Nobel Prize in Literature 2021 Speculation

[Septularisen]

Unfortunately, I think Tanikawa’s time has passed

With 89 years... Yes!

 

[Septularisen]

After the scandal and with the new external members they have awarded two europeans and a writer from the USA. Nothing seems to have changed.

Unfortunately it seems that you have right here!

 

[Septularisen]

Yes, the Oulipó would have been a unique joint prize; and I also think that (perhaps in place of Sartre) an award to Surrealism, could have been cool: Louis Aragon, Andre Breton, Paul Éluard. But the Oulipó is better.

I'm agree with this idea... (maybe not for Paul ÉLUARD in 1964 as he pass away in 1952...)...
Another great name is the Italian author Italo CALVINO.

 

[Papageno]

My least favorite winner in this century is, besides Dylan, Modiano. Not that he's bad - he's not. I just don't have him in such a high esteem.

Modiano is actually my favorite laureate of at least the last decade, and maybe the whole century so far. I particularly appreciate the subtlety of his novels, the understatement, their simple style, their uninvasive mysteriousness, and their exploration of memory in a dreamlike atmosphere of loss.

I don't think I really have "the worst" laureate this century, as I have always felt the Academy's decision was well supported, perhaps apart from Dylan's win which has definitely come as a shock...

On the subject of Murakami, I definitely agree that he would be an unusually weak laureate. I personally might sometimes (mildly) enjoy reading him, as I enjoy some of his repeated motifs that were listed above in "Murakami's Bingo" someone posted, but I just don't think he is good enough for the Nobel prize, not while so many other and better authors around the world still draw breath (at least 100 of them have been mentioned in this forum alone!).

 

[Dante]

Talking about awarding "institutions" like the Nobel Peace Prize does, what about the Oulipó. It would have been great!

Well, it would still be great considering that OuLiPo is more than alive (although less relevant)! Hervé Le Tellier, the latest winner of the Prix Goncourt, is the president of the institution nowadays.

 

[nagisa]

I was merely trying to express my admiration for Japanese culture. If this sentiment offends you so much I have no problem at all in excluding you from it.?
And that's all you will read from me on that topic.
Have a nice day!

Sorry, but what "Japanese culture" are you "admiring" in a guy who left Japan at 5 and didn't return for 29 years, whose avowed biggest influences are 19th century British and Russian fiction, who has said himself he doesn't like being pegged to his Japanese origins? Apart from, you know, the way he looks?

Like Liam said: you may think it's a compliment, but it really isn't. Have a nice day too.

 

[Liam]

Have a nice day too.

And with that, let us move on to fresh fields and pastures new, ?

 

[hayden]

After Dylan I consider Le Clezio the worst Nobel decision in the whole 21st century.

The fact Le Clezio won at all is weird. I don't want this to sound negative, so I'll balance it with the fact I think the winners in the 2010s were very good/excellent, but the 00s had a really bland and unfortunate stretch for me. The quadruple whammy of Jelenik/ Pinter/ Le Clezio/ Muller felt like they were picking straws amid a time they didn't need to. Although Pinter has since passed, if any of the other three still hadn't won, I don't think anyone would be calling for them to win.

Such a shame considering the slews who didn't win those years (nor will ever).

Haven't read Yang Lian, but Bei Dao and Duo² are amazing poets. I've only read one book by each, but If I'd have to pick one it would be Duo.
By the way I have a novel by Bei Dao which I'm planning to read soon. When I bought the book online I honestly thought it was poetry. We'll see.

I only got around to reading Yang Lian for the first time last month, but I'm glad I did. Insane work.

China has 5-6 really strong contenders right now, and while I would hate to see the Misty poets overlooked, I'm still rooting for Yu Hua to pull ahead. Like I said, if there's a split anytime soon, I think it will be between who Chinese laureates.

 

[hayden]

Talking about awarding "institutions" like the Nobel Peace Prize does, what about the Oulipó. It would have been great!

That would have been cool (albeit, maybe 25-ish years ago). Not sure if groups are being considered at all to be honest. Who knows, maybe a restoration/translation group has been nominated since. Or a library of sorts (can't think of any examples right now). I think the only organization we currently know to be nominated was the Pali Text Society over 100 years ago.

I imagine awarding Oulipó could be as muddled as awarding (say) beat poets as a whole, or Hungryalist poets, etc. As easy as it would be to say 'the Misty poets have won the Nobel Prize!' I mean... where does the money even go? The practice of nominated groups (3+ people) might not be allowed.

Gao Xinjian - As soon as he won he basically stopped being an author and unless he has some massive wealth of untranslated material that's vastly different from what's currently available I find it hard to make a case for him being Nobel-worthy versus just finding his two novels interesting and his drama works politically controversial in the same way loads of non-winners drama works are (Ngugi, etc).

