How Many Adjectives Does it Take to Describe the Booker Prize?

In the contrary climes of global gong giving, other than the Nobel Peace Prize - to win which you generally have to have personally hacked at least a thousand to death - there can be no award more divisive amongst patrician and public alike than the old Booker McConnell prize, now known as the Man Booker.

Even the nomenclature of the reward raises the hackles of the literary 'luvvies'; the old guard preferring the former appellation and the more practical parvenus of the 'he who pays the piper' school, insisting on the latter. To those remaining on the sidelines, whether media, man or mouse, it is pragmatically referred to as simply 'The Booker'; an award which on an annual basis provokes an inundation of ink-fuelled imprecations from the winner's detractors, and even from within the ranks of the organisers themselves.

One of the original instigators of the Booker and the publishing legend who discovered Alan Sillitoe and bought Joseph Heller's Catch 22 for just £250 back in the day, Tom Maschler, holds a number of concerns regarding the honour:

"One is that on a number of occasions the winner seems to have fallen far short of fulfilling our goal, i.e. it was inordinately difficult to recognise the winner as 'the best book'. Clearly this is a highly subjective question. Nonetheless, some of the novels have been such very strange choices that it is really difficult to make sense of them."

Amen to that, Tom, me ould son. Many of the winning novels have seriously sapped my will to live, much less imbued me with the desire or ability to make sense of what I had just read. Does anyone remember The Famished Road by Ben Okri? More to the point; does anyone want to?

There seem to be entire swathes of years when the most obscure, staid, stultifyingly soporific stories about third world, table-top varnishers walk away with the accolade and a cheque for fifty thousand squid.

As Maschler says, the question of how the winner is arrived at is clearly a subjective question, answerable only by the judges appointed by the advisory committee, which in itself is composed of an author, two publishers, a literary agent, a bookseller and even a librarian, chaired by a person nominated by the Booker Foundation. Jobs for the boys, you might ask?

"I say, Holmes. Could that be essence of red herring I perceive?"
"Smellimentary, my dear Watson."

With that kind of line up one doesn't have to be Sherlock to surmise that in terms of the superimposition of subjectivity, the buck starts right here. Before the selection of the judges is made, it is easy to imagine a concerted conference of criteria culling along the lines of:

"Any back stock left, lads? Major book returns?"

Publisher number one pipes up:

"Ahem. There's an overrun of two hundred thousand copies on a title about a Bangladeshi badger baiter I couldn't even give away in The Mail on Sunday."

The committee counters in chorus:

"Bangladeshi badger baiter? Nominate him!"

A call then goes out to Wendy 'we know these kids' Wimperton from the Wormwood Scrubs Welfare Office, Lydia 'luvvy' Lydowne from Channel Four's Commonwealth Commissioning Office and Roger Righton from the Asylum Seekers' Alliance; in two shakes of a lamb's tail they all find themselves co-opted onto the commission of judges.

Is that not a good idea for a book project? Acquire the persona of an impecunious wretch from the most mysterious Commonwealth country imaginable: Tuvalu, for example. Adopt an exotic nom de plume such as Joffroi de Mandalay, then write the most inconsequential, mind-numbing, monotonous volume of a squillion pages - solely with the premise of duping a Booker board of adjudicators - concerning the destiny of a brood of Bangladeshi badgers marooned on a drowning atoll in the Southern Pacific.

It's not that implausible; a similar subterfuge worked a treat for Yann Martel and a Bengal tiger back in 2002.

The Booker was founded in 1969 as the English language equivalent of the Prix Goncourt and was first won by P.H. Newby's Something To Answer For; in itself an appropriate charge to be laid at the feet of the jury and most portentous for years to come.

Nonetheless, good old P.H. pocketed what was back then the tidy sum of £21,000 for his travails; enough to buy a Georgian gaff on London's Hampstead Heath or in Dublin's Dartry for that matter and still have change. Let's hope for his sake that he did; he may have been a prolific writer, with well over twenty tomes to his name, although I very much doubt that he ever hit the pay dirt to the same degree again.

