“Declan Burke is his own genre. The Lammisters dazzles, beguiles and transcends. Virtuoso from start to finish.” – Eoin McNamee “This bourbon-smooth riot of jazz-age excess, high satire and Wodehouse flamboyance is a pitch-perfect bullseye of comic brilliance.” – Irish Independent Books of the Year 2019 “This rapid-fire novel deserves a place on any bookshelf that grants asylum to PG Wodehouse, Flann O’Brien or Kyril Bonfiglioli.” – Eoin Colfer, Guardian Best Books of the Year 2019 “The funniest book of the year.” – Sunday Independent “Declan Burke is one funny bastard. The Lammisters ... conducts a forensic analysis on the anatomy of a story.” – Liz Nugent “Burke’s exuberant prose takes centre stage … He plays with language like a jazz soloist stretching the boundaries of musical theory.” – Totally Dublin “A mega-meta smorgasbord of inventive language ... linguistic verve not just on every page but every line.Irish Times “Above all, The Lammisters gives the impression of a writer enjoying himself. And so, dear reader, should you.” – Sunday Times “A triumph of absurdity, which burlesques the literary canon from Shakespeare, Pope and Austen to Flann O’Brien … The Lammisters is very clever indeed.” – The Guardian

Thursday, September 8, 2011

“Wouldn’t It Be Nice To See A Work Of Pulp Win The Booker Prize?”

Erm, no. Allen Barra penned a mildly controversial piece for The Daily Beast earlier this week, suggesting that Benjamin Black, the alter-ego of John Banville (right), should win the Booker Prize. Herewith be the gist:
“One reason, I think, that critics are giddy over Black is that—let’s just say it—he’s more fun to read than Banville. (Well, some of Banville.) THE SEA is as exquisite as an Irish mist, but I won’t read DOCTOR COPERNICUS, KEPLER, and THE NEWTON LETTER again for all the whiskey in Quirke’s favourite pub. Another reason is that Benjamin Black’s territory is a new one for critics who regard themselves as “serious.” I suspect most of them have never dipped into the sordid but seductive world of Irish crime fiction—Patrick McGinley, for instance, or Ken Bruen, who is direct enough about his debt to Chandler to title a book DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS and whose detective, Jack Taylor, is so dissipated he makes Quirke seem like “a parfait genteel knight.” Banville might take it as an insult, though I think Black would not, that the Quirke novels are as good as anything produced by his contemporaries.
  “In 2006, when Banville accepted the Booker Prize for THE SEA—and, to be clear, if they had asked me, I would have voted for it—he made his famous statement, “It’s nice to see a work of art win the Booker Prize.” The egoism expressed in this statement bothers me not at all, but the deliberate tossing about of the phrase “work of art” makes me think that the man who used it was a pretentious prig who could do with a cheap thrill or two. Perhaps there is a difference between John Banville and Benjamin Black; if so, I think I prefer the latter. Black is Banville to be sure, and as Groucho said, outside of the improvement, you can’t tell the difference.
  “Wouldn’t it be nice to see a work of pulp win the Booker Prize?”
  A couple of things about all that:
  One, a work of pulp will never win the Booker Prize, because the Booker Prize isn’t awarded for pulp. It’s like suggesting that a pole-vaulter should win the gold medal for the javelin, because they’re both Olympic sports and involve running for a bit with a big stick and then letting go. The Booker Prize is what it is; I honestly don’t get this obsession some crime fiction writers and readers have with a crime novel winning it. To me it suggests an inferiority complex, that crime fiction will only be fully validated when it wins a literary prize. The truth is, if you want to win the Booker Prize, or be in with a chance of winning it, at least, then write the kind of book that tends to win the Booker Prize. And yes, I know that there’s great excitement about the fact that AD Miller’s SNOWDROPS has been shortlisted for this year’s Booker (along with Patrick DeWitt’s western SISTERS AND BROTHERS), and happy days for AD Miller if the book wins. Would it change the way people read and write crime fiction? Should it? Isn’t one of the attractions of crime fiction that it’s the half-breed outlaw of the publishing world? It is for me, at least. Do I want or need to see the kind of stories I like to write and read receive some kind of belated pat on the head as they pass through the gilded pillars into the whited sepulchre? Because - and it gives me no great pleasure to say this - literary fiction is on its knees. And not just in terms of sales - how often have we read the latest in an interminable series of ‘the novel is dead’ eulogies, in which some writer we’ve never heard of laments the fact that the literary novel has disappeared up its own fundament? The fact of the matter is, the literary novel is a vampire, a beautiful but dead shell which requires regular infusions of new blood in order to maintain the illusion of vitality, sucking up inspiration from the genres it purports to despise. Maybe crime fiction and AD Miller’s SNOWDROPS is just the latest victim, who knows. And really, who cares?
  Secondly, and as all Three Regular Readers will be aware, Ken Bruen has yet to write a book called DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS, although he did contribute a short story to the collection of essays, interviews and short fictions published by Liberties Press earlier this year.
  Thirdly, John Banville is as entitled to a sense of humour as anyone else, and his ‘It’s nice to see a work of art win the Booker Prize’ comment was as much mischief as it was any kind of qualitative judgement on previous winners.
  As to whether Benjamin Black is as good, or better, a writer than John Banville, well, that’s a matter of opinion, and mine is that Banville is the better writer by some distance. But one thing is certain: Benny Blanco don’t write no pulp, in either guise.

