to literary awards (see here). While I myself am obviously quite interested in award-winning novels and authors, I don't actually personally rush to buy them. I make a note of the names and titles, and if I stumble upon them in the right circumstances, I buy them. But I see literary awards as a good way of keeping up with what names are emerging and worth remebering in the world of literature.

  2. #2
    If grace is an ocean... grace86's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Location
    Southern California
    Posts
    1,880
    Blog Entries
    39
    I like the website. I take note of Booker Prize winners. Don't exactly rush out to buy them (I'm not allowing myself because I've got too many books to read right now!) I had been interested in Nobel Prize Winners in the past..thanks for the reminder that they are announcing it tomorrow.
    "So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss, and my heart turns violently inside of my chest, I don't have time to maintain these regrets, when I think about, the way....He loves us..."


    http://youtube.com/watch?v=5xXowT4eJjY

  3. #3
    Registered Usher vili's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Location
    here. in my head
    Posts
    138
    Thanks for your reply and kind words, grace86. I actually forgot to mention that National Book Awards finalists were announced today. Especially the poetry volumes look appetizing. In any case, the flood of awards this week keeps me busy.

  4. #4
    Registered User Boris239's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Location
    New York
    Posts
    419
    I don't consider Nobel Prize in Literature as something important. Too often it is given because of the political reasons and not because of the real value of the books.

  5. #5
    Registered Usher vili's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Location
    here. in my head
    Posts
    138
    Quote Originally Posted by Boris239 View Post
    I don't consider Nobel Prize in Literature as something important. Too often it is given because of the political reasons and not because of the real value of the books.
    I would personally think that this has been the case mainly just in the past decade or so. There have, of course, been other rather strange selections in the past as well, and other even stranger omissions. As a result, I don't personally put as much weight on Nobel Prize as I do for some other awards, yet I think it still is important in its own strange way.

  6. #6
    Registered User ~Maude~'s Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Location
    Currently lost in Germany
    Posts
    78
    I don't rush out and buy award winners either, but if I'm stuck between two books and one has won an award, I usually pick the award winner.

    Your site is very nice

  7. #7
    Ataraxia bazarov's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    In spleen
    Posts
    2,219
    I think that good book lives after his writers death also, so if writers is dead...
    At thunder and tempest, At the world's coldheartedness,
    During times of heavy loss And when you're sad
    The greatest art on earth Is to seem uncomplicatedly gay.

    To get things clear, they have to firstly be very unclear. But if you get them too quickly, you probably got them wrong.
    If you need me urgent, send me a PM

  8. #8
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Jul 2005
    Posts
    129
    not really. award winners end up becoming commercialized, and then i just hate it for that reason.

  9. #9
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Apr 2006
    Location
    Washington
    Posts
    64
    Nice job on the site. I don't really let awards influence my choice of the books that I want to read, however if the book has won an award, that's just a bonus, and it never hurts to know which books are recieving awards.

  10. #10
    Artist and Bibliophile stlukesguild's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    The USA... or thereabouts
    Posts
    6,083
    Blog Entries
    78
    When I look over the names of those who have won the Nobel I see a good number who were surely deserving... some of the best writers of the last century: Harold Pinter, J.M. Coetzee, V.S. Naipaul, Günter Grass, José Saramago, Wislawa Szymborska, Seamus Heaney, Kenzaburo Oe, Camilo José Cela, Joseph Brodsky, Wole Soyinka, Jaroslav Seifert, William Golding, Gabriel García Márquez, Czeslaw Milosz, Odysseus Elytis, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Vicente Aleixandre, Saul Bellow, Eugenio Montale, Heinrich Böll, Pablo Neruda, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, Giorgos Seferis, John Steinbeck, Ivo Andric, Saint-John Perse, Salvatore Quasimodo, Boris Pasternak, Albert Camus, Juan Ramón Jiménez,Ernest Hemingway, François Mauriac, Pär Lagerkvist, William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, André Gide, Hermann Hesse, Eugene O'Niel, Luigi Pirandello, Ivan Bunin, Sinclair Lewis,Thomas Mann, William Butler Yeats, Anatole France, Knut Hamsun, Rudyard Kipling,,Giosuè Carducci... Undoubtedly, like any artistic award, politics has played a part in who has or has not won. I question whether Dereck Walcott was seriously thought by anybody to have been among the greatest writers active in 1992... but the choice was to be expected. With the 400th anniversary of Columbus' journey happening at the height of political correctness, it just wasn't possible that a European or an American win. They "needed" to honor the Southern Hemisphere of the Americas... but avoid the Spanish connection. A reverse situation clearly applied to Gunter Grass, whose politics probably kept him from the prize for a good many years. I could probably add a number of others I feel SHOULD be/have been Nobel Laureates, including: Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Andre Malraux, H.G. Wells, Aldus Huxley, Geoffrey Hill, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, John Ashberry, Anthony Hecht, Frederico Garcia Lorca, Alejo Carpentier, Franz Kafka, Cormac McCarthy, Bertolt Brecht, Osip Mandelstam, Anna Ahkmontova, Vladimir Nabokov, etc... Nevertheless... out of the above writers I can't find any I'd disagree with... and few of those I didn't list are in any way an embarassment to the roster.
    Last edited by stlukesguild; 10-15-2006 at 10:40 AM.
    Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
    The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
    My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
    http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/

