Peter Temple’s winning this year’s Miles Franklin award* with his crime novel Truth has caused a bit of a ruckus – and, consequently, there’s been some interesting discussion about it on various blogs. The discussion mainly concerns the implications of a so-called genre novel winning this traditionally “literary fiction” award, but there is also some discussion of the literary “worthiness” of Temple’s work. If you are interested in this discussion, you may like to check out:
As I wrote in my own post and have commented elsewhere:
- I have not read this novel yet – though I did read and was impressed by his previous novel The broken shore;
- I am not a reader, in general, of crime fiction.
As is my wont, I don’t have strong feelings about this. I was surprised by the win (not so much because of its “genre” nature but because I’d read more mixed reviews of it than of some of the other shortlisted books), but I’m also interested in the strength of feeling its win has engendered. I would be sorry if we tried to categorise eligibility for the prize based on some notion of “genre”, and yet I recognise that “genre” implies adherence to conventions that can make it hard for writers to achieve the level of creativity and “difference” (or innovation) that we tend to expect in our literary prize winners. For me, then, the issue is whether the novels longlisted, shortlisted and then awarded literary prizes like this have achieved that level of “literary” interest that we readers look for. Time will tell whether I think Temple has achieved this in Truth.
* The Miles Franklin Award conditions are that the work express “Australian life in all its phases”. I’m not sure what “in all its phases” means as I can’t imagine any one book exploring all aspects of Australian life. I have to assume that Peter Temple’s novel being set in Melbourne does meet this criterion.
PS (a few hours later): Silly me did not check the conditions. It is not “in all its phases” as I read elsewhere but “in any of its phases”. That makes more sense and is what I assumed was meant anyhow. Temple clearly meets this.
Whispering Gums 
Thanks for all the links, Sue. I’ll be sure to pop by and read them all.
That said, I do get weary about this whole “genre” vs “literary” debate – remember all that ruckus when Child 44 was longlisted for the Booker a couple of years ago? And I see yesterday’s Guardian has stirred it all up again on the back of hearing Truth won this year’s Miles Franklin. *Big yawn*
I’m not sure you can easily draw lines in the sand and claim a particular book falls into that camp or this camp. Some books cross the boundaries and refuse to be pigeon-holed. Some can be literary crime novels, such as Natsuo Kirino’s “Out”. And, just as there are many poorly written genre novels on the market there are plenty of so-called literary novels that aren’t worthy of the title either. If literary is supposed to equate with high-quality writing and inventiveness, I’d be at a loss to name any literary novels (off the top of my head) that I’ve read in the past year that comply with that.
I haven’t read Truth, so I’m reserving judgement. I have to say I’m quite itching to read it now! 😉
LOL kimbofo, so’m I! And I do agree with your re drawing lines in the sand. At the National Film and Sound Archive, where I spent most of my career, we bought out of making fine genre distinctions when describing film and music for this very reason.
I read a lot of crime fiction, and as with anything else there’s good and bad. Bottom line for me would be whether or not Truth is a decent read. I really couldn’t care less about who wins which prizes anyway. I think it’s mainly a load of old cobblers.
Here, here! 😉
LOL Guy and kimbofo. I agree re the issue being whether or not it is a good read or not. As for prizes, I have mixed feelings. They can be a useful guide but I would never follow them slavishly or get too bothered by them. In other words, they are of intellectual interest to me as in I wonder who will win this year and why? And they can engage people in dialogue about reading and writing, particularly when they are controversial, and that’s a good thing. N’est-ce pas?
Yes it’s a good thing to get people talking about books, but whether or not a book is a prize winner doesn’t impress me. In fact if it’s a Nobel prize, a Booker prize or a Pultizer prize, that’s a definite put-off as I’ve had horrible luck with them.
I don’t get the crime=lower form of life argument. I tend to dislike historical novels but they seem to win quite often.
Ah, I’m interested in your horrible luck with these winners. Care to elaborate? I can think of winners that I haven’t thought totally worthy (such as Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam, though I am going to reread that one day to check!) but there are many I have liked – particularly Nobel winners such as Patrick White, Toni Morrison (deserved it for Beloved alone I reckon), JM Coetzee and so on. The Pulitzer seems a more hit-and-miss affair. I tend not to follow prizes specifically, as in I must read all the such-and-such prizes. I like, rather, to pick and choose – but I do take note of the main prizes and use them as one of my many guides to reading!
Oh, and I used think I disliked historical novels too, but I have discovered in recent times that I’ve read and enjoyed more than I realised I was doing. If that makes sense. For example, I thought Wolf Hall was an excellently conceived and executed novel.
The name of the most recent Nobel prize winner escapes me, but perhaps I’ve deliberately blanked it out. I tried to read it but life’s too short. I read somewhere or another someone speculating that perhaps it’s a matter of translation in that case.
The other one–The Quickening Maze. That one was a loser but I still didn’t like it. There are others, of course, but these are the two recent examples that leap to mind.