4 comments:

Gerard Brennan said...

Nice one, Dec. This article popped up on my google alert for "Irish crime fiction" and now I'm wishing I'd given it the consideration you have. That's a well measured response, man. To be honest, I got half way through and lost interest (I've only read The Book of Evidence so I'm woefully undereducated in the works of Banville/Black).

Completely missed the Down These Green Streets error!

gb

David Barber said...

I picked up on the DTGS error and that was it for. If someone is going to critique something, get your story straight.

I don't think anything other than an "arty" book will win a Booker. It's like a comedy will never win an Oscar for best film. A comedy actor will never win a best actor Oscar. Not "arty" enough!

And, because a novel has won a Booker it won't make me read it. Reviews from "real" readers are what count!

I'm off to buy your e-book!

Great post, Declan.

Richard L. Pangburn said...

Great post.

I'm a very forgiving reader myself, so I find it easy to commiserate with all involved.

John Banville's remarks elsewhere evince considerable ego, but his quip about the Booker finally going to a work of "art" was just that, reminding me of Al Capp, famous for the satirical comic strip, LIL ABNER, back in the 1950s.

John Steinbeck, in 1953, said that Capp was "possibly the greatest writer in the country today," and he recommended him for the Nobel Prize. When Capp was asked about this in a later Playboy interview, he replied, "I revere John Steinbeck far too deeply to question his literary judgment."

I don't know him, but perhaps the newspaperman's gaf regarding DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS should have been caught by a copy editor (if they exist these days), but bloggers in general make these gafs too often for me to be too critical.

I often think right but type wrong, and I'm in too much of a hurry to proofread on the fly. Later I come back and correct what I then discover to be mental lapses, horrendous malaprops and such.

Good thing nobody reads my blog.

As fast as well-made books seem to be disappearing in favor of electronic media, I would not be surprised to see most books extant today turned into pulp tomorrow, the way low grade magazines were back in the day when "pulp" meant: reading matter with no shelf life.

It is not just literary books that are being elipsed by market conditions. The entire body of humanities is in danger of being trashed by the right-wing materialistic mindset that is sweeping the United States. Entertainment trumps education because there is more money in it.

Ray Banks said...

Well said, Dec. The sooner the crime writers give up the Booker talk, the better. And that gaffe with the GREEN STREETS is symptomatic of an article that has little knowledge of its subject, hence:

"Cain wrote one good book, Postman, and a shelf full of schlock."

I rest my case.