The prize money has since risen to £50,000, but in real terms that amount would hardly buy you a Merc these days, much less a mansion. What a Booker prize has meant for its winner - and even for the long and shortlisted - is a greater public profile as a writer and the guarantee of superior sales. Even P.H., as the award's first winner, found himself catapulted onto the Evening Standard's best selling list as a result of his victory; a feat unprecedented at the time. It was the first time that a British novel had ever found its way onto a best selling list as the result of winning a competition.

Such has been the downfall in terms of credibility of the Booker and its reputation after the fallow findings of successive juries, however, that most rational authors looking to increase their revenue would rather have a recommendation as 'unputdownable' from Richard and Judy rather than be tarred with the poisoned chalice of the Booker, the winner of which - as Tom Maschler as much as admitted - is as often as not synonymous with unintelligible.

I, for one, readily admit to not reading a Booker winner since DBC Pierre's success Vernon God Little in 2003; and that was down to happenstance; I had purchased the book six months prior to its nomination. Had it already won the Booker, it is doubtful that I would have bought it; ditto The Life of Pi.

Strangely enough, a mere glimpse of the list of laureates in its entirety will disavow even the most incredulous with regard to the prize's worth; there are some excellent reads amongst the victors.

Peter Carey's The True History of the Kelly Gang was a personification rather than a portrayal of Ned Kelly; how did Peter Carey manage to pull that off linguistically? A tour de force, regardless of the fact that the outcome was a fait accompli.

Oscar and Lucinda was fine; I even enjoyed Keri Hulme's The Bone People which was slaughtered by popular opinion. Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day was a masterpiece, as was Schindler's Ark and The English Patient; excellent stories 'with a grand ould read in them' as me granny would have said.

Also in the 'good read' category I would place the aforementioned Vernon God Little and The Life of Pi, adding Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin and even our own Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha. Now there' a man who's laughing all the way to the bank; hopefully not the Anglo-Irish.

Nonetheless, for every single compelling volume on the list there seem to be up to three which can only be parked in the category of turgid drivel. In this classification I would place Graham Swift's Last Orders and the dreadful Midnight's Children; cures for insomnia if ever there were. Precisely how Salman Rushdie's book became the Booker of Bookers or the Best of the Booker is beyond me; unless - of course - the same panel of adjudicators voted thrice.

Once again, subjectivity rules and what is sauce for the goose may not be for the gander. The blame for any loss of Booker credibility - if any - must be laid at the feet of the jury. The parameters are put in place and tempered by the principles of the judges of any particular period and the mores of the day.

Just as Western society in general is currently thrashing in the throes of a politically [in]correct, multicultural, apologetic, guilt-ridden complex, the Booker judges seem to be simultaneously sacrificing sound criteria as to what stands for universal readability in favour of a stage show of sterility as to what passes for entertainment in the real world.

Continued judgements of this nature ultimately alienate the reader and are counter-productive to the Booker itself. If the stated objective of the Booker is to find the best book of the year by an author from a qualifying country then its judges - in electing what Tom Maschler described as strange choices that are difficult to make sense of - are doing the Booker the greatest of disservices.

The answer to the question 'how many adjectives does it take to describe the booker?' is largely the same as the answer to the question 'how many luvvies does it take to screw in a light bulb?' The answer, according to Ken Follett is ten; one to screw it in and the other nine to say 'Darling, you were marvellous.' Can it be possible for one word to be preceded by ten adjectives, and if we found ten or even more of them to describe the Booker, what would they be and in which order would they go?

USAGE

1) Adjectives modify other words, such as nouns, to give them a more detailed meaning or a description. Like adverbs, they are descriptive words; at the lowest common denominator, they describe how something is or what something is like. Some adjectives - such as determiners - have special functions, and adjectives can be made from nouns such as water ski or from parts of a verb, such as a present or past participle; for example: boring and bored.

