The Mookse and the Gripes discussion
note: This topic has been closed to new comments.
Booker Prize for Fiction
>
2020 Booker Prize Speculation
message 201:
by
Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer
(new)
Jan 20, 2020 01:10PM
Maybe we will have five winners this year. Will be tricky for the shortlisted book that doesn’t make it.
reply
|
flag
I think it's very difficult to predict the dynamics of a particular panel or even, after the fact, to judge how the dynamics might have operated.
I've been saying that I would like to figure out how to eavesdrop on this year's panel for a while. I've also been hoping there was a Nixon-like taping system in place during last year's deliberations. Oh well. I find the distinction between "literary" & "genre" & "general" & "women's" fictions all interesting. I've noticed that on some bookselling sites, if a book is written by a woman, it is immediately labeled "women's fiction." Then something like Catch-22 might be labeled literally any of the above (except women's) it's impossible to tell what is what, and all the sites/sellers seem to be as confused as me.
When I was in music school, way back in the 1980s, there was a VERY clear distinction between classical and virtually all other music. (I was once outed for spending nights singing at a jazz club, and my scholarship was threatened if I kept it up.) Then shortly after I graduated, that same school implemented a jazz program! Nowadays, all of the big conservatories have departments that would have simply been labeled "popular" music in "my day." I find this hilarious, since Mozart was pretty popular in his day.
My point being that this debate has raged for years, and sometimes genres gain currency, other times they don't. Bottom line, if a book or piece of music is good I'm happy to imbibe. My phone's SD card is full of music including full operas, all the great female jazz singers, reggaetón & rap, musical theater, 90s grunge, singer-songwriters, Metallica, Rammstein, Ozzy Osbourne & people like Ariana Grande, Britney Spears & Ricky Martin. ETA: I nearly forgot Beyonce! I think that's a sin if you live in the US. Best of all: a double Donna Summer album. Lots of "embarrassing" music, according to my friends, but I listen to it all at different times. I have a playlist called "bubblegum" that I count on to change my mood from heavy/depressed/angry to... less of all that. It works!
Also, I really want the chicken book recommendation. That's awesome.
Well, this discussion is called Booker Speculation. :)The arguments and decisions written by the US Supreme Court are available to the public; I think the briefs, arguments and decisions made by literary committees should be made available to the public too.
Ella wrote: "My point being that this debate has raged for years, and sometimes genres gain currency, other times they don't. Bottom line, if a book or piece of music is good I'm happy to imbibe."But whether or not you ever open the book may well decide on a bookseller's classification. I am happy to read historical fiction, crime and thrillers but would not be seen dead reading women's fiction, romance, fantasy or horror. I am open-minded to books labelled as LGBTQI but would need a recommendation from someone because I worry that I might end up with porn. Of course, I know that these classifications could be arbitrary and books might be shelved differently in different shops, but the fear of picking up the wrong thing (or even being seen to look at it) is high.
Have you seen a professional about your inordinately high fear of being seen picking up the wrong book, MisterHobgoblin? It sounds like your fear of inaccurately shelved books borders on mania.
I suspect I'm not alone in my fear. We are all afraid of the judgement of others and, even more, the judgement of ourselves.
I probably should know better than to ask this, but what do you mean by "women's fiction"?
Ang wrote: "I probably should know better than to ask this, but what do you mean by "women's fiction"?"It's not an exact science, but books written by women, for women focusing mostly on romances and families, often with pastel coloured covers and/or gold embossed lettering. That sort of thing.
The books you describe can be spotted by their cover, as can porn, so I don't think you need to be afraid.
MisterHobgoblin wrote: "Ella wrote: "My point being that this debate has raged for years, and sometimes genres gain currency, other times they don't. Bottom line, if a book or piece of music is good I'm happy to imbibe."..."
I think e-readers were invented so that we can read things we otherwise wouldn't be caught dead with.*
*Although, as someone who reads on public transport, and also sneaks looks at other people's e-readers over their shoulders, I can attest that it's just as easy to judge book quality by reading a few lines as by seeing the cover/size/paper quality.
Mod
I have to confess that I am always curious to know what people are reading, and on occasion I have felt I wouldn't want to attempt to justify what I was reading!
Mod
Mod
Mod
I'm not sure if all of it has upbeat endings - stuff like Jodi Picoult is in the women's fiction category as these explain
https://writersrelief.com/2016/03/02/...
https://www.writersdigest.com/guest-c...
There is of course plenty of comment about the sexism of this definition, and saying "why is there no men's fiction?"
https://www.thebookseller.com/feature...
A search for words like 'women's fiction category' will bring up lots more articles in that vein.
