The Giller Longlist

Last year, my novel The Garneau Block was longlisted for the Giller Prize. This year, The Book of Stanley was not longlisted for the Giller Prize.

Last year, I was surprised. I did not even know there would be a longlist. This year, I waited for the longlist like a gazelle waiting to be attacked by a panther. That is, if panthers attack gazelles.

In the past weeks, I looked up the judges and searched their work for elements of humour. My novel has elements of humour: would that seem unserious to them? I attempted to woo the judges, via shamanic mindcommunication techniques, but failed to make contact. There is a ravine near my house. I sat in the ravine, on warm September afternoons, meditating on the word Giller, making it my own, attracting it with my will — this, I understand, is the secret of The Secret — but it always felt false. Besides, people wanted to jog and have sex and shoot up drugs in the ravine, and I was in their spot. It was dreadfully uncomfortable.

Today, ungenerously, I have looked up reviews of the novels on the list, and I have delighted in the bad ones. Then, in guilt, I have despised myself and praised the novelists on the list — their humanity, their artfulness, their respect for tradition, their Giller-sounding title-making skills — to well-wishers on Facebook. I have attempted to do this without sarcasm. And I have failed.

This afternoon, I allowed one of my friends to convince me that I didn't even want to be on the Giller longlist. This way I remain an underground artist, a cult hit in Belgium, "that guy with the open fly." An outsider. But now that I think about it, my friend is a real idiot.