Nobel Prize in Literature 2008

[sara]

I think it's time for the academy to look to new horizons.

While we are at it, could someone explain to me why some great writers like *cough* Philip Roth or Don de Lillo are supposed to be out of the question?
I am not really familiar with the politics of the Swedish Academy, but my understanding is that they are not going to get it any time soon (if I remember correctly there was also an announcement or an interview -sorry for being so vague- on how American writers are out of the picture for some time).

I can see how the tendency might be to honour less known writers and therefore make their work more accessible to a wider audience but still....
I can't see how Lessing or Pamouk have been honoured with this Prize, while Roth has not.
I am sorry for sounding so subjective, but he might just be the greatest living writer.

 

[Mirabell]

While we are at it, could someone explain to me why some great writers like *cough* Philip Roth or Don de Lillo are supposed to be out of the question?
I am not really familiar with the politics of the Swedish Academy, but my understanding is that they are not going to get it any time soon (if I remember correctly there was also an announcement or an interview -sorry for being so vague- on how American writers are out of the picture for some time).

I can see how the tendency might be to honour less known writers that therefore make their work more accessible to a wider audience but still....
I can't see how Lessing or Pamouk have been honoured with this Prize, while Roth has not.
I am sorry for sounding so subjective, but he might just be the greatest living writer.

I read somewhere that Philip Roth is apparently pushy, plugging his name whenever he can, sweet talking people with influence on the academy. the academy doesn't take well to these tactics.

 

[sara]

Thank you for your reply, Mirabell.
Somehow, as much as I LOVE Philip Roth (a lot) I actually can see him as being pushy. And he does issue a book every year lately, which could be as well interpreted as "will you give me the Nobel already!"

I thought that there were some more complicated political reasons behind this (him not getting the Prize, that is), but I might be wrong.

 

[Bjorn]

While we are at it, could someone explain to me why some great writers like *cough* Philip Roth or Don de Lillo are supposed to be out of the question?

As far as I know, they're not. A lot of people seem to assume that they are based on the fact that they haven't gotten it (at least not yet), but I've never heard of any member of the Academy saying they will never get it. I think there was a comment from the former secretary that he wasn't sure whether some frequently mentioned writers (I think he mentioned Oates and Murakami) need the prize, since they're already about as huge as one can be within literary circles, but that's about it. They're usually very tight-lipped about possible future winners.

(if I remember correctly there was also an announcement or an interview -sorry for being so vague- on how American writers are out of the picture for some time).

Former secretary Horace Engdahl made a comment about American literature as a whole being "insular." He never said that every single American author was worthless, or that no US author would ever get it, but that's how a lot of people interpreted it.

I am sorry for sounding so subjective, but he might just be the greatest living writer.

FWIW I agree that Roth is great, and I certainly wouldn't complain if he got it. But on the other hand, it's not like there's any shame in joining the non-Nobel club alongside Tolstoy, Twain, Kafka, Woolf and others...

 

[sara]

Thank you for your comments Bjorn!

I have to say that I agree with you on the last comment- I guess it's no shame to not get a Nobel..

However, I sometimes wonder about the significance of this particular prize. I mean- what are really the criteria?
Growing up, I thought that it was the one Prize that signified -well, in one word and to put it simply- literature greatness.
I don't mean to imply of course that all the writers who got it in, say, the last ten years, are not or could not be great (and I have to be honest and admit that I haven't read all of them) but I have this vague impression that the Award is now given to -apparently- very good writers, who are not that well known, so that they become more accessible to the wider audience.
And my impression might not be wrong after all all, since the words of the former secretary (that some writers are already huge and don't need the Prize) imply more or less the same thing.
Now I can see how Philip Roth, after all the Faulkner Awards and the Pulitzers and the millions of books he's sold, does not "need" the Prize, however there is something I don't like about this rationale (plus I don't see what international fame has to do with merit when it comes to such prestigious awards, but whatever).
It's like saying "look, we know Roth and DeLillo are GREAT and in many ways deserving of the Prize, BUT we might give it to someone who's maybe not as great -or maybe even less deserving!- so that more people read thei books". (You can argue whatever you like here but I will never get how Jelinek ,for instance, is more/as deserving of the Prize as Roth and DeLillo and even Oates).
And in my humble opinion, this statement does not "honour" the writers who finally get it, nor the Prize itself.
(Not to mention that this almost reduces the Nobel Prize to something like the Oscars- "Tom Hanks was great in that film, but hey, he already got it twice, let's give to some undeserving and overacting actor because he has never got it before!")

