INDEPTH: DORIS GILLER
10 years of the Giller Prize
As told to Jessica Wong, CBC News Online | November 3, 2003
Over its 10-year history, hundreds of people have been involved with the Giller Prize. CBC News Online spoke with Giller participants about their experiences, that famous party, championing CanLit and what sets the distinguished award apart from the pack.
A distinct prize
We envisioned an award that would honour the quality of fiction in this country and we would nominate the top five books that appeared, to the jury, to be the best five of that particular year.
- David Staines, University of Ottawa dean of arts, Giller Prize co-founder
I come to the party with a great deal of carefree, lack of concern. Somebody's going to get $25,000. I have five envelopes. Whoever wins gets the envelope with his or her name on it. I then tear up the four other envelopes, thereby saving $100,000.
- Jack Rabinovitch, Giller Prize founder
What's really wonderful to me about the Giller, this is an award that was created out of love and I think that makes it different from a lot of awards. There are many awards that are done to give prestige…This award was created out of one man's love for his wife's love of books. This grew out of love and I think it was one of the things that immediately made it special.
- David Kent, Harper Collins president and CEO
Having a second major prize for fiction writers - and one that exists outside the government's domain - has helped to increase the attention given Canadian fiction… The Giller has played a major role in identifying new or little-known writers - winners like Vassanji; worthy nominees like Michael Helm, Lisa Moore, Michael Redhill, Michael Crummey, and Timothy Taylor - bringing them to general attention, and ensuring them future support from the publishing establishment.
- Russell Brown, University of Toronto professor, co-editor of A New Anthology of Canadian Literature in English
Just the size of the Prize - $25,000 - made people sit up and take notice when the prize was announced in 1994 and almost became the most important fiction prize in Canada from the outset. I would say it certainly is now.
- Scott Anderson, Editor-in-chief, Quill & Quire magazine
[The Giller] is a good thing in that respect, when it does broaden people's horizon beyond the big mainstream houses, the bigger name authors as well. I mean, who will now forget John Gould because he's mentioned in the same paragraph as Margaret Atwood. It doesn't hurt.
- Lynn Van Luven, University of Victoria professor and literary critic
The Giller experience
As a writer, it means I haven't had any time to write. It is an extra demand, I suppose. One of the exhilarating things is hearing from so many people. So many people have been made genuinely happy by this event: people that are very close to me and people a bit further away, people that it wouldn't have occurred to me to have been moved by this. Of course, that's meant that I'm talking a lot, I'm e-mailing a lot, I'm on the phone a lot. And it's all great. There's nothing about this that I want to complain about.
- John Gould, Giller nominee ('03)
[Being nominated for a Giller] generally means a book goes into another printing. A fairly respectable book has one solid printing in hardcover. It will have at least two if it gets nominated for a Giller.
- David Staines
[Winning has been a] great distraction from my ability to concentrate on my work. Since the morning I was shortlisted until now, I've been working on revising a book and I'm appalled that I've just reached page 130 after more than a year… What I do appreciate about this is that so far as my immediate, peculiar community is concerned - that is to say, the community of immigrants, regardless of where they come from - they have found in my success a great amount of hope for their own endeavours. They are celebrating with me.
- Austin Clarke, Giller winner ('02)
My impression is that the Giller Prize, over its 10 years, has become quite well known internationally. Agents report that an author who wins the Giller Prize is much more likely to be noticed by foreign agents and foreign publishers. At that level, it can mean a much greater recognition outside of Canada…Within Canada, there's no doubt that the winner of the Giller Prize spends a considerable time on the bestseller list following their win.
- Scott Anderson
Judging the 'best'
There's a seriousness [to being a jurist] because you know what you have in your hands is years of work and half a lifetime of a consideration of questions, all the complicated things that go into fiction. That's what you're holding in your hands and when you' re reading 80 or 90 books over the course of a few months, you have to respect what you have in your hands. And when it comes to the decision, always, I want to shortlist 20 or 25 and name five winners instead of one…
- Bonnie Burnard, Giller nominee ('94), jurist ('96, '97) and winner ('99)
In the first year, I remember Mordecai Richler saying to me, when everybody was surprised at the fact that M.G. Vassanji won, he said, "I don't understand why anyone's surprised. All you have to do is read the books." And there are many people who may question the judge's final decision, and they have every right to do so, provided they've read the books.
- Jack Rabinovitch
These things tend to be difficult for authors and other artistic people… the whole idea of a competition is such a difficult concept for things that are so individual and so subjective. But this is the way our society is.
