Prizes And Failing To Win Them. And Reviews. And... What?

I never actually figured out what The Prize Bigger Even Than The Booker is. I think that title might be metaphorical or something. I also wonder if there isn't a typo in the sub-title "Most literary endeavour ends not in failure, says Robert McCrum," because in the article he says, "...most literary endeavour ends not in prizes, but failure."

However, the author's (presumably this Robert McCrum of the subtitle) contention is that book prizes "play an indispensable role in identifying new writing of consequence." He feels that this is especially true now that there are so many sources of opinion relating to books. A reader can get confused.

He may be right. I don't have an opinion, myself. I tend to read prize-winning books long after the rest of the reading public has forgotten about them, so I sometimes miss the consequential part.

McCrum includes a quote from Samuel Beckett that I liked a lot. "Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

Fail better. That is absolutely profound. It's probably the best that many of us can ever hope for.

I also was kind of impressed by the banner ad for Gas-X along the top of the page. There may be something profound about that, too.

The link came from artsJournal.