Awards Should go to the Living

Though the National Book Critics Circle Award carries no money, its posthumous awarding to Roberto Bolaño for his monster of a work, “2666,” raises a host of unsettling questions about the place of prizes, especially monetized prizes, in the world of letters. It’s not that “2666” was not a great work or that I feel it shouldn’t have won. In fact, though I have to admit I haven’t finished it, I have a hard time believing that there could be another piece of fiction from 2008 that is more ambitious, more expansive, more powerful than Bolaño’s book—that there is any other book more deserving. Rather, the problems that I see all stem from that simple piece of common knowledge: Bolaño is dead. When the award was presented to the translator, Natasha Wimmer, the author himself was a thoughtless corpse decomposing in his lime-strewn grave.

Awards should be given to the best book. I don’t dispute that. And in the case of the National Book Critics Circle Award, as I’ve already stated, I have no real problem with its awarding. Yet I can’t help but feel that there is something backward-looking about even giving an award to a dead man. Yes, the work should be honored, but—and here is the crux of my argument—are prizes supposed to merely be reactive? Are they not supposed to encourage further production of literature along with merely honoring the good work of the past? Should there not be a proactive element to prizes?

I have to say that, as unpopular as the Swedish Academy is these days, the Nobel Prize Committee has got it right in this respect: no posthumous prizes. They dole out their dough only to writers who will use the money to continue to write; they bestow their attention only on those who can directly benefit from a greater demand for their work. To the chagrin of aficionados of Borges and John H. Updike ’54, the list of accolades and honors in their biographies will never include the words “Nobel Laureate.” And while I agree that Borges and Updike outshone—in influence, most definitely, and in skill, most probably—the likes of laureates such as Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson, there is no reason to give them laureate status now just so future generations of their family can burnish the trophy. After all, the quality of Borges or Updike’s literary output is in no way diminished by the fact that a prize was never received.

America’s flagship prize, the Pulitzer Prize, has given out three literature prizes posthumously, squandering its hefty award sum (today it weighs in at $10,000) on the family of the deceased. How does this serve to promote the arts? It might permit the prize committee to pat themselves on the back for their good taste in recognizing the works of geniuses after their time has passed (they gave the award to Sylvia Plath 19 years after her suicide and John Kennedy Toole 11 after his), but how does it do any lover of literature any good? How does it serve to inspire new creative works? I know it may sound insensitive, but I cannot believe that the purpose of the prizes given out in this country is to console the family of the bereaved.

Perhaps if recognition is felt to be really important, if an attempt to rectify an unmerited critical disregard is felt absolutely necessary, a special recognition can be given, like the lifetime achievement award given by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I understand that certain prize-giving committees are limited by their founding documents to giving out only a certain number and type of prizes, etc., but offering up money to the dead truly is nonsensical and counterproductive. It is a difficult issue to resolve, especially when, as was the case last year, a book written by a dead man was probably the most deserving of awards, and I don’t pretend to have a perfect solution. To choose to disqualify anyone based upon extra-literary considerations opens the door for all sorts of petty politicking—something the literary realm definitely needs no more of. However, the case is that, in the cash-strapped world of letters, it is more important than ever that the moneys within are channeled to the warm bodies that can produce the next White Whale and not to skeletons that will merely rest in the muck.

—Columnist Sanders I. Bernstein can be reached at sbernst@fas.harvard.edu.