Nilanjana S Roy: Nebulas, LSD and literature

SPEAKING VOLUMES

If writing is about capturing a fragment of reality, then literary prizes are about stepping into a looking glass world that bears almost no resemblance to the place we live in.

One of my favourite literary blogs, Bookslut, www.bookslut.com, summed it up perfectly: "There are some strange literary awards requirements. Only women allowed for the Orange Prize. The fuss over England and its former colonies, but not all of its former colonies or else that would include the US for the Booker. But the Ondaatje award has to be the silliest. Your book must evoke a 'sense of place.' Whatever the hell that means."

I differ with Bookslut's Jessa Crispin only slightly in that the Ondaatje Award has competitors. The Mythopoeic offers with delicious vagueness to reward the "fantasy novel, multi-volume, or single-author story collection for adults published during the year that best exemplifies "the spirit of the Inklings".

The Inklings included the likes of C S Lewis, J R R Tolkien and Owen Barfield who met and discussed their work at an Oxford pub, and I never see the Mythopoeic without conjuring up visions of a beleagured prize panel trying to decide whether x author is Inklingesque enough.

But it pales in comparison to the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, which "promotes books that will contribute to greater understanding and cooperation among the peoples and nations of the Pacific Rim and South Asia", the Charlotte Zolotow Award which oxymoronically, "is given annually to the author of the best picture book text" and the Jane Addams Children's Book Award, given to "the children's book that most effectively promotes the cause of peace, social justice and world community".

These three awards have another peculiar distinction: they haven't yet nominated a book that I've been tempted to read.

Of the mainstream literary prizes, the Booker shortlist varies from entertaining to excruciating.

There are years when it looks like the revenge of the nerds: you guys out there want to watch TV and see more dumb movies, we'll give you an excuse by writing books you simply cannot bear to read.

The Pulitzers are slightly better, quality-wise, but include a lot of earnest stuff of the kind that gets called "literary" when the word the critic's looking for is actually "unreadable".

I've been watching the Whitbread and the IMPAC with increasing interest; when they aren't trying to outdo the Booker in nominating obscure writers undeservedly raised out of their obscurity, they can produce some surprises.

About the only award for writing that has maintained consistent standards over the years is the Nebula award for science fiction, which is given to the previous year's best novel, novella and short story.

I read the shortlisted stories for 2003 in tandem with recent New Yorker stories, and the Nebula awards, oddly enough, outdoes the New Yorker lot on every parameter from originality to literary quality, and then some.

Unlike mainstream fiction awards, too, the sci-fi awards seem to be more accepting of women writers and includes them with no fuss over the gender issue "" especially if you're looking at the last three decades.

Here's a brief excerpt from Karen Joy Fowler's Nebula winning short story, What I Didn't See: "Merion joined me in the graveyard where I'd just counted three deaths by lion, British names all. I was thinking how outlandish it was, how sadly unlikely that all the prams and nannies and public schools should come to this, and even the bodies pinned under stones so hyenas wouldn't come for them. I was hoping for a more modern sort of death myself, a death at home, a death from American causes..."

And here's the first line from Jeffrey Ford's winning novella, The Empire of Ice Cream: "Are you familiar with the scent of extinguished birthday candles? For me, their aroma is superceded by a sound like the drawing of a bow across the bass string of a violin."

I'm not sure whether I should be pleased or dismayed about this: the best literary fiction I've read all year has consistently come straight off the sci-fi lists.

Maybe this is because SF doesn't talk down to its audience; maybe it's because the standards are higher when it comes to speculative thinking; maybe it's because any SF writer who chose a self-important style wouldn't make it to the least of the many pulp magazines.

And maybe literary fiction needs to wake up and take a look at what those much-despised guys down in the ghetto of genre fiction are doing right.

Deb of the Year: Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, aged 27, former kennel boy, chef and current flavour of the month, is supposed to have produced 2004's most stunning debut. I have no desire to prejudice readers against The Last Song of Dusk, though given the initials - - LSD "" it did occur to me that perhaps Shanghvi had embarked on an elaborate post-modern joke.

In the spirit of the hype, which abjures reviewers to pack as much as possible into the space of a blurb, I give you a brief summary of LSD, composed of sentences culled straight from the text itself:

"Indeed, Anuradha Patwardhan's looks were so fabled that more than a few young Romeos of the Udaipur Sonnets Society categorically claimed her as their Muse. (pg 3) "Absolutely!" Radha-masi stepped in.

"The last time she sang, only a few stars stepped out to listen." (pg 15) His cataleptic, bloody body was dumped into the nearby jungle, where the same night a snigger of hyenas ate him even as he struggled back into consciousness, wondering why on earth he had stumbled into this nightmare called Life in the first place. (pg 30) Song. Rain. Ignition. Song. Rain. Ignition.

Finally, this time around the danged thing started. Grunt. Roar. Forward. (pg 61) "Don't you dare treat me like a poodle!" Even hitting Raghubir was an act soaked in eroticism. (pg 74)

"They're savages at the core of them," she whispered, her eyes widening as far as they could stretch. (pg 119)

But the instant he saw Nandini gyrating her devious hips on the table, his scrotum tightened, his full-bodied organ whooshed up with blood, and the need to ram this thin, bony girl with every fibre of his body woke him with a jolt. (Ibid) "And," Nandini added, tilting her head, "I believe, at the last count, there were six hundred admonitions to the unqueer in the Bible""including death for a leg-over on Sunday!"(pg 195) My beloved storyteller, she thought. Tell me not this story. (pg 285) He was to tell the Story. (pg 295)" Enjoy 2004's hottest literary sensation. I most certainly did.

nilroy@lycos.com