How to improve lit awards
From a piece in the North Shore News by Friend of Q&Q Caroline Skelton:
If only literary awards could be more like the Grammys.
The organizers of that famed event don’t seem to give a hoot that each year their audience twitches fitfully through 90 per cent of the evening, en route to album of the year. Tuning in to see whether Amy Winehouse would trounce Rihanna this year, for instance, you were first apprised of Jimmy Sturr and His Orchestra’s big win in Field 17 — Polka.
At the B.C. Book Prizes, announced tomorrow, there’s but seven little categories. And out of all the B.C. fiction published this year, there’s just one Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.
Reading through the five books on the shortlist, it struck me as unfair that one should go home with all the proverbial marbles.
What about the many charms and peccadillos of the other four? Not one little ode for all those finely realized characters, lushly painted scenes and hold-onto-your-socks-lest-you-get-blown-away metaphors?
Click through to read the author’s suggestions for new awards, including the “I can smell the cobblestones!” award, the bad sex award, and the madwoman/madman in the attic award.
I’m always bemused by writer’s prizes no matter which way the winnings
are cut. That a writer could stand on a stage or at a lectern and believe something noble has just happened is a public act only Bob Rae or an emperor’s tailor can appreciate.