Den brittiska bloggen Omnivore har tillkännagivit de åtta nomineringarna till årets Hatchet Job of the Year Award. Det delas ut årligen till den recensent som skrivit ”the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the past twelve months.”
Många recensenter och läsare älskade Morrisseys Autobiography, men A A Gills i The Sunday Times var inte helt imponerad. Det här är slutklämmen:
There are many pop autobiographies that shouldn’t be written. Some to protect the unwary reader, and some to protect the author. In Morrissey’s case, he has managed both. This is a book that cries out like one of his maudlin ditties to be edited. But were an editor to start, there would be no stopping. It is a heavy tome, utterly devoid of insight, warmth, wisdom or likeability. It is a potential firelighter of vanity, self-pity and logorrhoeic dullness. Putting it in Penguin Classics doesn’t diminish Aristotle or Homer or Tolstoy; it just roundly mocks Morrissey, and this is a humiliation constructed by the self-regard of its victim.
Eleanor Catton vann både priser och kritikernas gillande med sitt jättelika romanbygge The Luminaries, men David Sexton i London Evening Standard var av en annan åsikt:
A ship made of matchsticks in a bottle is a feat of construction but not necessarily a great work of art.
Donna Tartts The Goldfinch, en annan av förra årets stora utgivningar, klarade sig inte heller undan. Peter Kemp blev nominerad tack vare sin recension i The Sunday Times. Ett utdrag:
Outdoing even The Little Friend, famously a decade in the writing, The Goldfinch has taken 11 years to appear. These epic gestations are attributed by awed Tartt admirers and devotees of websites such as Donna Tartt Shrine to uncompromising perfectionism. ‘It’s because of perfectionism that man walked on the moon and painted the Sistine Chapel, OK? Perfectionism is good,’ she has stressed. But it’s hard to spot much of it in this ineptly put-together book.
Och den kanske elakaste formuleringen:
No amount of straining for high-flown uplift can disguise the fact that The Goldfinch is a turkey.
Men Omnivores pris bygger på en seriös idé, som de utvecklar i sitt lilla manifest. Men det saknas inte kritiker: ”The Hatchet Job of the Year Award is the worst award of its generation”
O.W.
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