Neil Gaiman: By the Book

What book is on your night stand now?

There are a few. My current audiobook (Yes, they count; of course they count; why wouldn’t they?) is “The Sisters Brothers,” by Patrick deWitt. It was recommended by Lemony Snicket (through his representative, Daniel Handler), and I trust Mr. Snicket implicitly. (Or anyway, as implicitly as one can trust someone you have never met, and who may simply be a pen name of the man who played accordion at your wedding.) I’m enjoying it — such a sad, funny book about family, framed in a Wild West of prospectors and casual murder.

My “make this last as long as you can” book is “Just My Type: A Book About Fonts.” It’s illuminated a subject I thought I understood, but I didn’t, and its chapter on the wrongnesses of Comic Sans came alive for me recently visiting a friend at a Florida retirement community, in which every name on every door was printed in Comic Sans. The elderly deserve more respect than that. Except for the lady I was visiting, widow of a comics artist. For her, it might have been appropriate. On the iPad there are several books on the go, but they are all by friends, and none of them is actually published yet, so I will not name them.

When and where do you like to read?

When I can. I read less fiction these days, and it worries me, although my recent discovery that wearing reading glasses makes the action of reading more pleasurable is, I think, up there with discovering how to split the atom or America. Neither of which I did. (I clarify this for readers in a hurry.)

What was the last truly great book you read?

 

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Esi Edugyan and Patrick deWitt nominated for Walter Scott Prize

  By Shannon Webb-Campbell

Esi Edugyan and Patrick deWitt will go head-to-head once again, this time for the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction, a U.K. literary award established in 2010.

Last year, the duo dominated the Canadian award circuit. Edugyan won the Scotiabank Giller Prize for her novel Half-Blood Blues (Thomas Allen Publishers) and deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers (House of Anansi Press) took the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Literary Award. Both were shortlisted for the prestigious Man Booker Prize, but lost to Julian Barnes.

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Foran, deWitt add GGs to literary accolades

The Sisters Brothers

By Stuart Woods

Two of the most high-profile winners of the 2011 Governor General’s Literary Awards have already won major literary prizes this season.

Charles Foran won the non-fiction prize for Mordecai: The Life & Times (Knopf Canada), which last month won the inaugural Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for non-fiction and, earlier this year, the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction. In total, Foran has earned $130,000 in prize winnings for his biography of the late Montreal author (and two-time GG winner for fiction). Foran is also in the running for the $40,000 B.C. National Award for Non-fiction, which will be handed out in 2012.

This year’s fiction winner is Patrick deWitt, whose comic Western, The Sisters Brothers (House of Anansi Press), also won the $25,000 Rogers Writers’ Trust Prize for Fiction.

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Ignore the Booker brouhaha. Readability is no test for literature

Authors on the Booker prize shortlist: left to right, Carol Birch, Stephen Kelman, Patrick deWitt, Esi Edugyan and A. Miller. Photograph: Ferdaus Shamim/WireImage

The Booker prize judges misunderstand literature and its purpose. Would they blame maths for being difficult?

By Jeanette Winterson

The Booker Best Pony in Show row is an annual event that at least lifts novels off the books pages and into the public debate. This year’s fight about readability tempts me to set up a new publishing house, funded by Sir Stelios. EasyBook could recruit the chair of the Booker judges, Stella Rimington, as CEO and offer a no-frills novel-reading experience that goes from A to B and does not tax the brain.

Nothing wrong with that. There are plenty of entertaining reads that are part of the enjoyment of life. That doesn’t make them literature. There is a simple test: “Does this writer’s capacity for language expand my capacity to think and to feel?”

Subject matter is not the point. It might be socially relevant, or it might not. It might be historical, science fiction, a love story, a crime novel, a meditation in fragments. There is no point judging a novel by its subject matter; what is in vogue now will be out of date soon. Nobody reads Jane Austen because we want her advice on marriage. And we don’t care that she lived right through the Napoleonic wars and never mentioned them once. Who cares about the Napoleonic wars now?

Novels that last are language-based novels – the language is not simply a means of telling a story, it is the whole creation of the story. If the language has no power – forget it.

The problem is that a powerful language can be daunting. James Joyce is hard work. Virginia Woolf’s The Waves is a very slow read. Schools teach language-friendly versions of Shakespeare.

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Applause and dissent at the Booker Prize dinner

Julian Barnes (right) is congratulated as he is announced as the winner of the Man Booker prize at the Guildhall Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA

The Man Booker dinner is the most sought-after ticket in the literary world. Sameer Rahim reports from the evening when Julian Barnes finally won the prize.

 

The Man Booker dinner is the most sought after ticket in the books calendar. Last night former winners like Howard Jacobson and Kazuo Ishiguro rubbed shoulders with the actor John Hurt and the BBC’s Alan Yentob. Yet while literary London used it as an opportunity to catch up (“Darling, we must have cocktails next week” – I swear that is a direct quote) the nominated authors were quietly sweating in their tuxedos or dresses.

All the talk was about whether this year’s prize had lost its traditional highbrow status. The tables at the front end of the Guildhall, where the nominated authors sat with their publishers, didn’t think so – though there was some muttering from the authors and agents further back, whose friends and clients the judges had ignored.

Oddly enough even people with strong opinions seemed not to have read the whole shortlist – or even much of it. More than one person told me that apart from Julian Barnes, Patrick deWitt and Carol Birch they hadn’t found much to interest them. Either this shows how little excitement the shortlist has provoked or as Stella Rimington, the chairman of the judges, has argued, it shows up the narrowness of “so-called literary critics” and their ilk.

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Ondaatje declines Governor General’s Literary Award consideration

Michael Ondaatje

By Sue Carter Flinn

Although there’s been much buzz over award newbies Esi Edugyan and Patrick deWitt’s impressive hat trick of nominations, another story unfolded today as Michael Ondaatje’s well-received The Cat’s Table was noticeably absent from this morning’s Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction shortlist.

According to his publisher, McClelland & Stewart, Ondaatje asked for The Cat’s Table, which is shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, to be withdrawn from consideration.

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Booker prize 2011: the shortlist

Interactive: A shortlist for the 2011 Booker prize

By Christine Oliver

A judging panel focused on ‘readability’ has produced a shortlist for the 2011 Man Booker prize which has been accused of populism by some. Julian Barnes is the only contender to have been previously shortlisted. He joins Carol Birch, second-time novelists Patrick deWitt and Esi Edugyan, as well as debutants Stephen Kelman and AD Miller on a Booker shortlist which has set bookshop tills ringing. Here we gather together audio, reviews, interviews and features so you can get fully acquainted with all the contenders

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Shortlist For Giller Revealed

By Leigh Anne Williams

The shortlist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada’s richest prize for fiction, was announced Tuesday morning in Toronto. The finalists are: David Bezmozgis  The Free World (HarperCollins Canada); Michael Ondaatje  The Cat’s Table (McClelland & Stewart);

Lynn Coady The Antagonist (House of Anansi Press); Zsuzsi Gartner Better Living Through Plastic Explosives (Penguin Group Canada); Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers (House of Anansi Press); and Esi Edugyan  Half-Blood Blues (Thomas Allen Publishers)

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