Nobel Prize in Literature 2010 Speculation

[Weejay]

I would say that Ko Un have a fair chance really...
Transtr?mer > We wont give the prize to a Swede ever again, cause of what happened in 1974

[Mirabell]

The Literary Saloon (hi guys!) has a good write-up about the odds for those interested:

the Literary Saloon at the complete review - 21 - 30 September 2010 Archive

um. yes. http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/...html#post73469

[JTolle]

Transtr?mer > We wont give the prize to a Swede ever again, cause of what happened in 1974

And hopefully this will change very soon. Having read (I think) all of Transtromer's work until 2006, and having been very taken with all of it, there's no doubt in me that he is at least as deserving as any other names that are thrown up, and far more so than many. I don't read nearly any Swedish literature, but as a highly civilized, well-to-do nation I'm sure they're producing literature of high artistic merit as many other similar nations are. I hope that the incidents of 1974 will soon quit haunting the Academy, so that they can award someone whose work is as astounding as Tomas Transtromer's.

In Defense of Living American Authors:

I am not the biggest fan of Banville, Muldoon, Achebe, Mulisch, Murakami, and a few others who get tagged as Nobel-worthy every year. Achebe I could live with because I'll concede to the general opinion about someone who pretty much single-handedly brought African literature to the fore of a world stage, the others, I might squirm a little.

But I'll reserve judgment on all of them. I've read some of every one of those authors. However, I have not read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, The Discovery of Heaven, and Arrow of God. And, not having read these and other books, I really can't say if any of them are truly deserving, and I certainly won't say that they simply are not worthy of the award, considering that Marquez won it for what seems like a masterpiece (One Hundred Years of Solitude) and a great novel (Chronicle of a Death Foretold) (not to mention the general drift of the Boom) and someone like Lagerlof can win based on (this seems to be consensus) the merit of Gosta Berling's Saga.

If Roth, DeLillo, Pynchon, or McCarthy have a masterpiece or two in their oeuvre, just that could mean that they really do deserve a Nobel.

Roth: American Pastoral, Sabbath's Theatre, Portnoy's Complaint. DeLillo: Underworld, White Noise, Libra. Pynchon: Gravity's Rainbow, Mason & Dixon, The Crying of Lot 49. McCarthy: Blood Meridian, Suttree, The Border Trilogy. Until I've read them, I can't say for sure if they are overrated, I can't say for sure they're underrated. And until anyone else has read them (or at least tried), there's no reason to brush them under the rug.

Also, American Literature does not just consist of those 4 men. Though I haven't read all of them I'd name (waalkwriter) Vidal, Albee, (Mirabell) Barth, Ashbery, and also bring up Gass, Coover, Kushner, Oates, Delaney, Crowley, Theroux, Johnson, and Vollmann. Many of whom, if you'd read them, completely evade the stereotypes leveled against the Big Four: Insularity, Postmodernism, Elitism, Pseudo-Intellectualism. Look at Vollmann, a world-author as much as George Dibbern was a "citizen of the world", and Anne Carson may be elitist and difficult, but nearly every person she honors in her work and is influenced by has been dead 500 hundred years or more.

Roth has made a stupid comment, but he's not a stupid man, his defense of Milan Kundera after the scandal that arose a few years ago (along with Rushdie, Eco, Semprun, and Pamuk to name a few) and his continued insistence on bringing Polish writers and their works to the attention of the American mainstream illuminates some aspects of this man's drive and nature. He is not as insular and blind as that comment has made him seem, he might be jealous, angry, truly indifferent, or something else, but the man has been drawing on world influence since he was a child: Kafka, Celine, Levi, Conrad, Dostoyevsky, Gogol.

It's all about an effort of reading, that's why I really admire the WLF, bringing the seemingly disparate parts of World Literature into cohesion and conversation as they are meant to be. I won't hate on Estonian writers or claim that South Korean literature provides nothing and just gives me a headache, until at least I've read some major portion of their writing, and even then I probably won't hate, because four writers do not make a country's literature.

[Liam]

JTolle # 286: An elegant and beautifully written mini-essay, .