Coetzee - I have yet to find anything he's done truly profound or moving. Nearly every single thing I've read by him has just been sort of a 3/5 shrug for me. A lot of the way he treats race and gender seems very heavy handed and makes me cringe.

Pinter - I've read every play and seen quite a few of them. His poetry is horrendous. I'll never get the people that are baffled and upset at Dario Fo's win yet find Pinter acceptable.

I like Xingjian's short stories. (And, not literature, but his paintings are my taste too). Maybe give Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather a shot.

As far as Coetzee, if you're referring to Disgrace... yeah. Not sure why people consider that his magnum opus. It wouldn't even be published today. Waiting For The Barbarians is much better.

Agree with Pinter. I actually like Dario Fo. Maybe he's slightly lightweight for the Nobel, but at least he has some great material.

 

[redhead]

Gao Xinjian - As soon as he won he basically stopped being an author and unless he has some massive wealth of untranslated material that's vastly different from what's currently available I find it hard to make a case for him being Nobel-worthy versus just finding his two novels interesting and his drama works politically controversial in the same way loads of non-winners drama works are (Ngugi, etc).

I think he’s written a few plays and some poetry after his Nobel, but according to the intro to a book of his plays poor health has prevented him from writing anything too ambitious since the mid 00s. He’s done a fair amount of painting and art exhibitions, though.

That said, I agree there’s been some bland winners this century. In addition to some of the ones already mentioned, I’m not a fan of Kertesz.

 

[Bartleby]

The fact Le Clezio won at all is weird. I don't want this to sound negative, so I'll balance it with the fact I think the winners in the 2010s were very good/excellent, but the 00s had a really bland and unfortunate stretch for me. The quadruple whammy of Jelenik/ Pinter/ Le Clezio/ Muller felt like they were picking straws amid a time they didn't need to. Although Pinter has since passed, if any of the other three still hadn't won, I don't think anyone would be calling for them to win.

That's one of the things I like about this prize, that writers I wouldn't have heard of enter my reading list - that coupled with the assumption they are great writers, and usually that you can trust most of their output to be even... and now you (and everyone else dismissing him) made me want to read Le Clezio even more. I've only leafed through some of his books but I found the beginning of Desert to be quite sensuous and lush and beguiling...

I absolutely love Jelinek (that's no surprise) and Müller, even tho I've read only one novel by each, but they're incredible. I hope the latter's whole oeuvre is just as good, for she has published little (and haven't, to my knowledge, written fiction since winning the prize), but I can see her being a worthy winner if we are to believe the words the SA described her with, so I wouldn't mind her having a short body or work, with short books, each of them having great poetic resonance and remaining in my mind for a long time, as the one I read did, even affecting the way I wrote for a while with her peculiar style.

As for Pinter, I need to read more from him, I was definitely not prepared for what I received from the couple of plays I read, but with time they grew on me, so I'm intrigued by him, let's say... and willing to re-read the plays I read and read the others.

That said, I agree there’s been some bland winners this century. In addition to some of the ones already mentioned, I’m not a fan of Kertesz.

another one I still need to read... oh boy...

 

[redhead]

That's one of the things I like about this prize, that writers I wouldn't have heard of enter my reading list - that coupled with the assumption they are great writers, and usually that you can trust most of their output to be even...

Yeah, to be honest despite my complaints, when it comes to awards I do like the Nobel the most (its long history also aligns with my interest in European history). Even when a winner doesn’t resonate with me, I can usually understand why the committee thinks their work is worthy—even with the more controversial laureates like Jelinek. Which I can’t say about most other prizes… (Though I suppose that says more about awards in general than the Nobel.)

 

[Liam]

Waiting For The Barbarians is much better.

Literally
a n y t h i n g
else
he wrote
is better
than
Disgrace! ?

 

[Bartleby]

Literally
a n y t h i n g
else
he wrote
is better
than
Disgrace! ?

It’s so funny to see people’s reactions to some books/authors here, compared to the ones I see people having in Brazil. It’s happened a lot; mostly everyone loves Vargas Llosa’s The Bad Girl, and I remember coming here to find a lot of you having disliked the book. In BR Roth is basically a literary god (ok, he kinda is in the US in most circles as well); not so much here. And now Disgrace. It’s Coetzee’s most famous book in BR, the one that’s always being discussed in book clubs, now I’m genuinely curious. It’s just fun to see these many different receptions

 

[Lupo Avorio]

By the way, on the topic of Murakami, I wonder who else from Japan could be a contender in the near future? There’s Yoko Ogawa and Yoko Tawada, and Ryu Murakami as well (though I’m not exactly a fan of his). I went through a phase a few years ago where I read all the translated Akutagawa prize winners I could find, but I haven’t kept up with those authors’ works so I can’t say much about them. Who else is there?

