His Love of Words Rivals His Contempt for Critics - New York Times

His Love of Words Rivals His Contempt for Critics - New York Times:

DUBLIN - Not everyone [including the Times's own Michiko Kakutani] was thrilled by the decision last month to give the Man Booker Prize, Britain’s most influential literary award, to “The Sea” by the Irish novelist John Banville. To begin with, two of the five Booker judges vehemently preferred another book, Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go.”

…
Meanwhile, booksellers at the prize dinner grumbled that the novel was the least commercial of the six finalists (only 3,721 hardback copies had been sold before Booker night on Oct. 10; the total has since risen to just over 9,100). Mr. Banville subsequently appeared on a radio arts program with three critics, who all, he said, hated his book.

But all this is grist for the mill to the author himself, who seems to relish a good literary dust-up, or at least not to mind being at the center of one.

So the Booker Prize is worth 6,000 books in 3 weeks, or roughly 9,000 books in a month. Not too impressive–one of Oprah’s sneezes sells 10,000 books.

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