Nobel Prize in Literature 2010 Speculation

[Corswandt]

As I keep saying: it is the size of the prize that makes the Nobel so visible internationally.

It's much more than just the Benjamins.

For all the boneheaded choices the Swedish Academy has made, for all the deservedly forgotten authors who have been awarded with it, the palmar?s of the Nobel Prize in Literature is still the most impressive of any literary award, which, granted, is due in no small part to it having been awarded for more than 100 years now.

You could start a competing worldwide or regional literary award (the Man Booker International Prize seems to be a serious attempt to do just that), but how many decades would have to pass before it was taken as seriously as the Nobel? Do you see 10+ page threads in here speculating about winner of this year's Austrian State Prize for European Literature, for instance?

[Daniel del Real]

It's much more than just the Benjamins.

For all the boneheaded choices the Swedish Academy has made, for all the deservedly forgotten authors who have been awarded with it, the palmar?s of the Nobel Prize in Literature is still the most impressive of any literary award, which, granted, is due in no small part to it having been awarded for more than 100 years now.

You could start a competing worldwide or regional literary award (the Man Booker International Prize seems to be a serious attempt to do just that), but how many decades would have to pass before it was taken as seriously as the Nobel? Do you see 10+ page threads in here speculating about winner of this year's Austrian State Prize for European Literature, for instance?

I totally agree, it's not only the money. There is the Planeta Prize, sponsored by the Spanish editorial monster Planeta, that gives more than 700K euros (600K for the winner and 150K for the finalist). A lot of money it is, but although the award is more than 50 years older it is far away from the respect and the tradition that Nobel Prize have. Personally I think that the winners are really mediocre with names that disappear soon from the literaty sphere into the shadows of obscurity.

Latina, don't try to make Eric Engdahl change his mind, he's 3 times more Europeist than Horace

[adaorardor]

Philip Roth on the Nobel, how arrogant:

Asked whether he thought his time had come to receive an award last won by an American in 1993 with Toni Morrison, Roth told Reuters: "I really don't care and I don't think anybody else here cares either.
"I don't think any other American writers care. We have got the most powerful literature in the world. We have had it for the last 60 years. I think since the war it has consistently been the most powerful literature."


Poets poised for Nobel glory; Swede is favourite | Reuters

[peter_d]

That is exactly the attitude I would adopt if I were in his position. As soon as you realise you are never going to get it, you act as if you don't find it important. Mulish, and probably also other hopeless candidates, always point at the list of great writers that never won it... Actually I think I like that attitude better...

Philip Roth on the Nobel, how arrogant:

Asked whether he thought his time had come to receive an award last won by an American in 1993 with Toni Morrison, Roth told Reuters: "I really don't care and I don't think anybody else here cares either.
"I don't think any other American writers care. We have got the most powerful literature in the world. We have had it for the last 60 years. I think since the war it has consistently been the most powerful literature."


Poets poised for Nobel glory; Swede is favourite | Reuters

[Amoxcalli]

"I don't think any other American writers care. We have got the most powerful literature in the world. We have had it for the last 60 years. I think since the war it has consistently been the most powerful literature."

Obviously. Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jul?o Cort?zar, Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Milan Kundera, Naguib Mahfouz, Jos? Saramago, Orhan Pamuk, Jorge Luis Borges, Heinrich B?ll, Eug?ne Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, William Golding, Boris Pasternak, Chinua Achebe, G?nter Grass, Raymond Queneau, Anthony Burgess, V.S. Naipaul, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Doris Lessing, Carlos Fuentes, Wole Soyinka, Italo Calvino, Nadine Gordimer, Umberto Eco, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Haruki Murakami, Kazuo Ishiguro, Michael Ondaatje, Herta M?ller, J.M.G Le Cl?zio and Kenzaburo Oe are second-rate writers who really should just give up on writing and plough a field or something. The United States of America, that's where literature's at.

Somehow, I doubt Mr. Roth has read even half of these authors. He has greatly discouraged me from reading any of his books with a silly statement like that.

[Daniel del Real]

Obviously. Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jul?o Cort?zar, Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Milan Kundera, Naguib Mahfouz, Jos? Saramago, Orhan Pamuk, Jorge Luis Borges, Heinrich B?ll, Eug?ne Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, William Golding, Boris Pasternak, Chinua Achebe, G?nter Grass, Raymond Queneau, Anthony Burgess, V.S. Naipaul, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Doris Lessing, Carlos Fuentes, Wole Soyinka, Italo Calvino, Nadine Gordimer, Umberto Eco, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Haruki Murakami, Kazuo Ishiguro, Michael Ondaatje, Herta M?ller, J.M.G Le Cl?zio and Kenzaburo Oe are second-rate writers who really should just give up on writing and plough a field or something. The United States of America, that's where literature's at.

Somehow, I doubt Mr. Roth has read even half of these authors. He has greatly discouraged me from reading any of his books with a silly statement like that.

