Nobel Prize in Literature 2021 Speculation

[Nirvrithi]

Yes i thought this was striking too, but personally I think it harked back more to Handke than forward to this year. Or maybe Houellebecq is our winner...

Yes, but while for Handke it was more of a political scandal of sorts, it is purely a private scandal for Ko Un. Her stress on the words "personal lives" is what takes me to Ko Un.

 

[Ater Lividus Ruber & V]

Does Ellen Mattson's straight answer to the question "Is the writer's personality considered when deciding on Nobel Prize for a laureate?" portend something? Does it allude to Ko Un??? If so, nobody would me more pleased than I. She states categorically that a writer's personal life or private life has no influence on the decision. It is pure literary merit. This sounds more like an anticipatory bail plea for deciding on someone with outstanding literary merit but embroiled in personal scandal.

Yes, but while for Handke it was more of a political scandal of sorts, it is purely a private scandal for Ko Un. Her stress on the words "personal lives" is what takes me to Ko Un.

Um, what? Handke is an ethical moron, a real life troll and provocateur who understands any press is good press. He knows how to game the system. What he's said is abhorrent and inexcusable. However - and I dislike having to compare the two - he's only written and said things. Ko Un, on the other hand, systematically sexually abused women for decades. He used his fame and power (both as a critic and an editor) to force up and coming writers to appease his sexual desires.

"What poet Ko Un, 84, did to female writers, editors and publishers was something shocking. He groped them in front of other members of their groups.

According to poet Choi Young-mi, one of the victims who first revealed his sexual harassment, Ko unzipped his pants, masturbated and even yelled at a couple of female writers there to help him satisfy his pathetic sexual desire."

"People like him were members of the editorial boards of major literary quarterlies, through which aspiring writers and poets make their literary debut or publish their works. If someone refuses their request to curry favor with them sexually, retaliation awaits them. Their works won't be chosen for publication," she said.

Ko Un - why it took so long for his sexual misconduct to be revealed

At home, poet Ko Un, 84, has remained mum on fresh allegations that he abused his status in the literary world to sexually harass female writers and publishers. But he was vocal in...

www.koreatimes.co.kr

Whatever attachment you feel to his literary legacy, and I'm all for reading the works of authors who have disgusting personal lives, he no longer deserves the Nobel Prize. As we've seen in the 80 pages this year, there are plenty of authors. Should the Academy do double laureates for a decade, there are plenty of candidates. What he's done is unforgivable, and the Academy will not go unscathed rewarding him the prize like they did with Handke.

 

[Septularisen]

Just a random question: What are your top 10 laureates since the prize's inception? Let's see how un/uniform our preferences are!

Hard to choose just 10 names between more of 100 laureates, let's say in no particular order:

Thomas MANN
Samuel BECKETT
Joseph BRODSKY
Jaroslav SEIFERT
Wole SOYINKA
Albert CAMUS
José SARAMAGO
Odysseas ELYTIS
Gabriel GARCIA MARQUEZ
Ernest HEMINGWAY

 

[ministerpumpkin]

Yes i thought this was striking too, but personally I think it harked back more to Handke than forward to this year. Or maybe Houellebecq is our winner...

By the way, speaking of Houellebecq, I was reminded earlier today of this cinematic gem I watched a few years ago:

The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

It's...not good, but still entertaining. I checked and it's available for free with ads on VUDU, at least in the US. Don't know about Netflix or anywhere else.

 

[Uemarasan]

Um, what? Handke is an ethical moron, a real life troll and provocateur who understands any press is good press. He knows how to game the system. What he's said is abhorrent and inexcusable. However - and I dislike having to compare the two - he's only written and said things. Ko Un, on the other hand, systematically sexually abused women for decades. He used his fame and power (both as a critic and an editor) to force up and coming writers to appease his sexual desires.

