Tales from Chaucer

Libraries are always 'weeding' books, by which we mean getting rid of things that are too worn, or old, or unused, or in which the information is no longer correct. This is distressing in principle to some people, who see libraries as eternal housing for all things ancient. But a library only has so much space, and has to keep making space for what's new -- so out goes the old. We like to recited the mantra that everything old is not a treasure. Some old books are just old books.
But sometimes you come across something that is just too priceless to discard, and often it has more to do with the book as an object, as an artifact, than as a work of literature. I came across one such today. This is a book from 1959 called Tales from Chaucer. The author, Eleanor Farjeon, sought to render many of the stories from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in modern English, so modern readers could enjoy them. It has been a long time since anybody read it, and who knows how many people read it back then? We have a few other books that are complete renderings of Chaucer's most famous work in modern English, so do we need this one?
As I said, the author is Eleanor Farjeon, but it is illustrated by Marjorie Walters. Each chapter heading has a black and white woodcut showing the character the tale is named for -- the Knight, the Parson, the Nun, et cetera. Throughout there are color tinted plates of notable scenes from the stories. The plates are on thick paper stock, and in remarkable shape despite being nearly fifty years old. I could never bear to take this book out of the collection. Not only is it a beautiful work in itself, but it also harks back to a time not so long ago when books and reading were one of the most brilliant and colorful mediums of entertainment. I still think they are, and I am thankful that there are so many library users who agree. But a book like this still stirs something in my memory that I think we will never recover.

What's in a Prize?

At a recent book discussion group we talked about Inheritance of Loss by Indian author Anita Desai. The book won the 2006 Man Booker Prize, the most coveted book award in the United Kingdom. But opinions about the book were mixed. One member of the group who especially disliked it wanted to know how it had won a major prize. This is a question I have been often asked; I suppose anyone who conducts a book discussion, or stands at a library circulation desk talking about literature with people has been asked the same question often.
For one thing, tastes differ. Even on the level of ‘literature,’ by which I mean writing that takes itself seriously as art – about one in a hundred book by my count – there are books that some people just don’t like. But with literary awards it goes beyond that.
Whether it’s the Pulitzer, the National Book Award or the Nobel Prize, there is as much politics that goes into each year’s selection as there is consideration of the merit of the work. Sure, Octavio Paz gets a Nobel Prize, and Nadine Gordimer and Czeslaw Milosz. But Elfriede Jelinek (Austria)? Imre Kertész (Hungary)? One can almost hear the discussions of whether it’s time to give the prize to a woman, or to someone from eastern Europe. It is almost impossible for literature, or anything else that is made in the real world and presented to the real world, to remove itself completely from political considerations and be judged solely on merit.
Get out an almanac sometime and read the list of books that have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. How many have you read? How many have you never even heard of? What seemed so well-done in, say, 1942 (Is This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow) or 1995 (The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields), may be less than compelling today. Moreover, nobody remembers the reason that particular author was thought to merit a major award that particular year.
I think literary awards are a great way to keep track of what people who appreciate literature are reading. I use them in selecting books for book discussions, and for my personal reading. But I don’t kid myself that because this book won this award this year, it’s the best book out there.