As the 2018 shortlist is announced, the chair of this year´s judges explains how they hope to reward more than simple innovationThere´s a passage in Proust that offered useful guidance during meetings to judge this year´s Goldsmiths prize, about `artificial novelty` in a work of art being less effective than a repetition designed to reveal a new truth. (I imagine he´s implicitly defending his own method as a novelist.) What we were looking for - in a prize designed to reward the `genuinely novel` - wasn´t innovation as such, but writers able to take fresh possession of the form´s resources. Books that had strong advocates among the judges but couldn´t quite displace the six on our list have earned thanks for the pleasure they gave us - Jonathan Buckley´s The Great Concert of the Night, Jeremy Gavron´s Felix Culpa, Danny Denton´s The Earlie King & The Kid in Yellow, Nick Harkaway´s mighty fantasy Gnomon.There have been novels in verse before, but the one we selected, Robin Robertson´s The Long Take, does a remarkable job of harnessing the dynamics of prose fiction and has a superb sense of time and place. The main character, a traumatised veteran of the second world war, sees the world collapsing around him a second time in the corporate destruction of Los Angeles as a liveable city. Cinephiles will particularly respond to the element of film noir, not a matter of vague atmosphere but specified shots, angles and film shoots. Continue reading...
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