"The parts I didn't read had promise."

MobyLives recently wrote about the petty squabbles and “unfortunate” compromises that take place behind the closed doors of literary prize judging panels. We linked to this eye-opening Guardian article in which dozens of Booker Prize judges discussed the disheartening experiences of being “arbiters” of literary prestige.

Last week at a literary reading I had a chance to speak with a literary critic (who I’ll refer to as X) who is one of the twenty-four board members of The National Books Critics Circle. Of the many major prizes, I’ve always had a fondness for the NBCC Awards, since the board members are at least in the business of making aesthetic decisions. But according to X, things are just as problematic at the NBCC as everywhere: none of the members have read all the submitted books, anything edgy or politically incorrect has no chance (since it always offends someone), and often the winners are books that the board members are merely “okay” with. Sometime it only takes a single champion to move a book forward, and there’s always a danger the other judges haven’t read enough to protest.

For example, X described a pre-longlist committee discussion in which one board member proposed Karl Marlantes‘s epic Vietnam novel Matterhorn for the fiction award. X had read only the first 20 pages and skimmed the remainder of the 592-page book; X hated the book’s prose, but didn’t feel justified in attacking the novel having read so little. It looked as if Matterhorn could be moving towards the longlist.  Only at the last minute, another board member said, “Yes, well, the prose in that book is pretty piss poor.” Two more board members chimed in with similar assessments, and the committee moved forward to another title.

Despite reservations concerning the process, X compared the NBCC awards favorably to other literary prizes:

For all the NBCC troubles, and it has many, I’d estimate that it’s the most egalitarian award (which is also the reason it’s only the fourth or so most important in the U.S.: too unpredictable, too slow). With all those board members, I’d guess that someone has read each of the longlisted book. And some surprising titles hit the shortlist, and once in a long while, as I understand it, one wins. With the really big awards, we’re talking about only a few readers, reading only the most obvious and incestuous selections.

The selection process for some categories is worse than others: fiction is terrible; poetry is really quite good.