With the Olympics in Paris just weeks away from commencement, ArtsHub decided it would be a bit of fun to speculate on what the Games would look like if, say, instead of sporting prowess being celebrated, we looked to championing the cerebral might of wordsmiths. To that end, we reached out to a community of bookish folk to see what events they would support if mind games were lauded over the body brawny and beautiful.
Did you know, for instance, that once upon a time medals were also awarded in five artistic categories: architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture? All submitted artworks had to be original and sports-themed and, like their more athletic counterparts, those participating in this “Pentathlon of the Muses” were supposed to be amateurs. The categories were later divided into specific classifications such as literature in a drama, lyric or epic; orchestral and instrumental music, solo and chorus singing; drawings, graphic arts and paintings; statues, reliefs, medals, plaques and medallions.
It’s difficult to believe, but there were actually medals won through iambic pentameter. Apparently from 1912 to 1948, poems were submitted inspired by the idea of sport. In 1924, the silver-winning contribution was from British poet Dorothy Margaret Stuart. Her fencing-inspired poem ‘Sword Songs‘ included the line, ‘I sing of the spirit that dwells in the bright grey blade.’ Rousing indeed.
It’s a great pity that the arts are no longer a component of the Games, but if we had a literary Olympics what likely events would be on the cards?
Imagine, for instance, speed reading… Individual readers are given a chunky brand new book and tasked with finishing it in record time. (They’d be given a series of questions about major plot contrivances to answer at the end to gauge their fast but close-reading aptitude.) The corollary to that is, of course, speed writing. Authors would have a set, hourglass time to brainstorm an award-winning synopsis and the first three pages that would impress the most curmudgeonly of literary agents and publishers.
Kirsten Krauth is keen on a literary version of “Dodgeball” where one lines up against ‘AI, fraudsters, plagiarists, “constructive” critics, mansplainers, overzealous fans and aspiring writers who corner you at launch events with “I’ve got a great idea for a novel can you help me publish it?” even though they haven’t started writing it yet.’
How about a ‘Pun-tathalon’, as suggested by Eileen Ormsby, whereby, ‘medal winners are appointed on a groan-worthy scale’ or Karen Crombie’s proposal of ‘spotting spelling mistakes in public’.
‘Categories include shop signage, restaurant menus and traffic signs,’ explains Crombie. ‘The judges will award extra points for random apostrophes.’
‘Haiku sprints’ (see what can you do in 10 seconds), offers Jennifer Compton, and on the other side of the scale, ‘all night marathon writing (drugs mandatory)’. What about competitive stacking of the to-be-read pile, quips Sian Prior, or the fastest way to sort a bookshelf via author name, title or colour, posits Anna Featherstone, while Vivienne Pearson nominates the ‘heptathlon for all the different skill sets/income streams you need to survive as a writer…’
What about debating rounds? wonders Terry Schroeder. So: ‘Austen versus Brontë, Haiku versus Epic, Highbrow versus Lowbrow’ and the very contentious ‘use of the Oxford comma.’
For those who want to test their brawn as well as their brains, there could be weight-training and balance exercises. As Amanda Kendle suggests, you could see how many books you can carry out of the library in one go, or perhaps booksellers could race each other to see how many deluxe boxed sets of hardcovers they can lift up to the top shelves on small, unstable ladders.
More physical feats? ‘High jump over the collected works of a prolific author. Ditto long jump. Javelin through a representation of AI,’ says Helen Patrice, while Sherryl Clark recommends, ‘Darts using fountain pens. Shot put using manual typewriters.’
How about ‘the procrastination triathlon of house cleaning, baking and maintenance,’ says Lisa Davis. Nik Willmott pipes in with ‘idea archery… the aim (!) is to hit the bull’seye-dea and stick to writing only about it rather than going off on tangents…’
Scott-Patrick Mitchell suggests, ‘Race walking for poets, but you just let them amble through a city at their own pace and at the end of the day they share a poem about their adventure … that’s if they haven’t become trapped in a coffee shop.’
Fellow poet David Stavanger proposes: ‘Extended metaphor, haiku sevens, artistic sleeping, mood wrestling, figurative skating, alter egos’ (Patrice offers ‘ego-lifting’), while Damien Becker rolls off a string of possibilities, ‘Unboxing, synchronised edits, long hand, marathon recitation, book diving, track changes, bibliosleigh and plot twisting.’
Alan Fyfe also has several ideas: ‘Networking marathon (have writing conversations at 26 events). Competitive publisher bothering (one publisher at an event with 25 authors). Gymnastic editorial compromise (see how many arbitrary edits can be done to a work and still have it be coherent). Rhythmic Twitter cancellation (self-explanatory), 100-metre em dash (speed event for overuse of em dashes). Poverty triathlon (do the shopping, pay the rent and raise a kid on $11,000 a year). Grant wrestling (full contact).’
In a similar vein, and in acknowledgement of the many hurdles authors have to negotiate to succeed, Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon wonders, ‘Which writer can jump poverty, working class roots, their family background, grants, mental health, anxiety, crippling imposter syndrome, race or a second language background? The hurdles get higher each time.’
Other authors are philosophically-tuned. ‘The mental gymnastics of separating art from artist,’ says Kate Couper Watson, who also would like to honour extreme bookworms, even though she realises her event would be a niche one outside the main Olympic program. ‘Show a bibliophile a series of books of mixed age and see if they can guess one or more names from the inscription. Is this a soft leather-bound tome “To Dear Minnie with love from Ethel” in copperplate or is it a hardcover children’s book from the 80s “To Jason love from Grandma”?
Read: How did winning literary awards affect your life?
‘We can also do blindfolded sniff tests of books and guess their ages? Or we start with the blindfolded sniff test, progress through blind handling to guess genre and refine our original age guess, to seeing the cover and guessing the year of publication, all the way to the inscription.’
There’s certainly no end to the possible literary laureate events that can prevail should the authorities and powers-that-be decide to restart an arts-inclusive Olympics…
