John Sutherland on how the author didn't help his own case
What, one wondered, would the epithet be? "Controversial"? "Safe"? "Eccentric"? "Grotesque"? In the event the papers next morning settled on "surprising". Surprising not just because it was a turn-up for the book, but because this particular novel had been preferred over shortlist rivals that, on the face of it, had more reader appeal, more energy, more punters' cash riding on them - more everything, except, possibly, art.
Judgment on John Banville's triumph was predictably divided. On one side there were those (in Ireland, for example) who felt it a wholly appropriate award for a writer who was now certified to stand alongside Beckett. On the other side there were those of the Diogenes faction who declared Banville's triumph a "disaster" from which Man Booker, and indeed English fiction, might never recover.
Why, then, didn't the committee do what those eminent critics, Mr Hill and Mr Ladbroke, instructed them to do - choose one of the favourites? Why did they go for the 7/1 outsider, "surprise" the reading public and - allegedly - do irreparable damage to the most prestigious fiction prize in the English-speaking world? It was not because, it must be said (again), the favourites were not prizeworthy books. They were and are. The simple answer is that Banville's is a deeply divisive novel - and in the end it came down (as it should) to the intensity with which opposing parties believed in, and were prepared to argue for, their corner. The Banvilleans, in the final analysis, (just) out-argued the anti-Banvilleans - no blackmail was used, no manipulation, no grandstanding. Merely argument.
The reviews of The Sea reflect that argument. They have split between those who genuflect to the novel as a high point of fictional art (a view with which I concur) and those, such as Tibor Fischer, who slag it off as something to go in the bin along with Martin Amis's Yellow Dog.
Banville doesn't always help his own case. A few hours before the ceremony he confided to an American journalist that The Sea was "a bad book". With authors like that, who needs Tibor? Nor, it would seem, was he indulging in false modesty. He came over to London from the US on the day of the award and booked his flight for 8am the following day. He wouldn't win. No chance. Bad book. Pack your bag.
Banville is, as I observe him, an egregiously modest writer. He is also, as I read him, an egregiously good writer. But there is no secret that the committee was divided on how good. They are always split, but with The Sea there were factors making division particularly sharp. One judge was on record as "loathing" the novel. Another judge, who read the work five times, could quote reams with page references and believed it was the one novel of 2005 that would last until 3005. It has that effect on some readers.
As chair of the committee one felt like Evel Knievel, preparing for his jump across the Grand Canyon. One can argue critically from entrenched positions with an open mind. One can compromise. One can agree, gracefully, to go with majority opinion. So it was.
There are, as I personally experienced it, a number of difficulties with The Sea. The English ear (mine included) sometimes has difficulty with what Banville calls "Hiberno-English", the one good thing, he says, the invader left his plundered isle. The idiom of The Sea is rich. A recurrent objection is that the language gets in the way of the story (what story?). But couldn't one say the same thing about Ulysses? Joyce's novel, for a certainty, wouldn't have won the Man Booker in 1922 . . . and the prize would have been safe from "disaster", 1922-style.
The subject matter of The Sea - alcoholism, terminal disease, family disintegration - does not contribute to the cheeriness of life. But neither does life, if you've lived enough of it.
On the Today programme, the morning after the prize ceremony, Banville had a couple of my comments on his novel thrown at him ("slit-your-throat gloom . . . too literary, perhaps, for some readers").
"If they give me the bloody prize," he complained, "why can't they say nice things about me?"
Well, here goes. In a year when half a dozen Man Booker prizes wouldn't have been enough, he richly deserves his. Enjoy it, John. - (Guardian Service)
John Sutherland is chairman of the Man Booker Prize judges