Alex Clark: Observer writer and former Booker prize judge
Just what the literary world needs – another judging spat! I confess that when I heard that the Pulitzer prize for fiction, due to be awarded to the best American novel of last year, was being kept in its cupboard because the committee couldn't reach a majority verdict about any one of the three finalists, my first thought was – good on them. Why do prize juries insist on pronouncing one book – or play, or work of art, or piece of music – worthy of attention and acclaim, even if they privately think that it wasn't all that, just the thing that drifted to the top of the pile or whose advocate had the loudest voice in the final meeting?
But then I began to think that this is not as strong a statement as one might hope. The committee –called on to adjudicate between three novels from an initial 341, which had been sifted by three judges that included novelist Michael Cunningham – weren't actually making a stand about the quality of contemporary fiction, they were just admitting that they didn't know how to make their minds up. And more importantly they've made the prize seem somehow detached from what's really going on in the world of letters. An award should be a snapshot of the cream of a culture at a particular moment – not the expression of some Platonic ideal of art. Shouldn't it?
Nick Fraser: Broadcast editor and former Sundance festival judge
When it comes to prizes I am deeply conflicted. If any film, book or public figure in relation to whom I can claim the remotest connection wins the obscurest prize, I'll join in the chorus of acclamation. And I am filled with indignation when the films I've helped produce don't win. But something always says to me, 'Hey, stop… ' Beginning with my school days, when I aimed to cart away every prize in sight, I've grasped the fraudulence of prize-winning. I identify with Albert Camus, who went white when he was told he had won the Nobel prize. Wrongly, he thought he didn't deserve it. But he also knew that he would henceforth be considered as a writer who was over and done with. And the prize would attract the spite of his many detractors.
I've sat on many documentary film juries. Not always, but frequently, I've felt that the best didn't win. The prize was awarded in a spirit of compromise, or indeed desperation prompted by the onset of exhaustion. So, no – I don't think awards are a snapshot of the "cream of culture". At best, I feel they enable the odd cat to get to the cream. Do you think prizes always go to the right people? Can you think of a recent major and worthy award?
AC Your mention of school days rings a distant but slightly shaming bell. Ever since my rendition of "Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill" won me the Newland House junior singing competition in 1979, I've had a belief in my extraordinary vocal abilities that is somehow at odds with the rest of the world's view. Which certainly backs up your opinion that the best doesn't always triumph. And I suspect this used to be a little less of an issue when the "cream" was more readily accessible, and more evenly distributed – when publishers, to draw on my own background, hoped that a prize might propel a writer into the stratosphere, rather than actually make it possible to get his or her work into a bookshop in the first place. But despite that, and despite the obvious fallibility of prize juries I still think prizes are a useful (and entertaining) indicator of a cultural moment, especially when they alight on the unexpected or controversial. To give an example of where I think awards work, look at this year's Orange prize shortlist, just announced. I've no idea whether Cynthia Ozick, a truly tremendous but hardly millions-selling novelist, will win, but I'm delighted to see her there.
NF I cannot speak about Cynthia Ozick. I know who she is but not what she writes. Let's talk about the Oscars. Did you really think that The Artist cut the mustard? Or The King's Speech? I'm not asking whether you enjoyed the films, and indeed I did. But we have become used to the triumph of the second rank. Think of Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending. I bought this slender volume when bored in Detroit airport. It's a wonderful piece – but a piece it remains, a longish story, what Turgenev would surely have called a novella, not really a novel. Couldn't the Booker jurors find a bigger book?
What happens is that music has to go on. Poetry makes nothing happen, as we know, but prizes do. But let me ask you another question. Let's assume that prizes are, by and large, a literary or film racket. What would you do to reform them? What would be your ideal prize?
AC "Racket" is a harsh word! But I do think the fact that I'm thinking of the Booker (which I should mention that I've judged, in 2008) and that you bring up the Oscars is obviously significant: they're both awards that generate a huge amount of noise and publicity and chatter (and money). There's clearly a point where a prize becomes something other than itself – less of a straightforward recognition of excellent work (I tend to agree with you about The Artist and The King's Speech) and more of a signifier of a possibly outmoded idea that a coterie of connoisseurs can identify and anoint an unimpeachable piece of art. So, my ideal prize would recognise the impossibility of that aim. Most artworks are imperfect in some respect, and I don't think that's a problem: to me, perfection implies stasis, which in turn implies death. So let's give up on the idea that a prizewinner in any medium will be flawless. And let's also be realistic about judges, who are human beings with wildly varying tastes, prejudices and priorities. .
NF I also value the idea of imperfection. Some of the most interesting awards – like the MacArthur Foundation's "genius award", for instance – go to works, careers or even lives in progress. There's something great about the capability to give recognition to something that embodies promise. Of course, grants do this, but I think there should be more prizes of this nature. I also appreciate prizes where the jury are encouraged to create their own categories. This is the case with the Peabody awards – the jurors watch many, many entries, but you do know that they cared enough about what they were given to decide why it should get a prize. But you've restored my taste for battle. There are few things better than seeing something good acknowledged. And I never really lose hope. Someone out there will agree with me, I tell myself. They, the jury, will feel that such and such a film I've cared about is a masterpiece. And it does happen, sometimes, really, it does.
