Oranges vs. Bananas Redux

Posted 17 April, 2008 in Awards |

Remember the post in which I jokingly suggested the outrage that would accrue to the creation of a male-only literary prize as a counterweight to the female-only Orange Prize? Seems this idea has been seriously floated … by one of the shortlisted authors for this year’s Orange Prize:

ONE of the six authors shortlisted for the women-only Orange Prize yesterday backed calls for a new literary award – for men.

Sadie Jones was speaking after critics of the 12-year-old prize complained loudly of sex discrimination. A men’s prize could help get more boys reading, she said.

While I don’t believe that a male-only prize is the way to get boys reading, it’s interesting to note that the article that Jones’s comments appear in points out that the British publishing industry is dominated by women and women make up the majority of book buyers, so the Orange Prize may be having a positive effect.

On the other hand, from what I know of the Canadian publishing industry, although it is predominantly composed of women, proportionally few of those workers are in upper management, which is still largely an old boy’s club. So there’s a way to go before we reach parity.

And — just in case anyone thinks I’m trying to open another Pandora’s Box here — I don’t think that a male-only prize is necessary (or even desirable) at this point. (In fact, if you really want to know, I’m of the mind that there are already far too many literary prizes out there. We need to scale back on their number, not continue to add more. But that’s a controversy for another day.)

In related news, Panic Girl has some nice things to say about your humble correspondent over at her site, and she links to another piece that articulately argues for the continued relevance of the Orange Prize, in this case by deconstructing the Tim Lott article that started the whole fracas in the first place.

1 comment to “Oranges vs. Bananas Redux”

panic, April 17th, 2008 at 8:50 pm:

• Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinteresting!

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