Well, Teru Miyamoto maybe? I run out of options here. Fuminori Nakamura and Masatsugu Ono are quite young, they could be on a watchlist for the future, but at the moment times are probably premature. What about Karen Tei Yamashita (if you consider her a Japanese candidate, but I doubt it)?

I have a somewhat ignorant question: you guys have been bringing up a lot of Japanese authors upthread: are there any distinguished Japanese POETS that we should pay attention to? Y'all know how much I love poetry,

Dear Liam, I dare to suggest you Hiromi Itō and Matsuo Takahashi, who are also novelists and essaysts. Not a lot of their works are translated, but still there’s some material to find out.

 

[Leseratte]

It’s so funny to see people’s reactions to some books/authors here, compared to the ones I see people having in Brazil. It’s happened a lot; mostly everyone loves Vargas Llosa’s The Bad Girl, and I remember coming here to find a lot of you having disliked the book. In BR Roth is basically a literary god (ok, he kinda is in the US in most circles as well); not so much here. And now Disgrace. It’s Coetzee’s most famous book in BR, the one that’s always being discussed in book clubs, now I’m genuinely curious. It’s just fun to see these many different receptions

Maybe this has to do with the difference of backgrounds. Anyway I´m happy to read that there still are animated book discussions in Brazil.

 

[redhead]

Thanks for the names, Lupo Avorio. I’m not familiar with any of them other than Teri Miyamoto, whose Autumn Brocade I recall liking. Unfortunately, I don’t know if his profile is high enough to win.

 

[Daniel del Real]

What is more representative of Ogawa's work? Because everything I've read has been very bad. At least by comparison The Housekeeper and the Professor seemed vaguely literary. I mean sure, she may have better stuff that's untranslated but Hotel Iris and Revenge were both 1/5 books me to and read like generic kink/bondage/spooky story junk. I can't imagine her remaining untranslated works are all vastly different in quality and subject matter.

The Memory Police fell flat for me in the same way that Samanta Schweblin's Little Eyes did, subject matter on authoritarianism and surveillance that's been beaten to death and isn't even remotely new being regurgitated in a way that's hardly profound or moving. It was clunky and most of its supposedly grand ideas seemed blatantly ripped out of a high school freshman English reading list (1984, Fahrenheit 451). Most Black Mirror episodes on Netflix do what this book was trying to do better.

I just read a novel translated as Lectures of the Hostages and liked it. It is a well-tuned set of stories from different characters that find some interesting, intelligently planted connections towards the end.
However, I don't think this has been translated to English yet.

It’s so funny to see people’s reactions to some books/authors here, compared to the ones I see people having in Brazil. It’s happened a lot; mostly everyone loves Vargas Llosa’s The Bad Girl, and I remember coming here to find a lot of you having disliked the book. In BR Roth is basically a literary god (ok, he kinda is in the US in most circles as well); not so much here. And now Disgrace. It’s Coetzee’s most famous book in BR, the one that’s always being discussed in book clubs, now I’m genuinely curious. It’s just fun to see these many different receptions

Travesuras de la niña mala is so incredibly bad that, as much I despise MVLL as a person, I can't believe he wrote that piece of crap.
On the other hand I loved Disgrace.

 

[Daniel del Real]

Modiano is actually my favorite laureate of at least the last decade, and maybe the whole century so far. I particularly appreciate the subtlety of his novels, the understatement, their simple style, their uninvasive mysteriousness, and their exploration of memory in a dreamlike atmosphere of loss.

I don't think I really have "the worst" laureate this century, as I have always felt the Academy's decision was well supported, perhaps apart from Dylan's win which has definitely come as a shock...

On the subject of Murakami, I definitely agree that he would be an unusually weak laureate. I personally might sometimes (mildly) enjoy reading him, as I enjoy some of his repeated motifs that were listed above in "Murakami's Bingo" someone posted, but I just don't think he is good enough for the Nobel prize, not while so many other and better authors around the world still draw breath (at least 100 of them have been mentioned in this forum alone!).

Count me in among the Modiano's admirers. Continuing with the off-topic, if I'd have to pick my top three writers awarded with the Nobel this century it would be, in no particular order, Modiano, Coetzee and Müller.
The worst: Pinter, Le Clezio, DYLAN.

 

[Americanreader]

What's the problem with Jelinek? Honest question, never read her.

My least favorite winner in this century is, besides Dylan, Modiano. Not that he's bad - he's not. I just don't have him in such a high esteem.

I found Jelinek's The Piano Teacher to be kind of shocking for shocking's sake. I will say I did admire the prose, I'm just not sure what her themes and ideas were supposed to be. Maybe I should try some of her plays, although there aren't a ton of those in English.