Oddest Book Title of the Year shortlist announced for The Diagram Prize 2022

The six-strong shortlist for the 44th edition of the prize sees a record three entries from one publisher, US-based McFarland & Co. The academic specialist is also seeking to become the first publisher of back-to-back Diagram wins after Roy Schwartz’s Is Superman Circumsized?—a look at the Jewish origins of the “Mensch of Steel”⁠—flew away with the 2021 award, garnering 51% of the public vote.

McFarland & Co was launched in 1979, is based in the small Appalachian town of Jefferson, North Carolina and largely produces humanities monographs, particularly in popular culture. Its shortlistees are: Ron Riekki’s The Many Lives of Scary Clowns: Essays on Pennywise, Twisty, the Joker, Krusty and More, a look at the horror clown genre “from Shakespeare to Stephen King”; RuPedagogies of Realness: Essays on Teaching and Learning With RuPaul’s Drag Race, Lindsay Bryde and Tommy Mayberry’s examination of the cultural importance of the hit reality TV show; and Jane Austen and the Buddha: Teachers of Enlightenment, Kathyrn Duncan’s somewhat unlikely linkage of Britain’s greatest Regency writer with Buddhist philosophy.

Horace Bent, The Bookseller columnist and administrator of the prize, praised McFarland’s triple shortlisting. He said: “Diagram glory is a hard-won thing and after last year’s magisterial Is Superman Circumsized?, I thought McFarland would struggle to repeat its success. Boy, was I wrong. Three shortlistings is a colossal achievement that will ring down the ages along with Hilary Mantel’s double Booker wins or perhaps even Milli Vanilli’s triumph at the 1990 Grammys.”

Two other academic imprints are in this year’s Diagram hunt: the University Press of Mississippi’s Frankenstein was a Vegetarian: Essays on Food Choice, Identity, and Symbolism, Michael Owen Jones’ look at “folklore and foodways”; and University of British Columbia Press’ What Nudism Exposes: An Unconventional History of Postwar Canada, Mary-Ann Shantz’s presumably free-flowing canter through 70 years of Canadian naturism. The sole non-academic title is Smuggling Jesus Back into the Church, author Andrew Fellows’ contention that Christianity has become too secular.

Tom Tivnan, The Bookseller’s managing editor and co-ordinator of the Diagram, said: “If nothing, this year’s stellar Diagram sextet shows the power of academia whose esoteric works may extend scholars’ understanding of the world, but whose head-scratching titles definitely entertain Diagramistas year after year. For example, where else but the Diagram Prize would the wider world even entertain a notion of a Canadian nudist movement⁠? And by extension makes us think of the horrific frostbite those poor Canadian nudists might have suffered.”

The winning title will now be chosen by members of the public via an online vote. The vote closes on 26th November, with the winning entry to be announced on Friday 2nd December.

There is no prize for the winning author or publisher, but traditionally a "passable bottle of claret" is given to the nominator of the winning entry. If a title wins that was nominated by The Bookseller staff, the claret will be given at random to a member of the public who participated in the online voting.

The Diagram was originally conceived in 1978 by Trevor Bounford and Bruce Robertson, co-founders of publishing solutions firm The Diagram Group, as a way to avoid boredom at the annual Frankfurt Book Fair. The inaugural winner was Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice. Other honourees include The Dirt Hole and its Variations (2019), Managing a Dental Practice: The Genghis Khan Way (2010) and Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers (1996), the last of which won 2008’s Diagram of Diagrams public vote as the most popular title in the first 40 years of the prize. The Bookseller and Bent have administered the award since 1982.

The shortlist in full

Frankenstein Was a Vegetarian: Essays on Food Choice, Identity, and Symbolism
Michael Owen Jones
University Press of Mississippi
A cultural history of food and folkways, from Mary Shelley’s monster to “how food is used and abused on the campaign trail [and] how gender issues arise when food meets politics”.

The Many Lives of Scary Clowns: Essays on Pennywise, Twisty, the Joker, Krusty and More by Ron Riekki (McFarland & Co)
Essays on the examination of the killer clown horror genre from its origins to today. Includes interviews with practitioners, including the director of 2020’s slasher B-Movie “Kill Giggles”. 

Jane Austen and the Buddha: Teachers of Enlightenment by Kathryn Duncan (McFarland & Co)
Duncan’s argument that the suffering in Austen’s novels meant the author “intuitively” grasped some of the Buddha’s most fundamental teachings of the Four Noble Truths: “that life contains suffering... and that we can stop suffering by following the Eightfold Path”.

RuPedagogies of Realness: Essays on Teaching and Learning With RuPaul’s Drag Race by Lindsay Bryde and Tommy Mayberry (McFarland & Co)
“Academic yet accessible” look at the cultural importance of RuPaul Charles’ global reality TV hit, and what the show teaches its viewers.

Smuggling Jesus Back into the Church by Andrew Fellows (IVP)
“Polemical but hope-filled guide” of how secularism has taken over the church and how Christians can recentre and revive their faith.

What Nudism Exposes: An Unconventional History of Postwar Canada by Mary-Ann Shantz (University of British Columbia Press)
“Original” perspective on postwar Canada by situating the nudist movement within the country’s broader social and cultural context and considering how nudist clubs navigated changing times.