How Should a Literary Award Be Given?
Whenever major literary awards are announced, readers of the Vishnupuram Literary Circle regularly discuss the award and the books that receive it, both online and in person. One question that repeatedly emerged from these discussions was: How should an organisation decide who receives a literary award?
Award-giving organisations generally appoint juries, which create a longlist and then a shortlist. From these, a final jury selects one work. This process is usually considered objective. Yet every award is decided by a different group of judges, each with their own literary standards and values. As a result, the award itself does not necessarily come to represent any consistent literary ideal.
We believe that a literary award should have a literary readership movement behind it. The award should express a literary value broadly shared by that community of readers. Only then can the award acquire a distinct meaning and significance.
The idea that emerged from our discussions was simple: a community of readers who believe in a particular literary value should be able to decide which work best represents that value. The Living Tamil Award was created from this idea.
An Award Given by Readers
An award given by a community of readers carries a different kind of authority from one bestowed by a government or institution. That authority deepens when individual readers make the award possible from their own savings. No patron purchases influence over the choice; the value of the award rests on the seriousness of the reading behind it.
This is therefore not simply an award movement. It is also a wider movement of reading.
Our Criteria
Those familiar with the Vishnupuram Literary Circle and the awards it has presented in Tamil will already recognise the values behind our literary criteria. We are bringing these together here for readers in India and around the world.
For us, modern literature emerges when a writer uses language as a means of pursuing an intimate inner search and expressing their deepest experiences. It arises naturally through language. Its form and language emerge from the correspondence between the writer's inner world and language itself.
At its best literature can speak to the reader's own inner world across time, place and language through its images, emotions and depiction of life. A literary work is a parallel life, an alternative life that exists alongside our own. Literature allows the reader to live that life. The experiences and ideas the reader takes from it become their own.
For this reason we do not consider works written primarily to promote a particular idea or explain a particular position to be literature in the fullest sense. We do not consider works created artificially in response to current news or political issues to possess literary value. We also reject approaches that look for familiar social messages, political criticism or contemporary political correctness in a literary work.
Even if such works become highly popular or receive numerous awards, they do not, in our view, constitute literature.
We also reject writing produced primarily for commercial purposes or to appeal to the tastes of readers. Literature is, above all, an expression of the inner world of the writer. And because that inner world is ultimately shared by all humanity, it can become the inner world of the reader as well.
These literary criteria have emerged from what we have come to understand through our own experience of life. They are the values that guide our choices.
Selection Process
Literary writers working in any language in the world will be considered for this award. It is preferable if their works are available in English. If not, the works will be translated for consideration.
Anyone may nominate a writer. We will also actively seek nominations from leading critics and people deeply interested in literature.
Since this is a lifetime achievement award, the writers nominated should be those who have continued to produce major works of literature in their own language, supported by their strongest works.
Once a writer is nominated, readers from our community will read their books and recommend writers they consider worthy of the award. These recommendations will form a longlist. The longlist will include the names of the writers as well as the works that demonstrate their literary achievement.
The longlist will be made public. Readers will be invited to share their responses and discussions of the works. These responses will also be published.
After this judges will be selected from within our own community of readers. They will create the shortlist. Discussions surrounding the shortlisted writers and works will also be made public. The judges will then select the final recipient of the award.
The purpose of this award is to bring the distinctive aesthetic vision developed by modern Tamil literature into the wider landscape of world literature. Having established figures or international juries whose perspectives already represent the mainstream would work against this purpose.
Our judges will therefore come from within our own community. The award will reflect our own literary vision and we will explain in detail why a particular writer has been chosen.
The writer who receives the Living Tamil Award should understand its significance in one clear way: a large community of readers across the world read the work, argued for it, funded the award and chose to honour it.