Sunday, March 17, 2013

bust up over 'elitist' new book prize


Presenter Mariella Frostrup brands the new Folio book prize 'elitist' in a heated exchange on Radio 4's Today programme. Sour grapes or good point, asks Jon Stock

Entertainment vs elitism: Mariella Frostrup, left, and Kate Clanchy
Entertainment vs elitism: Mariella Frostrup, left, and Kate Clanchy Photo: Rex, Charles Hopkinson
There’s nothing like a good spat on the Today programme and this morning didn’t disappoint. Broadcaster and journalist Mariella Frostup locked literary horns with poet and writer Kate Clanchy over the new £40,000 Folio Prize launched this week.

In the middlebrow corner, Frostrup poured scorn on the prize for being elitist and ignoring readers – a position that had nothing, of course, to do with her not being invited to join the new Folio Academy, a collection of a hundred writers and critics who will judge the prize.

And in the highbrow corner, Kate Clanchy, poet, writer and member of the Folio Academy, defended a prize that she claimed will actively eschew books that entertain, soothe or can be read on a train.

“It’s a disaster for Radio 4,” Frostrup, presenter of the station's Open Book programme, fumed. “Not one of my esteemed colleagues, from Melvyn Bragg, Jim Naughtie, Mark Lawson or myself – all people whom I feel fit the criteria of being serious about books – feature on it [The Folio Academy]."

Today presenter Sarah Montague struggled to maintain order as Clanchy, who slipped in an early plug for her novel out this year, explained the thinking behind a prize for writers that will be judged largely by writers.
"We’re moving into a world where the reader is king,” Clanchy said. “If you look at the Amazon bestseller list…”

"Why not be judged by readers?” Frostrup interrupted. “Make it more democractic, bring it out, open.”

“We [writers] read slightly differently, more jealously,” Clanchy countered. It was a calculated choice of words. Could she hear sour grapes choking in Frostrup’s trademark raspy throat? “We read more emulously, we read more technically, looking for the plot, looking for how the other writer did it. Looking for the new thing, always. Whereas I think readers quite often tend towards the conservative. Because they look for the book to soothe, or the book to entertain.”

“We’ve got an awful lot of people looking for the book…which you can read on the train. I think from an academy of writers, you may also be able to celebrate this other thing, this thing that is disturbing, this thing that is new, this thing that we’ve never read before. What we hope most of all is that choice then goes back to the readers.”

Frostrup had had enough. “There’s no such thing as a good book that doesn’t entertain,” she cried. “You talk about there being 100 members of the Academy, but that’s not actually very many when you’re going to have to draw five judges a year. It already feels a little bit elitist.”
Frostrup may not have been invited to become a member of the Folio Academy, five of whom will be chosen by lot each year to judge the prize, but she can console herself that she delivered the best line in today’s exchange.
“These days, to get any sort of publicity for a book, you’re need to have JM Coetzee dating Katie Price to get into a newspaper,” she quipped.
And there’s nothing like a good row to get publicity for a book prize.

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