Again, the cock crows

Sometimes it feels like the publishing world is awash in prizes. The last few days have brought us the National Book Critics Circle finalists, the American Library Assn. Awards, the Best Translated Book of the Year finalists and probably more that I can't keep up with. But one that I do keep up with is the Tournament of Books from The Morning News.

Designed like the NCAA basketball tournament, the novels in the Tournament of Books face off in brackets during the month of March. Sober debate and careful consideration begin to give way to the silliness of the project -- what sense does it make, really, for the slender and bookish "Firmin" by Sam Savage to face off against Emily Barton's walloping historical fiction "Brookland"? The judges explain their decisions in each match online, which are then subject to amused commentary by the site's editors. The winner gets awarded a rooster -- in name, anyway; so far no author has been forced to accept a live rooster for the honor, although the editors threaten to present one.

The Tournament of Books is not a fair arbiter. Sasha Frere-Jones "only got through 300 pages" of "Against the Day" by Thomas Pynchon before deciding it was a loser, which made me, a fan, a bit bonkers. But it's that kind of competition: Judges can say, no, no sirree, no can do. In fact, Sam Lipsyte, the judge in the prior round, hadn't finished the 1,001-page novel either -- but he'd decided it was a winner.

The list of contenders in the 2009 Tournament of Books follows.

All books in the competition are 30% off at Powell's, if you want to get in on the action. Click the links below for our reviews.

• "The White Tiger" by Aravind Adiga
• "2666" by Roberto Bolaño
• "A Partisan’s Daughter" by Louis de Bernieres
• "The Northern Clemency" by Philip Hensher
• "The Lazarus Project" by Aleksandar Hemon
• "My Revolutions" by Hari Kunzru
• "Unaccustomed Earth" by Jhumpa Lahiri
• "The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks" by E. Lockhart
• "Shadow Country" by Peter Matthiessen
• "The Dart League King" by Keith Lee Morris
• "A Mercy" by Toni Morrison
• "Steer Towards Rock" by Fae Myenne Ng
• "Netherland" by Joseph O’Neill
• "City of Refuge" by Tom Piazza
• "Home" by Marilynne Robinson
• "Harry, Revised" by Mark Sarvas

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Comments

[M. Kellner]

Any literary "competition" requiring the description found in your article, that "Sasha Frere-Jones 'only got through 300 pages' of Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon before deciding it was a loser," cannot even remotely be said to have anything to do with literature.
Fortunately for literature and for readers who care about it, Thomas Pynchon long ago foresaw the coming of such future exercises in pointlessness as a "Tournament of Books".
The victims here aren't those authors with Pynchon's savvy for preemptive indifference to such nonsense, but those who find themselves cravenly discredited for being selected, against their will, as "contenders".

If only Don Quixote, that peerless flower of knight errantry, and timeless example of what literary merit actually consists, would grant us all the boon of destroying this "tournament" -- which is determined, apparently, not to honor authors and their books, but to tarnish their reputations, and confuse literature with all the crap that things like The Morning News promotes and celebrates in order to, what? Sculpt everything to some monolithic pile of mediocrity?

[V.]

I agree with Kellner's 1/27/09 comment. Those who judge book tournaments should know enough to finish a book before making a decision about it--especially a Pynchon book. Perhaps the reviewer also walked out on Scheindler's List for being such a downer.