Though romance readers in particular seem to use the definition in being clear about how they'd define the genre of a book they've read, what they do and don't like reading etc. As someone who doesn't like it (the few modern examples I've read have been depressing but without gritty detail that feels well researched) I find it makes fewer waves, at least among people I know online, to call it "commercial women's fiction" - though of course in some circles that would also be a snobbery too far.
(I think this is one of those problems where people who want the category abolished aren't noticing that there's a large but often silent readership that likes these books and will happily gravitate towards shelves of it, unbothered by the label. However, maybe it could be re-named. Someone like me who's read only a very small number of these novels is really not in a position to suggest to what though.)
There is a clear male equivalent in lad lit. But more generally, women tend to be more willing to read books by men and about men than the other way around.
Antonomasia wrote: ""Women's fiction" is a publishing industry category with a clear meaning in that context.The RWA definition seems quite widely used to describe it online, including on Wikipedia and the Goodreads g..."Categorization is difficult. On the one hand, lots of good books are shelved in genre sections, where they won't reach a readership outside of that particular community. On the other hand, it's also unsatisfactory when there is no separate shelving plan within fiction (many second-hand bookshops have thrillers, women's fiction, literature, etc all together and it can be very offputting to sort through if you don't like all of those types of books).
And yes, nobody really cares what we read on the bus. But it's human nature to want to present ourselves somehow, no? Our clothes make a statement, and so do our books, even if we're the only ones paying attention to what that statement is.
I think we are on genre and topics are spinning too fast for me to follow , but here are a pair of articles on the controversy over American Dirt.https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
https://lithub.com/heres-what-you-nee...
I love that headline; "Here’s what you need to know about the biggest literary controversy of the decade (so far)" for an article written on Jan 21st, 2020! Hopefully tongue in cheek - although there are some of course who would argue that that makes a claim for the period 2011-2020.
Mod
These things get far too easily railroaded into criticisms of authors for writing (which makes it look like an attack on creative freedom), when what's really at issue, especially now it's clear there are plenty of, in this instance Mexican novelists writing about immigration, is what big publishers are a) accepting in the first place and/or b) choosing to give the biggest advances and publicity push, despite years of campaigns. And this is a novel from a perspective that will appeal to a liberal audience - most anti-immigration conservatives wouldn't have been interested anyway, so I don't see a good argument about audience loss either.
Anto's discussion of what to call women's fiction is more interesting to me than the war of American Dirt. But that's been a tad hard to escape for the last few days or week (feels already like forever.) And while I love the LitHub headline, they don't say much in this explainer. It's another reduction of "one group mad that someone from another group wrote a book" and that is unhelpful to everyone. The NYTimes has hedged their bets by having both a good and bad review (and poor Lauren Groff -- I truly mean that.) Before the controversy, though, the blurbs (from a bunch of white dudes and nobody of Mexican descent) were a wee red flag to me and also I tend to react badly when everyone is pushing the same book, so I'd already decided against reading it, and that's kind of a relief. But all this hype will make many people feel like they need to read it, if only to decide for themselves and that will only put more money and fame into the book that everyone is mad at.
But PS: if you've not read Parul Sehgal's review, you should b/c it's funny and as always, well-written.
Any thoughts on why Donal Ryan being longlisted in 2018 did not attract anything like this criticism
Gumble's Yard wrote: "Any thoughts on why Donal Ryan being longlisted in 2018 did not attract anything like this criticism"I didn't read it - was it more respectful to the actual lived experience of those fleeing Syria? From your review, I see it's certainly not the research that made it somehow less controversial. (Part of the massive criticism of American Dirt has been how very badly written it is, though, and I don't know that this is true of From a Low & Quiet Sea.)
I edited out a long paragraph that I don't feel comfortable posting here, but I have some thoughts. When I decide how to say them more eloquently, I will post them.
ETA - if you allow "all languages" in the reviews, then look at the 1-2 star reviews, you can see a difference in the way the book was received by those living outside of the US/UK
Mod
Antonomasia wrote: "It didn't get anything like the same amount of publicity from its publishers, and Ryan almost certainly didn't get a 7-figure advance."I honestly think the combination of the advance + already movie deals + it being included on tons of "most excited to read" lists + the Oprah pick is what put tipped the scales. Not to mention that really tacky and over-the-top party they threw for publication day.
Yes those two issues were what I thought too Anto. And the publicity I believe was particularly insensitive around a launch party. Ella. Not sure my review was particularly balanced and I did later see something which seemed to imply better research.
