Nobel Prize in Literature 2010

[Eric]

Lionel wants me to rant. So here goes. The only time I saw Pinter in real life he was sitting at a table and had a kind creepy stare. He was with his wife Lady Antonia Fraser, one of the poshest Anglo-Catholic families in England. Her daddy was the Labour (!) peer Lord Longford (aka Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford /pronounced packenham/), So, I suppose Lionel will say he betrayed his class origins. It's easy to be an admirer of working class life when you belong to the aristocracy. Pakenham was about as working class as the two Swedish social-democrats Hjalmar Branting and Olof Palme. And along comes this violence and thugs playwright from the East End of London and marries his daughter.

It is nice of PerDanielAmadeus to give us such fulsome information on the Nobel. But when he uses the word "stunning" you would think he had become a Swedish Mirabell, or maybe it's our old friend Peter Englund, or even Horace the Hedgehog.

Patricia39, thank goodness there's someone here who's actually read Mario Vargas Llosa. But I'm afraid we're not allowed to like him on these threads because he's too right-wing for some of the armchair revolutionaries that have nested here.

My English grandfather worked down a coalmine. But I cannot consider myself as working class, as I've had the most ordinary of middle-class upbringings. It was my father who rose from being a working class lad to become a grammar school boy on a scholarship, then a university student in the 1930s. So by his change of class, I too have no direct link to workers and other romantic beings.

Jelinek, or Jelly Neck as I call her for fun, is one of those screwed up types who comes from a pretty well-off bourgeois family and has been playing at being a Commie for decades.

I thought that A.S. Byatt was a staunch Labour supporter. Because her sister Margaret Drabble hobnobs with the very Lady Antonia Fraser I was mentioning above in the Pinter context. And A.S. Byatt's daughter, Antonia Byatt was the top literature bod at the Arts Council of England under the previous Labour government. There appears to be a little clique of rather well-off and well-connected people in Merrie England who play at proletarian politics.

 

[waalkwriter]

Lionel wants me to rant. So here goes. The only time I saw Pinter in real life he was sitting at a table and had a kind creepy stare. He was with his wife Lady Antonia Fraser, one of the poshest Anglo-Catholic families in England. Her daddy was the Labour (!) peer Lord Longford (aka Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford /pronounced packenham/), So, I suppose Lionel will say he betrayed his class origins. It's easy to be an admirer of working class life when you belong to the aristocracy. Pakenham was about as working class as the two Swedish social-democrats Hjalmar Branting and Olof Palme. And along comes this violence and thugs playwright from the East End of London and marries his daughter.

It is nice of PerDanielAmadeus to give us such fulsome information on the Nobel. But when he uses the word "stunning" you would think he had become a Swedish Mirabell, or maybe it's our old friend Peter Englund, or even Horace the Hedgehog.

Patricia39, thank goodness there's someone here who's actually read Mario Vargas Llosa. But I'm afraid we're not allowed to like him on these threads because he's too right-wing for some of the armchair revolutionaries that have nested here.

My English grandfather worked down a coalmine. But I cannot consider myself as working class, as I've had the most ordinary of middle-class upbringings. It was my father who rose from being a working class lad to become a grammar school boy on a scholarship, then a university student in the 1930s. So by his change of class, I too have no direct link to workers and other romantic beings.

Jelinek, or Jelly Neck as I call her for fun, is one of those screwed up types who comes from a pretty well-off bourgeois family and has been playing at being a Commie for decades.

I thought that A.S. Byatt was a staunch Labour supporter. Because her sister Margaret Drabble hobnobs with the very Lady Antonia Fraser I was mentioning above in the Pinter context. And A.S. Byatt's daughter, Antonia Byatt was the top literature bod at the Arts Council of England under the previous Labour government. There appears to be a little clique of rather well-off and well-connected people in Merrie England who play at proletarian politics.

I seem to be a bit confused here. Are you trying to go about saying that someone can't be wealthy and yet have a left-inclined social conscience? Need I point out to you that the greatest champion of socialism and proactive government policies there ever was in America, was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, scion to New England royalty, a member of America's de facto ruling class of northern industrialists and politicians. Because you seem to be saying that by being rich, they aren't allowed to also be inclined towards moderate, Democratic socialism. I mean in America a majority of people making over 200k a year voted for Obama; he actually lost the poor voters, who Republicans have convinced to vote against their own interests.

Where do you think America's great "Conservative" movements come from? Certainly not from the upper stratums. It completely destroys your idea of the peaceful and logical separation of class interests into political parties. The tea party people in America aren't rich well educated urbanites; they poor people from rural areas, uneducated for the most part and paranoid about 'big gub'ment'. They go around picketing the capitol building carrying signs with "Stop Fascism" on one side, and "Say no to socialism on the other" and when you talk to them its clear they don't have a clue of the difference between Communism and the Keynesian welfare state. They tend to be especially religious; many are the folks who like to stand outside abortion clinics and yell "baby-killers" at all the women, and they foster the occasional firebomber or guy who takes it into his head to follow a doctor into church and shoot him in the head.