I'm sure he has read most of them, the problem is that he's so desperate to get an award he know he's never going to get that telling stupid statements like this to the world is the only way he has left to make himself notice.
If as a pure writer he is mediocre, with these declarations he only confirms the Academy's opinion he is not a person who deserves to represent this coveted award an the prestige that it carries.

[Taleb]

Philip Roth on the Nobel, how arrogant:

Asked whether he thought his time had come to receive an award last won by an American in 1993 with Toni Morrison, Roth told Reuters: "I really don't care and I don't think anybody else here cares either.
"I don't think any other American writers care. We have got the most powerful literature in the world. We have had it for the last 60 years. I think since the war it has consistently been the most powerful literature."


Poets poised for Nobel glory; Swede is favourite | Reuters

Well if Roth said that, "We have got the most powerful literature in the world", then he gravely wasted the opportunity for his Nobel. Or is it not????? Or is it possible he never read what Lee Siegel wrote this year on the death of the novel in the U.S.:

Where Have All the Mailers Gone? | The New York Observer

Or the of Time magazine's defence(pathetic actually, when you read Roth's comments) of the state of the American novel, by championing Franzen, by stamping "great american novelist" on it's cover, a sort of cheering and uplifting U.S. novelists' spirits in the age of the MEMOIR...........!

Going back to Roth's chances though( forget even his quote) you've got to know that he has been awarded with every prestegius award that is there in the U.S.( you name it, including the gold medal of fiction), and the Nobel committee does not offer it to artists like him, with too many prizes under his belt, unless possibly only if goes out of favour, and continued publising whatever $#!&, like his last three novels. Or possibly if he criticised U.S. politics. Plus, I think the Nobel committee like to award an american-version-of-a-European novelist(Bellow) rather than Roth's American's American novelist.

[adaorardor]

A friend suggested that Pina Bausch would've been a great choice, because her work broke down the barriers between theatre and drama. Giving the prize to her could've helped enlarge the definition of what is 'literature'. Thoughts?

[Daniel del Real]

A friend suggested that Pina Bausch would've been a great choice, because her work broke down the barriers between theatre and drama. Giving the prize to her could've helped enlarge the definition of what is 'literature'. Thoughts?

I have two strong reasons why she is not the right one for this year Nobel

1.- She was a modern dance coreographer.
2.- She's dead.

[adaorardor]

I have two strong reasons why she is not the right one for this year Nobel

1.- She was a modern dance coreographer.
2.- She's dead.

My post, originally a separate one that was relocated here, was asking WOULD she have been a good choice, not suggesting she might win it this year.

[Taleb]

2.- She's dead.

Dead on......Daniel!!

I think they might prefer this year a poet over a novelist over a dramatist.

[Eric]

I agree with Corswandt in #224 when he or she says:

For all the boneheaded choices the Swedish Academy has made, for all the deservedly forgotten authors who have been awarded with it, the palmar?s of the Nobel Prize in Literature is still the most impressive of any literary award, which, granted, is due in no small part to it having been awarded for more than 100 years now.

As for starting up a prize on another continent yes, sure, it will be looked down upon for a decade or two. But it is the same as with corruption and crime in the developing countries: you've got to start somewhere and not adopt ma?ana tactics.

As for the Man Booker, it is surely a prize for things written in the English language. English is not the only language of literature and culture in the world.

*

I am pretty Eurocentric myself (as I think Daniel is suggesting), because the continent of Europe does better than many others with regard to standard of living, freedom of press, human rights, income equality, non-discrimination of women, gays, literary culture, etc.

But the elephant in the room is: why don't these other continents themselves start big cultural things, prizes or bursaries, without always assuming that Europeans and North Americans are going to despise all their efforts? Now the European imperialists have got off their backs for half a century, it's time for them to do things themselves. Postcolonialism also means that you run your own destiny.

*

The idea of "the most powerful literature in the world" is a load of nonsense. Individual writers can be brilliant if nurtured in a national and international climate that understands them. The USA certainly has the most weapons, and given some the other people that have got nuclear bombs, etc., we should be pretty glad that the Yanks frighten them. But literature is not a big macho muscle game.

The Yanks have their own prizes, and could easily afford one where translations are also accepted and they pay a million dollars to the winner. In fact the Neustadt fits the bill to some extent. But the Americans haven't, like the Brits, bothered to really invest in one. So not only Lula, but Barack Obama could also be thinking of improving the literary prestige of his country.

I still think the idea of a Brazil-financed literary prize (e.g. the Lispector Award or the Machado the Assis Prize for International Literary Prowess) would boost Brazil's chances in the world of literature. Let the Portuguese speakers show up the Spanish-speakers, just for once.

[waalkwriter]

I think the Man Booker Prize is severely flawed because American authors are not included. It's ridiculous.

And I find American Prizes tend to be flawed. You have the dull-witted, insufferably boring Americana that the Pulitzer promotes, and then you have the insufferably artsy and stylistic thoroughfare of the National Book Award.