Mod
I read that several Latina writers blurbed (or promote) it. Went back just now to check who apart from Sandra Cisneros and Julia Alvarez (Erika Sánchez, Gina Rodriguez, MJ Rodriguez - whom I hadn't heard of before) there was a post saying that Salma Hayek had now withdrawn her endorsement because she'd given it without actually reading the book.
Antonomasia wrote: "Ella wrote: "Before the controversy, though, the blurbs (from a bunch of white dudes and nobody of Mexican descent) were a wee red flag to me "I read that several Latina writers blurbed (or promo..."
That's interesting - b/c I've not actually held the book in my hands. So all I saw was what the library listed on "libby" which is their ebook system (also called overdrive) and they only noted white men - mostly HUGE name writers, so perhaps they thought Alvarez was not big enough? dunno. Maybe that has also changed. I'll check b/c it certainly didn't do a service to the book.
I almost replied to a post on Twitter about this book, but remembered in time that the Twitter universe does not know me, so thought better of it. My thought, without reading the book, is that much like The Help, this immigrant experience book written by a nice white woman will attract more white readers than an immigrant experience book written by a “Luiselli.” That could be the silver lining in the controversy. White America gives lip service to caring about the children in cages, but not much, they buy the lie that the thousands of brown children are all victims of human trafficking, and most feel that the brown adults coming here aren’t our problem. Perhaps there is a slim population of white readers who will trust the story in the hands of one of their own and hopeful this will open some eyes and create more compassion and empathy.
Mod
If it gets them reading about the issue it would be a good thing, but most people read things that validate their own world view.
I think part of the frustration is at the gross capitalistic drive of the book-industry that has reared its ugly and distasteful head. Everything about this book was rigged from the beginning: it was destined to be the hit of the year. (And it probably will still be.) It was chosen, marketed, selected, pushed into all the right places. Oprah. Goodreads. Famous Mexican actors. All those front-page reviews etc. It's not just an issue of "X group cannot write about Y group" but rather that no matter how badly X writes about Y if you have the full force of the money-machine behind you, there's no way you will ever lose.
WndyJW wrote: "If it gets them reading about the issue it would be a good thing, but most people read things that validate their own world view."J wrote: "I think part of the frustration is at the gross capitalistic drive of the book-industry that has reared its ugly and distasteful head. Everything about this book was rigged from the beginning: it w..."
Part of the problem is the obnoxious over-the-top marketing (complete with barbed-wire fence decorations at a book party thrown, I think, by her publishers....) and the other part is that - as far as I can tell, from the blurb as well as reading reviews (and one hilarious hot take combined w/ a review) - it in no way represents México - right down to the food eaten or the names. I've spent a lot of time in many parts of the rather huge UMS (aka Mexico) and despite claiming to have done tons of research, it seems she's got some very basic factual issues.
It's long, but I strongly suggest reading this: https://thebluenib.com/a-poor-imitati...
I must again stress I've not even seen the actual book, let alone read it. Maybe it's wonderful. I can't judge though, since I'm not an immigrant or an undocumented immigrant from anywhere, let alone Mexico.
If people think reading this book will help them understand real migrants, then I suppose we can all eat at Taco Bell and pretend we've spent a year or two in Nezahualcóyotl. I mean - she claims to have done a ton of research and also that nobody 'with browner skin' (or something like that) has written a migrant story - that second part is simply untrue, as I think we all know - there are a ton of books written about the un/documented im/migrant experience.
This is where I get irritable, and I apologize, but I would rather people not read books that only contain caricatures of people who already suffer from far too many cartoonish ideas about them. I truly do think cartoonish stereotypes are more harmful than complete ignorance.
Even her claims about her husband (from Ireland) being an undocumented immigrant and her supposed Puerto Rican abuelita are painful to hear about.
I just read an article in NYT that mentions the book promotion dinner with a faux-barbed-wire floral arrangement and shows a tweet from Jeanine Cummins, the author, with her book cover behind a woman’s hand with nails manicured with white polish, blue flowers and barbed wire across the nails! Ms Cummins wrote, “You guys, @BookManicurist is some next level awesome. My book jacket never looked prettier! #americandirt”I now do not believe that Ms. Cummins did any research on the border, that she has any empathy or compassion for what desperate migrants have endured and suffered. Can we imagine Toni Morrison at a book launch for Beloved with floral arrangements featuring chains and whips and exulting over a manicure that features shackles? Would Elie Weisel sit at a table with a center piece of a swastika?
Ms Cummins coopted suffering and trauma for her benefit and silly Oprah is too caught up to see it.
