Nobel Prize in Literature 2017

Ater Lividus Ruber & V

Ater Lividus Ruber & V

我ヲ學ブ者ハ死ス
Agreed. Professors I know tend to focus on their specific areas (which makes sense when they have to know EVERYTHING) and aren't that into discussing contemporary authors from around the world with much avidity. Here, a different story.

OTM! I found the rest of that window interview you wanted. You'll have to skip around, but it looks to be the entirety here.

https://www.svtplay.se/video/154729...rekt-presskonferens-med-litteraturpristagaren
 
OverTheMountains

OverTheMountains

Reader
Ater said:
Agreed. Professors I know tend to focus on their specific areas (which makes sense when they have to know EVERYTHING) and aren't that into discussing contemporary authors from around the world with much avidity. Here, a different story.

OTM! I found the rest of that window interview you wanted. You'll have to skip around, but it looks to be the entirety here.

https://www.svtplay.se/video/154729...rekt-presskonferens-med-litteraturpristagaren
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A great many thanks!

It is interesting that he is working on a graphic novel. I wonder who he is using as an artist.
 
tiganeasca

tiganeasca

Moderator
Thanks, all, for your comments. I agree by and large. I also thank faulkner for his (her?) comment about community. But as I think about that notion it seems to me that community is something that applies to participation in this forum in general rather than to this specific thread. Let me be clear: I completely agree with the notion that participation here encourages and confirms a sense a community. There's no question about that in my mind. I think that it's a wonderful and a valuable thing and suspect that our participation here is driven part by what StevieB pointed out: that in our daily lives, few of us are fortunate enough to have a group of friends or colleagues with whom to discuss such matters.

My only issue with the notion is that I don't believe that that explains the particular...vigorousness...of the Nobel thread(s). There are hundreds, if not thousands of other threads here, many of which are of interest as well. But the debate and discussion on the pre-award Nobel thread was particularly energetic and particularly lengthy. It was that fact that I was pointing to in my initial post. I think redheadshadz confirmed my own sense that it is largely for the thrill and enjoyment of the speculation itself. No doubt it's a very personal thing in every case.

Again, thanks to all (well, almost all) for your thoughts. Much appreciated.
 
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U

Uemarasan

Reader
redheadshadz said:
Um so on that note, what do people think of Ishiguro's work?
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The best thing personally to come from this award is it has urged me to reexamine and rethink the work of Ishiguro. It's been years since I've read the books, so I'm planning a reread and looking more closely at his use of British literary genres. I have a feeling there is something very rich to mine from his navigation of genre conventions and his use of erasure not just in themes but in literary form.

I've also been thinking about how Ishiguro responds to the DNA of a culture being written in its literary genres. When I read Ishiguro's work in the past, it was in the context of British literary tradition. The Nobel has given me the opportunity to reconsider that perspective. I have a feeling I'm going to come away from his novels with a much deeper appreciation this time around. I'm certainly excited.
 
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L

leopold

Reader
Isahoinp said:
Because I've seen this quote dragged up again in yet another article, I'd like to hear what you all think of it:

Despite his delight, even Signor Fo's publisher, Michael Earley of Methuen, was shocked. However much Signor Fo is "a first-class theatrical genius, we were never expecting this to happen", he said. He pointed out that the Nobel committee had often acted in mysterious ways. Mr Rushdie and Mr Miller were strongly tipped to win, but the Nobel organisers had told Mr Earley that they would be "too predictable, too popular".

The original source is from the London Times:

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/62/016.html

And I saw it regurgitated again in the New Republic's coverage of this year's prize:

https://newrepublic.com/article/145200/happened-nobel-prize-literature

I suppose Sture Allen's tenure as Permanent Secretary only had maybe two "big" winners (arguably Morrison and Grass) but even then many "big" and "predictable" winners had won it before and after his tenure.
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I remember announcement of Grass. It was unsespected early - on the last Thursday of September - and it was debut of Horace Engdahl as Secretary. But I don't know when exactly in 1999 he become Permanent Secretary.
 
redhead

redhead

Blahblahblah
I haven't, but I might with Ishiguro. And yes, I do think it matters how others view potential laureates. Last year with Bob Dylan, they made it a point to highlight the critical texts written about him over the years.
 
CapreseBoi

CapreseBoi

Reader
ISHIGURO: [...]Then when I was thirteen, I bought John Wesley Harding, which was my first Dylan album, right when it came out.
INTERVIEWER: What did you like about it?
ISHIGURO: The words. Bob Dylan was a great lyricist, I knew that straightaway. Two things that I was always confident about, even in those days, were what was a good lyric and what was a good cowboy film. With Dylan, I suppose it was my first contact with stream-of-consciousness or surreal lyrics [...]
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He tried music at first, and wrote songs. And, as was posted in the Nobel pages, he has mentioned that he is a big fan of Dylan. It's pretty interesting to me.

