h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

... is there an Orange Prize for women's fiction? I mean, it's not exactly as if women have been underepresented in the ranks of authors or unrecognised of late. Long gone are the days when Mary Ann Evans had to write as George Eliot.

So why exactly? Can anybody tell me what *purpose* this prize serves? Can anybody tell me what purpose *any* literary prize serves, for that matter?

To sell more oranges.

OK, I should have said 'higher purpose'.
I read a review of Zadie Smith's winner. It seems like the fairly derivative and pedestrian love-triangle crap that gets peddled as literature nowadays. And authors wonder why nobody reads their books...

My, we're chirpy today!

It's my normal misanthropic gloom. I got *two* copies of this book at Christmas: I wonder why?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316729531/qid=1149685572/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/202-6880894-1335034

I knew what that book was going to be before I clicked the link.

Though I'll admit that I had exactly the same rant at the tele when they were showing a news item about it.

Why, did your rant correspond with mine, then?

I'm sure that Ms Smith is a fine writer. I'm sure that On Beauty is, within its admittedly rather rarefied context (one that does not admit half the population of writers), a good example of the Modern Novel (whatever that means). I still haven't seen a convincing reason why I should go out and buy it, let alone why the rest of the world should care that it's been written in the first place. So, from the point of view as to whether it's prizeworthy, like any book it ought to have an impact beyond its rather select coterie of readers. For instance, 'Silent Spring' (though non-fiction) served as call to arms for the ecology movement and a wake-up call for the rest of us. I have yet to understand what another set of variations on eternal triangles and/or tetrahedra can possibly do to change the way we look at the world around us.

My rant coresponded to yours with almost 1 to 1 topology, right down to the reference to Geore Elliot.

How about Colm Tóibín? Just scooped €100,000 for 'The Master'.

The latter actually looks like an *interesting* book. I know little about the suject matter. However, this probably means that to me, it's another introspective work about literati.

It's about Henry James. Haven't read it, but it is highly spoken of.

I'm serious thinking of setting up a prize called The 'Lemon Prize'. It is to be awarded to the book which is the most worthy attempt at meeting the unwritten criteria for all those bloody literary prizes, for instance
* no genre fiction
* photo of the artist on the back with a thousand-yard stare
* must either be a literary biography about a neurotic personality or a meandering mediation on the human condition
* Oxbridge educated author (preferably), who has never sold more than 500 copies of any book beforehand
* The more obscure the plot, the better
* Endless namedropping of places, other authors, literary critics
...you get the picture.

> Endless namedropping of places, other authors, literary critics

I have recently listened to tapes of DNA reading a few of the Hithhiker's Guide books, and was struck by a fact I hadn't noticed before: he never mentions a philosophical theory by name, or any authority, except ones he has obviously made up on the spot. A wonderful approach! If only others were so disciplined!