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Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Kiran Desai Wins Man Booker Prize

posted by on October 10 at 15:40 PM

Story on it here. My bang-on prediction here—plus an exceedingly dickish comment by a Mr. “Frank Sauce” that I hadn’t read until today:

Why, exactly, should people in Seattle care about a prize given in a little island in the Atlantic Ocean, an island about the size of the Olympic Peninsula? What makes this even more insulting to my brief attention span, scrolling through your so called blog looking for screenshots from Hump is that this prize is for a novel. The Man Booker is for 1) a book that is 2) not even real in 3) an empire that no longer exists…

And it goes on. My belated feeding of the troll: This shit matters because I said so, and today I am correct 100 percent of the time. Bow before my superior prestigious-literary-awards-handicapping-intellect, Mr. Sauce. Bow, I say!

RSS icon Comments

1

When and why was the name of the Booker Prize changed to the Man Booker Prize?

On second thought, at least they didn't change the name to the QWEST Booker Prize, the SAFECO Booker Prize, or the KEY BANK Booker Prize.

Posted by Slip Mahoney | October 10, 2006 11:51 PM
2

Mr. Constant:

You're prediction was correct. Congrats! Yet there's no possible way that I can bow to you, even in the figurative sense. We should all agree that the Man Booker prize is not a gauge of a books literary value ("Literature is news that stays news"-EP), but of the books selling [emotional and physical] value right now. No doubt, Ms. Karsai wrote her heart and soul into her book and she deserves the kudos and the sales that come from receiving the Man and in no way do I want to belittle her achievement.

However, I believe you misread my previous comment, which leads me to believe you will misread this, my second, comment, but I will try to write this text more in the narrative (a less obscure form than before), which may be more inline with the way you think. The argument of a literary prize’s value will forever be available for us to discuss, but we really should try to avoid those arguments.

My comment to your prediction questioned your position, but why you would even take a position befuddles me. Unless, of course, you like that position and you seem to like positions that make you “100% correct” for a day. Yes, I, too, love the feeling of you feeling “100% correct” for a day. Everyone should have those days. It simply saddens me that we need the Man to feel this type of validity.

Thank you for reading,

Frank Sauce

Posted by Frank Sauce | October 11, 2006 4:17 PM

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