Post-Booker

I'm not sure this blog gets any traffic -- it's awfully hard to find -- but here are a few thoughts for those of you who might be interested in what it was like to be a Booker longlistee ...

A wild month of bewildered anticipation ended yesterday with the news that Consolation has won the 2007 Toronto Book Award and, at the same time, did not make the cut for the Man Booker shortlist. As you can imagine, it was quite a strange day.

Prizes are weird things for writers. Most of us don't write to be nominated or to win prizes, and yet it's impossible not to be aware of the huge (and ever-increasing) group of honours that our books are considered for. So after what is often years of private labour, the public life of a book runs the gauntlet of not only reviewers and readers (where its longevity is usually decided), but it is also filtered through the machinery of prize-making and prize-giving, and these are sometimes the most gut-wrenching phases of a book's (and its author's) life.

Most writers I know say that they fear and desire these honours about equally, and I would agree with them. We write primarily to reach others, but when we reach them, we'd rather be loved over the altenative. Awards are a public form of this yearned-for love, but most of us know coveting prizes is bad for us as writers. For one thing, it transforms us from strange neurotic people who operate mainly in private, to people who must try not to act strange and neurotic in public. It's surprising how many of us there are who can put together a pretty decent sentence on the page but who, when speaking publicly, can get to looking (in Orwell's memorable phrase) like a monkey on a stick.

But today, of all days, I should probably be a monkey on a stick for at least a few moments before getting back to real life. Because there were so many of you who sent your love and good wishes and both congrats and consoling words today, so for those of you I haven't said it to directly: thank you. There are very fews days where you go from joy to anxiety to brief sadness to relief all between sun-up and sundown and it was good to have friends and loved ones to share it with. I have to say though that it's the joy and relief that are sticking with me. My god, what an incredible ride, but freaking hell, I'm glad it's over.