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Congratulations to Aravind Adiga who has won the 2008 Booker Prize for his novel The White Tiger. It is the story about a young man in India who is born into poverty and climbs his way out by various amoral and endearing means. (I have not yet read the novel, so I cannot comment on the storyline.)

While I am glad to see his success, books like this make my job in writing groups harder. You see, Mr. Adiga is the fourth novelist who has seen his debut novel win the Booker Prize. While I spend a great deal of time trying to encourage unpublished novelists, I also spend an incredible amount of time editing unpublished work that would be better off if the authors did things like… oh, let’s suggest that maybe authors should read books in their spare time, study grammar a little, and–please, oh please–work harder to create a narrative structure that isn’t self-indulgent.

Sorry. Was that my outside voice?

Previous winners of the Booker Prize include stories that you have certainly heard of, such as The Remains of the Day, and The English Patient.  Possession: A Romance by A.S. Byatt won, which was a very good novel that was made extraordinary by the letters in the middle of the book. And if I ran across writing of this caliber in writing groups, I would weep with joy. However, I don’t. I don’t find writing of this caliber in writing groups. I do find an inordinate number of characters who wallow in their misery, which is supposed to make the stories “deep”. I find plots that meander. I find descriptions that are meant to be poetic that destroy the flow of the story. Yikes.

So, congratulations to Mr. Adiga. But, note to aspiring authors: your vision will only work and take you to his level if you work on your craft a lot more than you (or anyone) will ever actually want to.

One other note: If you’re American, or anything other than a member of the Commonwealth or Ireland, forget about winning the Booker Prize. You can’t. This is very much a case of “Rule Brittania”.

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