LITERATI
Fake Prizes
The literati are the fabricated prize winners on the Human Farm.
Among all the pseudo-humanities, literature is the pseudologia fantastica—the pathological falsifier. Literature isn’t honest; it is manufactured. A prize winner isn’t self-made; he is launched!
If there were, hypothetically, a prize for good literature, good writers would apply. But no such prize exists. No good writer can apply to anything.
Instead, from some dull office, gray people launch a fake prize and crown a fake winner. That winner is an unassuming, controllable, and thoroughly socialized nobody. Great efforts—and significant sums of money—are spent on nationalizing his background story.
The Process
A no-name imprint is created for the writer’s work. Money flows in from shady accounts. Even though the writer is completely unknown, his manuscript miraculously appears on the desks of all the major critics, feuilletonists, and culture makers. “He came out of nowhere,” they will say, “and won. Genius!” Not so. Their praises are plucked from thin air. His struggle to success is entirely fabricated. Their consideration? Paid for long in advance with lavish dinners and a seat at the jury table.
The cultural bureau received its carbon copy. Once approved, the greatest publisher in the nation—the regime press—engages its machinery. No national writer rises to prominence without the regime’s backing.
The team consists of professionals. The success is formulaic: the big themes of life— love, loss, betrayal, redemption. The language must be simple. The manuscript is a gigantic ‘mini-production’. The winner is likely soft, perhaps a homosexual, highly educated yet incapable of writing too well, ensuring he remains forever dependent on the machinery that made him.
Not that he needs to write much. Our celebrated literati, who wins all the prizes, does so with one or two works. That’s it. Eternal fame—provided he does as he’s told.
Just as dogs resemble their owners—a fact rooted in scientific narcissism—literary prize winners resemble their masters. Even if they aren’t one of them, they’ll dress the part.
