Whatever it is, I Don't Like it (38 page)

After decades of this, the inside of your brain becomes like one of the novels you have never wanted to write: a seething, muttering melodrama of corruption and crass cowardice, peopled by sinister forces of mindlessness against whom you plot the bloodiest revenge. You know their names, the judges of the Man Booker, you know where they live or where they teach or where they practise whatever dark arts of indiscrimination are theirs. One by one, when you are ready and when they least expect it, you will pick them off.

Not to have been thinking about it this time, therefore, not to have known when these judges were deliberating, made the good news doubly sweet. It felt like a last blessing from Uncle Gerry. I owed it to him, I thought, to rejoice in the thing itself. And hope for nothing further. That would have been his advice to me, as it was my mother's: enjoy the now. An intelligent panel of judges had liked the book sufficiently to nominate it with a dozen others. Enough. Be grateful.

But you might as well ask a river not to flow. Five weeks later I am sitting by the phone. And this time it rings with a different tone. The shortlist tone. How do I recognise it? Twenty-seven years of waiting has prepared me. I know how the shortlist tone sounds because it is unlike all the others. It rings like a fanfare. Now, surely, surely, this will be enough. Five judges, exceptional for their discernment – judges such as there have never been before, paragons of acuity and good taste – have narrowed me down to six. I promise myself I will ask for nothing more. This will do. This will more than do.

Come the the night of nights, I hear, to my astonishment and wonder, the name Finkler read out. Finkler! Don't tell me my own character has stolen the prize from me. Am I in yet another novel of the sort I don't write? But I am propelled towards the stage. It's me. I've won.

So is that sufficient now? Is the summit reached? Ah, reader, reader . . .

A Note on the Author

An award-winning writer and broadcaster, Howard Jacobson's novels include
The Mighty Walzer
(winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize),
Kalooki Nights
,
Who's Sorry Now?
(both longlisted for the Man Booker Prize) and, most recently, the 2010 Man Booker Prize-winning
The Finkler Question.
Howard Jacobson lives in London.

By the Same Author

Fiction

Coming From Behind

Peeping Tom

Redback

The Very Model of a Man

No More Mister Nice Guy

The Mighty Walzer

Who's Sorry Now?

The Making of Henry

Kalooki Nights

The Act of Love

The Finkler Question

 

Non-fiction

Shakespeare's Magnanimity
(with Wilbur Sanders)

In the Land of Oz

Roots Schmoots: Journeys Among Jews

Seriously Funny: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime

Copyright © Howard Jacobson 2011

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

 

Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR.

 

First published by Bloomsbury USA in 2012

This electronic edition published in March 2012

eISBN 978-1-60819-797-2

 

www.bloomsburyusa.com