Ko Un - why it took so long for his sexual misconduct to be revealed

At home, poet Ko Un, 84, has remained mum on fresh allegations that he abused his status in the literary world to sexually harass female writers and publishers. But he was vocal in...

www.koreatimes.co.kr

Whatever attachment you feel to his literary legacy, and I'm all for reading the works of authors who have disgusting personal lives, he no longer deserves the Nobel Prize. As we've seen in the 80 pages this year, there are plenty of authors. Should the Academy do double laureates for a decade, there are plenty of candidates. What he's done is unforgivable, and the Academy will not go unscathed rewarding him the prize like they did with Handke.

Exactly. There is no comparison between someone whose rhetoric is found distasteful and someone who has actually violated or committed violence against another human being. I find the false equivalence disturbing.

With regard to the topic of those who should have won the Nobel, it seems to be a rather commonly held belief that Chinua Achebe at some point should have gotten it. I’ve been reading quite a bit of African literature lately, and I wonder why Ousmane Sembene, a literary as well as cinematic pioneer, isn’t mentioned in the same capacity. Perhaps his cinematic work has overshadowed his literary output?

 

[Morbid Swither]

Just a random question: What are your top 10 laureates since the prize's inception? Let's see how un/uniform our preferences are!

1. Toni Morrison
2. Mario Vargas Llosa
3. Patrick White
4. Elias Canetti
5. Yasunari Kawabata

After the top five, my list really gets too muddled, but 6-20 basically would be poets.

 

[Leseratte]

The primitive does not need to know why the sun comes up each morning to be able to predict that it will, just like we do not need to know why the Nobel Library is predictive of the Nobel Prize winner to know that it is predictive.

I can´t find Martino's original post, but his questions make sense to me:
" The checked out copies seem to me: a) books that Swedish citizens/students take for their dissertations or other academic activities; b) books that are checked out by members out of curiosity (not necessarily works written by the finalists considered for the Nobel this year but by writers possibly often mentioned in the long list each year). I think the library is for the members to study, find works by other writers from the linguistic areas of the finalists, and not for actually checking finalists' books out. I mean: what kind of secret selection would this be ? There are cultural journalists all around the world trying to guess the winner each year. Do you think that SA members are so naif? Or so scarcely financed ?"
One must think of the possibility that the academy members are playing just a bit with the anxious readers. I can´t account though for this check out method working so well.

 

[redhead]

Does Ellen Mattson's straight answer to the question "Is the writer's personality considered when deciding on Nobel Prize for a laureate?" portend something? Does it allude to Ko Un??? If so, nobody would me more pleased than I. She states categorically that a writer's personal life or private life has no influence on the decision. It is pure literary merit. This sounds more like an anticipatory bail plea for deciding on someone with outstanding literary merit but embroiled in personal scandal.

God, I hope not. Giving it to Ko Un now would be idiotic. What he did was monstrous and no matter how they tried to spin it, in light of their own scandal the decision would be viewed as them doubling down.

But I don’t think there are hints or anything in the video. They haven’t chosen a winner yet, and I recall a similar video in 2019 where the member implied they were trying to be more international in their selection and then they awarded two Europeans. That comment in the video was most likely about Handke.

 

[redhead]

By the way, has anyone on here read anything by Eucken? I found this:

The choice of philosopher Rudolf Eucken as Nobel laureate in 1908 is widely considered to be one of the worst mistakes in the history of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The main candidates for the prize this year were poet Algernon Swinburne and author Selma Lagerlöf, but the Academy were divided between the candidates and, as a compromise, Eucken, representative of the Academy's interpretation of Nobel's "ideal direction", was launched as an alternative candidate that could be agreed upon.

Now I kinda want to read one of his philosophical works to see if it’s that bad.

 

[errequatro]

just realised that Soyinka has a new book out. Maybe the Academy will jump on this and award an African writer... Unlikely, but then again...

 

[alik-vit]

By the way, has anyone on here read anything by Eucken? I found this:



Now I kinda want to read one of his philosophical works to see if it’s that bad.

As a member of Faculty of Philosophy I can say with full confidence: he is dead as thinker and he is dead as writer. It's even not second rank of German philosophy. Just a name of respectable professor from the time when "idealistic directions" were not just words for SA.

 

[Americanreader]

Top 10 Laureates in chronological order
William Faulkner
Samuel Beckett
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Camilo José Cela
Derek Walcott
Toni Morrison
Wislawa Szymborska
Harold Pinter
Orhan Pamuk
Olga Tokarczuk

 

[redhead]

Just a random question: What are your top 10 laureates since the prize's inception? Let's see how un/uniform our preferences are!

In no order:

Kenzaburo Oe
Patrick White
Halldor Laxness
Samuel Beckett
Harold Pinter
Olga Tokarczuk
William Faulkner
Peter Handke*
Gao Xingjian
Claude Simon

*I don’t think he should have won, though. Despite liking his books, I buy them used.

 

[Papageno]

I just wanted to mention that I dreamt last night that César Aira was announced this year's Nobel laureate in literature. I even remember the bizarre caption, something like: "for imbuing everyday things with the extraordinary senses, and extraordinary things with the everyday," something like that. I also remembered this forum in the dream and thought: Oh my god, this news is going to be so explosive!!!
I can't really explain the dream, I like Aira, but he would not be my top pick. But it would be pretty cool if my dream were prophetic!

 

[Morbid Swither]

I’m pleasantly surprised to see so much love for Patrick White.

 

[Morbid Swither]

I just wanted to mention that I dreamt last night that César Aira was announced this year's Nobel laureate in literature. I even remember the bizarre caption, something like: "for imbuing everyday things with the extraordinary senses, and extraordinary things with the everyday," something like that. I also remembered this forum in the dream and thought: Oh my god, this news is going to be so explosive!!!
I can't really explain the dream, I like Aira, but he would not be my top pick. But it would be pretty cool if my dream were prophetic!

Though the notion seems fanciful to me now, but in light of this post, I don’t mind admiring that it has occurred to me I would really be taken by a César Aira/Can Xue split!

 

[namelesshere]

I’m pleasantly surprised to see so much love for Patrick White.

Patrick White is my absolute favourite "difficult" read.

 

[Bartleby]

Does Ellen Mattson's straight answer to the question "Is the writer's personality considered when deciding on Nobel Prize for a laureate?" portend something? Does it allude to Ko Un??? If so, nobody would me more pleased than I. She states categorically that a writer's personal life or private life has no influence on the decision. It is pure literary merit. This sounds more like an anticipatory bail plea for deciding on someone with outstanding literary merit but embroiled in personal scandal.

what she said is nothing new, however; I don't think it's trying to comment on the selection of any past laureate necessarily (or intending to pose as a premature "apology" for this year's choice). I say this having in mind this excerpt from Kjell Espmark's book about the Nobel Prize in Literature, posted on the Nobel Prize website:

Naturally, there is a political aspect of any international literary prize. It is, however, necessary to make a distinction between political effects and political intentions. The former are unavoidable – and often unpredictable. The latter are expressly banned by the Academy.

and more recently this interview with then permanent secretary Peter Englund in 2011.

He shares basically the same mindset as Mattson's, going in even more details.

 

[Seelig]

Just a random question: What are your top 10 laureates since the prize's inception? Let's see how un/uniform our preferences are!

In no particular order:

1. Simon
2. Canetti
3. Elytis
4. Beckett
5. Martinson
6. Singer
7. Szymborska
8. Bellow
9. Kertesz
10. Alexievich

 

[Weejay]

Just a random question: What are your top 10 laureates since the prize's inception? Let's see how un/uniform our preferences are!

A hard one... here's 10 in no particular order:
Albert Camus
Jean-Paul Sartre
Samuel Beckett
Gabriel García Márquez
Dario Fo
Günter Grass
Elfriede Jelinek
Harold Pinter
Orhan Pamuk
Bob Dylan

damn... forgot Tomas Tranströmer, Wole Soyinka... and many others...