A second visit to the Cheltenham Booker debate

It seems like the Cheltenham Literary festival has some special deal with someone when it comes to weather.  Once again, the event was bathed in such warm sunlight that I wondered if I shouldn’t be calling in to the Lido.

I was there for a fantasy event: if there had been a Booker award in 1945, which book might have won it.  The festival invited a panel of five writers to debate this in public, each author being set to champion one of the titles.  The line up was:

• AS Byatt for Elizabeth Taylor’s  At Mrs Lippencote’s
• Rafaella Barker for  Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand Central Station I sat down and Wept,
• Akalla for George Orwell’s Animal Farm
• Rachel Johnson for Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love
• Alexei Sayle for Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited.

I thought that this year the choice was trickier than the one I watched last year, when two of the contenders had seemed rank outsiders.  Or perhaps, because then I’d gone along anticipating The Good Soldier was the only possible winner, I had more of a commitment to the debate.

This year, I had not done all of my homework.  A couple of weeks ago I finally got round to reading Brideshead Revisited, but there were two on the list that I hadn’t read, or tracked down as second hand copies.

I know, I should have gone out and bought them new.  The Taylor, at any rate, would have been a useful addition to the shelf I’m gradually giving over to her writings.  But the last few weeks have been busy, and I kept putting that trip to town off.  So I read the little that was available free of each of them on-line and had my preconceptions confirmed.

Taylor’s opening intrigued, and drew me in…

‘Did the old man die here?  What do you think?’ Julia asked, as her husband began to come up stairs.

‘Old man?  What old man?’

She stood on the shadowy landing with its six white doors.

‘What old man,’ asked Roddy once more, coming up and putting his arm along her shoulders.

‘The husband.  Mr Lippincote.  Oh how I wish we needn’t live in other people’s houses.’

‘What if he did?’

Yes, what indeed?  The dead cannot communicate with the living, or do harm to them.

If there had been more available than the tantalising first ten pages I would have read on.  Note to self: must put this on my Christmas list.

Note 2: no ditto on Elizabeth Smart’s novel.

It’s taken me a long time to reach the point where I know when to give up on a book, and this one will go on that fairly short list.  Even the rather passionate advocacy of Rafaella Barker could not move me to go back and read more of this:

I am standing on a corner in Monterey, waiting for the bus to come in, and all the muscles of my will are holding my terror to face the moment I most desire.  Apprehension and the summer afternoon keep drying my lips, prepared at ten-minute intervals all through the five hour wait.

On stage, there was some debate about the merits of poetic prose, but the agreement of the whole panel seemed to be that the novel has no narrative line.

I had it in mind that this one should be the first to fall, and it was offered up for the first round of votes, along with Mrs Lippincote’s, but it was Taylor’s novel that went out at the first round, while Elizabeth Smart’s made it through to the last.  Two days later and I’m still not clear how this could have happened.

I hadn’t enjoyed Brideshead Revisited, it seemed lacking in heart.  But, if I had to choose between Smart’s description of a love affair or Waugh’s, I’d opt for the latter, despite its slow start, and off-key ending.  Not so the panel, who dropped him.

As they did,  The Pursuit of Love.  Well, it’s a nice book, a funny book, but I would have been surprised to see it win.  So, the last two books standing were Animal Farm and By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. 

Interestingly, these were the books whose advocates had given the most passionate opening arguments, and perhaps that’s why the rest of the panel fell away.  All had offered literary accounts of their chosen novels, but the first three had lacked the engagement with their texts that Akalla had for Animal Farm, or Rafaella Barker for By Grand Central Station…

It was obvious that their books had touched them.  They did not just admire the writing, they loved it.  And for that reason, I’m thinking that though Smart’s novel did not, in the end win, I ought to give it a second chance, and read it through to the end.

After all, I could borrow it from the library, I don’t have to put it on a Christmas list.

At The Cheltenham Booker (1915) panel event

So the weather was good, and that always helps, even if you’re seated in a blacked-out marquee, because when you’ve walked past families settled on the grass, or students gathering at the promotional tents, and the rest of us are milling between those seven other possible gathering points that have been fitted into the grassy square, well it could have got messy.

But we had sunshine slanting across the autumnal leaves that line the main route into Cheltenham, so there was a lot of cheerful chattering as people compared notes and ‘book bags’.  I was in literary mode well before I found my seat.

I was early.  There was time to settle down and take a good look about.  A woman squeezed past to take the seat on my left.  ‘How many have you read?’ she said.  ‘We’ve done them all.  I passed them to my husband as I finished each one, and then we discussed them.’

‘Which one would you like to win?’ I asked.

‘Somerset Maugham,’ she said.  ‘Isn’t he marvelous?’

And that’s how it seems to be at the literature festival, people are ready to talk book at the drop of a smile.

The audience was divided, evenly at the first straw-pole, between the five novels that had been chosen as ManBooker contestents.  It was an eclectic selection: The Thirty-Nine Steps (John Buchan), The Good Soldier (Ford Madox Ford), Of Human Bondage (Somerset Maugham), Psmith, Journalist (P. G. Wodehouse) and The Voyage Out (Virginia Woolf).

The panellists, Victoria Glendinning, Andrew Lownie, Selina Hastings, Alan Judd and Robert McCrum championed a novel each.  If you’ve ever wondered about one of the most often repeated pieces of advice given to would-be writers that they should read, lots, events like this demonstrate what it’s about.

After writers have read for pleasure, they go back and think about how the story got written.  So, that’s what we heard, writers thinking aloud about the nuts and bolts of creation, assessing not just the literary merits, but also the creative skills.

Chairman, James Walton was not impartial.  He anticipated which of the novels would fall at the first and second hurdles as he pushed for a decision on the titles that could be quickly discarded.  But, he pointed out, half of his job was time-keeper.  This panel could not luxuriate in arguments about what was clearly lesser literature.  The winner would be decided within an hour.

Was this a fair collection of titles?  How come Joseph Conrad’s, Victory, or The Rainbow, by D. H. Lawrence weren’t included?  I’d wondered about how this list had been put together when I booked the ticket.

It was only after the event that I realized how artful the compilers had been.  What we had were titles to appeal to all sorts of readers – adventure, comedy, social issues, female writing and a mystery.  Many had, like my neighbour, read all of them for the first time in preparation for this event.  Some were going home to read one or two again, some to try them for the first time.

What the panel had done, was to rouse our curiosity.  As we filed out, all round I heard people discussing those five, 1915 novels.  Is it me, or isn’t the idea that something published one hundred years ago can still grip us, wonderful and somehow reassuring?