[alik-vit]

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[Bjorn]

um. yes. http://www.worldliteratureforum.com/...html#post73469

Wooops. Sorry. Serves me right for being gone a couple of days and not reading closely.

JTolle - very well put.

For those who can read Swedish, there's an interesting article in SvD today about whether or not the Nobel is, to quote Bellow, the "kiss of death" for any author who gets it - ie that once they've gotten the prize, they never really publish anything worthwhile again. There's no real answer, obviously, especially since many winners are getting on a bit in years, but from 1950 onwards, 24 winners - almost half - have either gone completely silent or only published one or two books after they got the prize.

[Liam]

Tomas Venclova

Yes: a truly gifted and profound poet; I would compare him (thematically, at least) to Brodsky. I've only read one collection of his poems (in Russian, with the Lithuanian originals on the facing page), but I agree: he would be fully deserving.

Then again, I'm also rooting for Cathal O Searcaigh, Pentti Holappa and/or Imants Ziedonis.

As far as modern Irish poetry is concerned, I would say that O Searcaigh is a greater poet than Paul Muldoon, whose name periodically pops up as a perennial candidate.

This goes back to why I think the one diversity consideration should be LANGUAGE, rather than COUNTRY. "An American hasn't won in 17 years" is not a very good argument. "Spanish hasn't won in two decades" is a good argument.

Well, what about those languages that have never gotten the award, then? And not just globally; you can limit it to Europe alone and the number of overlooked languages will be staggering.

America has few great writers; they're all so far stuck up in their own little world I can barely stand to read them

OK, point taken in regards to Le Clezio and Marquez (later on), but are you telling me that Rushdie and Eco aren't "stuck up in their own little world"? Both of these writers have incredible potential, but have produced nothing but borefests lately.

[anchomal]

Cathal ? Searcaigh's reputation is in tatters in Ireland since the allegations that he had sponsored the educations of Nepalese boys in order to cajole them into sex. Apparently they were borderline regarding the age of consent so from a legal standpoint he was just about ok, but this news broke at the height of the church sex abuse scandals, and his behaviour certainly seemed predatory.
He has been widely portrayed as a paedophile and I wonder how well he is read here now. His stuff still gets published (I noticed a new collection prominently displayed in my local bookshop not too long ago, and in hardback no less! - no such thing as bad publicity, and all that...). As to whether or not his poetry is any good, I can't comment since I have not read any of his work. But I can't imagine he'd be a popular winner.

[Liam]

Cathal ? Searcaigh's reputation is in tatters in Ireland...

Hey, we all got skeletons in our closets, his are just more... well-hung, .

I don't think he ever attempted to hide what he was doing because he never considered it wrong. It's not like he's been caught doing something naughty in secret, like the recent story with the Swedish head of police (involving lies, physical/emotional abuse, and possible rape).

Besides, didn't the documentary Fairytale of Kathmandu pretty much make everything regarding ? Searcaigh's behavior clear?

Not a problematic issue for me as long as it's not illegal and there's no physical/emotional intimidation involved.

[waalkwriter]

I suppose you're right Liam. Rushdie and Eco haven't written their best work of late, and indeed all I've read was In the Name of the Rose of Eco's, and if I were completely truthful I'd have to say I it was so so, brilliant at times, exhausting and tedious at others.

I would like to respond to JTolle's nice little mini-essay. One thing that stuck out at me was that Lagerlof was also being recognized for writing The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. She was, in her day, an immensely popular children's author whose work was a very idealistic, romantic reaction against the Swedish realists like Strindberg and Ibsen, and at the time the Academy was very much in a stage of literally following Nobel's wishes and giving the award to 'idealistic writers'. I found her quite charming, it's too bad the last English translation of Gosta Berlings Saga was done in 1898 and is probably littered with flaws, as translations weren't done so tightly and professionally then as they are now, and I've found that I prefer to read newer translations.

