WEEK 11. THIS YEAR’S BOOKER PRIZE COMPETITION AND WINNER (2009)

‘The Booker Prize represents the very best of contemporary fiction. One of the world’s most famous literary prizes, it continues to be the ultimate accolade for every fiction writer’ – Booker’s description of the Booker Prize

‘Posh bingo’ – Julian Barnes’s description of the Booker Prize

2009 Judges:

James Naughtie (chair), Lucasta Miller, John Mullan, Sue Perkins, Michael Prodger

2009 Shortlist:

A.S. Byatt, The Children’s Book
J.M. Coetzee, Summertime
Adam Foulds, The Quickening Maze
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
Simon Mawer, The Glass Room
Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger

Abjection

I thought you'd all done Kristevan 'abjection' on your Theory core already, or I'd have spent a little longer on it in the lecture today. If you're a little unsure what it means, you could do a lot worse than to follow these links:

Here's a fairly straightforward definition.

This introductory account situates Kristeva's theory in its Lacanian theoretical context.

Here are some Google Books monographs that use the concept (sadly Kristeva's own Powers of Horror book isn't up for preview on Google Books).

And here's an applicaton of Kristeva's theory to Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, and Keri Hulme's The Bone People (by Samantha Pentony).

Anne Enright, LRB article on winning the Booker

You should read the article at the other end of this link, in which Anne Enright talks about the experience of winning the prize, and especially the subsequent book-tour and publicity.

Do you think winning the prize, and staying in a succession of posh hotels whilst on tour made her happy? Hmm. 'It is a melancholy thing, to pass hundreds of thousands of people on the road and remember so few.'

Enright's Gathering

WEEK 10. ANNE ENRIGHT, THE GATHERING (2007)

‘[A] genuine attempt to stare down both love and death’ – A.L. Kennedy

‘There are some quite good set-piece scenes . . . but, God, it’s wearing’ – Hugo Barnacle
Anne Enright was born in Dublin in 1962. After working for RTÉ for some years, she became a full-time writer in 1993. The Gathering was her fourth novel and the first to be shortlisted for the Booker.

Editions:

Anne Enright, The Gathering, (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007; London: Vintage, 2008).

2007 Judges:

Howard Davies (chair), Wendy Cope, Giles Foden, Ruth Scurr, Imogen Stubbs

2007 Shortlist:

Nicola Barker, Darkmans
Anne Enright, The Gathering
Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Lloyd Jones, Mister Pip
Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach
Indra Sinha, Animal’s People

Topics:

• Memory and the Past.
• Narrative and Unease.
• Reviewers and Sales Figures.

Reviews:

A.L. Kennedy, ‘The Din Within’, The Guardian, (28 April 2007)
Adam Mars-Jones, ‘Intimate Relations’, The Observer, (6 May 2007)
Tom Adair, ‘Every Last Piece of the Jigsaw’, The Scotsman (19 May 2007)
Hugo Barnacle, ‘The Gathering’, The Sunday Times, (27 May 2007)
Patricia Craig, ‘The Gathering’, Independent, (7 June 2007)
Eleanor Birne, ‘What Family Does to You’, London Review of Books (18 October 2007)

Guardian Book Club on Desai's *Inheritance of Loss*

John Mullan (a Booker judge himself this year, and a Professor of the University of London to boot) has been running one of the Guardian's 'book club' sessions on Desai's novel. Check out what he's said so far:

Week 1: Divisions. "A novel of shifting points of view, The Inheritance of Loss flits from one character to another, from one emotion or sense impression to the next, its narrative form acting out the sense of dislocation that is its theme. "

Week 2: the Importance of Food. "Food focuses cultural unease. Eating makes you feel you belong, and makes you know when you do not."

Week 3: Kiran Desai on writing The Inheritance of Loss. "As I wrote [the novel], I began the process of considering that one's place in the world might be merely incidental, just a matter of perspective. Perhaps the centre was not firm at all? And as I wrote I became aware of the rich novelistic moments that come from many stories overlapping, from this moral ambiguity, and from the utter uselessness of the flag. Even the past – home of sorts to all of us – wasn't fixed. History is only someone's story. I felt as if I were writing to displace myself, and to know that my story wasn't the only one – that there would always be other books on the shelf."

Week 4's installment will appear in next Saturday's Guardian. Take a look, why don't you.

Desai's Lossy Book

WEEK 9. KIRAN DESAI, THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS (2006)

‘What Desai gives the Booker panel is Incredible India as Beautiful Writing. The stories are of loss and humiliation, displacement and dispossession — the rich music of victimhood is never not heard. But that makes it all the more poignant and beautiful, testing every skill that she may have honed at her creative writing course at Columbia University. . . . And hence, this Beautiful Writing should not only tell the right Stories, but should also foreground the right Issues’ – Aveek Sen

Kiran Desai was born in New Delhi in 1971. Currently living in the United States, she is the daughter of Anita Desai, shortlisted for the Booker Prize on three occasions. The Inheritance of Loss is her second novel.

Editions:

Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss, (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2006; London: Penguin, 2007).

2006 Judges:

Hermione Lee (chair), Simon Armitage, Candia McWilliam, Anthony Quinn, Fiona Shaw

2006 Shortlist:

Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss
Kate Grenville, The Secret River
M.J. Hyland, Carry Me Down
Hisham Matar, In the Country of Men
Edward St Aubyn, Mother’s Milk
Sarah Waters, The Night Watch

Topics:

• Indian Writing and the Booker.
• Globalisation and Internationalism.
• Promise and Accomplishment.

Reviews:

Aamer Hussein, ‘Maps of the Heart’, Independent, (8 September 2006)
Natasha Walter, ‘Mutt and the Maths Tutor’, The Guardian, (26 August 2006)
Pankaj Mishra, ‘Wounded by the West’, New York Times, (12 February 2006)
Sarah Hughes, ‘Uncle Potty and Other Guides to the Truth’, The Observer, (3 September 2006)
Aveek Sen, ‘Voices of the Same Poverty, The Telegraph (Calcutta), (12 October 2006)

Banville and Irish Literature

I don't have much to say in today's lecture about Banville as a specifically Irish writer; but if you're interested in his place in the tradition of Irish writing you might want to look at this article: Kersti Tarien Powell, '"Not a son but a survivor": Beckett... Joyce... Banville', The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 35, Irish Writing since 1950 (2005), 199-211. Here's the abstract:

John Banville's fiction represents a sustained effort to investigate the mechanics of the creative act, where the author's own search for means of representation are paralleled by his characters' search for knowledge, understanding, and unproblematic utterance. Intertextual references nuance and reflect this quest, which will be traced from Banville's earliest, unpublished literary manifesto to his later fiction. Examining Banville's complex literary allegiances to Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, this article analyses the representation of the creative act in Banville's fiction.