Man Booker Drama

•

May 18, 2011

Today Philip Roth beat out a “stellar shortlist” to win the Man Booker International prize. But that’s not the drama.

No, “Judge Withdraws Over Philip Roth’s Booker Win,” is the drama. That’s right, Carmen Callil has retired from the award panel over Roth’s win because, well, to quote Callil herself, “he goes on and on and on about the same subject in almost every single book. It’s as though he’s sitting on your face and you can’t breathe.”

BSKY

Isaac Fitzgerald

Isaac Fitzgerald has been a firefighter, worked on a boat, and was once given a sword by a king, thereby accomplishing three out of five of his childhood goals. Formerly of The Rumpus and McSweeneyâ€™s and most recently the founding editor of BuzzFeed Books, Isaac is now the co-host of BuzzFeed Newsâ€™ Twitter Morning Show, #AMtoDM. He also appears frequently on The Today Show to talk books, and is co-author of Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them and Knives & Ink: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos (with Recipes) (winner of an IACP award), and the author of a YA novel and picture book forthcoming from Bloomsbury. He uses Twitter.

4 responses

Matt

May 18, 2011

Not “his fourth,” mind you — the fourth.
Isaac Fitzgerald

May 18, 2011

Yikes! Mistake fixed. Thanks so much for the heads up, Matt 🙂
Guy Cheney

May 18, 2011

Should Roth have won the prize? A perfectly debatable issue. Did Carmen Calli act in a reasonable manner when she didn’t get her way? Case closed. She did give herself a nice boost in name recognition.
heather

May 18, 2011

I’m still cracking up at the thought of Phillip Roth sitting on someone’s face, having his dirty ol’ salad tossed by some blonde housewife from New Brunswick.
Okay. It passed.
Kind of.
I’m glad there are people for whom books matter enough to get this juiced over. Go Callil, show ’em your ecstatic growl.