Another voice
The Trask ahead
Auberon Waugh
jn the current issue of Books and Book- men there is an interview with the first (joint) winner of the Betty. Trask award. Outside the tiny world of London literary awards, few people will remember the dismay which was felt when it became known that a lady called Betty Trask had died leaving a huge fortune — apparently £400,000 of it survives — to found a new literary prize which would be entirely independent not only of the Arts Council literature department with its unpleasant aura of left-wing Australian homosexual- ism, but also independent of the sorority of London committeewomen who have de- scended on the literary scene, thrilled at the prospect of exercising a little power and showing off all the rubbish they learned about 20th-century English litera- ture at Oxford and Cambridge.
The writer of the piece, Mr Tim Satchell, seems dismayed at the meagreness of last year's prize, and suspects a conspiracy to prevent Miss Trask becoming more impor- tant than Booker McConnell. In fact, according to Mr Mark Le Fanu, who organises the award for the Society of Authors, Mr Satchel! had his figures slight- ly wrong. The total pay-out in prize money was £17,000, against £15,000 for the Book- er Prize. This still represents a return of less than 41/2 per cent on Miss Trask's endowment, and the first prize of £12,520 was shared between two writers, so in effect the Trask Award remained upstaged by Booker McConnell, which increased its prize to £15,000 this year.
Mr Le Fanu is adamant that there is no conspiracy to keep Booker on top, with all the ghastly coterie of would-be high-brows and back-scratching academic reviewers which has succeeded in ruining the literary pages of so many newspapers and maga- zines and threatens to destroy the English novel. He says that the administration of a prize is very expensive, and that the return from the £400,000, invested in a mixed bag of 'growth' equities, gilts and cash, was so low that he might even have been over- generous.
The original rumours had it that there was to be a prize of £50,000 restricted to a Mills and Boon-style romantic novel with no sex, no violence and finely chiselled nostrils in the ascendant. So much scorn was poured on the enterprise by the literary awards establishment — and so much misrepresentation — that last year's panel of judges (under the respectably middle-brow chairmanship of Mr Peter Grosvenor, literary editor of the Daily Express) received only 25 published en- tries, as well as 250 unpublished ones. The rules laid down by Miss Trask specify that an entry must be a first novel, published or unpublished, by someone under the age of 35. It was also the benefactress's wish that the award should go to a novel which was of a romantic or traditional nature, and that it should not be experimental (my italics). The specifica- tions in italics were what aroused the fury and scorn of the Martin Amis-Claire Tomalin brigade, and what gave rise, I imagine, to Mr Satchell's suspicions that the Society of Authors was deliberately playing down the award in deference to the `serious' literary establishment.
Mr Le Fanu assures me that he has no intention to defer in this way, and I unhesitatingly accept his assurance. The decision to award a prize of £1,000 each to everyone on the short list was taken by the Society of Authors' management commit- tee, and the decision to split the £12,500 first prize was taken by the judges them- selves, who included the mildly Bookerish figures of Margaret Forster and Nina Baw- den. But the final result was a prize which was thoroughly eclipsed in money value, as well as in 'prestige', by Booker.
This seems to me a betrayal of Miss Trask's trust. Her purpose in devoting her whole fortune to the Cause was plainly to encourage the writing of romantic or tradi- ' tional novels and to discourage the drivell- ing experimentation which, with Arts Council and Booker support, has done so much to make novels unreadable and to discredit the art form. Above all, we are told, she was inspired by a loathing of Joyce's Ulysses and the effect it has had on so much of the more pretentious writing today. Her purpose, unless I misunder- stand her, was not to give a little pat on the head to selected goody-goodies but to strike a blow which would contribute to rescuing the British novel and taking it out of the hands of such as Dr George Steiner. For this purpose what is needed is a single, huge prize awarded with panache at a magnificent annual banquet which would be made the scene of an annual anti- Joycean and anit-Modern Movement pole- mical lecture by the chair.
So far, the only detectable influence of Miss Trask's benefaction might be in the composition of the year's Booker panel, under the brilliant chairmanship of Profes- sor Richard Cobb, the French historian and literature expert who was proud to declare that he found most of Proust unreadable, as it undoubtedly is.
Next year the Booker Prize may no longer exist. Until the intentions of the Dee Corporation (an American food multi-national which is buying Booker McConnell) become known, we must asume that it won't. Certainly it is hard to see how Dee's international prestige will be enhanced by this dismal prize, which many believe to have been endowed by Mr Christopher Booker.
Mr Le Fanu agrees with me that if all Miss Trask's money were invested in gilts at 12 per cent, he could produce a prize of £25,000. He argues that this would be bad management, since without the 'growth' assured by carefully chosen equities the value of the £25,000 would decline year by year. No doubt this is true, but I feel such a prize would dominate the literary scene for 'long enough to send the Booker groupies packing. Unfortunately — and I am sorry to say this, because I am sure that Mr Le Fanu is a conscientious manager — I did not detect much relish for 'his combative role in his approach to his duties.
Yet it seems to me an important thing so far as anything to do with modern literature is important — that the Modern Movement should receive its coup de grace. In the world of painting, there are too many thousands of millions of dollars invested by museums and trusts in the blotchy rubbish which such as Lord Gowrie must call 'art' for there to be any turning back. As the Turner Prize fiasco demons- trated, there is a growing awareness among intelligent people that the Modern 'art' Movement has lost whatever vitality it once had, but too much money is tied up in it, as I say, and this is conspicuously not true of the Modern Movement in letters. This, too, could be seen by intelligent people to have run out of vitality 45 years ago. The Emperor has been prancing around without any clothes for years and years as the nights grew darker and the winds grew colder. All that is needed is for someone to pronounce him dead.
People might reasonably ask whether any first novels are being written these days which justify a £25,000 prize, but I do not see that it matters. The important thing is not who wins the money, or what for, but the occasion of its being given: the annual Betty Trask Anti-Joycean Oration. Perhaps it would continue to dominate the literary scene for five or even ten years before the money ceased to hold much allure, but that would be enough to do the trick. Thereafter the Prize would continue, as one of those minor awards which cause nothing but pleasure, like the James Tait Black Prize: the Anti-Joycean Oration would survive in an age which had forgot- ten all about Joyce and the Modern Move- ment, as another quaint custom, like toast- ing the Queen at banquets or praying for those who died at Agincourt in All Souls another strand in the rich fabric of our national eccentricities.
The closing date for this year's Betty Trask Award is 31 December. Entries should be addressed do the Society of Authors, 84 Drayton Gardens, London SW10.
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