It is painful to see pictures of children in cages on cement floors with nothing but mylar blankets, it is heartbreaking to see adults crammed into small rooms with not enough room for them all to lie down or sit down at the same time, and it causes great shame that my country is doing this. Thousands of children will be forever scarred by being taken from their parents, aunts, uncles or grandparents at a such young ages.
It is simply not possible for a person who is distressed by all of this suffering to be touring with a big smile, eating at tables with barbed wire floral arrangements or feeling joy at barbed wire manicures! It’s vulgar, insensitive is not a strong enough word. I’m disgusted.
I'm reading American Dirt and am close to the halfway point.I think the biggest problem is the marketing behind the book. As previously noted, it was so heavily marketed and received so much pre-publication buzz that it was going to be a chart-topper regardless of its actual content.
I cannot speak to the authenticity of the experience presented in American Dirt as I have no shared experience and am largely ignorant of the experiences of migrants.
The actual writing is just fine. It is neither great nor is it awful. It is, most often, simple, direct, and effective. It is quite easy to read. Thankfully, it is not entirely linear - but, despite quite a few flashbacks, I feel that it lacks nuance and holds the reader's hand too tightly. The narrative is simple (probably too simple; real life is never this neat) but there is much momentum that keeps the pages turning, which I think is to its merit, as I believe that was the author's intent.
It certainly is not a "great" book. It's not a "bad" book. I believe Cummins had good intentions in writing the book and bringing this story to a wider audience but I think some of those intentions might have been whittled away some by the marketing momentum and the generous advance.
While I much preferred Lost Children Archive, I recognize that the average person is unlikely to read Luiselli's book. American Dirt, on the other hand, is a novel that will very much appeal to the average person. It is not especially demanding and is an easy read.
I suspect it will be a 2- or 3- for me unless the latter half is astonishingly good.
I don’t have an issue with a white woman writing about the experiences of migrant Mexican women if it is treated with respect, but Ms Cummings seems far too delighted with the book to be at all distressed by its subject. I can understand being excited that her book is successful, but I don’t recall Valeria Luiselli being more excited about her books’ success than she was serious about the people involved.
I'm going to leave this topic alone, but one more link before I close my mouth on the topic forever (unless I actually read it - unlikely as the library wait is like 9 mos minimum.) I thought this was a nice non-literary-critic response: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment...
Mod
For Oprah to say this book woke her up is disheartening. How could anyone who has watched the news not felt empathy, compassion, horror and shame at what the US has done to migrants?
Mod
I don't really follow her at all (and only ever saw a handful of episodes of her original show), so maybe she has made other out-of-touch calls, but with this and her withdrawal of funding from this film people seem disappointed with her decisions at the moment.
I think like Selma Hayek, Oprah jumped the gun and didn’t contemplate what she was reading. That is forgivable, we’ve all, at least I have, raved about a book or movie only to have someone point out troubling aspects that make me rethink my initial excitement. At least she’s withdrawn funding and maybe she will discuss the troubling aspects that trouble Latino people and consciousness readers.
A couple of people who originally praised it, including Selma Hayek, admitted to not having read it and pulled their support. I don't know that Oprah reads all the books for her club anymore. It seems like she probably has staff to pull in recommendations, but who knows.I find it very troubling that the same person acquired The Help as this book. I can't think of two books who have caused drama of this sort as heightened as this and that one. (I'm still a bit scarred from some of the straight up fighting I saw over The Help.) I do think it's very troubling that a brand new study was done on diversity in publishing and not much has changed since the last one, despite everyone saying all the time how hard they're working on this very issue. A bit like the Grammys. I didn't watch, but I checked Twitter for the winners this morning and they were not as diverse as music for sure. If you keep doing the same thing, you often get the same results.
Coincidences amuse me. Sarah Henstra (a ROC long listed author) had published an article analyzing Oprah performance/ interview as narrative:https://www.jstor.org/stable/23416125
Amusing as in, it seems like such a small world, everybody is somehow connected.
Thanks for that link, Lia. It's noteworthy that Henstra suggests that Winfrey hosts "a TV book club so popular that Oprah's insignia on a novel's cover typically boosts sales tenfold." I'm reading American Dirt just now, and do not understand why it has merited her imprimatur.
And even though that article is 12 years old, it's still relevant. It is suggested that Oprah is responsible for the "mobilization of social concem without a socio-political frame-work in which to act". Which summarizes a lot of the discourse around American Dirt.
And talking of everyone being "somehow connected", I notice that in the same issue of Studies in Popular Culture there's an article entitled "Trainspotting, High Fidelity, and the Diction of Addiction" (Stalcup, 2008). Which caught my eye because another 2020 RoC novel, That Lonesome Valley, is being described as ranking "alongside Trainspotting and Burroughs’ Junkie as a pre-eminent text on drug addiction and destitution."
