John Darkin: Recognition may be desirable, but wealth is as good

Opinion

Glittering prizes are bestowed on writers for quality and merit, but are awards essential to ensure fame and gain?

Certainly not in the case of The Da Vinci Code.

Such is the book's popularity that the Church in Rome is worried it is a deliberate attempt to discredit the Catholic faith.

The church is particularly alarmed that tourists in Rome take the controversial novel, written by American thriller writer Dan Brown, as a guide-book to Christianity.

In the world of fiction-writing, publishing and bookselling, winning a prestigious literary prize is a surefire way to guarantee good sales of a book.

The winning author's standing increases and so does the book's saleability. Publishers reissue the writer's backlist and bookstores promote the latest prize-winners.

Every once in a while, however, a different kind of book takes the world by storm. Dan Brown's latest novel is such a novel; it has not relied on winning a great literary prize to bolster its success.

Instead, Brown's reward has come in the form of public adulation and the personal fortune that The Da Vinci Code has created.

It could be argued that if critics are correct - that The Da Vinci Code is a badly written book based on false premises, the characters are one-dimensional and implausible, and, as a novel, it demands too little from the reader - it is unlikely to win any major literary prize.

Scores of prizes are, in fact, available to writers, many of whom must dream of being smiled upon by at least one set of judges during their lifetime.

The most prestigious awards are the Nobel Prize for Literature (international), the Man Booker Prize (Britain), the Prix Goncourt (France), the Pulitzer Prize (United States), and the Whitbread Prize (Britain).

These all award literary quality ahead of popular taste. Dan Brown's name has so far failed to appear among the nominees.

A new award is on offer this year, one that will stimulate debate among readers of quality literature, unnerve its leading contenders and leave publishers' hands sweaty in anticipation of new profit opportunities.

The Man Booker International Prize, worth about $180,000, is to be awarded every two years to a living literary figure whose body of (fictional) work has been consistently excellent and creative, and has had a profound influence on readers.

The prize will acknowledge one writer who has regularly achieved the highest standards and who genuinely deserves superstar status.

Notable omissions from the inaugural 2005 long list include J. M. Coetzee, Peter Carey, Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, V. S. Naipaul, Umberto Eco and the present superstar, Dan Brown, whose books are having the most profound influence on the adult book-buying public in decades.

Included, however, are, according to critics, some surprises, Ian McEwan and Muriel Spark among them. To be expected are the names of Gunter Grass, Milan Kundera, Margaret Atwood, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Saul Bellow and, if one wanted to take a punt on the eventual winner, the American Philip Roth or the prolific Doris Lessing.

Will the failure to rub shoulders with this exalted company bother Dan Brown? He is no novice and does have several other books in the top 10 after all. We can only guess.

In reality, however, he should not despair. Although his glittering prize will not include recognition of greatness by the world's literati, he can take comfort in substantial royalty cheques earned from the sale of 18 million copies of The Da Vinci Code in more than 40 languages.

Heavenly rewards for Brown may be on hold. The Da Vinci Code's subject matter may have done much to stimulate tourism to Rome, but Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone regards Brown's work as absurd and vulgar, and damaging to the Catholic Church.

Nevertheless, it seems that Rome's tourist bosses are keeping busy totting up the extra receipts from visitors.

Brown's book suggests that Jesus had a child with Mary Magdalene, whom the Church has always portrayed as a scarlet woman. It is only a work of fiction, a make-believe and, as such, is entertaining. A more literary reader might prefer Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, published in 1989, which is another story centred on the coded-message idea, and is regarded as a work of genius.

The great writers whose names appear on the Man Booker International list, and those who surprisingly do not, are the intellectual foundation stone upon which modern fiction writers draw their inspiration. Their works are glittering prizes donated to benefit mankind.

Dan Brown, on the other hand, is an artisan writer hero, a cavalier and front-line trooper in a publisher's armoury, whose efforts have stimulated mass public curiosity and a large income for the book trade.

There are glittering prizes to cater for all tastes.

* John Darkin is a Gisborne writer.