[Mirabell]

to get back to the topic at hand, here is M. Orthofer's elaborate analysis of the ladbrokes list the Literary Saloon at the complete review - 21 - 30 September 2010 Archive

[Latina]

I am pretty Eurocentric myself (as I think Daniel is suggesting), because the continent of Europe does better than many others with regard to standard of living, freedom of press, human rights, income equality, non-discrimination of women, gays, literary culture, etc.

But consider how much advanced in history is Europe compared to Latin America. We are only celebrating our 200 years now.

[anchomal]

The Booker Prize that has been referred to is not the yearly prize but the International Booker, the one that is awarded every two years as a career achievement prize (worth ?60,000). It considers writers working in English or whose work is generally available in translation into English. The three writers honoured so far are Ismail Kadare, Chinua Achebe and Alice Munro. So perhaps in time this one will be able to put up a challenge to the Nobel in terms of status....

[peter_d]

to get back to the topic at hand, here is M. Orthofer's elaborate analysis of the ladbrokes list the Literary Saloon at the complete review - 21 - 30 September 2010 Archive

Interesting article. Suggesting that the Ladbrokes people have access to some inside information... And coming up with a shortlist of potential nominees:

Bella Akhmadulina
A.S. Byatt
Less Murray
Adam Zagajewski
Michel Tournier

The suggestion that a poet is in the air becuase the list heavily leans towards poets doesn't make all that much sense, I think. Ladbrokes knows as well as we do, that it has been some time since a poet was awarded. That's why their chances increase.

As for Akhmadulina, the arguments make sense. Nevertheless, I remember from our discussions that she seems to be a bit 'over the hill' as well. Hasn't published any new works for some time. But I don't know whether that is among the criteria. How active was Lessing when she got the prize?

For me Elias Khoury could be added to the list above. He's not a poet, but I have seen his name appear everywhere the last few months. Coming in at 45/1, he is at around the same odds as Mueller last year...

[Bjorn]

Englund has now announced on his blog that the winner will be announced on thursday. Crap. There goes my usual Nobel routine.

[Samuel Johnson]

"Samuel Johnson" seems to be a insider of sorts re: the Swedish Academy, so he/she may be able to tell us who exactly is making ??? (possibly a lot) out of this leaking business.

The Academy has got a history were the name of the winner was leaked out to journalists more or less every year. After a change to a more secretive policy (I think it might have been in the eighties) there have been no apparent leaks until the LeCl?zio-case though. I very much doubt that a current academy member is leaking information as it used to happen in the old days however. There's simply too much at stake and a too big risk of getting caught.

There must however be people working near the academy which have no access to meetings but perhaps still get enough information to make very valid guesses (or if they are really curious, good old eavesdropping is probably not that hard in an old building with wooden doors such as that in which the academy houses?). If I wanted to find my source of information I would definitely look there. And who makes the profit? Probably no one even near the academy as it would be too obvious. My guess would be some professional gambler rather than anyone from the literary world. But these are just speculations.

As for Herta M?ller last year there were definitely an interesting pattern in changes at the betting agencies but it is also interesting that the dramatically lowered odds was presented right after the publication of an article were a renowned Swedish journalist predicted that M?ller would get the prize. The same journalist had guessed for Le Cl?zio the year before so maybe she just gave the agencies a scary feeling of d?ja vu...

Many of course believe that she has got some kind of insider but personally I don't think it is that strange that a person who probably both knows the personal taste of the academy members and pretty much everything that is happening around the academy can make two really good guesses in a row. When pretty much half the academy shows up at a Herta M?ller-seminar in Stockholm of course people start to put two and two together?
You must also remember that although M?ller and Le Cl?zio might have appeared to come out of the blue in the English speaking world they had been considered top names here for years. I personally think they were quite predictable choices.

But still, if someone knows how to get the information it's probably her.

I really hope the academy can keep tight this year. Last year?s excitement was pretty much spoiled and I absolutely love a big surprise. I have a feeling that anyone except Oz and perhaps Adonis will have to be considered like a minor upset though. There are so many factors among the ?favorites? that could be considered as negative. ?Not a poet?, ?another woman?, Swedish, American, ?is a poet? etc?

[peter_d]

Looking at that ladbrokes list as a Dutchman, I find it kind of remarkable that Cees Nooteboom is rather stable with his ranking in the list over the past few years. He always around place 20 to 25, with odds at around 1/30. Probably it means nothing, other than that he is not considered to be 'over the hill', like Mulish. I don't believe in any chance for Nooteboom (because his profile is seen as too similar to that of Le Clezio), but what is often overlooked is that he considers himself first and foremost as a poet. The English Wikipedia entry goes exclusively into his novels and his travel writing. His poetry is only mentioned in the bibliography. Maybe I should revive my wikipedia account to make things a bit more balanced there. Was just considering all this, now that 2010 is expected to be a poet's year.

On a different note, does anybody here know how many years ago Ladbrokes started this tradition of Nobel literature betting?