Four novels short listed for the Mann Booker Prize, four authors, four pundits. Nov1 a ten-year-old Ghanaian boy written by a middle aged Englishman; Nov2 a period novel again narrated by a boy written by a woman. What happened to “write about what you know?” The read extracts indicated our current paucity for inhabiting other worlds made up for by some arrogance of that ability. I cringed. It’s as if authors caught up in the suspended animation of the writing process forget that they’re breathing and eating and periodically going for a shit. Yes they write words that extend to some hundreds of pages but they seem to be regressing to the monkeys and typewriter condition where given enough authors they will write the nonsense of their fully detached state; coherent yet inarticulate, devoid of the rooted experience that binds us, that connects our universal consciousnesses. Could it be that our 21st century human evolution is content with every man being a cognitive island where we all have an equal right to inflict our private imaginings on the world and call it literature? But these are up for a prize, chosen for these merits. Maybe if you’re a serious author and not a faymouth golfer already on his second autobiography one needs to write a flight of flagrant fancy to turn the heads of the nodders that they might join you in your “mmm”ing circumstance. Aren’t we lucky James Joyce wasn’t moved to write about a transvestite Pilipino coming to terms with life after failed surgery?
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