Nobel Prize in Literature 2023 Speculation

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Seelig

Seelig

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Hello everyone! By this time of the year I use to dream of winners (yes, I have that kind of uncounscious). Last year I dreamt of Godard winning and Vila-Matas appearing in the ceremony to pick the prize… had a great time myself haha. But this year I haven’t dreamt of any particular writer but of a concept: that “ideal direction” part of the Nobel prize. As my psychoanalysis is taking forever, so I ask you, fellow readers: as ambiguous as it sounds, do you think that “ideal direction” is still relevant today in choosing a winner? Is it really a strong criteria of the prize alongside literary merit? I woke up last night as with a nightmare: with the fear (and disgust) that most of the prizes are first and foremost political statements. Sorry to disturb the interesting conversation about candidates, but my analist refuses to go into this dream and I think I will abandon the therapy and go to read and reread Blixen, Frisch, Joyce, Woolf, Borges, Proust… all those that should have won were not for that “ideal direction” thing…
 
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Leseratte

Leseratte

Well-known member
Seelig said:
Hello everyone! By this time of the year I use to dream of winners (yes, I have that kind of uncounscious). Last year I dreamt of Godard winning and Vila-Matas appearing in the ceremony to pick the prize… had a great time myself haha. But this year I haven’t dreamt of any particular writer but of a concept: that “ideal direction” part of the Nobel prize. As my psychoanalysis is taking forever, so I ask you, fellow readers: as ambiguous as it sounds, do you think that “ideal direction” is still relevant today in choosing a winner? Is it really a strong criteria of the prize alongside literary merit? I woke up last night as with a nightmare: with the fear (and disgust) that most of the prizes are first and foremost political statements. Sorry to disturb the interesting conversation about candidates, but my analist refuses to go into this dream and I think I will abandon the therapy and go to read and reread Blixen, Frisch, Joyce, Woolf, Borges, Proust… all those that should have won were not for that “ideal direction” thing…
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A very good question! But while people debate it, if I had such an insightful unconcious I would ask it to dream about lottery numbers.
 
Septularisen

Septularisen

Reader
Seelig said:
Sorry to disturb the interesting conversation about candidates, but my analist refuses to go into this dream and I think I will abandon the therapy and go to read and reread Blixen, Frisch, Joyce, Woolf, Borges, Proust… all those that should have won were not for that “ideal direction” thing…
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For say the truth the reason why James JOYCE, Marcel PROUST and Jorge Luis BORGES have never won the prize, is not for that "ideal direction" thing...
And Karen BLIXEN died the year she was due to win!
 
Seelig

Seelig

Active member
Septularisen said:
For say the truth the reason why James JOYCE, Marcel PROUST and Jorge Luis BORGES have never won the prize, is not for that "ideal direction" thing...
And Karen BLIXEN died the year she was due to win!
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I try to see your point, Septularisen, but I really don’t get it… So why, then? Was it because they lacked other thing: literary merit?
 
Liam

Liam

Administrator
Do we know if they were even NOMINATED? I mean, maybe Borges, but were Joyce and Woolf nominated before they died?
 
Leseratte

Leseratte

Well-known member
Septularisen said:
For say the truth the reason why James JOYCE, Marcel PROUST and Jorge Luis BORGES have never won the prize, is not for that "ideal direction" thing...
And Karen BLIXEN died the year she was due to win!
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I've never read Blixen, but what the other four maybe have in common is that they are not a easy read. It seems that the SA
tries to hold a balance between quality and acessability.
 
redhead

redhead

Blahblahblah
Seelig said:
I try to see your point, Septularisen, but I really don’t get it… So why, then? Was it because they lacked other thing: literary merit?
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It kind of goes without saying, but literary merit isn't some objective thing, and at the end of the day, the winner is simply the one with the most votes. Which doesn't necessarily have to mean the writer the most committee members favor, but simply the one the most can live with. Soon after Modiano won, I read somewhere that his selection was a choice only a committee could make, and that stuck with me.
 
Verkhovensky

Verkhovensky

Well-known member
Seelig said:
I try to see your point, Septularisen, but I really don’t get it… So why, then? Was it because they lacked other thing: literary merit?
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For one thing, Proust died before all of the volumes of Lost Time were published and in the same year first volume was translated to English (I can't find when the other translations started getting published, but I doubt it was much earlier). So it wasn't feasable to award him before they could assess the whole series.
Similar to Kafka - they just died too early.

Maybe the rules should have been different, for example that dead authors were eligible for some time after death if the most of their work was published posthumously, but alas this is not the case. You have to be alive when awarded, this is just in the rules.
 
Verkhovensky

Verkhovensky

Well-known member
Liam said:
^Blixen is by far the most "accessible" of the bunch! Mind, it doesn't make her any less profound than the other writers on this list, just that she chose to tell her stories in a more straightforward manner. I love her interlinked short stories in particular!
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And she wasn't the winner in 1959 because one sole member of the comitee passionately argued that no one will take them seriously if they keep awarding Scandinavians. And in 12 angry men fashion, he pursued others to vote for Quasimodo.
...

The name of that member - Eyvind Johnson.
 
Septularisen

Septularisen

Reader
Seelig said:
I try to see your point, Septularisen, but I really don’t get it… So why, then? Was it because they lacked other thing: literary merit?
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Some people replied to your question...
It's always the same problem. You can't ask to the SA to award writers never nominated, or they died before that the whole of her masterpiece has been published...
I am often asked why writers like the Italian Cesare PAVESE, or the Frenchman Paul CELAN have never been rewarded... It's forgetting a little too quickly that the first died at 41 and the second at 49, well before being able to write their work!...
 
Septularisen

Septularisen

Reader
alik-vit said:
Indeed, if FRENCHMAN and CITIZEN OF FRENCH STATE are ... SYNONIMS!
And even in this case
it's suitable approach for.... manager of TAX OFFICE!
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Another one : "So, you can turn this around however you want, but Paul CELAN was... French!"
Now, for the rest is up to you...
 
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