Twice Man Booker Prize Winner Peter Carey Says People Are Getting Dumber
Twice Man Booker Prize Winner Peter Carey Says People Are Getting Dumber
Australian author Peter Carey who has been tipped to become the first to win the Man Booker Prize three times says only dumb people would put cookery books and Dan Brown novels at the top of the most-read charts. "We are getting dumber every day. We are really, literally, forgetting how to read. We have yet to grasp the fact that consuming cultural junk is completely destructive of democracy," said the 67 years old author of 11 books who lives in New York during a speech to close the 2010 Sydney Writer's Festival. But fellow Australian Bryce Courtenay who is more commercially successful and popular than Carey disagreed. "There is no such thing as a wonderful book that gets lost. It just doesn't happen. But what is getting lost is a lot of very, very ordinary books that have literary pretensions. And they're just very ordinary books. There's the assumption that just because you're a literary writer therefore you are writing something of importance, of interest or entertainment or education or ability. Its absolute crap," Courtenay said. Courtenay has never accepted that Carey knows more about literary excellence than him. Peter Carey has won the Man Booker Prize twice for Oscar and Lucinda (1988) and True History of the Kelly Gang (2001) .His latest novel Parrot and Olivier in America is being touted to be a top contender for 2010 Man Booker Prize, but the long list is still unknown. Only Carey and JM Coetzee of South Africa have won the Booker Prize twice. Nigerian writer Ben Okri remains the youngest author to win the Man Booker Prize at 32 for his metaphysical novel The Famished Road in 1991. JG Farrell won the 2010 Lost Man Booker Prize with his novel Troubles. This special Booker is for books published in 1970 but were not considered, because the prize stopped to be awarded retrospectively. The Long list of the nominees of the 2010 Man Booker Prize will be announced in the last week of July, the shortlist will be released early September and the winner will be honoured at an awards ceremony on Tuesday October 12, 2010.