Welcome to "...and the winner is"!

[tiganeasca]

After Adrien shared a portion of the citation honoring Anatole France during our Skype chat, I thought it might be fun to play that game. And so I have put together a quiz for those so inclined. (If people are interested, I'll post the second one later.) Since we know how seriously the committee takes their work, I think we should take it equally seriously. And that means knowing which citation matches which author. I have omitted personal pronouns like "he" or "she" and national identifiers (which occur far more often than I had realized). Gentlemen and ladies, sharpen your pencils and match the writer to the citation. Good luck!

1. Miguel Angel Asturias	a. “through works rich in nuance – now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous – has formed [xxxxxxx] narrative art that applies to all mankind”
2. Günter Grass	b. “vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of [xxxxxxx]”
3. Kenzaburo Oe	c. “impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity“
4. Gao Xingjian	d. “in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of [xxxxxxx] reality“
5. Yasunari Kawabata	e. “with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today“
6. Naguib Mahfouz	f. “through…magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity“
7. Octavio Paz	g. “oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the [xxxxxxx] novel”
8. Patrick White	h. “narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the [xxxxxxx] mind”
9. Nadine Gordimer	i. “an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature”
10. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn	j. “for the ethical force with which…has pursued the indispensable traditions of [xxxxxxx] literature”
11. Toni Morrison	k. “impassioned narrative art which, with roots in a [xxxxxxx] tradition, brings universal human conditions to life”
12. Isaac Bashevis Singer	m. “whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history“

 

[Bagharu]

I give up ? (Slow, painstakingly very slow clap for the SA)

 

[hayden]

Oh geez. Paired them up best I could and did a search to see how many I got right.
One. Only got one right. (Kawabata).

 

[tiganeasca]

Apologies. I should have said that you can just shoot me a message and I will send you the "answer key." I've gone through these citations from the very beginning and the only notable thing is how banal and mindless they really are.

 

[Bagharu]

Surprisingly I got two correct: Grass and Singer!
(Another that I tried, Kawabata, failed miserably)

Edit: I was wondering how without reading any Grass I got his citation right, after reading his wiki page, I think I got Grass right because, it feels like, in some dark corner of my mind somehow the information that connects him with 'dark fables' is stored and that helped me
And here I was, feeling so happy with a 66.66% success rate ?

 

[tiganeasca]

Apologies. I should have said that you can just shoot me a message and I will send you the "answer key." I've gone through these citations from the very beginning and the only notable thing is how banal and mindless they really are.

No. I shouldn't have said "mindless." "Pointless" maybe. Or impossible to write. How do you summarize a career in a phrase? But reading them all, it's remarkable how similar they are. Just substitute in one nationality for another, one convenient phrase for another.

 

[Bagharu]

No. I shouldn't have said "mindless." "Pointless" maybe. Or impossible to write. How do you summarize a career in a phrase? But reading them all, it's remarkable how similar they are. Just substitute in one nationality for another, one convenient phrase for another.

I think only Pamuks' citation is spot on, just reading it points at him without wax. And also Modiano as Jayan said, his citation is also quite indicative of his oeuvre. And Mo Yan?

 

[redhead]

Just tried this. I recognized Oe’s and Grass’s quotes and took an educated guess on White based on an anecdote I remember. Of the rest, I just did the best I could and.... got them all wrong except for Paz. So that’s 4/12

 

[Bartleby]

I only actually remember 4 of these (Gordimer, Gao, Grass, White); the others appear to demand a kind of wild guess, since being so similar, it could refer to any of them haha

 

[Ben Jackson]

After three years of the thread, here's my answer:

Paz--- Sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity

Gordimer--- through magnificent epic writing

Patrick White--- Epic and psychological narrative art

Grass--- frolicksome black fables

Kawabata---- expressing the essence of Japanese mind

Mahfouz--- works rich in nuance

Oe--- human predicament today

Morrison--- expressing the essential part of American reality

Xingjiang--- universal validity and linguistic ingenuity

Asturias--- vivid literary acheivements

Solzhenistyn---- ethical force

Singer---- impassioned narrative art

I'm not sure if I got Solzhenistyn and Singer's citation correct, but I'm sure for the rest.

 

[Ben Jackson]

After three years of the thread, here's my answer:

Paz--- Sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity

Gordimer--- through magnificent epic writing

Patrick White--- Epic and psychological narrative art

Grass--- frolicksome black fables

Kawabata---- expressing the essence of Japanese mind

Mahfouz--- works rich in nuance

Oe--- human predicament today

Morrison--- expressing the essential part of American reality

Xingjiang--- universal validity and linguistic ingenuity

Asturias--- vivid literary acheivements

Solzhenistyn---- ethical force

Singer---- impassioned narrative art

I'm not sure if I got Solzhenistyn and Singer's citation correct, but I'm sure for the rest.

Just went to check my results on wiki, I found out I got the everything correct.

 

[tiganeasca]

Just went to check my results on wiki, I found out I got the everything correct.

Sorry Ben. I no longer have my answer sheet; congratulations on getting them all right.

 

[Leseratte]

After Adrien shared a portion of the citation honoring Anatole France during our Skype chat, I thought it might be fun to play that game. And so I have put together a quiz for those so inclined. (If people are interested, I'll post the second one later.) Since we know how seriously the committee takes their work, I think we should take it equally seriously. And that means knowing which citation matches which author. I have omitted personal pronouns like "he" or "she" and national identifiers (which occur far more often than I had realized). Gentlemen and ladies, sharpen your pencils and match the writer to the citation. Good luck!

1. Miguel Angel Asturias	a. “through works rich in nuance – now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous – has formed [xxxxxxx] narrative art that applies to all mankind”
2. Günter Grass	b. “vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of [xxxxxxx]”
3. Kenzaburo Oe	c. “impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity“
4. Gao Xingjian	d. “in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of [xxxxxxx] reality“
5. Yasunari Kawabata	e. “with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today“
6. Naguib Mahfouz	f. “through…magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity“
7. Octavio Paz	g. “oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the [xxxxxxx] novel”
8. Patrick White	h. “narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the [xxxxxxx] mind”
9. Nadine Gordimer	i. “an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature”
10. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn	j. “for the ethical force with which…has pursued the indispensable traditions of [xxxxxxx] literature”
11. Toni Morrison	k. “impassioned narrative art which, with roots in a [xxxxxxx] tradition, brings universal human conditions to life”
12. Isaac Bashevis Singer	m. “whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history“

I couldn´t match a single one. Some of these appraisals seem synonymous to me.

 

[tiganeasca]

I couldn´t match a single one. Some of these appraisals seam synonymous to me.

Thank you! That was exactly the point I was trying to make!