The Best Non-Fiction Book In 2008! Could We Have That Again?

The Best Non-Fiction Book in 2008!  Could We Hear That Again?

The fun of it is that two completely different juries in two far-separated Canadian cities have just chosen the best non-fiction book published last year, for mouth-watering prizes – and chose different books.  It gets funnier….

The B.C. (national competition) prize was $40,000 for the winner and $2500 for the three runners-up.  The Ontario (national competition) prize was $25,000 for the winner and $2500 for the two runners-up.  The B.C. prize went to Russell Wangersky for Burning Down The House: Fighting Fires And Losing Myself. The Ontario prize went to Tim Cook for Shock-Troops: Canadians Fighting The Great War, 1917-1918.

The two juries chose completely different books for their whole list of prizes. The juries didn’t name one book the same - for winner or for any of the runners-up. 

Seven books in all were awarded.  The juries didn’t name one single book in common.  The B.C. jury read something over 160 books.  The Ontario jury read 135 books.  They must have read some of the same books.  But they obviously didn’t value the same kinds of books.

To be completely fair (and informative), it needs to be said the jury members were, honestly, “national”.  The B.C. jury was made up of well-known writers Stevie Cameron (Toronto), John Cruickshank (Toronto), and Andreas Schroeder (Roberts Creek, B.C.).  The Ontario jury was made up of writer Warren Cariou (Winnipeg), Jeffrey Simpson (Toronto), and Shirley Thomson (former head of the Canada Council, no residential city named).

(If you think there are too many Torontonians on the list, you may be right.  But that isn’t really the point.)

The point is – and it should be learned by every writer in Canada – that judges and juries chosen, decisions about prizes and awards, and even the choices of who will be published and who thrown into the ash-can are choices made very often with complete honesty - from huge, unconscious, local, political, and historical bias.

Any of us who publishes in periodicals or by book publishers knows how much (unconscious?) bias is at work in selection.  I remember writing a short story and sending it out to a “good” periodical.  The story was rejected – with a twist.  The editor more or less asked me if I’d please learn to write before sending him anything else. There was venom in his rejection. I could have been chastened and stopped there, but I rather liked the short story (not an uncommon feeling among writers.)  And so I sent it out again, this time to Queen’s Quarterly, the rather prestigious quarterly. 

The response was enthusiastic.  They loved the story.  They were delighted to accept if for their 90th anniversary issue.  And then, to my delight, the story was chosen again – this time for an anthology of the best short stories of the year – and it was published again (and I was paid again). That kind of experience is common among writers.

I remember being taught by Earle Birney at UBC, famous poet of the famous poem “David”.  He had rejections slips papering a door in his office, I remember.  ALL were rejections slips refusing to publish “David” – which has by now probably been re-published a hundred times!

There are two lessons in the story of the latest “best non-fiction book prizes”.  One is that it is a great honour and experience, I am sure, to be among the short-listed – and a great honour to be the winner.  The very fact that there are such prizes are an encouragement to writers who often spend years in up-paid research and long, long times shaping their books.

The second lesson is to those who don’t get their books on a short list.  To begin, the reason may be that such books are just not very good.  Or it could be they are books that the jurers are conditioned not to like: for political, social, stylistic or other reasons. Or – as the two latest, completely different results of jurying reveal – it could be that the jurers have totally different ideas about what “good” non-fiction is.

If you are one of the writers whose books fall between the cracks, you have to remember that very often the cracks are gigantic, and the ground jurers stand on is often a very narrow strip of space where they can feel comfortable. They choose with complete honesty – which sometimes doesn’t have a lot to do with how good books are. Time, alas, decides.  And from all the lists of book winners in the world one thing is clear.  Time chooses different books, very frequently, than the ones chosen by “outstanding” jury members.