I don't know if it has been posted here, but the Paris Review published a previously print-only (I believe) 2008 interview with Kazuo (also a story by Munro and Alexievich). He has had a pretty interesting life haha.

https://www.theparisreview.org/inte...guro-the-art-of-fiction-no-196-kazuo-ishiguro

Haha I love this bit.
INTERVIEWER: How do you choose your titles?
ISHIGURO: It’s a bit like naming a child. A lot of debate goes on. Some of them I didn’t invent—The Remains of the Day, for example. I was at a writers’ festival in Australia, sitting on a beach with Michael Ondaatje, Victoria Glendinning, Robert McCrum, and a Dutch writer named Judith Hertzberg. We were playing a semi-serious game of trying to find a title for my soon-to-be-completed novel. Michael Ondaatje suggested Sirloin: A Juicy Tale. It was on that level. I kept explaining that it had to do with this butler. Then Judith Hertzberg mentioned a phrase of Freud’s, Tagesreste, which he used to refer to dreams, which is something like “debris of the day.” When she translated it off the top of her head, it came out as “remains of the day.” It seemed to me right in terms of atmosphere. With the next novel, it was a choice between The Unconsoled and Piano Dreams. A friend had persuaded me and my wife to choose the right name for our daughter, Naomi. We’d been torn between Asami and Naomi, and he had said, Asami sounds like a cross between Saddam and Assad—who was then the dictator of Syria. Well, this same guy said, Dostoyevsky might have chosen the title The Unconsoled, Elton John might have chosen Piano Dreams. So I went for The Unconsoled.
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peter_d

peter_d

Reader
CapreseBoi said:
Haha I love this bit.
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ISHIGURO: It’s a bit like naming a child. A lot of debate goes on. Some of them I didn’t invent—The Remains of the Day, for example. I was at a writers’ festival in Australia, sitting on a beach with Michael Ondaatje, Victoria Glendinning, Robert McCrum, and a Dutch writer named Judith Hertzberg. We were playing a semi-serious game of trying to find a title for my soon-to-be-completed novel. Michael Ondaatje suggested Sirloin: A Juicy Tale. It was on that level. I kept explaining that it had to do with this butler. Then Judith Hertzberg mentioned a phrase of Freud’s, Tagesreste, which he used to refer to dreams, which is something like “debris of the day.” When she translated it off the top of her head, it came out as “remains of the day.” It seemed to me right in terms of atmosphere.
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Judith Herzberg published a collection of poems in 1984 titled Dagrest, which is the Dutch translation of Tagesreste. Interestingly, I found a translation of a poem from this collection. Notice how they translated the title of the collection from which this poem is taken.

Program

Fear wakes first. Then it wakes
Reason and the Program for the Day
that will tuck it in again. Why
can't Calmness get up first, or
Joy, why is Fear so unruly,
so pushy?
Teacher! Me! Me!
Yes, yes, the teacher has noticed. Now
go back to your seat and don't talk out of turn.
After lunch when we have history, you can
tell us all you want, what actually has happened.

From The Remains of the Day (Dagrest, 1984)

Translated by Shirley Kaufman (in ‘But what: Selected Poems’. Oberlin, 1988).
 
Liam

Liam

Administrator
^That review is so embarrassingly bad. I wonder how it slipped the editor's final approval. I can't testify to the strength of Ayn Rand's philosophy, as I haven't given it much thought, but as a writer--purely as a writer--she is abysmal. Atlas Shrugged resembles a shovelful of hard clay at best, a stinking pile of horseshit at worst. Once again, maybe the ideas it espouses are good ideas, but from a purely literary perspective the book is laughingly bad. The only person the writer of the review has embarrassed is himself. An uneducated, boorish philistine, you're WAY out of your depth. Get the fuck out of here.
 
peter_d

peter_d

Reader
Liam said:
^That review is so embarrassingly bad. I wonder how it slipped the editor's final approval. I can't testify to the strength of Ayn Rand's philosophy, as I haven't given it much thought, but as a writer--purely as a writer--she is abysmal. Atlas Shrugged resembles a shovelful of hard clay at best, a stinking pile of horseshit at worst. Once again, maybe the ideas it espouses are good ideas, but from a purely literary perspective the book is laughingly bad. The only person the writer of the review has embarrassed is himself. An uneducated, boorish philistine, you're WAY out of your depth. Get the fuck out of here.
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After the sentence 'I haven't read Ishiguro's work, and I never would given the exceprts above' I stopped reading, because such trash doesn't warrant the time. Calling themselves The Objective Standard... Is this serious or some kind of jokey fake news website?
 
Liam

Liam

Administrator
@Daniel: hehe, point taken, but I have to say, I'd prefer that to unprovoked political rants a la Harold Pinter, :)
 
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