see that Lisa Jardine, chairperson of the judging panel for the women only Orange Prize for Fiction, is causing a bit of a fuss with her comments on the state of contemporary English writing. Mindful of the fact that the shortlist for this year's award features four North American writers (Margaret Atwood, Jane Mendelsohn, Anne Michaels and E. Annie Proulx), one Irish (Deirdre Madden), one Scottish (Manda Scott), and nobody from England, Ms Jardine argued in the Daily Telegraph that English writing is "absorbed with the petty foibles of our insular way of life" and that it is full of "that peculiarly self deprecating parochial sentiment immortalised in the poetry of Philip Larkin".
She singled out Julian Barnes, Graham Swift, Fay Weldon and Pat Barker for special censure, and suggested that English writers might get their act together and become a little less blinkered if they took heed of what their American counterparts were up to. Presumably, then, Pat Barker should stop writing about such "insular" and "parochial" events as world wars and start writing about such monumental subjects as, let's say, adultery in suburbia - though somehow I don't think John Updike would have escaped Ms Jardine's scorn if Couples had been set in Colchester.
She reserved particular venom for Graham Swift, whose Bookerwinning novel, Last Orders, she declared, would bomb in America. Why? Because it was merely "a book about four middle aged men in a pub worrying about their friend's ashes".
This line of argument opens up wonderful new possibilities for literary criticism. Take Ulysses, for instance, that parochial nonsense about two eejits wandering aimlessly around Dublin. Or Twelfth Night, with its tedious gang of cross dressers messing around on an island. Or Persuasion, with dopey Anne wondering if Wentworth still fancies her, for God's sake. And as for those two tramps hanging around under a tree in case some guy turns up - get a life, lads.
STILL, I suppose Ms Jardine will at least do her duty and factually read all the books submitted for the Orange Prize. Not so the judges for Britain's biggest nonfiction prize, the 27,500 NCR book award, which was presented last week to Orlando Figes for A People's Tragedy.
So how many of the 122 submitted books did the panel get round to reading? Chairman Clive Anderson said "lots", Nilgella Lawson said "loads". David Taylor also said "lots," adding that about 25 of the books had been read by at least one of the judges. He defended this by declaring "We are busy working people. We just haven't got the time".
In fact, the vast majority of the books were only read by a group of "professional readers" hired for the occasion, who then provided the judging panel with summaries of the contents as well as critical comments. Well, I suppose the NCR judges were only following the example of Sydney Smith, who loftily declared: "I never read a book before reviewing it - it prejudices the mind so."