Barnes and the Booker

W HY is it that the words ‘prize’ and ‘award’ are always accompanied by the word ‘controversy’? This year too, as always, the Man Booker Prize has had its share of criticisms, although more people seem to be in agreement about the choice this time around. Julian Barnes, dubbed the ‘Booker Bridesmaid’ for having been in the race three times before this — close to the finish line but never quite making it — has been fourth time lucky with his novella The Sense of an Ending, a mysterious fiction work about memories, sex and friendship. Of course, many say that it’s a case of the ‘right author at the wrong time’ as Julian Barnes has produced works more deserving of the accolades than this one.There have been apprehensions all round, for quite some time, about the ‘dumbing-down’ of the Booker. Not the least of these was the judges’ criteria of ‘readability’ in selecting the writer of the year, as it were.That is actually a tricky sort of consideration. True, a book’s readability will surely have an effect on its popularity — on how well it reaches out to the people holding it in their hands and how well it connects.But then, there is more to a book than mere readability. If that were the case, crime thrillers and pulp fiction might well win the popularity war. So, of course, when the judges speak of readability, they are looking for that quality in conjunction with the nuances that go into the making of ‘literature’.They say there is a simple test for deciding whether a book falls into the ‘literature’ category: Does it make you think and feel more? Does it raise some questions in your mind? May be answers some that were already there? In essence, does it make you stop and think a little?That, perhaps, is what we are looking for when we wait for that ‘name of the year’ to be announced. And that, surely, has to be what the judges look for, as well. So long as it has all these, and still is ‘imminently readable’. Meaning, it will hook you long enough to capture your mind and take it where it wants. That’s readability in top-rung literature.On several occasions, the choice for the Booker prize-winner has raised more than a few eyebrows. In one such instance, the centre of the controversy was our very own Arvind Adiga, whose White Tiger pipped Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scriptures, Steve Toltz’s A Fraction of The Whole, Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies and Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence. What was the X-factor that took him to the top? The judges claimed the book ‘shocked and entertained’ at the same time, with its dark and different take on modern India.Well, you might or might not agree with their choice, but I suspect the readability quotient has a lot to do with the end result.Which brings us back to this year’s winner. Julian Barnes was apparently the only ‘heavyweight’ left on the Booker Shortlist, and perhaps it was a conscious decision to remove the ‘readability first’ stigma from the award.Well, we all have our grudges, and we all have our favourites, and the Booker will go on being what it was. A little controversy never hurts anyone, does it?