Anyway, maybe the way to see it is Bjorn's last comment.
Many great writers never got it, and are still percieved and will forever be percieved the way they should, even without the Prize.

 

[Mirabell]

Dunno, the prize has often went to lesser known writers. The Bellows and Grass' just stand out. But when Claude Simon won it, most critics had forgotten he even existed, not to mention the Scandinavian poets who won it, see Karlfeldt in 1931. Literary Greatness? After all, Churchill and Rudolph Eucken, amongst others won it many many decades ago. Everybody who criticises these past decade(s) would do well to look at the first three decades. The academy learned from mistakes. Paul Heyse won, he was in his day, exceptionally successful, with critics and the reading public, according to some critics he was thought to be very deserving of the prize. Today he is not reprinted, his influence on literature has proven to be slim to none etc. With Lessing the academy awarded the prize to a living classic, her main work will continue to be classic for quite some time. Also, the academy has given out awards that fit the zeitgeist. Hamsun's pastoral novel "Growth of the Soil" (He won it explicitly for one work only!), Churchill's memoirs, etc., both of which are today of lesser importance. This led to trying to give lifetime assessments and awards. Choosing Pearl S. Buck engendered the pearl s. buck rule. Again, everybody who criticises this past decade would do well to look at the first three decades. What is the Nobel awarded for? Look at the justifications: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Literature
gives you a good idea.

 

[sara]

This is a very good point Mirabell, you're right.
I haven't given much thought on the first decades, to be honest.
I was mostly refering to the past decade.
And - I know this is a bit ignorant- when I think of Nobel prize, the first names that come to my mind are Bellow, Elytis, Seferis (that's what happens if you grow up where I grew up ), T.S.Elliot, Marquez, Faulkner, Camus and -yes!- Sartre.
In other words, greatness.
(I'm not a fan of all of those, but, still).

Not that there haven't been many laurates of less "importance" or less influential as you have pointed out, but as the years go by (and by that I mean the last decade, mostly) it's even more difficult to find a HUGE name among winners.

But then again, I am not so much trying to criticise the last decade, as much as wondering about the true criteria

 

[Mirabell]

But then again, I am not so much trying to criticise the last decade, as much as wondering about the true criteria

since I consider neither Sartre nor Camus particularly interesting and Pinter staggeringly great, I, of course, disagree (I have mentioned Lessing's titanic influence, have I? Also, there's Grass!)

as to the criteria, the justifications (see link above) are a very good hint. it doesn't say something like "best/greatest novelist".

 

[Stewart]

But then again, I am not so much trying to criticise the last decade, as much as wondering about the true criteria

The criteria is pretty much, as stipulated in Nobel's will, being to award the writer who has produced the most idealistic body of work. The idealistic part is what's been interpreted in many ways down the years.

You may enjoy this article from the Academy site.

 

[Bjorn]

However, I sometimes wonder about the significance of this particular prize. I mean- what are really the criteria?

Well, the only official one is the one in Alfred Nobel's will: to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency - whatever the hell that means. That's up to the members of the Academy to interpret, and they've changed their approach several times since 1901. Back in the early days, they took it to mean "authors who represent what we see as sound ideals" - hence no prize for Tolstoy, Ibsen et al. Since the 50s, it's come to increasingly mean something along the lines of "authors who challenge and explore important ideas." Here's an interesting quote from Engdahl, btw:

[Great authors] don't belong to their home countries in some strange way. They are like a boil that the nation is always scratching, that hurts the nation, that the nation might want to remove surgically. The most hostile reactions to a Nobel Prize always come from the author's own country. Nations can't live at peace with their greatest writers, it's not possible. Maybe they shouldn't.

Now, personally I think Roth would fit right in there - though it should be noted that Engdahl was speaking of prize winners such as Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn.

Growing up, I thought that it was the one Prize that signified -well, in one word and to put it simply- literature greatness.