- David Kent
That famous party
That's a Montreal thing. When we started thinking about a prize, we decided that we should do three things: A) pick the best author, regardless; B) highlight the five shortlisted books because, in the final analysis, the shortlisted books represent the best in Canadian literature for that year according to the judges; and C) have some fun while doing it…
Fun seemed to be one of those ingredients people never thought about in terms of a literary prize. My late wife was a fun person. Mordecai and I come from a fun background and so it seemed like a natural thing to do. And because we were emulating the Booker to some degree, they have a party. We're from Montreal originally, so we just threw a Montreal-style party.
- Jack Rabinovitch
It's a focused award and it's done with great panache and style, and… an ethic of celebration. That it's necessary to get dressed up, drink some good scotch and see people you haven't seen for a while at a party. That this is a necessary part of life and a good part of literary life.
- Bonnie Burnard
This year, the [Governor General's Literary Award ceremony] is being made deliberately a little more, what shall we say, commercial by moving the ceremony to a hotel this year. I suspect that it might be the Governor General 's attempt to jazz up the GG a bit so that it' s more competitive with the Giller.
- Lynn Van Luven
It was a glorious occasion, obviously. I tried to be as equanimous as possibly, with great difficulty. But I was even-minded. I thought that I should not assume that I'd won but I also felt that I should assume that I could win.
- Austin Clarke
It really is the most glamorous publishing evening of the year…The whole evening is an event. Jack has done this amazing job of making this something in tune with Oscar night: it is televised, people get dressed up to the nines to go out to this thing, it is at our finest hotel in Toronto. It gives the publishing industry a night to dress up like glamorous stars…
We didn't want [Giller Lite] to be the anti-Giller in any way, shape or form. We just wanted it to be an extension of it, because it's so exclusive, for everybody else who wants to celebrate great literature in Canada but doesn't get that coveted rose invitation.
- Michaela Cornell, Giller Lite organizing committee
Timing
Fiction in Canada right now is very strong. I think it's stronger
here than in any other country in the English-speaking world
and the Giller came along at a time when Canada was having this
international success. So in the 10 years that it's been in
existence, it's honoured a number of writers who have been honoured
elsewhere in the world. It's something whose time was very appropriate…
Books like A Fine Balance and Alias Grace and Barney's Version
were remarkable books that have gotten international attention
and so the Giller came along just when all this was beginning.
It seems totally appropriate that it should be this way.
- David Staines
I guess the good feeling that I obtain more than anything else is the fact that Canadian writers are internationally renowned and internationally recognized. And when people call me from the States or from England and they talk to me about shortlisted Giller winners who are on the bookshelves, whether it 's in San Francisco or in London, England, that's sort of a warm nice feeling.
- Jack Rabinovitch
Championing CanLit
Every year, I close the comments, with a certain amount of editing, by saying that …for the price of a meal in this town, you can buy these five books, so stay at home, eat at home and read the books! This year, someone pointed out that the cost of the books is more than a meal so I guess I'm going to have to say it's a meal for two.
- Jack Rabinovitch
We have all agreed, everyone whose books are submitted for prizes, we have all agreed that we will submit to this because it's a good thing for fiction at large. Not because it will turn any one of us into a genius, but because it will enlarge the readership of all of our work. That's the agreement. And so we agree to go to dinners and not win awards. That's part of the deal. And when you do win, there is of course no conviction that this is the best book.
- Bonnie Burnard
The fact that [my] book is written in a different form than most books people are encountering is a challenge until it's a strength… With this acknowledgement by the Giller committee, it gives people the encouragement to give it a try.
- John Gould
It's one time when people from the industry all get together and just celebrate the fact that we're doing things that have real value and lasting value, which these days, where so much of an emphasis on a daily basis is the tangible and measurable objective of cost, it 's really nice to take a break and celebrate the intangible and subjective and what can't be measured objectively, which is value. You just know it, but you can't quantify it. It's nice to celebrate something that you can't quantify.
- David Kent
I have a sense of a new generation now emerging and redefining our literature. So, while the Giller has done an excellent job of both acknowledging and awarding the greatness of writers such as Atwood and Alice Munro and of crowning writers like Rohinton Mistry as they joined their ranks, I would say it has been especially important in calling our attention to these newer writers.
- Russell Brown
Final thoughts
If it gets people reading books, it's a good thing, if it gets people reading good books, it's a great thing. I think the Giller is a great thing.
- David Kent
The Giller is so much a reader-oriented event. The idea is really to say "Read Canadian fiction, and as a starting place, start with these five books." And so many people do follow that advice… there's a sense of participation in it from the readers as well.
- John Gould
The Giller Prize celebrates excellence. It has a very wonderful Hollywood touch - class and glitter, good food and good wine - and since we are, in this stage of the year, November, becoming a bit lugubrious because of the nearness of Christmas and expense and the reuniting of families and all the tragedies associated with that, the Giller reminds us that life is fragile, thin, fanciful, flirtatious and we should celebrate the good amongst us.
- Austin Clarke
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