I've got chronic prize fatigue

Do the myriad annual prizes serve any purpose other than massaging the egos of the already successful?
Man Booker Prize
The books shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

I've got chronic prize fatigue

Do the myriad annual prizes serve any purpose other than massaging the egos of the already successful?

Next week, at London's Guildhall, the winner of the 2010 Man Booker prize will be announced. Tom McCarthy's novel C is currently odds-on favourite but, as it's generally considered "experimental" (or, as some people would prefer, "unreadable"), a win would be unlikely to emulate the enormous worldwide sales of last year's winner, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, with more than half a million copies sold.

Is that the point of the Man Booker prize? To sell more books? The question might seem rhetorical to the jaded or cynical, but it is still a reasonable question to ask. The prize's website states that it aims to reward the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland, but then rather tarnishes its mystique by describing in breathless terms how the award has enhanced the sales of previous winners.

This week (apart from the Nobel prizes in Stockholm) there were two other prizes in the news: Zaha Hadid winning the Riba Stirling prize for architecture, and the contenders for this year's Turner prize, the winner to be announced in December.

No area of the arts is left out, it seems, when it comes to prizes. Oscars, Brits, Emmys, Tonys – swathes of gimcrack statuettes adorn the chimney-pieces of some of the world's most overpaid people. But what are they all for?

Take the Turner prize, favourite whipping boy of the amateur critic. Awarded yearly to a British artist under 50 for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the 12 months preceding, is it anything more than a pat on the back and £40k? Certainly it differs from other prizes like the Mercury and the Booker, in that it doesn't present immediate merchandising opportunities, though presumably the cachet and therefore the saleroom price of the winner rises. By the same token, it's not easy for the enthusiast to rush out and buy examples of Zaha Hadid's work; in fact, she is arguably more famous for designing buildings that don't get built.

Whatever happened to art for art's sake? What is it about the arts, and the performing arts in particular, which requires that their practitioners be eligible for recognition over and above that which the rest of us receive – a salary cheque and the occasional encouraging word from our line managers?

Because it's subjective, there's no way of arriving at a consensus about the intrinsic merit of the winners of awards and prizes. What is true is that the Man Booker prize is rarely won by genuinely challenging fiction – the list of past winners is mostly a roll-call of already successful authors with healthy sales, writing in what might be called the mainstream, with only a handful of exceptions (Keri Hulme in 1985, for example).

Are some prizes "purer" than others? It's arguable that some of the literary prizes exist to reward merit without the taint of commercial exploitation – the James Tait Black memorial prize, for example. There might be a discreet note on the back of a winning book, but it's not the ticket to a 440% sales hike as triumph in the Man Booker is. However, the list of past winners is depressingly familiar – William Golding, AS Byatt, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie. All fine authors, but all established writers (and all Booker winners) once again at the head of the queue for the trough. The Somerset Maugham award is more refreshing: not only is the list of winners disarmingly freer of the usual suspects, but the comparatively modest prize must be spent on foreign travel.

And then there is the daddy of all awards – the Oscar. To some, a well-earned reward for the pain and heartache of sitting for hours in a Winnebago waiting to be called on to the set. To others, a gaudy and vulgar display of ostentation and insincere orotundity. Millions of people worldwide watch it. But are the awards themselves anything other than vainglorious self-congratulation?

Not really. Most Oscars are awarded "posthumously" – winners having already completed their theatrical runs, often already released on DVD. Sales of the latter rise if a film does well – certainly The Hurt Locker, the lowest-grossing film ever to win best picture, enjoyed a boost in the wake of the award. Anyone who wins an Oscar might expect their next pay cheque to include at least two more zeroes before the decimal point.

Mostly, awards are a bit of fun; a frothy frolic, an opportunity to see and be seen. For the winners, more moolah. For the losers, a chance to practise that rictus grin. The Man Booker puts grown-up literature on the front pages, albeit briefly. There is a surge, however small, in the sale of books not written by Dan Brown. And for that, if for nothing else, we should truly be grateful.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/oct/09/booker-prize-fatigue
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