Thursday, October 20, 2011

Sense of an Ending

Julian Barnes' short novel Sense of an Ending has won the 2011 Man Booker Prize. Has anyone read this? Does anyone plan to? The Man Booker has not been good to me lately (with its emphasis on "readability" rather than "high quality" and that's why there's a competing prize now), and I've been hitting about 50% with the Pulitzers (I have still not read A Visit From the Goon Squad though Yat-Yee Chong says it's fine and who am I to argue with Ms Chong so I have to pick up a copy soon).

But, this novel looks interesting in a postmodern unreliable narrator sort of way and Mighty Reader plans to read it so there it will be, sitting innocently in my house, right?

For readers of genre fiction, I wonder: do prize-winning books get your attention much? Does "Edgar Winner" or "Hugo Winner" or whatever make you pause and push you toward parting with some hard-earned cash?

22 comments:

  1. When I first started keeping track of the Man Booker winners I didn't like them very much. But I find that they tend to stay with me, so I respect them now, having only read 2-3, mind you. I'm at about 50% with the Pulitzers too. I haven't had a chance to read up on Sense of an Ending yet, though. I'd probably check out Goon Squad first.

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  2. I put a hold on this yesterday (university lib), so should get to it soon. And it does seem very easy to read (from the first chapter excerpt on Amazon) so hopefully I'll be able to read it between trying to frantically finish my experiments. I borrowed 'A Visit From the Goon Squad' and then my husband 'stole it' from me and read it. I never did finish it. Looking at my already loong 'to read list' , I don't feel compelled to finish it either. Shame on me!

    Lavanya

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  3. The book I'm reading right now, Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey, won the Booker in 1988. It is excellent, but the Booker committee and sponsorship has changed since then (now it's the Man Booker, of course) and it's become more a popularity contest than a measure of literary quality.

    I have promised myself that I'll read Goon Squad, because I want to someday have read all of the Pulitzer winners. I've read a lot of them, but by no means most of them. I've read all the winners for the last decade. I haven't liked them all.

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  4. I've been spending my bus rides rereading The Chosen by Chaim Potok. I remember really admiring it when I read it some years ago. And I remember thinking how very elegant the writing was. This time around, the writing (prose style) isn't impressing me as much, but the story is still very well constructed. It's a quiet story, but the dynamics bring a lot of tension. And it's interesting that there's no "evil" force in the story. The conflict comes from good people wanting different things.

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  5. And it's interesting that there's no "evil" force in the story. The conflict comes from good people wanting different things.

    Yeah, I like those sorts of stories. I'm tired of good versus evil. The dramatic engine of my WIP is that people make mistakes and work on partial knowledge and then there are consequences. There's no hero, no villain. Forces are not pitted against each other. Though it seems like a very noisy novel so far. I hope it quiets down some. I hope it seems less deterministic to a reader than it seems to me. I'm tired of feeling pushed around by the plotting author.

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  6. Just read about the 'competing prize' on the Paris Review website. Interesting! Also country of origin is not going to be a factor.

    Lavanya

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  7. And I see John Banville is backing it. He's a great writer.

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  8. I don't seek out prize-winning novels, but if am considering buying a book and notice it is a prize-winner will typically help sway my purchasing decision.

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  9. Rick, I know that prizes do give significant sales bumps, so somebody's watching. Maybe it's just that there is more mention of a prize-winning book in the press. Who'd heard of Tinkers before it won the Pulitzer? Who'd heard of Lord of Misrule before it won the National Book Award. On the other hand, everyone had already heard of The Graveyard Book before it won the Newberry.

    When I was a kid, reading a lot of SF, I read all the Hugo and Nebula winners. I sought them out.

    Banville is Irish, so of course he's a good writer. He also won a Man Booker in 2005. I wonder how he feels about that. Aside from pretty damned good, I mean.

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  10. oh- I meant my dissertation related (non literary) experiments ..:D

    Lavanya

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  11. Awards? Those are like the Oscars where I've never seen anything that wins. Book awards=never read/heard of the book.

    So, yeah, probably no influence here.

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  12. I avoid booker winners. I was also intrigued by the comment that the booker prize is lower quality because a book is readable. Shouldn't ALL books be readable?

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  13. Not in the least. Prizes mean so little, as any judgement on art is largely subjective and my tastes seem to be so very different from most judges.

    If the book looks interesting, I'll pick it up - regardless of that illustrated seal on the cover.

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  14. Martin, I think the Man Booker's "readability" translates into "requires little effort on the part of the reader" which isn't necessarily a good thing if your reader is an adult and your book makes claims to being literature. Winning a Booker used to mean that the prize committee felt the book might some day join the literary canon. Winning the Man Booker now means that the book might be immediately popular with a broad audience and sell a lot of copies. The Man Booker committee chair would like to see books like Mockingjay and Juliet, Naked up for the award. I'm sure those are fine books but they are not of the same sort as Oscar and Lucinda or The Sea, The Sea or Midnight's Children or Remains of the Day.

    "Readability" implies a celebration of the tastes and comfort of the reader, which is not something that art does, by my definition. "Readability" says to the reader "Oh, you're all right. Have another cup of tea." Art asks the reader to think, to be uncomfortable, to be a different mind after having read. Art novels are way more fun than merely "readable" novels.

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  15. "any judgement on art is largely subjective"

    But not all subjective judgments are equal! There is such a thing as informed opinion, as expertise, as training, as education, that make some judgments better than others. My older brother knows a great deal about 35mm cameras, but he knows nothing about novels or reading because, you know, he doesn't read. His opinion on cameras is worth a lot more than mine, and my opinion about novels is worth a lot more than his.

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  16. I used to pay attention to the Hugos/Nebulas (SF) and the Edgars (Mystery) and the Newberry (children's) but not anymore. As with you, there were too many disappointments and odd choices.

    I do need some new fiction to read -- for the first time in living memory, my fiction "To Be Read" pile is nonexistent! I did read Barnes' "England, England" a few years back and enjoyed it immensely, but his Booker winner doesn't sound that appealing to me. Fortuately, I have an enormous Nonfiction To Be Read pile which is keeping me quite busy.

    -Alex MacKenzie

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  17. When I first read that your "to be read" stack was nonexistent, I missed the word "fiction" and immediately thought, "Hey, what about those huge piles of books you bought at the SPL sale?"

    Even though I have a big stack of TBR books, whenever I am between books, I always catch myself thinking "I have nothing in the house to read."

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  18. That happens to me too! Planning to read something makes it a bit less exciting. I like being able to approach a wall of books and feel like it's full of opportunity!

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  19. Yes, I have a ton of unread nonfiction on my shelves, yet when I finished my most recent book, the very next day I picked up a brand new book at My Plucky Local Independent because I'd just read a review of it and wanted to read it RIGHT NOW. (The book is "Maphead: The Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks" by Ken Jennings, and it is terrific.)

    Why couldn't I just pick something from among the older stuff on my shelves? Just not as exciting, that's why!

    -Alex MacKenzie

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  20. I propose we all gather our to-be-read books and hide them around our homes like squirrels do with acorns. Then, whenever the time comes, we get to search around the house and just find new books!

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  21. About a year ago Mighty Reader put all of our "to be read" books up onto the shelves with all the other books, effectively hiding them from me. So now there is a bit of a treasure hunt when I look for something to read at home. Of course, I have lost track of the books I really wanted to read right away. And I have since then generated a couple of new TBR stacks. It's madness.

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