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Today the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded
journalist Svetlana Alexievich approximately $970,000 in recognition of a
lifetime of excellence. The 67-year-old author of Voices From Chernobyl and War's Unwomanly Face was praised by the
Swedish Academy "for her polyphonic(复调式的) writings, a monument to suffering and
courage in our time."
Prizes like the Nobel inspire much
expectations before the announcement. People give their best guesses as to who
will win, look
back on past winners, and even place bets as if spectators at a Derby(赛马会).
Literary prizes reward artistic brilliance.
They help writers earn a decent living. But is the public's fascination with
prize-winning authors healthy? Our impulse seems to increasingly contribute to
a culture of turning authors into celebrities, where readers follow the author
instead of the book.
A story should stand on its own, as a
considered, complete book, without biographical information from author. It's
an idea perhaps best conveyed in Roland Barthes's 1968 essay The Death of the Author. "The image
of literature to be found in contemporary culture is arbitrarily centered on
the author, his person, his history, his tastes, his passions."
Nearly 50 years later, a few still agree. "I
believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors,"
New York Times bestselling author
Elena Ferrante once wrote. "If books have something to say, they will
sooner or later find readers; if not, they won't, "she continued. "True
miracles are the ones whose makers will never be known."
①But the rules for submission for the Man Booker
International Prize, for
example, strongly encourage authors to "make themselves available for
publicity". And the foundation behind the National Book Award requires
finalists to participate in their "website-related publicity".
② In 2007, a reporter who showed up
uninvited at Doris Lessing's house was the first to inform her that she had
been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Today the Twitterati came knocking
on Alexievich's digital door hour before the award was even official. To be
considered for a prize is to be a public figure.
③ Harry Potter series author J. K. Rowling, with over 5.6 million
Twitter followers, has actively addressed readers through public appearances
and social media, revealing much more than we could have imagined when we
closed the final Harry Potter book.
We now know the house Harry's children will be sorted into, that Dumbledore is
gay,"
Voldemort" is actually pronounced with a silent "t", and a whole
host of the other minor and major details about the backstory of the
characters.
The magical world Rowling created in her
books—a relatively tight mystery with well-laid clues that led to a satisfying
conclusion, which
had to prove their merits to the reader based on an internal logic—is being unraveled
by her own hand.
④ Of course, public attention also has very
important benefits for authors. For three months after receiving the 2011
Pulitzer Prize in fiction, Jennifer Egan's A
Visit from the Goon Squad sold about triple its print sales from before the
prize, Publishers Weekly reports. On
Oct. 5, 2010, in the first FT/Oppenheimer Funds Emerging Voices Awards, as
Nigerian-born Chigozie Obioma accepted the prize for fiction with an easy
smile, his excitement was appreciable. Given the cash prize of $40,000 for each winner, it's
hard to downplay the importance of such an honor. Such awards bring necessary
visibility and funding to writers facing a literary landscape dominated by
white men.
But our culture of celebrity is often too
wrapped up in the way we read: How might the meaning of a work change if the
author really didn't grow up in a poor neighborhood, or if he or she was abused
in childhood? Readers studied the author's life as if it were the key to
interpreting his or her novels.
Behind our fascination is the question that
drives all such questions: What did the author intend? By all means, let us
praise brilliant work and in doing so trust that the author has already told us
enough, and that the story he or she meant to tell ended with the final page.
