The political underpinnings of ugliness at Man Booker

Why did the Man Booker committee award its prize to White Tiger? Its narrator is a half-literate primitive; his language is uninspired, ordinary vulgarity; and his opinions are -- this may sound rude but it is true -- garbage. I cannot see why anyone would want to recommend it to anyone, let alone award it anything.

Perhaps one clue as to why Man Booker did what they did is the blurb: not a sari anywhere, it says. The blurb-maker meant that this would be a refreshing, novel view of India, without the tiger hunts, the elephant safaris and the polo; about an India we have not heard of.

That sounds potentially interesting, but -- why does it have to be so ugly?

Perhaps because a book juror aspiring to with-it-ness wants to reward two things: the tearing down of icons (India of saris and tiger hunts); and a socially responsible subject matter. And can is socially responsible subject matter? As Man Booker takes it, it means just one thing: the lower orders. A kind of race to the bottom ensues as a result: the lower the better.

I do not recall where Russell offered his famous paragraph in defense of the upper orders in which he claimed that they -- the upper orders -- were responsible for the creation of one hundred percent of high brow art. But wherever that was, Man Booker has taken notice and will therefore have nothing to do with that tradition. Welcome to social revolution by aesthetic means: the operative aesthetic theory seems to be "since beautiful means upper classes, and since we want to be as low-class as we can, then please let us do as much UGLY as we can".

Too bad.

Really, too bad. Perhaps the jurors of Man Booker should see a film like Baran: the misery of the lower orders is featured there in spades; and yet the film manages to be hauntingly beautiful.

Really, is it necessary for Man Booker to do this? Are not our lives ugly enough as it is without Man Booker going out of its way to uglify them more? And, as for the lower orders are they, in Man Booker's opinion, so mentally deficient as to be unable to enjoy something pretty? Man Booker should see the saris (yes, saris) of India's poor: they may be cheap, but they are (emphatically) not ugly. They demonstrate that the poor, in their starvation of solace, just like the rich, turn to pretty objects.

Really, no one is so well off that he does not need something pretty in his life. It is not clear what the use of something like White Tiger might be in anyone's life.