‘Four of you are coming with me’
Tyler Hale on a rather unique field trip
Tyler Hale is enrolled on the 'Booker Prize Novels' course at Georgetown University (Washington DC). He was one of four students chosen to accompany the course leader Professor Father Alvaro Ribeiro to the Man Booker Prize dinner on Tuesday 6 October 2009.
"As with any good tradition, there are competing origin stories for the "Booker Prize Novels" course at Georgetown University. With a gleam in his eye and in hushed tones, Professor Alvaro Ribeiro, SJ, who first taught the course in 1995, may hint that it was originally conceived to spite a culture in English departments focused increasingly on new, groundbreaking writing at the expense of his beloved 18th century. More diplomatically, though, he is likely to explain that it provides a sort of bookend effect: if one is to study Samuel Johnson, Lawrence Sterne, and the rise of the novel as the dominant literary form in English, one certainly ought to study the current state of the novel as well. Where better, he might ask, than the Man Booker, the most prestigious literary prize in the world?
My relationship with the Man Booker Prize at Georgetown is, unbelievably, only a few months old. Yet, in such a short time, it has become the central focus of my college career. Upon enrolling in the course, knowing very little about it, I found an email in my inbox one morning instructing me to read the entire 2008 shortlist during the last month or so of summer vacation. I was, as most of my classmates would agree, intimidated. Taking the pulse of literary fiction as of 2008 quickly became my main project, and by the time autumn drifted in and I returned to Georgetown for my senior year, the class had already taken up most of my time and all of my attention.
On the first day of class, Professor Ribeiro introduced himself, made some enigmatic remarks about the nature and requirements of the course, and casually mentioned that he would be attending the award ceremony in London in October, and, "Oh, yes: four of you are coming with me." He drew names, quite literally, out of a hat.
The next week, the shortlist was announced, and three or four students each selected a novel to read quickly and present to the class. As only one had yet been published in America, we relied on a London bookseller to ship us a handful of copies of each book and kept them in steady circulation via a "Hollow Tree" (a cardboard box) in the English Department.
The strength of the 2009 shortlist became immediately evident. As Yolanda Kanavarioti noticed, each group fell deeply in love with the book it first read, brazenly defending it to the class and arguing its chances of winning. The books were defended on literary merit, but also pitted against one another as actual competing entries. Mock judging panels were established, toes were stepped on, tempers flared. No consensus was reached.
Meanwhile, the scope of Georgetown's involvement with the Man Booker Prize became more evident. Every year, the incoming class-including students of economics, politics, business, nursing, history, languages, and all other subjects-reads the same novel, engages with it in a written paper and a discussion section, and attends a lecture by the author. The program, called the Marino Family International Writers Academic Workshop, arranged for the Class of 2013 to read Sebastian Barry's 2008 shortlisted novel, The Secret Scripture. Members of Professor Ribeiro's class found themselves enlisted into running the event and, as it were, introducing the new students to the Life of the Mind.
And then, of course, there was London. A devoted student of Dr. Johnson, Professor Ribeiro instructed Colin Nagle, Danielle Post, Emily Sauerhoff, and I that "The person who is tired of London is tired of life." Indeed, amongst all of the events planned for us, we stuffed every moment with drinking in as much of London as possible. We dined with generous alumni and Booker trustees and chairmen, attended readings by the authors, and toured a publishing house. The most surprising and persistent question, after being introduced ("Have you met these students? They're enrolled in a remarkable course taught by a Jesuit priest at Georgetown University specifically on the Man Booker Prize..."), was an interested and generally curious, "Why would you be studying contemporary novels?" In light of the stodginess of English Faculties in Britain, the question proves quite sensible. In Britain, authors must be long dead before posterity judges their merit, with the very rare exception of as decorated a writer as J M Coetzee or V S Naipaul. Georgetown, this course seems to argue, is seeking to prove the opposite. When the judges declare 2009 as a "vintage year" for literary fiction in English, they don't only mean in terms of sales. Great literature is being written right now, and institutions like the Man Booker Prize are fulfilling their task of bringing it to the public's attention.
Thus, when Jonathan Taylor CBE, chairman of the Booker Prize Foundation, highlighted Georgetown's involvement in his opening remarks at the awards dinner, including the announcement of programs inspired by it at the Universities of Saint Andrews and East Anglia, Professor Ribeiro, Danielle, Colin, Emily, and I looked at each other and beamed with quiet pride. My classmates and I, amidst the clinking glasses and candlelit arches of the London Guildhall, realized that we had, with a little work and a lot of luck, stumbled into the heart of the debate about the future of culture and literacy - stumbled in, as it were, fighting for the right side.
While the narrative of the Man Booker in 2009 is drawing to a close, the story of Georgetown's involvement with the Man Booker Prize continues to be written. Our class will find plenty to work with in the coming months; after a brief retrospective about these chaotic weeks, we will dig into the "Best of the Booker" list, attempting to find out what makes a "Booker" book and what prize writing means in general. Moreover, our eyes will turn to the future and helping to set the stage for the next class's experience. At a publisher's party in Soho, my classmates and I cornered Simon Mawer and attempted to persuade him to speak to the Class of 2014. We'll see what happens. Regardless of who comes, Georgetown's relationship with the Man Booker Prize will strengthen to the benefit of both and many more."
Tyler Hale
Georgetown University Class of 2010
