Diary – 18 October 2003

The Man Booker Prize dinner was held on Tuesday in the Egyptian room of the British Museum. It’s something of an ordeal for the six on the shortlist who have to wait until the pudding to hear who’s won. I’d only read one of the books, but they send you a disc of readings from them all, so that when I was asked — several times — who I thought might win I was able confidently to announce that it would be a toss-up between Monica Ali and Margaret Atwood. There was one particular extract, read beautifully by Martin Jarvis, which contained a lot of F-words, which I thought was a cheat. In the course of several interviews outside the museum I said Vernon God Little by a young chap called D.B.C. Pierre couldn’t possibly win. Of course, it did. Afterwards somebody told me that the author had said in some newspaper that he was sorry for a misspent youth and that his initials meant ‘Dirty But Clean’, or something like that. I dare say there’ll be several articles in the next few days voicing the opinion that the Booker is being dumbed down, whatever that means. Book prizes are a jolly good thing and being on the shortlist is a considerable help to a writer’s career; winning is even better. Congratulations to young D.B.C. and may he go from strength to strength. Time will tell, as they say.

Just recently I’ve become obsessed with time, or rather with the theory put forward by J.W. Dunne in the 1920s. I’ve read his book and don’t understand a word of it, but he influenced a lot of writers, including J.B. Priestley and James Barrie. According to his forward to the time play, An Inspector Calls, Priestley didn’t understand it either. At a wild guess I think it means something like this — you are in a room with friends, sitting round a table having dinner.