Laura Miller’s Salon column yesterday got me thinking.  (It also reminded me that the National Book Awards were last night, which I had completely forgotten.)  But seriously, it got me thinking about the value of prizes and titles in our literary society.  Miller leads off with a quote by New Yorker critic James Wood:
“Prizes are the new reviews.”

She then goes on to discuss this in the context of vanity prizes, but I was already thinking of a year-end media tradition much closer to home: the “Best Of” lists.  Already they’ve caused quite a ruckus, and not just around our offices and the tens of other publishers that I know are eagerly awaiting these lists.  When Publishers Weekly posted their Top 10 of 2009, the list was devoid of any works written by women, and the blogosphere exploded with critique (including one from yours truly).

These lists are subjective and there are many of them, from the highly-regarded New York Times list to the myriad of top 10s that appear online and in bookstores, compiled not just by critics but booksellers and readers.  But still, they seem to sell books more than anything else.  Does it no longer matter if a review raves about a book, screaming its praises until its throat is hoarse?  Apparently not–unless that book then ends up on a list.  It’s gotten so bad that now people are buying prizes, which seems to be Miller’s point.

I don’t have the answer as to why the prize matters, although in a way I guess it could be a good sign.  Even if people aren’t reading reviews (or relying as heavily on them), they are still looking to established cultural institutions (the Times, the NBAs) to curate their reading for them, in the form of these lists.  I wish they didn’t have as much importance as they do (and they didn’t make me as crazy at work, waiting for the results to roll in…) but for now, they’re not doing any harm.  And anything that gets the book in the media… well, as a publicist, I definitely can’t complain.