As for your other comments, can I speak now as someone who has attempted to get through White Noise and had to stop because the pretentiousness of it was making him nauseous? Or must I sweep it under the rug? I could live with Thomas Pynchon, he is an intelligent man, and a balanced one. Even though I agree with liehtzu and think that his writing is asinine and not enjoyable to read because he's to busy naming characters Quackenbush and sending them to Timbuktu to drink more alcohol and spout conspiracy theories, (his dialogue also reminds me of beat writers, and that kind of dialogue really annoys me), but I could deal with it. Post-modernism is thankfully, on the way out it seems as people these days, particularly people my age, seem to embrace romanticism more as well as a simpler style.

Don DeLillo I could not. Why? Because he is such an enormous ass. I'll always remember, in like the first chapter of White Noise the character is talking about 'the kids walking around with their expensive walkmans' and he just goes on and on about the evils of materialism and what's wrong with youth today, I was waiting for him to run outside screaming, "You kids get off my lawn before I gut you and feed you to the dogs!" DeLillo has quickly become quite irrelevant to American society, and indeed my generation is more concerned with how one finds meaning and order in a fast-paced, often frivolous society obsessed with material things, rather than just railing on the system itself, or at least so I have observed.

I think this little quote from a review of White Noise written by Johnathon Yardley puts it best:

For lovers of pure prose, the novel is a trip; the trouble is that when you step back from it and view it clinically, it proves to be a trip to nowhere--yet another of DeLillo's exercises in fiction as political tract.


This is what makes DeLillo so irritating and frustrating; he's a writer of stupendous talents, yet he wastes those talents on monotonously apocalyptic novels the essential business of which is to retail the shopworn campus ideology of the '60s and '70s.

Take this quote from White Noise for example, (I parsed this from a B.R. Meyers essay because I don't have the book on me of course and it's been since my Junior year in high school that I tried t read it):

"Why do these possessions carry such sorrowful weight? There is a darkness attached to them, a foreboding. They make me wary not of personal failure and defeat but of something more general, something large in scope and content."

Now have that go on for several hundred pages and you get a good idea of what is in store for you in White Noise. I think monotonously dull is a good way to put, but that overlooks the fact that his political ranting is both shallow and cliched to the extreme, as is everything about DeLillo. He turns me off personally with how full of himself he is, and at the same time I can't respect his ideas because they are shallow, 'vogue' criticisms of an aging ex-hippie. They only ever scratch the surface.

I've gone on long enough I suppose. I'll just end by saying, out of that common list, the one writer I would be bothered least by winning is Phillip Roth.

[Taleb]

Dear Daniel

Since you are an expert on latin literature, do you think that Carlos Fuentes deserves his chance to win the Nobel? or is for the academy just another magic realist?

[waalkwriter]

I am not Daniel, but I did read The Old Gringo by Fuentes. Without going into extensive detail, I hated it, not just because it was so intensely difficult to read, but also because beneath all the stylism is a very plain, sappy, melodramatic love story and he turns the acerbic, bitter Bierce into a whiny sap. But the style is a big thing...I've never encountered a writer who switched point of view within a sentence, often doing so several times, and with no warning, Faulkner at least had little tics that you were able to follow, like dashes and a few words of italics that clued to a narrative shift and even he, so far as I know, wasn't mishmashing perspectives in each sentence like some literary particle accelerator.

I had no trouble reading The Sound and the Fury, but I couldn't follow Fuentes at all. His sentences were like raging seas shifting through time and place and point of view with nothing to hold on to. They were dull and long and the story was lifeless. Then there was the fact it was a poor translation; I kept having to stop and just ponder a sentence, because it would lack a direct object, or it would refer internally to an indirect object that wasn't there, (I'm not much for grammar so I can't explain very well the frequent, confusing, vague feelings of wrongness I got when reading it). There's a time when I think a translator has to say, "The author's original writing/intentions be damned, I've got to make this work linguistically and stylistically in the new language." This translator never had that moment, and they should have, around page one.

