Comments on: Author! Author! – David Lodge (The Jamesian Experiment – Part 1)

By: Countdown in The Pub « Lizzy’s Literary Challenges

Countdown in The Pub « Lizzy’s Literary Challenges — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 19:45:16 +0000

[...] Author! Author! - David [...]

By: Colette Jones

Colette Jones — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:20:02 +0000

She speaks the truth – I heard him say it too.

I disagree with him though!

By: lizzysiddal

lizzysiddal — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 07:13:34 +0000

The articles I read were full of comment about Tóibín’s booker-related friendships standing him in good stead. Again I couldn’t possibly say whether they were the deciding factor in the shortlisting or not. I haven’t read Tóibín’s effort. I can say that he himself thinks The Master is quite badly damaged by flashback. And I can say that because I heard him say it himself – if you see what I’m saying!

By: John Self

John Self — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 21:52:11 +0000

It’s faction, and that isn’t eligible for the Booker, is it?

Tell that to Thomas Keneally, who won in 1982 for Schindler's Ark! (Now better known as Schindler's List from the US title and film version.) As to Author! Author!, I don't remember much furore as such when Colm Tóibín was shortlisted and Lodge wasn't, but there was certainly a good deal of gosh-wow comment on the coincidence of two major novelists producing books inspired by James in the same year (or three, as Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty was - more distantly - inspired too). In fact Lodge clearly found the whole experience pretty difficult, as he wrote in his memoir/essays The Year of Henry James. My own view - warning! semi-informed prejudice approaching - is that Author! Author! would have had to be going some to be better than The Master, and that irrespective of the Booker, Tóibín's story of James would still have been the better received and the more widely read. It's a Master-(geddit?)-piece.