Orange Prize real issue is the choice of Lily Allen as celebrity judge
March 17th, 2008 admin Posted in News |
If there is one thing that makes me wish to quit the august and extremely pleasurable position I hold as literary editor of The Times it’s the annual debate about the merits of the Orange Prize. A prize for women authors: Sexist Con-Trick (as Tim Lott has it) or Force For Good? You choose.
Here’s where I stand. Get over it. Not, Get Over It You Awful Men and Let Us Redress Centuries of Repression Through the Virtues of Our X-Chromosome-Only Prize! I mean, get over it, in a broader sense.
Get over the idea that prizes given to novels – of any kind, stripe, gender or nationality – can, in any way whatsoever, be described as “fair”.
I have told this story before but I will tell it again. When Arundhati Roy won the Booker Prize for The God of Small Things, she told the assembled throng that she was honoured and humbled to have won the prize – not least because, she was sure, five different judges would have chosen a different book. How right she was, and how wise to remind us of the inherent subjectivity of this endeavour.
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