Gore, Kennedy and Angelou Win Quills, Desai Picks up Booker Prize

For book fans, it has been a busy day or two. In the US, the Second Annual Quill Book Awards were handed out. Across the pond, the Booker Prize winner was named. The Oscars and the Nobels they are not. The third millennium doesn’t value literacy in quite the way earlier times have. Being able to read is about extracting information quickly now, and less about reveling in a story (fiction or non-fiction) well told. Nonetheless, this public acknowledgement is better than a poke in the eye for writers.

Now in their second year, the Quills were established to make literature more popular by letting the average reader vote – extremely democratic but a list of winners of such awards looks like a best-seller list. Thus, it should be no surprise that Nora Roberts won for best romance book for her novel Blue Smoke. Maya Angelou, the only living poet most Americans can name, won the poetry Quill award for Amazing Peace and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth scored for best political-history book. Tyler Perry’s Don’t Make a Black Woman Take off her Earrings won Book of the Year. Since he also made the “comedy” film “Medea’s Family Reunion” in drag, the Quills may not have distinguished themselves with this choice.

Outside of the publishing world, no one seemed to care. Media reports didn’t even provide a full list of winners. No sales effect is expected. According to MSNBC (which sponsors the Quills), “Comscore Networks, Inc., an Internet research firm that monitors Web traffic, was unable to compile any numbers on visits to the Quills links, saying low traffic was the likely reason.” Indeed, for those who bothered to watch the webcast (it wasn’t a TV event), one couldn’t help but notice the numerous empty tables by the time the show ended. Perhaps the attendees went home to read.

Meanwhile, Kiran Desai won the Man Booker Prize (to give it its full name) for The Inheritance of Loss, a novel about an Indian family set in India and New York dealing with multi-cultural love and life. The Booker is a big damn deal. Unlike the Quills, the Booker has a check to go with it, £50,000. The Booker folks’ website says, “the prize aims to reward the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The Man Booker judges are selected from the country’s finest critics, writers and academics to maintain the consistent excellence of the prize.” In other words, it’s much more elitist (which in this journal is always a compliment) than the Quills. And of course, no Yank writers need apply.

In the English-speaking world at least, writing as an art form is viewed as second-rate by the popular culture, along with sculpting and dance. None of these is on the same plane as music or acting. Hence the joke about the starlet who was so stupid she slept with the screenwriter. All the same, the Kensington Review remains grateful to those who can still be bothered to read.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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