[JTolle]

I would like to respond to JTolle's nice little mini-essay. One thing that stuck out at me was that Lagerlof was also being recognized for writing The Wonderful Adventures of Nils. She was, in her day, an immensely popular children's author whose work was a very idealistic, romantic reaction against the Swedish realists like Strindberg and Ibsen, and at the time the Academy was very much in a stage of literally following Nobel's wishes and giving the award to 'idealistic writers'. I found her quite charming, it's too bad the last English translation of Gosta Berlings Saga was done in 1898 and is probably littered with flaws, as translations weren't done so tightly and professionally then as they are now, and I've found that I prefer to read newer translations.

As for your other comments, can I speak now as someone who has attempted to get through White Noise and had to stop because the pretentiousness of it was making him nauseous? Or must I sweep it under the rug? I could live with Thomas Pynchon, he is an intelligent man, and a balanced one. Even though I agree with liehtzu and think that his writing is asinine and not enjoyable to read because he's to busy naming characters Quackenbush and sending them to Timbuktu to drink more alcohol and spout conspiracy theories, (his dialogue also reminds me of beat writers, and that kind of dialogue really annoys me), but I could deal with it. Post-modernism is thankfully, on the way out it seems as people these days, particularly people my age, seem to embrace romanticism more as well as a simpler style.

Don DeLillo I could not. Why? Because he is such an enormous ass. I'll always remember, in like the first chapter of White Noise the character is talking about 'the kids walking around with their expensive walkmans' and he just goes on and on about the evils of materialism and what's wrong with youth today, I was waiting for him to run outside screaming, "You kids get off my lawn before I gut you and feed you to the dogs!" DeLillo has quickly become quite irrelevant to American society, and indeed my generation is more concerned with how one finds meaning and order in a fast-paced, often frivolous society obsessed with material things, rather than just railing on the system itself, or at least so I have observed.

Now have that go on for several hundred pages and you get a good idea of what is in store for you in White Noise. I think monotonously dull is a good way to put, but that overlooks the fact that his political ranting is both shallow and cliched to the extreme, as is everything about DeLillo. He turns me off personally with how full of himself he is, and at the same time I can't respect his ideas because they are shallow, 'vogue' criticisms of an aging ex-hippie. They only ever scratch the surface.

Sorry, Lagerlof was an oversight, I had indeed heard of the praise The Wonderful Adventures of Nils garnered, I forgot about that above. Now since Lagerlof seems a less suitable example, I'll trade her for Sholokhov who got it for Quiet Flows the Don plain and simple, nothing else. One masterpiece.

Concerning DeLillo, I haven't read any of his early work (although I am at this moment finishing End Zone), but I recently read Falling Man, Cosmopolis, The Body Artist, and Point Omega, basically his last four novels.

From what I've read of End Zone, which is really funny btw, I can see some obsessions and compulsions concerning the modern world/society (e.g. Nuclear Holocaust, Media, Metafiction), and if there weren't as much comedy and listlessness about the novel I might find myself hating it, but for now he has me. White Noise I borrowed from the library yesterday and will be reading next, so I can see if I hate it or not, but the issues you bring up against that novel are issues which really haven't haunted his later work, excepting Cosmopolis which was something of an exercise in "pure prose", but the others, generally mysterious though they were, seemed to be hopeful and humane and comforting.

At the end of Point Omega the character who has most embodied DeLillo's obsessive tendencies toward 'annihilation', 'postmodernism', and that sureness of thought which I've seen many times already, had become only a sad, feeble old man, devoid of all his former fervor in the wake of personal loss. I think that's representative of something in DeLillo, considering that after four late novels I haven't been too bothered by those concepts which he seems to have exhausted in his early work. Underworld is the last novel he wrote before coming into his "late period", maybe this is the masterpiece for those who hate White Noise. Despite its size I'm set on reading it after I finish the latter. Maybe the late work is more for those who hate the early work, and maybe it's the late work that he should be awarded the Nobel for, Underworld and on.

