zanmcquade replied to your link: Here Comes the Rooster - The Morning News
If The Marriage Plot wins I will be very, very disappointed in all of the judges. Harbach all the way.
I haven’t yet read The Art of Fielding so probably I shouldn’t say anything until next week or so when I do get to it. However, I love talking confidently about books that I know nothing about, so I won’t abstain. You may be right about Fielding’s chances—everyone who’s read it seems to love it. I have a premonition of dislike for myself. (And yes, am fully prepared to do whatever it takes to atone for this bold statement if I turn out to adore it.) I feel like I’ve read all the sports literature I’ll ever need between Exley and DeLillo’s 50 page dramatization of “The Shot Heard Around the World” at the beginning of Underworld, so if Fielding has even the slightest of heavy-handed metaphorical trappings around baseball I’m going to hate it. Also, my archnemesis Franzen saw fit to blurb enthusiastically about it not once but twice which gives me a lot of suspicion—if Franzen likes it then I must, out of sheer contrariness, not. Which isn’t fair—maybe they just have the same agent—and all of my reasons are terrible really—but I honestly would never read it if not for some outside force like the Rooster compelling me to do so. Still, it might be a very enjoyable final to have the two against one another and not just because their covers are so similar. Two extremely novelly novels (I’m assuming on the Harbach based on reviews), both set in or near universities—Barthes versus baseball. That win depends much on the backgrounds of the various judges, as does every decision in the game, I suppose, and I haven’t yet (and may not—I’m not obsessed here or anything) investigated the judges and tried to build their sense of taste in order to strengthen my own predictions. The Marriage Plot is deeply flawed—my biggest problem with it was that it tried to have its cake and eat it, tried to be a postmodern critique of the Marriage Plot novels of yore while still completely being one; it was unclear in its intentions and suffered for that, not a full success at either—but at least one of its flaws—the weakness of the sole female protagonist Madeline—may be a strength as it allows some readers to project themselves into the novel through her fuzzily outlined character. Also, I at least found it a quick, gripping read—I went through it in a day flat—which may lead to the Unputdownable Fallacy, in which a book is falsely accorded some sort of excellence just because it’s utterly compelling. And historically the ToB loves books that make readers feel smart—think Cloud Atlas, Wolf Hall—so all of the quotes from French Theorists and religious mystics might really work in its favor. That’s the basis of my prediction.
I’ll be wildly disappointed if 1Q84 wins, myself. That’s the 1/2 book that I haven’t been able to bring myself to finish because I found it so disappointing. It does have a lot of popular appeal, though, and a lot of people seem to love it even while recognizing its myriad flaws, so who knows.
