Nobel Prize in Literature 2009

[Igu Soni]

List of postmodern authors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Come on, in this list, pretty much everything is postmodernist!

Saramago and Garc?a M?rquez? No way

Also, Roald Dahl. I mean, Roald friggin Dahl? (Though I have to admit that I've always thought of Saramago as po-mo.)

 

[waalkwriter]

Oh, gorgeous,

I guess we're lucky you like any writer whose books were written after burning people on stakes became unfashionable.

That's a ridiculous assessment mirabell, there were plenty of people who did fantastic works of art. I don't share the assumption that just because po-mos came around and destroyed literature so much we some how can't evolve beyond it. And its not all po-mos, more exclusively its many of the hack American po-mos, writers like Saramago, Eco, they don't go overboard with it and they can actually write, something Barthelme, Barth, Gaas, and Pynchon can't.

Other writers were doing what the po-mos did, fracturing language and incorporating extensive referencing, only they did it better, writers such as magical realists, modernists, both groups of the 20th Century I am a huge fan of, a writer like Borges for example.

I'm tired of the focus on form personally, I am reader for a new literature movement to emerge without much focus on form; instead of the excessive energies of form the focus shifts to natural writing invibed with deep emotion or if there is fractured form it is done so as realistically and fantastically as Faulkner did it.

 

[Mirabell]

That's a ridiculous assessment mirabell, there were plenty of people who did fantastic works of art.

It was a joke, darling. Clearly and obviously a joke.

 

[waalkwriter]

It was a joke, darling. Clearly and obviously a joke.

Oh, I didn't see it like that. I've seen that kind of statement before; you know, dismissing people who don't like po-mo as antiquated.

 

[Mirabell]

Oh, I didn't see it like that. I've seen that kind of statement before; you know, dismissing people who don't like po-mo as antiquated.

No, Liam specializes, academically, in the Middle Ages. Literally, not metaphorically the Middle Ages.

 

[waalkwriter]

No, Liam specializes, academically, in the Middle Ages. Literally, not metaphorically the Middle Ages.

Ahh, see I was missing that, now I see your joke, lol. I didn't know that. No wonder he likes Eco

 

[Eric]

I was looking at the Nobel website, and found this:

The Nobel Committee for Literature

Despite their being called "The Eighteen", there only seem to be the following six people actually active:

Per W?stberg (Chairman)
FD, Writer

Horace Engdahl (Secretary)
FD, Professor, Writer

Peter Englund (Member)
Professor, Writer

Kjell Espmark (Member)
Emeritus Professor, Writer

Katarina Frostenson (Member)
Writer

Kristina Lugn (Member)
Writer

***

Er, that's it. So only six people choose who's to win the million dollars. Though they made a good decision this time round.

 

[Bjorn]

So only six people choose who's to win the million dollars.

Not quite. From the same page you linked to:

The Nobel Committee at the Swedish Academy is responsible for the selection of candidates from the names submitted by invited nominators.

And from its parent page:

The Nobel Committee assesses the nominations and presents a preliminary list of candidates for approval by the Academy.

And finally, from the Academy's own web page:

The results of the Committee?s work are presented to the Academy in April, in the form of a preliminary list of candidates, generally comprising 15 to 20 names.

When the Academy has approved the preliminary list, it goes back to the Nobel Committee again, and at the end of May, the Committee delivers a definitive list of priority candidates. The list is of five names as a rule and the Academy is free to make changes and additions. The Academy?s last task for the spring term?s Nobel Prize work is to approve the definitive list of candidates.

During the summer, Academy members are to read from the production of the remaining five candidates - if they have not already done so: many of the more prominent names recur on the definitive list year after year, in which case it will suffice to see whether in the intervening period they have published work which either strengthens or weakens their case. Each Nobel Committee member has also to prepare an individual report to be presented to the Academy at the first meeting of the autumn term.

When the Academy reconvenes after the summer holidays, the members must have done their homework. The first meeting of the autumn is held in mid-September, and since the decision on the year?s winner is currently made in early or mid-October, there are only a few weeks to confer and reach a decision. For the choice of a prize winner to be valid, a candidate must receive more than half of the votes cast.

 

[Eric]

I take in all your points, Bj?rn, but common sense still tells me that the six who do all the work and have chosen the candidates will steer the rest of them in the direction they want, as they, and their experts, will have examined all the information much more thoroughly than the rest of the 18 (some of whom are too old to take an active part in any decision-making).

I wouldn't imagine that the other Academy members do very much more than rubber-stamp decisions made by The Six, plus a little input on recent works by candidates, which may sway the 18 one way or the other. The method described on the Academy's own page does undoubtedly look very fair, and obviously, the members have built up a knowledge of what certain recurring candidates have written before, so they would only have to read their new works.

The basic point I am making is that it looks to me as if the six people listed have much more say than the rest. For reasons of efficiency, this may be legitimate, since they are literary people of long standing. It looks like what happens in a national parliament: an executive committee does most of the work, while the full parliament has a vote, but is firmly guided by the committee.

 

[Daniel del Real]

I take in all your points, Bj?rn, but common sense still tells me that the six who do all the work and have chosen the candidates will steer the rest of them in the direction they want, as they, and their experts, will have examined all the information much more thoroughly than the rest of the 18 (some of whom are too old to take an active part in any decision-making).
.

If it's six, or eighteen, or ten, frankly it doesn't matter. The real problem is the terrible decisions they've taken this decade.

 

[Stiffelio]

Quote:
The Nobel Committee at the Swedish Academy is responsible for the selection of candidates from the names submitted by invited nominators.



Who are these invited nominators? Can nominations only be submitted if the Academy invites a given person or institution to do so? I think this is also a critical knot in the decision making process.

 

[Bjorn]

Who are these invited nominators? Can nominations only be submitted if the Academy invites a given person or institution to do so? I think this is also a critical knot in the decision making process.

From the Academy's page linked above:

To be eligible for a Nobel Prize, a candidate must be nominated by a qualified person. Those entitled to nominate candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature are:

• members of the Swedish Academy and of other academies, institutions and societies similar to it in membership and aims;
• professors of literary and linguistic disciplines at universities and university colleges;
• former Nobel Laureates in Literature;
• presidents of authors? organisations which are representative of the literary activities of their respective countries.

Nominations made by persons not belonging to any of these categories will be disregarded. A person may not nominate himself or herself; that is, the Nobel Prize cannot be applied for.