  11. #11
    Registered Usher vili's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Location
    here. in my head
    Posts
    138
    Thanks, everyone, for your opinions.

    I have often had the feeling that literary awards may in fact be more for the writers than they are for the readers. It is a way to finance many a writer's career who otherwise could not make a living from writing fiction. In a sense, then, at least some awards could be seen as a continuation of the old patronage system.

  12. #12
    what is a cait? thevintagepiper's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    Dubai, UAE
    Posts
    967
    I don't follow it much or pay a whole lot of attention, but when i am reading/buying a book, I will go into it with higher expectations if it has some sort of award.
    [rebelution]-[drorings]-[love]

    don't fall down.

  13. #13
    sybilline
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    Near Blois in France
    Posts
    32
    I agree with most of you. Awards are rewarded to some respectable authors in a certain political and social context which deprives it of most of its value. I have the strange feeling that many talentuous writers are never and will never be rewarded.

  14. #14
    Registered Usher vili's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Location
    here. in my head
    Posts
    138
    Quote Originally Posted by sybilline View Post
    I agree with most of you. Awards are rewarded to some respectable authors in a certain political and social context which deprives it of most of its value. I have the strange feeling that many talentuous writers are never and will never be rewarded.
    Whether or not I agree with the idea that social and political contexts are the main influence over award judges, I am wondering whether it is actually very surprising that this should be so.

    While it is more or less possible to put together a longlist or even a shortlist of novels that are among the most interesting in any given year, I would personally most probably not be able to make a decision between these works themselves on the basis of the works alone. After all, choosing between something like Julian Barnes and Kazuo Ishiguro (both shortlisted last year for the Booker) would certainly drive me nuts. It is perhaps understandable, then, that some of the decisions may be influenced by matters like who would actually be the most deserving author, and not necessarily novel, to win the prize on a given year. Whether or not you, of course, find it acceptable is another question.

    I personally treat books shortlisted for, say, the Booker as already something I would probably like to check out. Whether or not it has gone the last mile and actually won the prize is perhaps not as important.

    I agree that there most probably are many writers with talents that simply will never have the backing of a publishing house to make them recognized enough to be even considered for these awards. As a result, I wouldn't personally treat book awards as something that list, or even try to list, the only authors worth reading. Instead, I just see them as recommendations of writers and novels that might be worth checking.

Similar Threads

  1. Let's Smash The Literary World With A Wrecking Ball!
    By WolfLarsen in forum Short Story Sharing
    Replies: 96
    Last Post: 08-05-2014, 02:11 PM
  2. A Literary Game to Know you
    By Ranoo in forum Forum Games
    Replies: 13
    Last Post: 05-12-2010, 02:05 AM
  3. Literary awards news (a website)
    By vili in forum General Literature
    Replies: 3
    Last Post: 08-23-2006, 01:25 PM
  4. Addition Awards!!!!
    By jakobin in forum General Chat
    Replies: 20
    Last Post: 11-30-2005, 02:07 PM
  5. Replies: 51
    Last Post: 05-19-2005, 04:42 AM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •