Ater Lividus Ruber & V
我ヲ學ブ者ハ死ス
I'd also like to see comics/manga get an acknowledgement. I don't think this is the year, however.
Cleanthess would cry!
Cleanthess would cry!
Nobel Prize in Literature 2020 Speculation
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DouglasM
Reader
Besides, Alan Moore wrote two novels, one of which is quite complex and over 1200 pages long. Not that this is enough to celebrate a prize for him, just saying that he also ventured into traditional literature. Personally, I cannot judge him. I only know V for Vendetta, which I read a few years ago. I really loved it, but I don't remember the quality of the writing in particular - I was too busy being mesmerized by the universe Moore created around V.
redhead
Blahblahblah
Sorry, you’ve probably answered this before, but who in comics/manga do you think is that deserving? I’m looking for recs. Earlier this year I read some Alan Moore, Maus, Frank Miller (the stuff from before he went off the deep end) and am looking for more. Who would you recommend?
hayden
Well-known member
Yeah, I wouldn't be too thrilled with that either. Luckily, I'm not sure I could see it happening.
Achille Mbembe is a name going into my queue. Sounds like an interesting dude. Always happy to find a new name.
Ater Lividus Ruber & V
我ヲ學ブ者ハ死ス
I would have to think about the apposite manga author for the Nobel. I'll get back to you on that.
In the meantime, if you haven't read seminal works like, Monster, 20th Century Boys, Mushishi, Oyasumi Punpun, Vagabond, Slam Dunk, Emma, March Comes in like a Lion, Children of the Sea, I'd get to them.
JCamilo
Reader
Oh, I am aware Moore did much more than DC/Marvel stuff. In fact, he refused to work for Marvel before even becaming famous, and they really had to use some shaddy busines deals to have works with his name with their logo. But I disagree about DC part. Not only V was re-edited and finished with DC, as Killing Joker, Watchmen and Swamp Thing were DC works and Watchmen is pretty much his masterwork. Of course, heavily critical of super-heroes culture and even more relevant those days and since the 90's he avoid the two major publishing houses and traditional super-heroe stuff, yet his image - as I said, sadly to him - is linked with the culture that was his main target.
I am curious to read Jerusarelm, one of his novels, but as I said, I am more fan to the guy, super-authentic artist and and a hero of sorts of all those causes that are pop today, from feminism to LGBT representation and anti-mass culture domination. Big guy, does not need prizes, need freedom to be the grump old men heralding the end of counter-culture.
And yeah, ALR & V, Cleanthess would
nagisa
Spiky member
Otomo? Or the French love Taniguchi Jiro for some reason, that might give him a way in.
Unfortunately, Taniguchi has passed away. A wonderful writer.
Next to Takahashi, I would vote for Moto Hagio and Junji Ito.
nagisa
Spiky member
Indeed, in 2017, that escaped me. A wonderful writer indeed; I've just never seen the level of recognition he attained in France anywhere else.
Ater Lividus Ruber & V
我ヲ學ブ者ハ死ス
Kazuo Koike probably would have been the right guy to award, as he's both critically acclaimed and a major influence/teacher to other big names. I could see them liking Taiyou Matsumoto and Fumiko Takano. Hagio would be a good choice considering her works and effect she's had on the industry. There's also Hayao Miyazaki (if Dylan got it, then he's not too popular for the award).
JCamilo
Reader
While Miyazaki deserves every praise he gets, he is a bit of larger than the nobel kind of personality. It would probally blur a bit the genre recognition that would come with someone like Koike or Takahashi, but of course, would be a massive twist of awareness, specially considering Miyazaki usual themes about a balance between nature, progress, tradition...
About Frank Miller... besides the same problems (even bigger) related to his links to super-heroes comics (not time to indulge Disney ego), his impact is more visual than the text. Of course, when you write the script you must know how to balance visual and text, even more when you are responsable for both, as Miller is usually, but you can feel, since both are great responsable for the Graphic Novel development in the 80's, that Moore came with Novel part, Miller with the Graphic. There is more cinema stuff in his work than literary.
pinkunicorn
Reader
The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman. Habibi by Craig Thompson. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel.
childeroland
Reader
It'd be nice if Benoit Peeters or Frederic Boilet had a shot, but they might not be considered good enough.
Bartleby
Moderator
I haven’t been particularly fond of these, they seem to come from people who know nothing about how the prize works, to put it kindly... today, tho, this critic, among the usual Atwood and Thiong’o guesses, and the promotion for Brazilian Alberto Mussa, went surprisingly for Houellebecq
“It would be as great a choice as Atwood’s, albeit in a opposite way. Few delineate so well our moral ruin as the French writer. Okay, another prize for a francophone, but this one really deserves it (differently from the stale Modiano, for example). Besides, the choice of such an abject persona would provoke some good and welcoming strifes in the literary community.”
needless to say, I strongly disagree with his views on Modiano
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Deleted member 83959
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I was a massive Miyazaki fan growing up and still cherish many of his works but I have a lot of trouble seeing him winning anything like this from a literary perspective. I mean to start with, most of his films are adaptions of existing written works. In some cases he's not even changing anything, he's just literally animating an existing childrens' novel.