(Some of this might make a move to the DeLillo thread, I think)

[Daniel del Real]

I'd wish to be an expert on Latin American literature, I'm just passionate for it, but I'll try to answer you as good as possible with my limited knowledge on Carlos Fuentes works.
So far I've read just 5 or 6 Fuentes books and I can tell quality is very uneven. That is why when someone like waalk reads Gringo Viejo, and it's not the right novel to start with him it could be a little disappointing and confusing as well. He's not an easy writer to read. He's very cryptic and takes his many voices too far away to the point it's a laberyinthical task sometimes to identify who is carrying the narrative line, who is speaking at the moment. It takes some time to get used to Fuentes narrative style but I have to tell it really worths the effort.
La Regi?n m?s Transparente is an outstanding novel, as I've said previously one of the best three novels written in Mexico in the XX Century. Fuentes is a really intelligent man that goes beyond magical realism and even though he has some characteristics in his books regarding this movement and the influence of many of his contemporary partners he takes it to a more intelectual level and makes it work differently. He's really complex not only in the way he suddenly changes narrator but how he analyse the behaviour and conduct of the Mexican citize from mid XX century. I've only seen that level of comprehension of Mexican population in Octavio Paz marvelous essay El Laberinto de la Soledad.
I think that Fuentes should be carried away from the magical realism bunch and be judged only by his indivudual contribution to Latin American and worldwide literature. It'd be truly unfair to deny him the prize just because GGM already won it as a representant of the magical realism school.
On the other side, as intelligent he is, he is also a big show off. I can tell he's like the Rushdie of Spanish letters. He's always in the need to be adored, bowed, glorified and this is something really bad for his image. He's a dandy and his personality and political ideology (always eating from the hand of the party in power) is something that maybe the Academy overlooks in not a very good way, but hey, Paz was just like that and he won it, so I don't see a problem with that either.
Does he deserve it? Yes. Do I want him to get it? No.
If he's unbearable already, I can't think how it's going to be after he is awarded with the highest prize for worldwide literature. Same goes for Vargas Llosa.
So if it's going to be a Spanish writer I'd highlight other names like Mars?, Pacheco, Gelman, Parra and the Goytisolos.

[Weejay]

And hopefully this will change very soon. Having read (I think) all of Transtromer's work until 2006, and having been very taken with all of it, there's no doubt in me that he is at least as deserving as any other names that are thrown up, and far more so than many. I don't read nearly any Swedish literature, but as a highly civilized, well-to-do nation I'm sure they're producing literature of high artistic merit as many other similar nations are. I hope that the incidents of 1974 will soon quit haunting the Academy, so that they can award someone whose work is as astounding as Tomas Transtromer's.
.

I fully agree with you on this. I really hope to see Transtr?mer as laureate this year.

[Daniel del Real]

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Names are moving in a normal way I think. It's interesting to check movement on Spanish language writers increase significantly.
I don't know what where the initial odds for Vargas Llosa but right now has gone 25/1. Other names that climbed are Fuentes, Mars? and Goytisolo.

[Taleb]

I'd wish to be an expert on Latin American literature, I'm just passionate for it, but I'll try to answer you as good as possible with my limited knowledge on Carlos Fuentes works.
So far I've read just 5 or 6 Fuentes books and I can tell quality is very uneven. That is why when someone like waalk reads Gringo Viejo, and it's not the right novel to start with him it could be a little disappointing and confusing as well. He's not an easy writer to read. He's very cryptic and takes his many voices too far away to the point it's a laberyinthical task sometimes to identify who is carrying the narrative line, who is speaking at the moment. It takes some time to get used to Fuentes narrative style but I have to tell it really worths the effort.
La Regi?n m?s Transparente is an outstanding novel, as I've said previously one of the best three novels written in Mexico in the XX Century. Fuentes is a really intelligent man that goes beyond magical realism and even though he has some characteristics in his books regarding this movement and the influence of many of his contemporary partners he takes it to a more intelectual level and makes it work differently. He's really complex not only in the way he suddenly changes narrator but how he analyse the behaviour and conduct of the Mexican citize from mid XX century. I've only seen that level of comprehension of Mexican population in Octavio Paz marvelous essay El Laberinto de la Soledad.
I think that Fuentes should be carried away from the magical realism bunch and be judged only by his indivudual contribution to Latin American and worldwide literature. It'd be truly unfair to deny him the prize just because GGM already won it as a representant of the magical realism school.
On the other side, as intelligent he is, he is also a big show off. I can tell he's like the Rushdie of Spanish letters. He's always in the need to be adored, bowed, glorified and this is something really bad for his image. He's a dandy and his personality and political ideology (always eating from the hand of the party in power) is something that maybe the Academy overlooks in not a very good way, but hey, Paz was just like that and he won it, so I don't see a problem with that either.
Does he deserve it? Yes. Do I want him to get it? No.
If he's unbearable already, I can't think how it's going to be after he is awarded with the highest prize for worldwide literature. Same goes for Vargas Llosa.
So if it's going to be a Spanish writer I'd highlight other names like Mars?, Pacheco, Gelman, Parra and the Goytisolos.

