Winkleris a 2006 novel by English food criticGiles Coren.It is a 'comic account of one man's search for meaning, identity, and a suitable response to the burden of history'.[1]
My Failed Novel
editWinklerwas the subject of aSky Artsdocumentary entitledMy Failed Novelwhich featuredJeffrey Archer,Hanif Kureishiand various other authors. The documentary was a broader meditation on the subject of failure but focused on the novel itself, which garnered a £30,000 advance yet only sold 771 copies in hardback and 1400 in paperback.[2][3][4]
In the documentary, the genesis of the novel was considered by a range of people. A contemporary critic of the book, Stephen Bayley, said the novel had a certain 'lavatorial awfulness' and 'an overwhelming obsession with bums.'[5]
Reception
editThe Spectatorwrote, 'there is an infectious glee with which Coren pillories politically correct nostra and the scabrous humour and farce make him a worthy heir of Tom Sharpe'.[6]
A review byThe Independent's Michael Bywater was written with the byline, 'Bright Spark dowsed in a swamp of disgust.' Bywater describes the protagonist of Winkler as 'too morally exhausted to attempt the construction of meaning for those around him. Winkler's default interaction is contempt or abuse, his disgust with the physical world – flopping flesh, sad food, corridor smells – boundless.' He added, 'wrapped inside Winkler's nihilism is a serious mediation on deeper matters: identity, wandering, return, and two questions which still cast the longest of shadows. What of the Holocaust, and what does it mean to be a Jew?'[7]
The book was considered in a chapter of Ruth Gilbert's textbookWriting Jewish: Contemporary British-Jewish Literature.[8]
Bad Sex in Fiction Award
editThe book won a 2005 Bad Sex in Fiction Award from theLiterary Review.[9] In the words ofThe Guardian,"Coren beat off heavyweight competition for the prize with an unpunctuated 138-word description of coitus, followed by the two-word sentence, 'like Zorro'."[10]
ShortListmagazine named it 'one of the absolute worst 'Bad Sex Awards' entries ever.'[11]
References
edit- ^"Curtis Brown".www.curtisbrown.co.uk.
- ^"Giles Coren: My Failed Novel".Sky.
- ^"How not to write a novel | Just Retiring".September 2016.
- ^"What does failure feel like?".Evening Standard.February 17, 2016.
- ^"Giles Coren: My Failed Novel - Interesting Media".interestingmedia.co.uk.
- ^Beckman, Jonathan (7 January 2006)."Recent first novels".spectator.co.uk.Retrieved13 June2020.
- ^"Winkler, by Giles Coren".The Independent.October 14, 2005.
- ^Ruth Gilbert (4 December 2013).Writing Jewish: Contemporary British-Jewish Literature.Palgrave Macmillan.ISBN978-1-137-37479-0.
- ^"Bad Sex Awards: the worst sex scenes in modern fiction".The Telegraph.November 30, 2017 – via www.telegraph.co.uk.
- ^Guardian Staff (December 2, 2005)."Food critic Coren wins British bad sex award".the Guardian.
- ^"Here are the absolute worst 'Bad Sex Awards' entries ever".Shortlist.November 24, 2017.