Is a single judge better than a jury for picking a literary prize winner? What does mathematics say?

“My literary taste is unorthodox, by current standards. I happen to think it’s sound, and I do my darnedest to defend it in my criticism. But I’ve never been bold enough to imagine that my literary judgments amount to objective, provable truths. That said, I don’t view them as negotiable either. So the prospect of sitting down with a couple of strangers to haggle about our respective tastes in literature struck me as radically unappealing.”

David Free’s essay jogs around an interesting question: assuming we should rank literature, how do we go about it? David Free is an Australian literary critic (and novelist), so I’m guessing he’s okay with ranking literature. But he’s definitely against the idea of a group of literary worthies handing out literary prizes.

Why? He doesn’t trust juries. He wouldn’t mind a single judge making a decision; at least, the subjectivity would be obvious. Even desirable. But the consensus of a jury, he argues, would invariably gravitate towards the mediocre and safe options. All too often, it’s not about the book at all, but the author.

I’ve been on a few prize panels, and yes, I always found it rather weird. There can be serious melodrama. I’ve seen books...

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