Swedish Academy: The Peter Englund era

[Ater Lividus Ruber & V]

Re: Swedish Academy - The Peter Englund era

I would have liked to edited my previous message, but as it has been approved yet, I'll post this one as an addendum. The two can, hopefully, appear together. I should amend my previous definition of Engdahl's period as "witness & testimonial literature."

2001 - V. S. Naipaul - colonial and post-colonial India and Trinidad, digressions on belonging (what it means to be a citizen and if this arises from living in a place of genealogical history)
2004 - Elfriede Jelinek - oppression of women, how patterns of abuse are inherited and cyclical, deleterious effects of pop culture
2005 - Harold Pinter - his diatribe towards the U.S. are mainly reserved for comments outside of his literature. I should say his political theater is more "about" Turkey, totalitarian governments, and Thatcher
2006 - Orhan Pamuk - the topos of jealousy, its expression in East vs. West contentions, and the consequences
2007 - Doris Lessing - women as agents but also what it means to be a woman, particularly in her autobiographies (it should be noted Lessing herself despised the ghettoization of being termed a feminist author)
2008 - Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio - his earlier literature centered around Big Companies, Big Technology, and Big Solipsism affecting humanitarian sentiments and culture, effectively dehumanizing us and leaving no room for humans as a species to be undeceived in our illusions of selfishness and ersatz connectedness, opening up paths of war, abuse, suicide, and totalitarian states.

Englund's tenure appears to have been the age of "authors who capture the history and space of the country they are from and celebrated in."

 

[EllisIsland]

Re: Swedish Academy - The Peter Englund era

Nice, thank you. Hence, we are also stuck in a "witness & testimonial literature" era right now

2009 - Herta Muller - violence, cruelty and terror in Communist Romania under the repressive Nicolae Ceausescu regime
2010 - Mario Vargas Llosa - cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat in South America
2012 - Mo Yan - who with hallucinatory realism merges Chinese folk tales, history and the contemporary, in particular with respect to life in rural China
2013 - Alice Munro - her characters often confront deep-rooted customs and traditions of rural Ontario, in particular the dilemmas of a girl coming of age and coming to terms with her family and the small town she grew up in
2014 - Patrick Modiano - for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation

Damn...

 

[EllisIsland]

Re: Swedish Academy - The Peter Englund era

Yikes. This EllisIsland character is quite toxic.
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Thank you, but despite of my shortcomings I seem to have made it through the local customs, awesome, maybe I should consider renaming my avatar...

 

[Vazquez]

Re: Swedish Academy - The Peter Englund era

So, here is the book:

"El Premio Nobel de Literatura" (Spanish translation), publisher "Academia Sueca" (Swedish Academy), written by Sture Allén and Kjell Espmark. Both are members of the Academy, so they know what they are talking about.

I'll quote some parts:

From "The throne, the altar, the family":

"The first period, until the death of Wirsen (the first Permanent Secretary), is characterised by Wirsen's interpretation of the Nobel words "high and sane ideal"... the winner should have a nobility... the set of directives that choose a Kipling, Heyse, and disapproved Tolstoi, Ibsen and Zola was based in a conservative idealism with Church, State and Family... the words of Nobel gave to Wirsen - Don Quixote of the romantic idealism - chance to export this provincial mind to international literature..."

From "The era of neutrality"

"Behind a desire to make the academy "younger", Erik Axel Karlfeldt was choosen as Permanent Secretary... the salvation of the Academy after the decadent period of Wirsen..."

From "For the ordinary reader"

"After Karlfeldt's death, the permanent Secretary was Per Hallstrøm... together with... Hjalmar Hammarskjold, who thought himself as "the icon of the ordinary reader"... this academy deleted any modern poetry... one of the best poets of the time was forgotten, Paul Valéry... the Academy give the prize to bestsellers like Sinclair Lweis... Pearl Buck... for a defender of Hesse, Anders Osterling, it was clear that the instituion was in a deep crisis."

From "The innovators":

This chapter tells how Osterling, the following Permanent Secretary, tried to change the previous ideas, given the prize to people like Gide, Eliot and Faulkner. "In that time, with a lot of influence from Anders Osterling, the Permanent Secretary, the Academy gave to the word "ideal" and wider meaning..."

From "The unknown masters":

"A new politic... was founded by Lars Gyllensten, the new Permanent Secretary..."

And then there's a quote from Gyllensten expalining about giving the prize to unknown writers. Some names mentioned afterwards are Singer, Elytis and Seifert.

Ok. Many times the Permanent Secretary is also the President of the Novel comittee, and sometimes not. But anyway, in the book, the Permanent Secretary is always introduced and someone who changed something, that gave a new direction to the prize.

In short, I really believe that if, instead of Engdahl, the Englund was in power since 1999 (let's suppose), some names would differ.

