FEAR OF THE LONGLIST by George Carroll
George Carroll is the World Literature Editor of and an independent publishers鈥 representative based in the Pacific Northwest.
None of the spoke with pitcher Madison Bumgartner in the dugout before he took the mound in the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series except for a brief exchange with his catcher Buster Posey. Partly due to superstition and partly because Bumgartner was intensely focused, was in the zone.
I鈥檓 currently in The Best Translated Book Award reading zone. Please do not distract.
There are rules and traditions about not speaking the name of something, whether it鈥檚 Voldemort in the books or Nest Egg in , or saying rain while fly-fishing.
This is so, in my mind, with longlist and the BTBA.
There鈥檚 an ultra-secret password-protected, for-your-eyes-only spreadsheet that the BTBA judges use that lists the title, author, translator, publisher, language, and country for each of the 2015 submissions. There is a column for each judge to place her notes or remarks. (Don鈥檛 try to access the spreadsheet, publishers, it will self-destruct quicker than Jim Phelps鈥 MI instructions.)
Fortunately my spreadsheet column is at the beginning of that section, just to the right of Katrine Osgaard Jensen鈥檚. She uses a letter code, which I鈥檓 pretty sure I鈥檝e cracked. But I scroll right no further, for therein lies the use of longlist, the word that assigns power, the word which can strip power. 鈥淟onglist contender, must longlist, short of longlist, no longlist.鈥 It can draw you in (I better read this) or repel (I better move on to something else).
I just have a list. Books move around like the stairways at Hogwarts. (Did I mention I just watched all of the Harry Potter movies?) Books that I read early in the process that I thought were really good, were really good, but they鈥檙e not as really good in comparison with the other really good books that I鈥檝e now read.
That doesn鈥檛 mean that some of the books I鈥檝e read don鈥檛 keep popping up a like a literary Whac-a-Mole. But will they make it to l-word? I don鈥檛 know.
Milena Michiko Flasar鈥檚 , Pascal Garnier鈥檚 , Eduardo Halfon鈥檚 , both Bohumil Hrabal titles and , Carlos Labbe鈥檚 , Michel Laub鈥檚 , Valeria Luiselli鈥檚 , Scholastique Mukasonga鈥檚 , Andres Neuman鈥檚 , Roderigo Rey Rosa鈥檚 , Paulo Scott鈥檚 , Solvi Bjorn Sigurdsson鈥檚 , Goncalo Tavares鈥 , Antoine Volodine鈥檚 , Christa Wolf鈥檚 .
All have much to love and I can do no better than to arrange them alphabetically.
Cesar Aira鈥檚 , Roberto Bolano鈥檚 , Hilda Hilst鈥檚 , Jorn Lier Horst鈥檚 , Giulio Mozzi鈥檚 , Haruki Murakami鈥檚 , Audur Ava Olafsdottir鈥檚 , Antonio Skarmeta鈥檚 , Juan Pablo Villalobos鈥 , Urs Widmer鈥檚 .
Again, only alphabetical, all flawed in little ways, but solid nonetheless.
Predicting the longlist is a bit like handicapping horses: consistency, class, form, and pace. Books get boxed, parked out, shuffled back. Fortunately, I have miles to read before I sleep and need not place my bets until March.
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