Thanks Daneil for the generous comments.....but whaf about.his most lauded work, "The death of Artemio Cruz"? One passionate proffesor of literature claimed it one of the best 100 novels ever, in his book "The novel 100"?

[adaorardor]

Thanks Daneil for the generous comments.....but whaf about.his most lauded work, "The death of Artemio Cruz"? One passionate proffesor of literature claimed it one of the best 100 novels ever, in his book "The novel 100"?

Fuentes' greatest novel, and it is indeed Nobel-worthy, is Terra Nostra.

Btw the most recent one (narrated by the severed head) was supposed to be good, too- anyone read it? (la voluntad y la fortuna)

[anchomal]

Hey, we all got skeletons in our closets, his are just more... well-hung, .

I don't think he ever attempted to hide what he was doing because he never considered it wrong. It's not like he's been caught doing something naughty in secret, like the recent story with the Swedish head of police (involving lies, physical/emotional abuse, and possible rape).

Besides, didn't the documentary Fairytale of Kathmandu pretty much make everything regarding ? Searcaigh's behavior clear?

Not a problematic issue for me as long as it's not illegal and there's no physical/emotional intimidation involved.


L.

Yes, the documentary made his behaviour clear but there was still something sordid about the whole thing. Perhaps not illegal, but there did seem to be a serious abuse of trust going on... he was sponsoring these kids (16 year olds are still kids...) and did come across as a predator. There was consent, but it was hard to ignore how manipulative the whole thing seemed. I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder but he's hardly a looker, is he? Middle-aged and overweight, it's a bit of a stretch to imagine all those boys queuing up for a turn.

I'm not passing judgement either way, I just saw you mention him as a possible Nobel contender and wanted to comment on how he is perceived here in Ireland now. Also, I don't think it helped his cause to act like the persecuted party and publically compare himself to Oscar Wilde... But like I've already said, I can't really voice an opinion on whether his poetry is of Nobel quality.

Oh, also, I actually quite liked White Noise!

[Eric]

Blimey, this is the thread to be at to belong to the in-crowd and those waiting for some unknown writer to get 1,000,000 dollars.

The Nobel Nominations thread is intriguing. For instance, Thomas Mann recommended someone called Ivan Shmelyov. I can't say I'd ever heard of him before I looked at the Nominations list. I wonder why Mann picked him.

Liehtzu (#272) says:

It may indicate that Mr. Roth has become more conservative in his old age. He made a genuine effort to spotlight terrific Central and Eastern European authors when he edited the "Writers From the Other Europe" series through Penguin in the 1970s: Milan Kundera, Bruno Schulz, Danilo Kis, Tadeusz Borowski, Bohomil Hrabal, Jerzy Andrzejewski, George Konrad, and others.

I find it fascinating that Liehtzu seems to imply that conservatism excludes "genuine effort". Two of the "terrific" Eastern European authors (i.e. Borowski and Andrzejewski) were in that book by Milosz called The Captive Mind as collaborators with the ?litist Communist r?gime in Poland. Both were damaged by Nazism, but they unfortunately then thought Communism worth sucking up to. But I agree that the Penguin series was good. It introduced me to, for instance, Bruno Schulz' work. Most worthwhile authors from the Communist countries were critics of the r?gime, and often conservative, even if only as a reaction against Communism. Though some, such as Jaan Kross, became Social-Democrats once the countries had been liberated from the Russian yoke, not ultra-rightist reactionaries.