Not only, I believe Engdahl left because his image was tarnished after giving during a long period the prize almost only to Europeans, and his comments about the USA.

So, as Daniel said, we have something different with Englund. At least it seems to me. Maybe the new Secretary will mantain it, or not, but in the end I'm certain the Permanent Secretary is very important.

Sorry about my bad translations, maybe I can do this with a little more time in the future.

 

[Vazquez]

Re: Swedish Academy - The Peter Englund era

Era of innovators? Era of well known names? Maybe you should throw that book out of the window...

No way! As "wrong" it can be, it was written by members of the Academy and published the Academy itself, so it gives a inside testimony that is quite important.

The era of half-shouldn't-have-gotten-the prize

Hm, I must confess I kind of agree with that. BUT I must add that I love Pinter, and I thought he really deserved it! On the other hand, Chinua Achebe would be a better winner than Gao Xingjan or Naipaul, IMHO, just to give one example.

I don't think there are many people on this board who would argue with Pynchon getting the prize

I wouldn't agree, but I remember Jelinek said he should have won instead of her!

Do they know of her in India, or China, or Brazil?

Here in Brazil - a little more than Modiano or Mo Yan. She had I believe two books already translated to Portuguese before the Nobel. Maybe three. For us, this is a lot!

Supposedly, Engdahl's tenure centered on "witness literature."

I agree with you.

Nice, thank you. Hence, we are also stuck in a "witness & testimonial literature" era right now

Yes and no. I believe with Engdahl a writer could win because of his "witnessess" instead of his skills as a writers, if you know what I mean. A writer with few books, or uneven. The new laureates are, imho (please remember those words, it's just my opinion) better writers. The fact they write well seems to me primary over the witness they had. I really like Lessing, but she is an uneven writer, I think. It seems to ME that her experiences in Africa were more important for the Academy, that "forgot" her uneveness - something in other times would never be "pardoned".

But this is just an example. Although I like to see patterns, of course there are exceptions - i.e., Coetzee or Loosa would win anyway (again, imho) with any Permanent Secretary in power.

 

[Ater Lividus Ruber & V]

Re: Swedish Academy - The Peter Englund era

Nice, thank you. Hence, we are also stuck in a "witness & testimonial literature" era right now

2009 - Herta Muller - violence, cruelty and terror in Communist Romania under the repressive Nicolae Ceausescu regime
2010 - Mario Vargas Llosa - cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat in South America
2012 - Mo Yan - who with hallucinatory realism merges Chinese folk tales, history and the contemporary, in particular with respect to life in rural China
2013 - Alice Munro - her characters often confront deep-rooted customs and traditions of rural Ontario, in particular the dilemmas of a girl coming of age and coming to terms with her family and the small town she grew up in
2014 - Patrick Modiano - for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation

Damn...

I think you are correct in assuming the Academy was/is still working towards "witness & testimonial literature," but, prima facie, what distinguishes Engdahl's period from Englund's is the former placed greater emphasis in peripatetic authors who exposed atrocities of mankind en masse, itinerant writers who pulled back the curtains of various civilizations to reveal the crooked timber manifest everywhere (thus pleading for society to organize itself in such a way to minimize the ubiquitous corruption), whereas the latter homed in on authors who primarily wrote about their own countries, helping to reveal their hidden springs and principles to the rest of the world. In short: scope is the difference.

 

[Ben Jackson]

Another old thread to comment on.

The Horace Engdahl and Peter Englund period (1999-2015), which was the era of Witness Literature, has some characteristics that are partly in accordance with Ater's observations. However, before I disclose some of the features, let me introduce Horace Engdahl and Peter Englund.

Horace Engdahl's a Swedish literary and dance critic who's considered as foremost advocate of deconstructionism into Swedish Literary circles. He worked in newspaper Kris in the 1970s and 1980s where he met Anders Olsson, current Chairman of the Nobel Committee. He's also know for works revaluating Swedish Literary Romanticism and for his aphorisms. He also translated writers from German Literature and French writers like Maurice Blanchot in the late 1970s. He speaks fluently German, French and English. Along with Peter Englund, they delivered a lecture along with writers like Oe, Xingjian, Gordimer, Timothy Garton Ash, Herta Muller and Nurudin Farah on Witness Literature, which was compiled and published in 2002. He was permanent secretary of Academy between 1999-2009, after becoming a member in 1997.

Peter Englund on the other hand, is a noted Swedish Historian whose works looks at World War 2 and Swedish historical and elusive figures and also reportages in Afghastian and other war-torn parts of the world. Some of his key works includes Battle that Shook Europe, Beauty of the Sorrow, History of Silence, Sunday Road.

