French literary awards are nearly as corrupt as American elections!

…Albeit, from my standpoint, more entertaining and less depressing. On average. Depending upon the election. I confess I’m inclined to draw the parallel because today marks the shift in Depression Alert from red to orange, or possibly amber, and also because the French-American question is a particularly interesting of late. And no, I’m not referring to anyone who would have preferred I title the post ‘Corruption in the Freedom Book Awards. ‘

The first wave of scandal for the French literary establishment came last week, swelling from the seismic activity of two former book-prize panelists who alleged that juries were swayed by political favouritism, self-promotional commercial interests, or outright bribes.

First, Madeliene Chapsal, a member of the Prix Femina jury, composed solely of women, was expelled from her position for revealing the behind-the-scenes deliberations of the jury in her published memoirs. Suspicions were confirmed with the publication of the details from the diaries of Jacques Brenner, an author and member of a prize jury during the 1980s and 1990s. Le Figaro exposed Brenner’s hitherto-unseen descriptions of the systems of bribes and favours by which the jury operated. No call for response is needed from Brenner, who has the now-mixed fortune of having died in 2001, but the current juries were turned upside down by the accusations.

Both pieces tell the same story: French prize juries vote for publishers, not for authors, or even, far-fetched a proposal as it may seem, for individual books. A position on a panel is one typically ordained for life (with the notable exception of Ms. Chapsal); though the jury offers no monetary payment, panelists do benefit from invitations to conferences, funded overseas travel, and, most importantly, publicity and the assurance that prize-seeking publishing companies would be just thrilled to pick up their book.

Brenner, for example, specifically chronicles the way in which he was pushed towards awarding prizes to other authors under their auspices of his own publisher, Grasset. The system hinted by the fact that four major publishing companies who publish the works of three-quarters of the jury members also win two-thirds of the awards appears to be reality.

But perhaps the greatest scandal in the world of French book awards took place on Monday evening, when the prestigious Prix Goncourt was presented to an American. True, Jonathan Littell, the American in question, grew up in France, and his best-selling novel Les Bienveillantes (’The Kindly Ones’) is written in French, but it should come as no surprise that half of the French literary world views this a pollution of its culture. This is, after all, a country which has created a governmental agency to keep foreign words from invading the pure language, continually battling the fiendish new words that might sneak across the ocean/channel before a uniquely French version can be proposed. Who knows what impressionable French youth playing football might otherwise suffer, should they call a corner-kick ‘un cornair,’ as it was before the Academie Francaise intervened with the far more convenient ‘un coup de pied de coin.’

But the 370-year-old Academie Francaise also awarded its Grand Prix de Roman to Les Beinveillantes, thus making Jonathan Littell the first American in recent memory to win two major French literary prizes. Uproar surrounded the Academie’s decision, as a group of Academicians condemned the book for its sections of violence and obscenity, and a counter-group condemned the first group for approaching the dangerous territory of moral censorship.

After all, one could hardly expect Les Beinveillantes to be light, family-oriented fare; its narrator, Maximilian Aue, is an SS Officer, whose account of the Nazi’s campaign of murder in Eastern Europe is rendered all the more chilling for its detachment.

But Littell, now placed amongst the ranks of Goncourt laureates Marcel Proust, Simone de Beauvoir, Pascal Quignard and Marguerite Duras, is trying not to place himself to the public view. Littell did not even appear at Monday’s ceremony, the capstone to the week of scandal. “He hopes his absence will not be misunderstood or, even less, be interpreted as disdain for the jury,” explained Littell’s publisher, Antoine Gallimard. “He has no need for publicity, both out of modesty and because he believes that literature is not part of show business, that what’s important is the book.”

What a shame. It would all have made such a good TV movie.

Thanks to Grumpy Old Bookman for pointing to the article about Bribes and the French Book Awards; read a nicely written contemplation of M. Littell’s recent win at Maîtresse.