Which is how it's come to be seen, though of course that's not an official title in any way. Look at it with a different set of goggles and it's really just a book recommendation by 18 literary snobs, paid for by the guy whose greatest claim to fame is inventing a better way of blowing shit up.

It's like saying "look, we know Roth and DeLillo are GREAT and in many ways deserving of the Prize, BUT we might give it to someone who's maybe not as great -or maybe even less deserving!- so that more people read thei books".

It would be, if they genuinely thought Roth was objectively better and more deserving than Jelinek. I don't think they do. Comparing completely different authors is tricky.

(Not to mention that this almost reduces the Nobel Prize to something like the Oscars- "Tom Hanks was great in that film, but hey, he already got it twice, let's give to some undeserving and overacting actor because he has never got it before!")

If you're comparing Philip Roth to Tom Hanks, I'm afraid I shall have to ask you (in a non-moderatorly capacity and with many a smiley face) to step outside. IMO, what would make it like the Oscars is if they almost always gave it to the author everyone had read, everyone had heard of, who had the biggest PR machinery - with the odd award going to a lesser-known (but still usually American ) writer now and then to prove that they're not just sucking up to the big studios. But that's more my issues with the Oscars than yours with the Nobel, I think, so nevermind.

 

[sara]

Ooops!!
Of course I wan not comparing Philip Roth to Tom Hanks ~lol~
I was just saying that the rationale behind this is similar- sometimes the most deserving actor does not get it, so that they can hand the Oscar to another actor for a less deverving performance, because he had lost it some other year- it happens all the time at these funny awards.
But I am sorry to bring our conversation to that level, but I couldn't help but spotting the "similarities".

Look at it with a different set of goggles and it's really just a book recommendation by 18 literary snobs, paid for by the guy whose greatest claim to fame is inventing a better way of blowing shit up.

That was my point exactly.

And guys, when I said "criteria" I didn't mean the official wording of the Academy on them. This is pretty much known.
What I meant (I apologise for not explaining) is what you also pointed out, the "interpretation" of the criteria.

On another note, I am not so sure if Roth fits in the "great writers do not belong in their home countries" disclaimer.
To me, Roth is the quintessential American writer - in a good way.
but I am not sure we're talking about the same thing.
For instance, would you say that his trilogy "hurts the nation"?
I can see how The Counterlife and Operation Shylock could "hurt" Israel, but not his "own" country.
Maybe I didn't understand the statement you quoted .

 

[Eric]

I know little about U.S. literature, but I think that Horace Engdahl was being pretty bigoted when he swept aside a whole literature, terming it "insular". I'm quite sure there will be insular tendencies, and that quite a few American authors will ignore European literature as incomprehensible. But to tar all American authors with the same brush is going too far. Engdahl may not have implied that every single American author was introverted vis-?-vis the rest of the world, but his comment was extremely badly timed and downright tactless.

Remember that the people doing the choosing for the Nobel prize are a bunch of about twelve very middle-class people (as several of the members of the committee are likely to be too old to participate meaningfully), and only look at things through the prism of what is translated into languages they can read. English will be one of the languages that most Nobel people can read with ease. Maybe a couple can read things in German or French translation (or original).

These Nobel people have made too many painfully politically correct decisions over the past decade or so. And you cannot expect twelve people from the same northern European nation to make a very balanced choice every year, when writers come from all over the world. Swedish people tend to gravitate automatically towards (and away from!) a number of countries. As Roth is Jewish, what he says (or lets slip) publicly about the Israel-Gaza war may swing his chances one way or the other.

I still claim that the fascination of the world with what a dozen Swedes think has far, far more to do with the disproportionately huge amount of money given to one lucky individual, than with any objective literary criteria.

Over the last couple of decades, cracks have also appeared in the Nobel committee, and people even resigned when Rushdie didn't get it.

As for the idealistically vague aims, Bjorn does rather debunk them ("whatever that means"). Engdahl's ideas about scratching boils seem pretty perverse. He, a member of the Swedish establishment, seems to be looking for writers in opposition to their countries, a thorn in the side, to use another metaphor. While it's nice that a couple decent Russians were offered the prize while people were being sent to labour camps, someone like Thomas Mann would hardly have won the prize for such complex novels as "Buddenbrooks" and "The Magic Mountain", were the Nobel committee to have always stuck to Engdahl's criteria of boil-scratching.