2) Position. Adjectives are commonly used in an attributive position; that is to say before the word they are qualifying:

The Booker is an important prize.

Or they can be used in a predicative position; that is to say, after a verb when we are still describing something:

The Booker Prize is very important.

Verbs used in this type of construction are called link verbs or copulas.

We also use adjectives after verbs of sense or appearance, such as appear, seem, look, feel and taste:

Despite winning the Booker Prize, he looked miserable.

However, if we are describing the verb, we must use an adverb, and not an adjective.

"I wasn't even nominated." The writer answered, churlishly.

3) Agreement of Adjectives. Unlike many other languages whose nouns have masculine, feminine and neuter forms, besides being singular or plural, adjectives in English have no gender or plural form:

He's a good writer.
They're good writers.

4) Types of Adjective. Here there are divergences between the grammarians and linguists as to what can be described as an adjective regardless of a word's function. The modern school does not recognise determiners, for example as adjectives per se, although in some way they are clearly describing the following noun. Thankfully, as I do not - and never will - belong to the modern school, I have no reservations whatsoever about giving an exhaustive, traditionalist account of types of adjective hereunder.

a) Adjectives of quality. These could describe many attributes such as size, type, nationality, colour, etc.: large, new, Spanish, black.
b) Possessive adjectives (not to be confused with possessive pronouns): my, your, his, her, its, our, your, their.
c) Active adjectives (gerunds). These are used to when describing that something is having an affect on something or someone at any particular time: boring, uplifting, etc.
d) Passive adjectives (past participles). These are used to denote that something or somebody has been affected in this manner: bored, tired, etc.
e) Nominal adjectives. These adjectives seem like nouns in nature especially when the adjective acts as a count noun or a mass noun: the dead, the blind, the meek, the poor or the old and the new.
f) Interrogative adjectives: which, what, whose, etc.
g) Distributive adjectives: each, every, either, neither, etc.
h) Demonstrative adjectives: this, that, these and those.
i) Quantitative adjectives: any, some, no, much, many, etc.

5) Comparatives and Superlatives. Adjectives have three degrees of comparison: the positive degree; tall, the comparative degree; taller [than] and the superlative degree; [the] tallest.

Dependant upon the amount of syllables it contains an adjective is composed of, they are written in either this form (shorter adjectives and those adjectives descended from Anglo-Saxon) or another; with 'more' and 'most' (longer adjectives and those descended from Latin and Norman French).

a) Adjectives of one syllable form their comparative and superlative degrees by adding 'er' and 'est' to the adjective: tall, taller, tallest.
b) Adjectives of this group ending in 'e' just add 'r' and 'st': bare, barer, barest.
c) Monosyllabic adjectives of this type ending in a consonant preceded by a vowel double the final consonant (to protect the sound of the vowel): fat, fatter, fattest. The exceptions to this rule are the adjectives of this subgroup ending in vowel + w; new, newer, newest; and vowel + y, grey, greyer, greyest.
d) Adjectives ending in a consonant preceded by a 'y' substitute the 'y' for an 'i' and add 'er' and 'est': heavy, heavier, heaviest. As in most cases to any rule in the English language, there are exceptions: shy, shyer, shyest.
e) Adjectives with three of more syllables form their comparatives and superlatives by placing 'more' and 'most' before the adjective if the comparison is favourable, 'less' and least' if the comparison is not: more interesting, most interesting; less beautiful, least beautiful. (In the case of a negative comparison for the monosyllabic adjective use an antonym; (less) tall - shorter or a negative comparative of equals; not as tall as. Less + adjective is acceptable but not as elegant.
f) Adjectives composed of two syllables follow either one rule or the other. The majority of these adjectives follow the pattern of 'more' and 'most': more timid, more obscure, more tiring. Adjectives ending in 'y', 'er' and 'ly' take the short form: happy - happier; queer - queerer; silly - sillier.
g) A few adjectives of two syllables can work with both forms. These are adjectives that end in 'ow', and 'le', as well as others such as handsome, stupid, polite, quiet, pleasant, and common; inter alia: commoner or more common, cleverer or more clever, politer or more polite.
h) Irregular adjectives. Some adjectives have irregular comparative and superlative forms. Amongst the most common are: good (better, best); bad (worse, worst); far (farther, farthest: distance only) or (further, furthest: additional, extra, or similarly); old (elder, eldest: only referring to people in terms of seniority, for example, siblings in a family) or (older, oldest: referring to both people and things).