Some protest, swinging their automatic rifles around callings for armed revolution, or as one Republican candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates said, "It's the ballot box or the bullet box for us." And of course these people get their marching orders, unknowingly of course, by the occasional stray conservative activist billionaire, like Rupert Murdoch or the Koch brothers, (who have pumped millions into organizational funding and activities to promote these groups), but they are for the most part lower to middle class blue collar people, reactionary and almost all-white, driven ostensibly by hatred of a certain, bland, centrist-governing President who hasn't really pursued any policy objectives that weren't commonsense and completely logical. People who scream about the government takeover of healthcare when discussing a bill that does almost nothing except institute some new regulations that keep HMO's from screwing people over as much as they do, and provides subsidies to help small businesses pay for health insurance as well as for some lower income families, along with a coverage mandate like we already for everyone who wants to drive a car.

It's difficult to take people with such a little grasp on reality, and such immediate embracal of sensationalism and hyperbole, seriously. They are buffoons, clowns, and unfortunately very dangerous ones of the American political process. Go try and talk politics to people who thinks Obama is a secret KGB Muslim agent who stole the election with the help of dirty community organizers like ACORN and is the anti-christ and the signal of the beginning of the end-of-days.

Try that on for a political rant Eric ^^

And Lionel, I thought of you when I saw a French clothing label for a clothing brand manufactured in America, at the bottom it said something like, "And sorry for our idiotic President (Bush), We didn't vote for him."

 

[Bubba]

And Lionel, I thought of you when I saw a French clothing label for a clothing brand manufactured in America, at the bottom it said something like, "And sorry for our idiotic President (Bush), We didn't vote for him."

Americans who, trying to curry favor with the French, or with whatever other foreigners, but especially with the French, apologize for their president--whoever he may be--or for being American ought to be stripped of their US nationality ipso facto. It's only marginally less offensive when it's a company (let me guess: it's those asshats at American Apparel) trying to sell stuff to foreigners that's doing the apologizing.

 

[waalkwriter]

Americans who, trying to curry favor with the French, or with whatever other foreigners, but especially with the French, apologize for their president--whoever he may be--or for being American ought to be stripped of their US nationality ipso facto. It's only marginally less offensive when it's a company (let me guess: it's those asshats at American Apparel) trying to sell stuff to foreigners that's doing the apologizing.

I used to be a lot more sympathetic to the French before I took this German Politics course. Not only did De Gaulle and other French leaders have some grossly exaggerated view of their own importance in defeating the Nazi's, but after the war they were far away the most obsessed with their own version of the Morgenthau plan, until British and American pressure, plus domestic German pressure forced them to back down. Their initial solution after WWII was pretty much to eradicate the German culture and create a powerless, politically fragmented agrarian collection of states under France's sphere of influence.

The French Congress created major dints in the Western alliance by refusing to allow Britain into the European Common Market and voting against allowing Germany into the, (I believe it was termed), European Defense Counsel, (which turned out better for Germany because the U.S. bypassed it and put Germany in NATO). They had a massive inflated ego in regard to their importance politically, and no other country went to such extents to hold onto its colonial possessions as did France. I don't know, it's just more and more I find things to dislike about France that temper the things I appreciate and admire about it. Particularly exhausting to me is the whiny, capricious, contrarian vein of French intellectual and political culture, particularly figures like De Gaulle, all the way up to blowhards like Chirac, and the current xenophobic demagogue in power now who is hell-driven to show all of Europe France's darker side.

I was going to say to Amoxicalli also, don't worry about Sweden. Seriously. It's been my experience that, compared to American politics, there's practically no difference between the two major party coalitions in Europe. The rightists just tend to believe in a little less Keynesian economics if they can get away with it, and in some cases, like Norway, the Rightist party is still incredibly progressive. Only in England are things rough, but don't worry there. The Conservatives will be, to put it brusquely, raped in the next election following the conservative platform they've shoved down the nation's throat. The liberals will be hurt more so, they will reap their just reward, trust me. I know about half a dozen mainly leftist voters in England who voted Liberal hoping to see a genuine party bring new progressive ideals to the political discussion; not rubberstamp a regressive Conservative tax plan and sign on to massive cuts to crucial state institutions in the middle of recession.

