Man Booker Excites Nearly One Thousand People on Earth
What does the Man-Booker award have to do with the earthquake that struck Pakistan? Timing. Too soon after Katrina we have the quake. By we I mean that part of all of us that feels community with everyone else. The great literary prize is an elitist exercise. Oh, don’t get excited. The ability to read and write puts us in an elite category, the ability to read and write like Zadie Smith or Julian Barnes puts them in a very tiny club with all the bickering, annoyance, deck shuffling tiny clubs create.
I’m in a tiny club too, so no one’s getting a free pass. My club has a president. The Treasurer has long since fled prosecution for the crime of barratry, and no one has stepped forward to take her place. Elwina dropped a note from Patagonia to say her choice for the Man Booker Prize will be revealed in a full page ad in the LA Times Food Section later today. The earthquake in Pakistan is the top news story where she lives, a few miles from the sea. She is banned from sea travel by order of The Admiralty for her malfeasance aboard the cruise ship MV Sublime Indifference. As a bursar aboard the Sublime, she did willfully and knowingly convert sums of money to her own use before being assailed by angry passengers and crue (sic). No one mentions the sly machinations of the ship’s master, a Portugese fellow traveling under a false name. Her attorney, the Honorable Guy Forget L’Argent, gave an impassioned speech before the Justice Junta although many felt the impact of his words muted by his refusal to remove his dark glasses. Others were put off by his cape. Elwina wore a burgundy shift that certain members of the club found ‘intolerably smart.’ The trial became a farce.
Her note went on to say that the death toll in Southwest Asia will exceed twenty thousand, but she urges us all to soldier on. It is the only recourse, she says.