 

[Bjorn]

On another note, I am not so sure if Roth fits in the "great writers do not belong in their home countries" disclaimer.
To me, Roth is the quintessential American writer - in a good way.
but I am not sure we're talking about the same thing.
For instance, would you say that his trilogy "hurts the nation"?
I can see how The Counterlife and Operation Shylock could "hurt" Israel, but not his "own" country.
Maybe I didn't understand the statement you quoted .

I may have translated that badly; what I'm guessing he means isn't "hurts" as in "causes harm to", but rather "causes pain" or "irritates" by challenging what we would like to think about ourselves and our society in this the best of all possible worlds; like Eric said, a thorn in their side. Without having read the entire trilogy (I plan to do that this year) I'd say that American Pastoral at least lands a few well-aimed pokes. That's not to say Roth isn't a quintessential American writer, of course; basically, it's the old "dissent is patriotism" thing again.

 

[Eric]

In my previous posting, I made a rather vague statement about "political correctness". Let me try to flesh out what I'm suggesting, the non-literary reasons that the prize was awarded to specific individuals. During the 1970s and 1980s, there was a balance between Left- and Right-wing authors. There were gay and straight authors, ones from smaller languages (e.g. Czech and Modern Greek). One bloomer was when the Nobel people shot themselves in the foot in 1974, by giving the prize to two people sitting on the Nobel committee itself!

Maybe since about 1990, when, of course some of the old guard of the Nobel committee had died off and new blood had arrived, the purview of the prize has become somewhat narrower, more politicised. Or maybe not. Perhaps I'm focussing too much on politics, as opposed to style. I could be being unfair. Some themes are recurring:

2008 - Jean-Marie Gustave Le Cl?zio French-Mauritian
2007 - Doris Lessing ex-Communist, nowadays conservative
2006 - Orhan Pamuk dissident; Turkish
2005 - Harold Pinter Left-wing, Jewish; British
2004 - Elfriede Jelinek Communist; Austria
2003 - J. M. Coetzee apartheid; SA
2002 - Imre Kert?sz Holocaust; Hungary
2001 - V. S. Naipaul multiculturalism, boil-scratcher; Trinidad/Britain
2000 - Gao Xingjian Chinese background; French
1999 - G?nter Grass Social Democrat; Germany
1998 - Jos? Saramago Communist; Portugal
1997 - Dario Fo socialist; Italian
1996 - Wislawa Szymborska socialist, later disillusion; Polish
1995 - Seamus Heaney Irish
1994 - Kenzaburo Oe Japanese
1993 - Toni Morrison Black aspect; USA
1992 - Derek Walcott slave aspect; Trinidad
1991 - Nadine Gordimer anti-apartheid; SA
1990 - Octavio Paz former left, later exposed Cuba; Mexican
1989 - Camilo Jos? Cela right-wing, dodgy background
1988 - Naguib Mahfouz Egyptian
1987 - Joseph Brodsky dissident; Russian
1986 - Wole Soyinka Nigerian
1985 - Claude Simon French
1984 - Jaroslav Seifert former Communist, then dissident; Czech
1983 - William Golding British
1982 - Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez Communist; Colombian
1981 - Elias Canetti emigr? Bulgarian
1980 - Czeslaw Milosz emigr? Polish-Lithuanian
1979 - Odysseus Elytis Greece
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer Jewish [Yiddish-speaking]; Polish-American
1977 - Vicente Aleixandre apolitical?; Spain
1976 - Saul Bellow Jewish; Canadian born, USA
1975 - Eugenio Montale Italian
1974 - Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson Nobel committee members!
1973 - Patrick White gay; Australia
1972 - Heinrich B?ll Social Democrat; Germany
1971 - Pablo Neruda Communist; Chile
1970 - Alexandr Solzhenitsyn dissident; Russian

Since 1970, at least, there have been no Balts or Scandinavians (bar 1974), no Israelis, two Poles, two Latin Americans, two Asians, three Africans, and around a dozen English-speakers, etc. Is this a fair spread, given the limitations of the prize?