 

[Amoxcalli]

I was going to say to Amoxicalli also, don't worry about Sweden. Seriously. It's been my experience that, compared to American politics, there's practically no difference between the two major party coalitions in Europe. The rightists just tend to believe in a little less Keynesian economics if they can get away with it, and in some cases, like Norway, the Rightist party is still incredibly progressive. Only in England are things rough, but don't worry there. The Conservatives will be, to put it brusquely, raped in the next election following the conservative platform they've shoved down the nation's throat. The liberals will be hurt more so, they will reap their just reward, trust me. I know about half a dozen mainly leftist voters in England who voted Liberal hoping to see a genuine party bring new progressive ideals to the political discussion; not rubberstamp a regressive Conservative tax plan and sign on to massive cuts to crucial state institutions in the middle of recession.

I'm not worrying about Sweden. I'm worrying about my undergraduate course becoming at least twice as expensive under the Tories. It's all fine and good that they'll be raped in the next election, but by that time I'll have a student debt of around 28 thousand pounds.

And I worry about Herr Geert Wilders. I have no doubt a government which owes its existence to a islamophobe will hurt international relations and if there's anything the Netherlands relies on economically, it's international relations. We do happen to have (had?) strong economical ties to the country with the biggest population of "totalitarian fascists", to paraphrase Der F?hrer.

Also.

It's Amoxcalli, not Amoxicalli. Amoxcalli. Geddit?

 

[waalkwriter]

I'm not worrying about Sweden. I'm worrying about my undergraduate course becoming at least twice as expensive under the Tories. It's all fine and good that they'll be raped in the next election, but by that time I'll have a student debt of around 28 thousand pounds.

And I worry about Herr Geert Wilders. I have no doubt a government which owes its existence to a islamophobe will hurt international relations and if there's anything the Netherlands relies on economically, it's international relations. We do happen to have (had?) strong economical ties to the country with the biggest population of "totalitarian fascists", to paraphrase Der F?hrer.

Also.

It's Amoxcalli, not Amoxicalli. Amoxcalli. Geddit?

Sucks for you, lol. But if it makes you feel better since I turned 19 I no longer have public health insurance, and thus have no way to pay for non-vital medical expenses ^^

Shoulda gone to Sweden. I hear there's a big a college up in there that teaches courses only in English, which is crazy.

 

[beelzebubbles]

A little levity on the subject of the Nobel for Literature

Bill Maher's New Rule: Nobel Committee Must Rename The Prize (VIDEO)

 

[phoenixzeze]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.. I think LIlosa is a great writer. I read some of his works and I really think he deserves a prize. But, you may respond aggressively to this, I try to read between the lines. I mean, why one cant help but notice some political orientation in the prize giving? especially the Nobel ones. A writer who lived in Iran and wrote about it, mostly in a negative way; another anti-Chavez writer. Other examples are to be mentioned once remembered...

I dont know, but I really think there is something behind the policy of chosing. I always manage to find flaws in the objictivity of chosing. Here, I am not saying that LIosa is not great. I love Latin American Literature, it is my favourite literature actually.

 

[Bjorn]

The fun thing, of course, is that they're usually accused of having a leftist politial bias. Exactly how Llosa is supposed to fit into that... I'm sure someone knows how to explain it.

Fact is, the award is supposed to go to wrters who deal with ideals. Those tend to be political, especially in dictatorships. I'd be more worried if they started giving it to writers who write nothing but harmless love stories and self-help literature.

As for the Iranian writer you mention, I assume you mean Shirin Ebadi? She won the Peace prize, not the Literature one. Completely different thing. Her book Iran Awakening is a very good read, though.

 

[Eric]

Just out of interest, Mario Vargas Llosa started out as a Marxist. But I think he realised that the political label doesn't matter when there is wheeling and dealing, corruption, manipulation, and so on, and that the Marxists could do this just as well as the right. Look at Orwell's depictions of the Communists during the Spanish Civil War for a comparison.

For those who live in Stockholm such as Björn, I believe that Vargas Llosa will be addressing either PEN or some other similar gathering on 11th December, i.e. one day after King Gustav has handed him his prize. None of the leftie prizewinners, such as Pinter, Jelinek, and so on, have refused to accept the prize from the hands of a royal, but that is another story. Funny how a million dollars makes people willing to become one-day royalists.

 

[Mirabell]

This is just for future reference, but when the next nobel speculation comes around, and the next wave of people gripe about who shoulda won but didn't, this will be my response

 

[Corswandt]

This is just for future reference, but when the next nobel speculation comes around, and the next wave of people gripe about who shoulda won but didn't, this will be my response

Pastis/Pearls would be awesome even if his competition among comic strips wasn't so lame.

I remember when at a book fair I asked for one of Pearls Before Swine collections, the lady at the counter told me that if I got two other comic strip collections I'd get a fourth for free, but I said that I was only missing one of the Pearls books and wasn't interested in any of the other strips. The lady sort of sighed and said "Yeah...Those who buy Pearls Before Swine don't usually get any of the other ones...".