NBA v. LBC

I've just re-read Rick Moody's NBA apologia in the April issue of The Believer.  Like too much of what runs in The Believer, it manages the perverse hat trick of being simultaneously earnest, smug and defensive.  Personally, I think it's almost always a mistake to engage your critics and respond to accusations - better to let your work stand for itself.  (Friends have advised me that this does allow others the last word, but it's a risk I'm generally happy to take, banking on the good sense of my audience.)

At any rate, I'll desconstruct Moody's essay at greater length this week over at The Elegant Variation, but I was struck by Moody's summary, which I thought had relevance to this grand LBC experiment.  (If only he'd issued this paragraph as his sole statement in place of the whiny grabbag that precedes it ... )

This is not to say that the institution of literary awards is free from serious problems.  For those who are foolhardy enough to consider the task of judging to be philanthropic, generous or somehow enriching, there can be some reward to the process, despite the occasional puncture wound, but it isn't a science, not should it be.  Awards are political.  They amount to individuals judging the work of other individuals, and the notion that such a process can somehow be made pure is naive.  Every award is a reflection of friction, group dynamics, etc.  Every award is administered by an organization, and that corporation has funding issues, has corporate involvement at some level.  Every award exists within a community of writers, so that the awards process, inevitably, is mitigated by feelings of this community about itself.  The community has its ups and downs, has its problems, its crises, especially at the philosophical level.  Does what we do have real value?  Does it have the same impact it once had?  The results of awards should always be considered through the prism of these mitigating facts.

Now, before some of our members start reaching for the smelling salts, the first thing you should do with the preceding passage is strike every occurence of the word "award."  Our selection is most emphatically not an award, as we've said here numerous times.  It's a selection, a pick, a heartfelt recommendation.

Although there are lots of things Moody cites certainly can apply to LBC  - most notably the idea that frictions are inevitable where invidividual judgments are concerned - the areas of greater interest is how we differ, and it's in these areas that I think LBC has the most potential to offer a lively alternative to some of the more hidebound awards out there.  We have no budget (we can't even afford a party at BEA!), no financial or corporate involvement and, perhaps most notably, many of our members aren't writers - they are readers.  Dedicated, close, impassioned readers.  Agendas are thus considerably diminished and, freed of those pressures, members have liberty to cast a wider net with respect to titles under consideration.

Comments

[genevieve]

Not being able to read the whole of Moody's piece, I can't help wondering if you are both saying much the same thing. I'm sure the LBC members should be able to avoid puncture wounds, however. And I'm delighted your only agenda is widening the reading net.