Saturday Links
Study of American literary awards published, the conservatism and ghosts of Russell Kirk, the hidden lives of the Barclay brothers, the Florentine Codex digitized, and more.
Good morning! Public Books points us to some useful research regarding literary prizes in the United States:
Last spring, the Post45 Data Collective published the extensive work of Claire Grossman, Juliana Spahr, and Stephanie Young, which includes information on winners and judges from nearly forty awards (worth $10,000 or more) between 1918 and 2020. Pairing this with data that we’ve gathered—on the demographics of fiction prize judges, winners, and finalists over the last 35 years—reveals broad trends about how the composition of prize juries influences the works and authors that they celebrate.
As recently as a few decades ago, both prizewinners and the juries that chose them were overwhelmingly white. But this year, the jury for the National Book Award is the most racially diverse in the prize’s history and its shortlist is among the most as well. Every panel of judges is idiosyncratic, and every decision all the more so. Still, the data not only helps us put this year’s selections in context, it may also point to which book is favored to win.
The numbers are here. I have only looked at 2020 so far. There were 75 awards that year. Men won 24 of them. Women won 51. You might be interested to know that of the 24 men who won awards, only four were white. I am going to dig into this a bit more. Public Books is surely right that until “a few decades ago, both prizewinners and the juries that chose them were overwhelmingly white,” but that isn’t the whole story.
Has Andrew Wylie been good or bad for literature? Alex Blasdel in The Guardian: “Andrew Wylie, the world’s most renowned – and for a long time its most reviled – literary agent, is 76 years old. Over the past four decades, he has reshaped the business of publishing in profound and, some say, insalubrious ways. He has been a champion of highbrow books and unabashed commerce, making many great writers famous and many famous writers rich. In the process, he has helped to define the global literary canon. His critics argue that he has also hastened the demise of the literary culture he claims to defend. Wylie is largely untroubled by such criticisms. What preoccupies him, instead, are the deals to be made in China.”
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