So there you go.
Mod
I've been reading a long interview with the editor (Amy Einhorn). One of the more neutrally interesting things in it is that blurbs are a much bigger deal in the US than in Europe. I'd heard years ago that British editions make a much bigger deal of quotes from newspapers, and that Americans find this a bit weird -now I see their equivalent is more of these advance blurbs from other authors and celebrities. Less neutrally ... her husband is a massive fan of Richard Ford (though in fairness an interview focused on editing from 2014 wasn't the place to add "... but he strongly disagrees with his treatment of ... ")
But after reading the whole thing I am more inclined to see American Dirt and its promotion as a calculated and cynical decision; I'd guess they didn't expect as much pushback as there has been in the last couple of weeks, but they maybe factored in similar reactions as a potential draw for an audience that might not have bothered with the book, or not as quickly. I wonder how long those librarians who are refusing to order it will be able to hold out.
I can't see libraries being able to hold out. The masses of book clubs will want this book. Especially now that it has the Oprah stamp. Thanks for that link to the Einhorn interview - interesting reading. I prefer a newspaper blurb - at least then I can be generally sure that a professional read the book (or did whatever they'd normally do w/ a book) and wrote a review.
I have cyncially been watching the behavior of the publisher, author, editors, etc and I note that they are mostly just gleeful about the sales...
I don't believe for a minute that the publishers care about the plight of people in cages and family separations and children fearing school because they don't know if their parents will be at home when their days are over. You can't live in the US and not know about immigration. You probably have complicated and nuanced thoughts on it too, if you live in the US, or you are just "against" or "for" at the very least. So, I'm kind of left with "they did all of this on purpose" and to generate buzz, and they've succeeded. That feels very different to me from The Help situation, where I did believe they were all a little shocked at the reaction and didn't expect it.
This book will sell VERY well. I'm still trying to figure out why a wealthy woman with loads of cash would need to use la bestia to get her child to the US, when she has access to piles of money and most undocumented people simply overstay visitor visas, but oh well.
PS: I didn't realize until you posted this interview w/ her that Amy Einhorn used the success of The Help to get her own imprint, then move that imprint over to Flatiron (which is owned by MacMillan) and currently is publisher of Macmillan’s Henry Holt division. She parlayed that last media storm into some good gigs.
https://publishingperspectives.com/20...
I'm not telling anyone in this group anything they don't know already, but having just finished Valeria Luiselli's essay Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions, I very much recommend that to anyone who hasn't read it yet.And Luiselli/Cummins are an interesting contrast in how to approach this issue. I haven't read Lost Children Archive yet, but I'm familiar enough with Luiselli to know she isn't for everyone (and of course, she's not an illegal migrant either, nor does she have much in common with most). What she is, of course, is very intelligent, and much more knowledgable about Latin America.
Still, it would be nice if the publishing industry could come up with someone in between -- someone who could write something plot based that would appeal to book clubs, but nuanced and not exploitative like American Dirt seems to be.
Also, and this does drive me crazy, I see from Wikipedia that Cummins worked in publishing in New York for ten years, so I'm just going to add nepotism to the list of nasty things going on here.
Emily wrote: "I'm not telling anyone in this group anything they don't know already, but having just finished Valeria Luiselli's essay Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions, I very much recommend that to anyone who hasn't read it yet."I thought it put her points about migrants better than the novel did. She does not have to have been a migrant herself, when she has spoken to many of them and translated their experiences.
I agree, Tell Me How it Ends was great. I read it after reading Lost Children Archive and kind of glad I did because I don't think I would have liked Lost Children Archive as much if I reversed the order.
Val wrote: "She does not have to have been a migrant herself, when she has spoken to many of them and translated their experiences."I agree. I tend to be of the belief that anyone should be allowed to write anyone if they've done their homework. But much of the criticism of Cummins has been regarding her race, and it's worth remembering that race isn't the only thing that divides experience Luiselli appears to be from a very privileged background. Unlike Cummins, she doesn't try to write from the perspective of an undocumented immigrant but about their experiences, which may make all the difference.
This topic has been frozen by the moderator. No new comments can be posted.
The Mookse and the Gripes
Books mentioned in this topic
The Vanishing Half (other topics)The Accomplice (other topics)
Exciting Times (other topics)
Reproduction (other topics)
Days by Moonlight (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
André Alexis (other topics)Emily St. John Mandel (other topics)
Naoise Dolan (other topics)
Deepa Anappara (other topics)
Maaza Mengiste (other topics)
More...