Should the Nobel people focus on regions or on invidual authors. How does the committee get to know about individual authors from specific countries? How does lobbying the Nobel committee work? What kinds of people are actively asked by the Nobel committee to submit candidates? University professors? If so, how are these chosen, or is it the grapevine?

Still a lot of questions about the Nobel. But everything about the mechanisms of choosing is shrouded in secrecy, as opposed to with the Neustadt, which has different judges each time.

 

[Bjorn]

Funnily enough, there was a story in a Swedish paper the other day about when Boris Pasternak got it back in 1958 - one of the most politically controversial awards. Since 50 years have gone by, the Academy's notes have been made public and surprise surprise - they (naively) don't seem to have the possible political value of the award into account at all. They simply read Doctor Zhivago (banned in the Soviet Union until 1988) and decided they couldn't not give it to Pasternak.

I cannot but see that this artistically remarkable, intensely experienced work, through its pure and powerful spirit, rising above political party squabbles, and if anything with an apolitical purpose, fulfills the demands put upon the Nobel prize for literature to an extraordinary degree. (...) [The Academy] can make its decision with a clean conscience, without worrying about the temporary issue that Pasternak's novel has not yet been allowed to be published in the Soviet Union.

The resulting political shitstorm resulted in Pasternak being forced to choose between refusing the award and being exiled for life (he chose the former) and the Swedish Prime Minister calling the Academy "unbelievably scatterbrained" and implying that ?sterling was senile for not taking politics into account.

Of course politics are always going to be a factor - especially in a world that puts political aspects on everything that deviates from the perceived norm (being gay, black, or Jewish is a political act now?), and especially given the interpretation of "ideal" to mean "dealing with idea(l)s." Since the nomination process is secret, it's hard to know for sure what aspects play in. For all we know the Academy has gotten a lot more savvy since 1958, and Engdahl might be lying through his teeth when he says, in the article I linked a few posts ago:

In some way we have to be blind to [the political power of the Prize]. If we were to think of it we would have to take secondary aspects into consideration, namely, what will be the effects of this Prize? We are not supposed to do that, for two reasons. One, because it violates the idea of the Prize. Two, because in my experience it's almost impossible to tell what the effects of a Prize will be. The reactions surprise us just as much every time. They keep making very little sense to us. (...) It's unavoidable that practically every choice will be seen as political in one way or another. (...) But we have to ignore that. As far as I know, the Academy only takes that kind of consideration in one situation, and I only know of that from older delegates: you shouldn't give the Prize to an author if it means putting their life in danger. That happens very rarely, but I know it was discussed when Solzhenitsyn got the Prize. (...) You have to remember that Pasternak's life was ruined by the Nobel Prize in 1958. The Academy didn't want to repeat that mistake. We were told it would not harm him. But I think it would be very difficult to award an author if we knew that he or she would be lynched the same day. But apart from that, I don't think we should take any such considerations.

 

[Mirabell]

here's stuff on hemingway/camus

Le pr?sident du comit? ?met son avis : on attendait du nouveau dans la mani?re d'Hemingway, et "c'est arriv? avec Le Vieil Homme et la mer", paru deux ans plus t?t. Certes, il y a du cynisme et de la brutalit? dans son ?criture, ce qui s'accorde mal avec l'id?al Nobel, remarque Herr ?sterling, l'homme fort du comit?. Mais il y a ind?niablement une forme d'h?ro?sme qui le s?duit. Hemingway, alors ? Ce n'est pas gagn?. Herr Siwertz, un autre pilier du comit?, objecte : Hemingway "n'a pas besoin d'un Nobel pour devenir c?l?bre ou riche". Il ajoute : "J'ai de plus en plus le sentiment que depuis trop d'ann?es nous nous en tenons au barom?tre de la c?l?brit?."

Camus ? "Son dernier livre, L'Et?, a des pages d'une beaut? classique, ?crit ?sterling. Son nom peut ?tre ? nouveau actuel. Camus repr?sente toujours l'une des meilleures promesses de la litt?rature fran?aise, et encore une oeuvre de la m?me qualit? que La Peste mettrait s?rement sa candidature dans une position plus favorable." Comme avec Malraux, on sent que le jury Nobel n'attend qu'un "petit" effort de l'?crivain. Dans le secret du vote, Hemingway finalement l'emporte.