His last film came out in 2013. At 7 years ago that falls somewhat into my "hasn't made something recently enough" disqualifier.
Ignoring that, his last two films are pretty much "meh" and left a bad taste in my mouth. I also have numerous issues with other parts of his filmography that I think a serious literary investigation by a group of "experts" would agree with. I guess even evaluating them as works for children (I'm well aware they aren't just for children though) I feel like you'd find a lot of inconsistencies in quality of plot: how much actual social issues are being investigated and explained combined with Japanese yokai versus just making something cute and appealing. A lot of his best known works while fun, really aren't saying or doing much that's truly important or revelatory.
The Wind Rises (his last film from 2013) bordered on revisionist history/propaganda. It was incredibly well made and animated but it was a massive glorification of the invention and design of the Japanese Zero fighter plane. A large portion of the film pushes this silly narrative that essentially boils down to "my wife is dying... I'll design this fighter plane in her honor!" And then at the end there's some rather blasé attempt to make it seem like the inventor is disappointed in was heavily used in WW2 and helped fuel the war machine.
The film before that, From Up on Poppy Hill (2011) was some of the most derivative, generic, dime-a-dozen anime in terms of plot (as someone who's wasted years of their life binge-watching anime I feel rather qualified to say this). It sort of follows in the proceeding film in trying to dive into Japan's nationalist/pro-war past but does it through some weird methods. One major plot point focuses on whether or not the two main characters are actually siblings (they want to date) and the rest of it is your average school life/school club stuff that dozens of anime every year cover. It wasn't bad per se, just kind of clunky and cheesy.
Howl's Moving Castle becomes an incoherent mess about 2/3s of the way through. This is likely (I haven't read the book so I'm assuming) due to Studio Ghibli removing actual plot scenes from their adaption of the book in order to use that removed time to stick in a bunch of battle scenes. From my last viewing of it (sometime back when I was in college) I really got the sense that they had about 30 minutes left of film time and way more actual plot left so they figured flashy action scenes that were visually impressive would trump a coherent plot and romantic narrative.
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Bartleby
Moderator
Well, Tranströmer’s prize came exactly 7 years after his latest poetry collection...
and as for The Wind Rises... I don’t remember any revisionist history when I watched it, but that it was really beautiful and it fell as one of my favourites from him...
but, yeah, in a sense, I find that if a filmmaker were to win, it would be some original screenplay writer whose scripts could be read like a play, and who dealt with deep questions like those posed by Bergman, for instance.
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Deleted member 83959
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This doesn't solely apply to discussions of Modiano but it always seems like critics saying this sort of thing are really rather clueless as to how the prize works and the types of writers who win. The type of criticism where Modiano's writing is "stale" because he's essentially rewritten the same themes and similar plots over and over (back when Murakami may have still had a chance at winning you'd see this sort of criticism all the time in published speculation). Like yes, they do do this. And you know who else does? A ton of other Nobel winners. Herta Muller's works are all basically the same types of these and plots being recycled. Mo Yan's are as well. Kenzaburo Oe does this heavily.
It seems to be this bizarre mentality a lot of critics who don't actually read Nobel winners have where they think every novel a Nobel winner writes needs to be some sort of completely different, unique work that doesn't rehash things the author has previously said or done.
I'm not saying writers can't get "stale" for rewriting similar things over time but I just remember seeing this a ton back in like 2013-2016 and it always drove me crazy. As if an author establishing an identifiable writing style and voice and then subsequently delving heavily into specific topics detracts from the value of their oeuvre as a whole.
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Deleted member 83959
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Sort of. If we're speaking about a truly new collection of poetry then yes, it was 7 years. However, in 2011 a collection of his earliest works that was initially published in 2006 (I think it was 2006) was republished in an expanded format with more previously unpublished material from older magazines and journals. At the time of his win the Nobel site included this in his bibliography as his latest collection so I always assumed they were counting it as a "new" work despite the poems all being around 50 years old.
If we're going by more than 5 years I believe Gabriela Mistral was also at 7 years (that's counting only actual published stand-alone books, she was writing in magazines newspapers more recently than that).
The five years thing is my own pointless rule. I'm not saying it really exists, just that statically the Academy choices have abided by it. So until the modern iteration of the Academy choses a winner that clearly breaks this I like to adhere to it in my own speculation.
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