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‘Indiscreet’ Sutherland’s Booker role appals advisers

Members of the hallowed Man Booker advisory committee, the body responsible for appointing the prize’s judges, are spitting blood at the appointment of John Sutherland to chair the award panel this year, claiming not to have been informed until hearing of it “quite accidentally” after the event.
A committee member, who preferred not to be named, said: “We were stunned when Sutherland was appointed. His name hadn’t been mentioned in meetings.”

The member said that the Man Booker administrator, Martin Goff, had made the appointment without consulting his committee colleagues, who include the broadcaster Mark Harrison and the bookseller James Heneage.

“He is an appalling choice, because of what happened last time round,” added the committee member.

“Last time round”, when Professor Sutherland was a judge in 1999, he wrote a piece for the Guardian in which he described the judging process.

His analysis was thunderously denied by two fellow judges, who accused him of a “breach of trust”.

The committee member said: “Last time he was incredibly indiscreet, and I think other judges felt betrayed. That kind of gossip, turning it into a circus, diminishes the stature of the Booker.”

Mr Goff said: “If the person concerned had gone through the minutes of the committee meetings, they would find that Sutherland was one of those people originally suggested.

“Then, when I had some turn-downs from other people I went to him and asked him to do it. The committee is an advisory committee – I don’t want to push it down, and we would never go against a majority decision, but almost no appointment of judges has ever been unanimous.”

Asked if Prof Sutherland was a potential liability, Mr Goff said: “That’s the very word I have used to him tonight. I have laid down certain rules.”

But he said Prof Sutherland was a “brilliant man”, adding: “Have you seen his CV?”

On the 1999 judging (when Prof Sutherland claimed that the winning book, JM Coetzee’s Disgrace, was “admired” but not “passionately liked” by the panel), Mr Goff said: “I was present in the whole meeting, as I have been for 33 years.

“There was a strong discussion, but no more than that. There was enthusiasm for Disgrace. It wasn’t a compromise.”

John Self loved Andrea Levy’s novel Small Island. So I was interested in this profile of her, published on The Guardian Books Website:

After years as a marginal voice, Andrea Levy is starting to get her share of the glittering prizes. Now, with her novel Small Island tipped for Whitbread book of the year, her explorations of her dual heritage are ready to reach a far wider audience.

John Irving, who wrote A Prayer for Owen Meany, which is looking like it is going to be my next read, gets a brilliant write-up from the incomparable John Self here.

If I like APfOM, it looks like I’ll have to invest in The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules as well.

Dammit!

Interesting article on the Guardian Books site about comments made by John Sutherland, the Chairman of the 2005 Man Booker Prize Panel:

The newly announced chairman of the 2005 Man Booker prize has admitted that the judges are unlikely to read all 130 books in contention, while describing his fellow judges as “light on the minorities” and the process as like a “world federation wrestling match”.

John Sutherland, an emeritus professor of English at the University of London and a Guardian columnist, said: “It takes six or seven hours to read a novel, and a judge is being paid about £3,000. You don’t have to read the whole thing to know it doesn’t qualify.