What A Dreadful Way To Pick The Winner Of A Book Prize!

The Golden Man Booker. “As a system of selection, this is a curious conflation of the single expert and the wisdom of crowds — or, if you will, super elitism and mob rule. After all, each novel on the short­list was chosen by just one person (not nearly enough), and yet the winner was chosen by thousands (far too many). Having the unwashed public pick the best novel sounds wonderfully egalitarian, but it ignores all kinds of unanswerable questions about the self-selection and legitimacy of the voters.”