The Culture of Awards

Since liberalism is about the rejection of higher truth and the worship of self, it logically follows that the more decadent the liberal culture becomes, the more self-esteeming it becomes, and thus the more prizes, awards, and honors it gives out to its own members. Indeed, it sometimes seems as if the constant stream of glamorous awards dinners and ceremonies we see in our society,—for film, for TV, for pop music, for writing, for journalism, for charity, for whatever—in which the cultural elite honors and worships its own most esteemed members, had become the elite’s main social activity, even its central religious rite.

However, in today’s New York Times, we learn of yet a new development in the ubiquitous Culture of Awards: an award given to a person for having received more awards than anyone else:

Calling him the “most decorated living American writer,” a panel named Philip Roth the winner of the Man Booker International Prize on Wednesday, an honor awarded every two years to an author for extraordinary work in fiction.

Have I got that right? Was Roth given the Man Booker International Price for being the most decorated living American writer?

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Ken Hechtman writes:

You wrote:

Have I got that right? Was Roth given the Man Booker International Price for being the most decorated living American writer?

I don’t think you do. The New York Times could have explained it better. The Booker Prize is the “colonial lit” prize. It’s supposed to go for the best English-language novel produced outside England. But in practice it never goes to an American. It always goes to a Commonwealth author.

LA replies:

Interesting. But that doesn’t disprove my point.

A reader writes:

I love this explanation of the self admiration frenzy of the ruling Idiocracy. It is an admission of their own raging mediocrity. “Fame is no Plant that Grows on Mortal Soil” wrote John Milton.

May 20

A reader writes:

You ask, “Have I got that right? Was Roth given the Man Booker International Price for being the most decorated living American writer?” The answer is no, it wasn’t given for the number of other awards he’s received. “Calling him the ‘most decorated living American writer,’ a panel named Philip Roth the winner … ” simply means that he was described by the panel as such when giving the award, and does not mean that it was the reason for the award. Here’s the press release from the prize organisation from which it was taken.

Also, if you look at the list of previous winners, none are Americans and (as far as I can see) they haven’t nearly as many awards. However, since it’s an award recognising overall literary achievement, it isn’t surprising that winners have a reasonable number of previous awards.

Incidentally, Ken Hechtman is confusing this prize (which is relatively new) with the considerably more well-known Man Booker Prize for Fiction (normally just “The Booker Prize”).

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 19, 2011 05:26 PM | Send