The Booker Prize has been awarded once more, this time to a so-called 'food novel' that has sent the literary establishment into paroxysms of joy. Critics are divided, naturally, because that is what critics do: they squabble over the latest bauble while Rome burns. But let us be clear. This is not a triumph. It is a symptom of a civilisation in decline.
Consider the context. We live in an age of intellectual decadence, where the novel has degenerated from the great moral instruments of the Victorians into self-indulgent exercises in style. A food novel, you say? How quaint. How utterly contemporary. One can almost hear the clinking of glasses at a Hampstead dinner party as beards are stroked and profundities uttered about the 'existential weight' of a recipe.
But let us dig deeper. The Booker Prize has a long history of rewarding the mediocre. This is not a new phenomenon. Look back at the 1960s, when the prize was founded, and you see the same pattern: a handful of genuinely great works, surrounded by a sea of forgettable fare. The difference today is that the mediocrity has become the point. We celebrate the insubstantial because substance demands something of us. It demands attention, discipline, and a willingness to grapple with the difficult. A novel about food? That is comfort reading for a comfortable age.
And what of the critics who are divided? Their division is itself a sign of bankruptcy. In the Victorian era, critics had standards. They could distinguish between the sublime and the ridiculous. Now, they argue over degrees of irrelevance. One camp praises the novel's 'sensory immersion', while the other decries its lack of narrative drive. Neither camp asks the essential question: does this novel matter? Does it speak to the condition of our nation, our culture, our souls? Of course not. It speaks to our appetites.
This is the mark of a dying civilisation. The Romans, in their decline, turned to ever more elaborate entertainments. They stuffed themselves with peacock tongues and watched spectacles of grotesque violence. We, in our decline, write novels about food and pretend that they are profound. The parallels are embarrassing in their exactitude.
But I am not one of those who will pretend that all is well. I am here to annoy you, to provoke you, to make you think. So let me say this: the Booker Prize is a mirror of our intellectual decadence. It rewards the trivial because the trivial is all we can stomach. We have lost the nerve for greatness. We have lost the ambition to grapple with the great questions of existence. Instead, we write about what we had for dinner.
And what of British publishing? They celebrate because they have a product to sell. But let us not confuse commerce with culture. The publishing industry is in the business of moving units, not refining souls. They will celebrate anything that sells, and a food novel sells because it appeals to our basest instincts: gluttony and self-regard. It is literature for the Age of Instagram: pretty, fleeting, and utterly meaningless.
So here is my challenge to you, dear reader. Do not accept this tyranny of the trivial. Demand more from your novels. Demand that they engage with the great questions: the nature of justice, the meaning of love, the horror of war, the possibility of redemption. Do not settle for a culinary tour de force when what you need is a moral one.
The Victorians understood this. They knew that a novel could be a tool for shaping a nation's character. They wrote about poverty, ambition, faith, and doubt. They did not write about the perfect soufflé because they knew that a civilisation is judged by its spirit, not its stomach.
We are living in the twilight of that world. The food novel is the funeral baked meat. And we are the guests, feasting at our own wake.
