Comments on: Graphic novels shouldn’t be eligible for book awards

By: The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log » Gene Yang

The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log » Gene Yang — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 12:15:25 +0000

[...] The Newsarama blog carries a link to an LA Times article on the National Book Awards in the US. Gene Yang’s American Born Chinese, which sparked a debate about eligibility recently, came in second, although Gene can carry his head high at being the first graphic novel to be nominated. As Newsarama notes though, the LA Times seem pretty enamoured with his work, regardless of it coming second or first (yes, that is a bad pun, sorry) before pointing readers to the First Second publisher’s blog where Mark Siegel comments on the awards. Regardless of where you stand on the eligibility issue, it has to be good to see the medium getting such good coverage and respect and for such a new publisher in the field it must be a real boost. [...]

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 10:20:34 +0000

Jeff, I can understand your point, but worry that too many seperate awards leads to increased ‘gehtto-isation’ of genres and styles. Arguably this has happened already in the case of crime and SF for examples; ignored often by the mainstream they created their own awards. Now one of the arguments I hear for not having SF&F in a mainstream list is that they have their own awards, something of a circular argument… I worry that ghetto-isation makes a field less accessible and open to new readers.

Of course GNs have their own awards, but I still think they should be eligible for mainstream awards too, especially given the huge growth in readership among mainstream audiences and in mainstream bookstores. I suspect events like Jimmy Corrigan winning the Guardian First Book Award contributed to this growth in awareness of the medium, with many readers of it never having been near a traditional comics store.

And yes, you are quite right that a book with no SF wouldn’t make it onto an SF awards shortlist, but the SF shortlists have proved to be far more flexible and open that their mainstream counterparts in defining what they will accept, hence books like Cloud Atlas and Never Let Me Go appearing on shortlists, despite their publishers not putting them out as SF. If a mainstream award has a GN category then that’s fine to put them in there, but if it lacks one then I think the GN should be eligible to be considered for the ‘normal’ award. In the case of American Born Chinese is it in a younger reader’s category and reflects the fact that libraries and bookstores are finding GNs a good way of interesting more children in reading (something I’ve had personal experience with, advising a couple of school libraries on the subject, with success). And although GNs do indeed do literally (sorry, no pun intended) what a prose author does with words, the creation of images, it still engages the imagination of the reader to fill in the gaps between the frames to give flowing life to the events portrayed, be they for younger readers (already brought up with picture books from the youngest age) or mature readers.

Of course, I could now have a rant about SF convention awards often ignoring GNs :-) Nah, save that for another day! Still, it’s got people talking about books and GNs, which is rarely a bad thing. And one last note here for anyone else reading: I know Jeff is not only a good writer and keen reader, he also likes graphic novels and supports them as he does other literary works, so I know he isn’t having a go here, just making a point.

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 09:58:50 +0000

Gareth, you are quite right, Cloud Atlas did have some SF elements (in fact we did that for the SF Book Group I’m in), but the point is it was not perceived as SF by the literary establishment or critics. Similarly with Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (another one we discussed at the Group), which even the author initially denied was SF although a year or so later she relented and confessed it did have some SF motifs. My point in mentioning the SF books was really to say that books published as SF&F generally won’t find their way onto mainstream awards, not even the Booker longlist, regardless of how astonishing a work they are.

By: Gareth

Gareth — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 22:34:08 +0000

Erm – not to derail a good rant, but Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell was a favourite to win the Booker at one stage. I’d say that was SF.

Attitudes are changing, slowly. You’ll always get people who don’t like change, but they’ll all be dead soon because they don’t believe in all this medicine nonsense and are busy applying leeches.

By: Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 15:15:17 +0000

I think it’s more basic than this. If an award is for a novel, it should go to a novel. If it’s for a graphic novel, it should go to a graphic novel. A novel will never win or be a finalist for a graphic novel award, so why should a graphic novel be a winner or finalist for a novel award? It’s wo different forms. It’s not that one is better than another. It’s that they’re different. It would be like saying that a book without a lick of SF or fantasy or any discussion of science should be eligible for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

That’s my only beef with it.

Cheers,

JeffV

By: The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log » Atwood does comics

The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log » Atwood does comics — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 14:29:00 +0000

[...] I had no idea about this at all until Heidi mentioned it on The Beat: award-winning Canadian author Margaret Atwood enjoys creating the occassional cartoon, which includes pastiching her own book The Blind Assassin and the supporting author tour and awards bestowed upon it. Wow, I’d never come across this before; I know she has tried a variety of genres and media (including using SF elements – she was a popular choice in the SF Book Group I’m part of) but I had no idea she drew these, how cool. I can also see from the same post that Heidi is about as impressed with Tony Long’s pontifications on the literary merits of graphic novels as I am. Wonder what he would make of a Booker-winning novelist doing comics (or even a Philip K Dick award winning one like Richard Morgan or…) [...]

By: Journalista » Blog Archive » Oct. 30, 2006: Theo Van Gogh is my co-pilot

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 13:51:54 +0000

[...] Wired News copy chief Tony Long is dismayed to discover that Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese has been nominated for a National Book Award. Writing for Bits of News, Alexander Rubio patiently explains why Long doesn’t know what he’s talking about. (Related: Neil Gaiman’s reponse to Long’s essay, and a response from the folks at Slave Labor and Forbidden Planet.) [...]