• Menu

    What’s it going to be then, eh?

    The International Anthony Burgess Foundation
    About Anthony Burgess
    • Introducing Anthony Burgess
    • The Books of Anthony Burgess
    • The Music of Anthony Burgess
    Discover More
    • A Clockwork Orange
    • Earthly Powers
    • Anthony Burgess and Shakespeare
    • Dystopian Fiction
    About The Foundation
    • Our Mission
    • Visiting Us
    • The Burgess Bar
    • Support the Burgess Foundation
    • Join our mailing list
    • Contact us
    Anthony Burgess Archive
    • About the Archive
    • Visiting the Archive
    • Object of the Week
    • Contact the Archivist
    What's On
    • News and Blogs
    • Event listings
    • Venue hire
    • Burgess Prize
    • Exhibitions
    • Podcasts
    The International Anthony Burgess Foundation
  • What’s it going to be then, eh?

    OPENING TIMES
    Bar Open for events
    Reading Room Available for pre-booked appointments 10.00am - 3.00pm weekdays
    Office Hours By appointment: info@anthonyburgess.org
    HOW TO FIND US
    Engine House
    Chorlton Mill
    3 Cambridge Street
    Manchester
    M1 5BY
    Nearest train station Oxford Road More information
    Next event
    Talks: The Sex Lectures Thu 06 Apr 2023 7:00 pm £14.50 More information
  • The International Anthony Burgess Foundation
  • What's it going to be then, eh?

    Exhibitions. New writing. Concert commissions. Academic research. Public events, in venues and online. And at the core of everything, preserving and promoting our extensive Anthony Burgess archive.

    Your donation to the Burgess Foundation supports our mission to promote the life and work of Anthony Burgess in so many ways.

  • What’s it going to be then, eh?

The International Anthony Burgess Foundation The International Anthony Burgess Foundation
NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

Observer/Burgess Prize: Lara Feigel on Judging the Prize

  • Graham Foster

  • 22nd November 2016
  • category

  • Blog Posts
  • tagged as

  • Journalism
  • Observer/Burgess Prize

I am delighted to be judging the Anthony Burgess prize. At a time when the arts pages in many of our newspapers are under threat, it seems doubly important to celebrate the role of arts journalism both as a necessary tool in enabling the circulation of books, pictures and films and as an art form in itself.

I have written book reviews since Robert McCrum generously sent me home with a book after I’d visited him at the Observer offices in 2008. I was a PhD student, more used to writing ten thousand word chapters than one thousand word articles (‘usually you’d still be clearing your throat,’ he said). So I was apprehensive about trying to squash a whole book into a few paragraphs but excited about the chance to speak directly to other curious readers. The book was Diana Athill’s memoir Somewhere Towards the End and, starting it on the train home, I responded passionately to it from the opening page. Here was a woman talking about sex and death with a candour I’d rarely come across in contemporary writers. I knew immediately what I wanted to say; I wanted to celebrate her courage as directly as possible. I found that once I started it was easy to compress what I thought. I just wrote what seemed most vital to me, and left the reader to discover the rest.

After that, each month there was an exciting trip to the Observer offices to choose a book from the shelf. I didn’t know how lucky I was, to have begun so easily and to be given so much choice. Not many literary editors work like that now, preferring to keep a tighter control and to use published writers. Over the years since then, as I’ve reviewed more widely, I’ve found writing literary journalism one of the most enjoyable aspects of my working life. There’s the pleasure in getting the cheques: in that sense that those hours spent reading and writing have bought in a tangible amount of money. But more importantly, there’s a pleasure in bringing the shadowy understanding of words and people that I’ve developed through writing my books to bear in so direct and immediate a way.

As an academic, I have sometimes worried that much of what I and my colleagues write is composed of obfuscating language, published in inaccessible places, and destined to reach a small audience of peers. Writing reviews there can be no doubt that I am in contact with readers. When I am championing books that I have loved, it is gratifying to feel I’m in some small way contributing to finding readers for those books. This gives me a sense of urgency, making me feel that I need to find a way to say as precisely as I can what I have thought and felt as I’ve responded to a book. And I think this gives me confidence to write my books with a similar directness to my journalism. Writing to a tight word count is also a way to discover the value of every word or hundred words. You learn to hedge less, because it wastes words, and you learn to strip your argument to its skeletal core.

So how wonderful to have come full circle and to be judging a prize on behalf of the Observer. This prize will give us a chance to celebrate arts writing at a time when it’s under threat and will give the winners in their turn a chance to develop a public platform to hone the writing voice.

For more information on the Observer/Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism, click here. 

Lara Feigel

  • Share | 
  • Print
Related Blog posts
A Shorter Finnegans Wake: editing an epic Andrew Biswell
Inside the archive: Restoring Joyce and Belli Anna Edwards
Blowing the horn for Anthony Burgess in 2023 Andrew Biswell
The 2023 Observer / Burgess Prize has a winner Ian Carrington
SEE ALL NEWS AND BLOG POSTS
Go to home page
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
Go to home page
Follow us

© 2023 International Anthony Burgess Foundation

Charity no. 1102623

International Anthony Burgess Foundation
Engine House Chorlton Mill 3 Cambridge Street M1 5BY
  • Site map
  • Privacy policy
  • Terms of use
  • Designed by Instruct
  • Built by OH Digital