The Nobel as Lenin Prize?

[Eric]

In an interview in 2007, the prose and short-story writer Teet Kallas (born 1943) said that awarding the Nobel has become similar to awarding the Lenin Prize. There is an agenda: a geopolitical one, plus one involving giving it to minorities or someone representing rights groups. Kallas suggests that the whole prize has been politicised and that they try to give it to various people out of kindness, so that no one feels hurt or left out.

Has the Nobel become, like the Eurovision Song Contest, an arena for bitterly rival forces and geopolitical group bargaining, or a kind of palliative prize to keep everyone happy? Or even a prize to perpetuate a world cultural élite that mere mortals cannot join? Do the winners over the last few years show that it is still the most important literary prize in the world?

Teet Kallas himself was a dissident in his day, and suffered at the hands of the secret police. Nevertheless, once upon a time the editions of some of his dozen or so novels were up in the 48,000 copies range, with the book selling out in a couple of days.

[Liam]

I certainly think so (ex: Jelinek, Lessing, Pinter, Coetzee, etc) but those Swedish bastards are sneaky: oftentimes they manage to award the Prize, on purpose, to a writer who does represent the best in modern literature, and whose books will be read for centuries (Beckett, Hemingway [whom I don't really like, but whatever], Faulkner, Heaney, etc), so at the end of the day one doesn't quite know what to think.

As much as I like to rail against the Nobel Prize I'll be the first to admit that many of its winners, at least, have been worthy recipients. Of course they didn't really NEED it to promote their work, which I guess just goes to show that the Nobel is only good for lifting a writer out of relative obscurity; if you're someone like Hemingway, you will be read, forever and ever, Swedish Academy be damned.

[Svidrigailov]

In an interview in 2007, the prose and short-story writer Teet Kallas (born 1943) said that awarding the Nobel has become similar to awarding the Lenin Prize.

Today the western countries gradually begin becomes are similar to the USSR - I mean totalitarianism of consciousness of society. The political correctness suffocating free thought, aggressively imposed tolerance, dogmatic multiculturalism. As though it wasn't ridiculous - but earlier all this restrained cold war of c USSR. The big and strong enemy (USSR) forced the western elite to look for allies in the societies.
But the enemy somewhere was gone, and the establishment of the western countries solved that it is time to take a revenge. The western farmyard received the autocratic owner. More truly, the owner simply dumped a mask - it was already possible not to observe the proprieties.
The Nobel Prize became indeed very similar to the Stalin Award (Lenin): the main thing and indispensable condition - compliance of the candidate to dominating ideology, unconditional submission to "requirements" of a present situation, passionate support of "the main line of party".
I think that it becomes already uncomfortable to many clever people to live in the so-called "free" countries. It is too much doctrines with which it began impossible to argue. Or you will accuse of "antisovietism". Fie, that is in "anti-democratism", "racism", "homophobia", "not tolerances" etc. It is impossible to doubt. It is necessary will obey.
There was such writer - Kestler. Today its many books start to remind me tendencies of the Western civilization.

PS: I ask to forgive me my English. At school I very badly studied - too much beer and women. And reading books

[Liam]

too much beer and women

Yeah, it's always their fault, isn't it?