Alice Munro

Liam

Liam

Administrator
Peter Englund says that Munro will not be coming to the ceremony in December because of "health reasons." Who will come to pick up the Prize in her name and what form her Nobel lecture shall take remains to be seen.
 
OverTheMountains

OverTheMountains

Reader
I hope that Munro has somebody speak something that she has written for the occasion. She is a very secluded writer - a celebrity for her writing, but certainly not for her public persona. She rarely attends interviews, or festivals, or is filmed talking about 'writing'. But she has so much to say about the task of communicating ideas to a reader, I suspect. It doesn't surprise me, though, that she is not attending the ceremony due to poor health. I have had this feeling for three or four years now - since she started releasing stuff that is now available in Dear Life. But, though she may not be well enough to appear, I am sure that she is well enough to write something for it. Or at least I selfishly hope she is.

I read a story from Runaway today. "Trespasses." The tension and pacing was just phenomenal. I was eating out of the palm of her hands by the end of the story. And that last paragraph is wonderful - simply wonderful.
 
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Damian Kelleher

Reader
That is a terrible article. This person is being deliberately disingenuous.

First, using Canada as an example of a strange, rare, out-of-the-way, controversial, unexpected pick is simply bizarre. Yes, it's their first laureate, but they (mostly) write in English and Munro has been published in all of the major American publications. A controversial pick she was not.

Put bluntly, I didn’t think they’d look beyond western Europe, and if they did, I figured they’d choose from a handful of well-trod countries (of which Japan is one). Instead they chose a writer from Canada, and because of that I’m hoping that 2013 marks a kind of threshold: the year in which the Nobel became a global prize.
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Unbelievable. Again, we are talking about a Canadian writer.

His choice of adverb in saying that Europe is “still” the center of the literary world makes clear that he thinks European hegemony was never seriously challenged.
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Incorrect. You would say something like "Europe is the centre of the literary world" if European hegemony was never seriously challenged. Adding the word "still" rather bluntly implies that there was a challenge.

Both Asia and Africa have fewer total awards than Scandinavia.
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True and reasonable.

Witness the difference between their motivations for giving the prize to Patrick White and giving it to Alice Munro. In 1973, they awarded White Australia’s first prize for a sublimely condescending reason, congratulating the Cambridge grad for his noblesse oblige in having “introduced a new continent into literature.” Aboriginal Australian culture has existed for millennia, and Europeans have lived there since at least the late 18th century, but it took the Nobel Prize, you see, for Australian writing to materialize.
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No, it took Patrick White's writing for Australian writing to materialise. That is more than obvious. The Nobel Committee believed that White brought Australian literature into global awareness. Right or wrong, that's clearly what is meant. Also, regarding Aboriginal people - there aren't a great deal of books, which makes the comment, which exists purely for outrage and hyperbole reasons, completely useless. The Nobel is not a culture prize.

If this year’s prize is a sign, as I hope it is, that the Nobel committee is dispensing with its ugliest prejudice, American writers need to recognize Munro’s win for what it really is. It’s a win not just for a writer who eminently deserves it — it’s a win for writers the world over who’ve long had to deal with more substantial dismissals than we have.
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Oh, please.

I'm sorry, but that entire article is garbage from start to finish - and I like Munro's win more and more as time progresses.

That said, thanks for posting it. I am amazed that, even when an English-language establishment author wins, people still manage to complain about the Nobel Committee. Goodness me.
 
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Damian Kelleher

Reader
I don't want to be too much of a hater. Which apparently is difficult, based on the above. Alas.

I need to give myself a Tabucchi chaser to calm down or something.
 
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Bernd

Guest
Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 
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