The Booker Longlist

So, there is going to be blood on the carpet.

I'm back to the Booker issue. The Independent carries a cantankerous take on the Booker tamasha.

"Every year in the August dog days, the conclave of five Man Booker Prize judges sends out smoke that's not yet white but a tantalising shade of grey. They deliver an interim report on the state of British, Commonwealth and Irish fiction in the form of a long-list. Every year, critics duly play the game of lauding, trashing or carping at the choices made. More of that later. But who ever bothers to judge the judges?" asks Boyd Tonkin.

"This selection reads more like an invitation to an upmarket vicarage tea-party than to a showdown in a blood-stained warehouse," he says.

I love it man!

Don't miss this Boyd piece.

And there are some more tidbits about the Booker Prize here:

As per The Telegraph, the longlist announces a fight for the PRIZE among the bigwigs like Rushdie and McEwan and Coetzee. So, what are the new comers doing here? "But among them are three first-time novelists, who add human drama to literary suspense," says Nigel Reynolds.
Adding human drama to literary suspense! Sounds like a theatre, no?

And there is more dope.

Harry Thompson, 45, one of television's most successful comedy producers - who has been long-listed out of the blue for his first work of fiction - was recently found to be suffering from inoperable lung cancer.

That is sad.

In contention for the first time is Zadie Smith.

John Sutherland, the chairman of the judges, said after yesterday's 90-minute long-list meeting: "This has been an exceptional year, and in the judges' opinion may rank as one of the strongest ever."

We know how Mr Smith must be feeling. Is that being mean?