6) Nouns as adjectives. Due to the flexibility of form of the English language most nouns, by preceding another noun (in the attributive position) can become adjectives; that is to say, they describe the second noun so that it can be distinguished from others of a similar type.

Car door; distinguishing this door from any other.
Cassette box; distinguishing this box from any other.

Particularly with new concepts, any combinations of this nature can become adopted by the English language as a new noun. The process evolves by connecting the two nouns with a hyphen before the new noun finally emerges as a single word.

Water ski; distinguishing this kind of ski from the traditional type.
Water-ski; later hyphenated as the concept became more popular and widely accepted.
Waterski; now a fully fledged noun and also a verb.

7) Adjective and adverb. Some words ending in 'ly' are adjectives and not adverbs, for example: friendly, lonely, lovely, ugly, deadly, likely, and silly. Other words ending in 'ly' can be both adjective and adverb, such as periodical words: daily, weekly, monthly, as well as early, hard or fast.

The Irish Times is published daily except on Sundays. (Adverb).
The Irish Times is his favourite daily paper. (Adjective).

I got up early (adverb) to catch an early (adjective) flight.

8) Order of adjectives. There are several variations of established order present in different conventions of English, with different grammars disagreeing on the details.

a) Adjectives of quality. To describe a noun (in the attributive position) these are the most important rules. Take, for an example, these adjectives describing a tennis racket. They will be placed in the following order:
i. Purpose: what something is for. A tennis racket.
ii. Material: what it is made of. A steel and nylon tennis racket.
iii. Origin or nationality: where it comes from. An American steel and nylon tennis racket.
iv. Colour. A grey American steel and nylon tennis racket.
v. Age. An old grey American steel and nylon tennis racket.
vi. Shape. A flat old grey American steel and nylon tennis racket.
vii. Temperature. A cold flat old grey American steel and nylon tennis racket.
viii. Size. A large cold flat old grey American steel and nylon tennis racket.
ix. General description. An expensive large cold flat old grey American steel and nylon tennis racket.
x. Intensifiers, such as taboo or swear words. A bloody expensive large cold flat old grey American steel and nylon tennis racket.
xi. Articles, pronouns or determiners used as adjectives. My bloody expensive large cold flat old grey American steel and nylon tennis racket.

This is not to say that every noun should have as many as eleven adjectives qualifying it; such a use of language is awkward and unsightly. However, if the noun had to be described by any of these adjectives, then size would come before temperature, and shape would come before colour.

A large hot roll, please.
A round red ball.

Which brings us back to our bleeding inconsistent small-minded cold-blooded flat-footed new-fangled black-balling third-world-centric steel-skulled Booker jury; get with it lads, or give up the ghost [road]. (Poor literary pun intended).

Not that I'll ever find myself on the hallowed list, especially after this diatribe. However, at least for the ladies there's always the Orange prize. Moreover, conspicuously absent from its criteria for victory is the necessity to invent peculiar personae and write torpid tales based in the farthest-flung, most bizarre outposts of the Commonwealth, Ireland and Zimbabwe.

In trumpeting the praises, then, of the Orange award and to paraphrase The Dubliners' celebration of the other tradition on this island as sung in the chorus of their song; 'The Ould Orange Flute':

"Tuvalu, Tuva-lee; sure it's six miles from Bangor to Donaghadee!"

David Kennedy
http://www.writing4all.ie/site/members/view/david_kennedy.htm