Characteristics of Horace Engdahl's Nobel Laureates:

Oppression, fear and hardships under repressive authority sometimes involving gender (Jelinek, Muller, Pinter, Coetzee, Xingjian)
Question of Freedom and responsibility of individual in society (Muller, Xingjian)
Clash of Extremes: East versus West (Orhan Pamuk)
Explorer of society and critique of Civilisations: impact of colonialism and decline of old empire and illness of modernization (Naipaul, Lessing (epicist of female experience) Le Clezio)
Abuses and silences of language and its exploitation: imitation of reality and interpretation of text through Derridean philosophy (Coetzee, Herta Muller, Jelinek, Xingjian, Pinter)
Reckoning of Holocaust (Jelinek and Kertesz) and fragile experiences of individuals becoming outsiders of society (Coetzee and Xingjian)
Charting history of society and effects on present, transitional choices from Sture Allen's era (Grass and Nazism, Xingjian and Cultural revolution, Naipaul and Colonialism and exile)
Renewal and Formal Experimentalism (Linguistic ingenuity of Xingjian and Chinese Drama, voices and counter voices of Jelinek's dramas, Pinter's inventive absurdist plays and comedy of menace, Pamuk and quest-like narratives, Naipaul's travelogues)

During Peter Englund's period, the emphasis are:

Turning the past into narrative, writing about their traditions and revealing their customs (Munro, Mo Yan)
Documentary style: charting history of society with total worldview and its principles (Llosa, Yan, Aleixievich)
Blurring the line between fact and fiction (Modiano, Munro, Transtromer's Baltics)
Focus on native geography and everyday life and miracles (Transtromer, Munro, Yan)

Witu these criteria in place, we'll expect to see candidates/ finalists during Engdahl's Era (1999--2009)

Handke, Bei Dao, Carlos Fuentes, Kundera, Sebald, Rushdie, Atwood, Kapusnickski, Aharon Applefeld, George Konrad, Mulisch, Farah, Ben Jelloun, Achebe, Adonis, Oz, Djebar, Magris, Les Murray, Kadare, Arrabal, Inger Christensen, Derrida, Stoppard, Ko Un, Noteboom, Tabucchi, Manea, Conde, Goytisolo.

Finalists we might see during Peter Englund's era, some of them appearing during Engdahl's:
Antonio Lobo Antunes, Ngugi, Nadas, Noteboom, Trevor, Adam Zagajewski, Adonis, Un, Dao, Atwood, Murakami, Oz, Kadare, Fosse. American candidates we'll see during this period: Ashbery, Roth, Oates, Updike and probably Albee. Other candidates that might be a possibility: Byatt, McEwan, Andre Brink, Ben Okri.

Remember, it was during this period (2008) that Horace Engdahl made his unforgettable, controversial remark concerning American literature. Looking at the characteristics of the Laureates awarded between 1999--2015, I'm not sure America really had a chance.

 

[dc007777]

Remember, it was during this period (2008) that Horace Engdahl made his unforgettable, controversial remark concerning American literature. Looking at the characteristics of the Laureates awarded between 1999--2015, I'm not sure America really had a chance.

Looking at those characteristics (literature of witness, concerns of modernization, formal experimentalism, the role of the outsider) and then this final remark, I'm a bit surprised a queer American writer never took the prize in the late 90s, early 2000s. I feel a few check off those boxes (Dennis Cooper, Tony Kushner, Kathy Acker, Edmund White etc). I think a lot of them can even dodge the insular American insult, too. I hope I'm alive to see who scored nominations in the 90s, early 2000s.

 

[Ben Jackson]

Looking at those characteristics (literature of witness, concerns of modernization, formal experimentalism, the role of the outsider) and then this final remark, I'm a bit surprised a queer American writer never took the prize in the late 90s, early 2000s. I feel a few check off those boxes (Dennis Cooper, Tony Kushner, Kathy Acker, Edmund White etc). I think a lot of them can even dodge the insular American insult, too. I hope I'm alive to see who scored nominations in the 90s, early 2000s.

The names you mentioned might be nominated, but not as finalist am sure. The Committee would be paying attention to the American writers I listed upthread.

The full feature of Engdahl's "illness of modernization triggered by advent of late capitalism." The feature shows up in some of Jelinek's works (if you remember Lust and how Jelinek make use of pornography as means of exploiting women) and Naipaul (if you remember how old neighborhoods paved way for small industries in Enigma of Arrival).

 

[dc007777]

The names you mentioned might be nominated, but not as finalist am sure. The Committee would be paying attention to the American writers I listed upthread.

The full feature of Engdahl's "illness of modernization triggered by advent of late capitalism." The feature shows up in some of Jelinek's works (if you remember Lust and how Jelinek make use of pornography as means of exploiting women) and Naipaul (if you remember how old neighborhoods paved way for small industries in Enigma of Arrival).

Yes, realistically, the only name I mentioned I can see appearing even on a long list is Kushner.