Et Camus obtint enfin le prix Nobel - Culture - Le Monde.fr

via Helen DeWitt's excellent blog:
paperpools: Camus wins Nobel prize

 

[Eric]

According to Russians, Boris Pasternak ("palsternacka" or "parsnip" is of the same etymology) was a leading poet, not novelist. I'm sure the novel was good (I've only seen the film with Omar Sharif and Julie Christie), but it would seem as if "Dr Zhivago" was picked when the Nobel people had somehow been persuaded that siding with the West against Communism wasn't such a bad thing after all.

I have some sympathy for the Swedish Prime Minister at the time (Tage Erlander, I presume), when he called the Nobel committee "scatterbrained". These "intellectuals" played into the hands of the KGB and others who no doubt loved to play a sadistic game with Pasternak, forcing him to refuse the prize as the price for being allowed, unmolested, to continue to live in Russia. How na?ve can you get!

As I happen to think that Communism is on a par with Nazism as a killer disease, I could approve that. Indeed, I cannot imagine anyone giving the Nobel prize to a neo-Nazi! But the Nobel committee seems to have cringingly sided with the side strongest in international terms at the time. What we call "brown-tonguing". So they decided that anti-Communism was OK. And yet, a few decades later, when Communism had been rehabilitated, despite Stalin's decades of cattle-wagons, the Nobel committee suddenly started sucking up to Communist authors, like Jelinek, M?rquez and Saramago.

I do believe that being gay, Black or Jewish / Muslim is a political act in the eyes of some armchair revolutionaries and do-gooders. So every time that trend swings in one direction or the other, literary prize committees, including the Nobel, rush to award things to those now in fashion.

*

Let me declare openly that part of my bias or prejudice stems from the fact that I can't stand Horace Engdahl. I saw him in action during several PEN meetings in Stockholm during the 1980s. I cannot honestly remember whether he was smarmy or arrogant, but something rankled with me at the time. As I attended about ten PEN meetings during my life in Sweden, with guests from Georgia (i.e. the Caucasian republic), Israel, Hungary and other PEN clubs, plus a Cuban who had spent 22 years in a Castro gaol, I saw enough of other PEN people to realise that Engdahl's behaviour was not the norm for a PEN member. In those days, I did of course not realise that he would become an influential figure on the Nobel committee.

 

[sara]

Very interesting Bjorn, thank you for the article.

since I consider neither Sartre nor Camus particularly interesting and Pinter staggeringly great

Really?
I know a lot of people who are not very much fond of Sartre - as a writer, at least.
I used to be a huge fan of his plays as a teenager. And "Les Mots" is one of my favorite books ever.
It's been a long time since I last read anything by him, though, and the same goes with Camus. I used to read him for some classes at school (it was french) but that was ages ago.
I am not crazy about Pinter, however.

as to the criteria.....it doesn't say something like "best/greatest novelist".

Ha.
Well, it only makes sense.
Otherwise, they would still need some more criteria to define "best" or "great", and this could go on forever.



Anyway, as I explained above, I was mostly wondering about how all those "criteria" are interpreted each time, and all your posts (Mirabell, Bjorn and Eric) helped me understand some things about the Academy that I didn't know.

 

[Daniel del Real]

Lessing is easily one of the most influential writers of the past half century, an excellent pick. Jelinek's control of language is staggering, she has a body of work which is engag?, affecting and insightful, commenting upon philosophy, feminism, fascism and language.

Nobel prize for Lessing was insignificant. What I'm trying to say is that if she wouldn't have gotten the prize just a few people would've care. She was out the map already. It's not the case of Borges everyone is complaining for not getting the prize. However I'm not saying she's a bad writer, I'm only pointing out that in my personal opinion there are other writers who deserve it more than Lessing, for exampled the mentioned Roth, Vargas Llosa, and in a few years, like it or not, Murakami

 

[sara]

Vargas Llosa

Yes!
I forgot to mention him earlier alongside Roth and DeLillo
(by the way, I keep mentioning DeLillo while I'm not so crazy about his work- apart from Underworld, that is. Anyway.)

Also, I forgot to ask earlier:
Mirabell, I am not familiar with Lessing at all- would you mind elaborating a bit on why she is so influential, if you have the time?