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[Covetous]

Living in sweden I took the opportunity to watch the only significent thing that happens in sweden, the nobel prise. Today at 13:00 (local time) Jean-Marie Le Clézio was awarded the Nobel Prise in literatur. I have as usual never heard of him. Have anyone else? Have anyone read anything by him? Was it good?

[TheFuriousWombat]

Looks like no English translations are around. Tis too bad although not surprising. That tends to be the case with Nobel winners.

[benji]

Actually, a lot of the winners have written in English over the last few years. Since 2001, an English language writer has won every other year according to Wikipedia. But yeah, the prize for literature is often a little weird. Unlike science, literature is tied strongly to culture and language, so it can be hard to look at all of the authors from all over the world and say "this one deserves special recognition."   

[KvP]

There's been a bit of controversy over the head of the Nobel committee coming out and saying that the US is incapable of producing fiction worthy of the prize. Critics were quick to remark that a prize that had overlooked Proust and Nabokov could fuck itself.

[Alex C]

I don't mind when someone from outside the US wins the prize, but the statement by Engdahl did upset me. I find it really ironic that a guy from Sweden of all places accused people from the United States of being too insular and concerned with its own issues to be a real part of literary dialogue. Look at our population! In this age of fast transportation and easy communication, do you really mean to tell me that out of all those people you really think there's nobody here willing to quit navel gazing long enough to take interest in the world at large? I understand and accept that Europe has a rich history of great literature and I expect them to continue that tradition far into the future, but such a sweeping generalization is just begging for harsh criticism.

[benji]

It was also rather absurd considering how many Americans have won in the past, including as recently as 1993 when Toni Morrison won. Has America just all of a sudden stopped producing great writers? Or was he just saying that the prize didn't become legitimate until 1994?

[CarrionMan]

Probably just a little of that good ol' European asshattery.

I mean, we've written the best science fiction: Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury, L. Ron Hubbard(if we just ignore his other mistakes…). Then we got Thompson, Salinger. What. Are they not artistic? Seriously…

[Tom]

Their have been a total of 12 Nobel Prize in Literature Laureates who are from the US, in fact one of them was in 1993 and 15 of them have come from outside Europe. They are usually, i.e. mostly based on their whole carrier up until that point. When you get right down to it, this prize as with all literature prizes, is highly subjective/selective with the winners based upon the individual experiences of those judging or choosing, whoever is on the panel or committee. Are you not being subjective? Seriously...

[benji]

whoever is on the panel or committee.

Current membership of the Swedish Academy. Ofcourse, by the nature of the prize, the panel is entirely composed of Swedish authors and scholars. Nominations come from all over the world, but the 18 Swedish people listed are the ones with final say. They're going to tend to choose authors from their own or similar cultures because those works are going to resonate more often.

[Hljómalind]

I've read The Flood by him: it was enjoyable, but I don't recall it rocking my world. As I understand it he's had at least two very different periods to his writing, and so it may be the latter period was more pioneering. Or perhaps he just doesn't read as well in translation.

The committee chair's announcement about US writers was patently silly and sadly typical of the unreflexive racism that inhabits a portion of the European left. What I found especially revealing was his claim of 'insular[ity]': I took that to be a codeword protesting Coca-Colonisation.

On a completely unrelated note, I think it'd be really cool if a graphic novelist, or an author associated as much with graphic novels as with non-graphic literature, won the award one year. For example, I think Maus as a work of cultural expression is on a par with Midnight's Children. To have a graphic novelist would really signal that the world literary community is moving with the times.

[Tom]

whoever is on the panel or committee.

Current membership of the Swedish Academy. Ofcourse, by the nature of the prize, the panel is entirely composed of Swedish authors and scholars. Nominations come from all over the world, but the 18 Swedish people listed are the ones with final say. They're going to tend to choose authors from their own or similar cultures because those works are going to resonate more often.

As such, due to a more localised/shared social consciousness, the experiential barrier that prevents full comprehension in communication is much, much weaker and in some cases non-existent.

[CarrionMan]

Maus was an amazing book, and deserves so much credit, not only for its artistic quality, but for its covering of the Holocaust and how even 30-50 years afterwards, it still affects people. I think it deserves more awards. I don't care how many it has gotten already.

[Covetous]

CarrionMan, thank you for that. I will try to get a copy of the book then.

I totally missed what Horas said about american authors. But 15 winners in totall is quite alot imho considering that USA have a population of 300 milions while the world is 6 billions. But Horas isn't famous for his good tacts so to say.

[Alex C]

I don't really have any grievance with the way the prize has been awarded in the past and I won't pretend to be well-informed enough to provide a real critique of the process. My statement about population was simply meant to illustrate that such a generalization is quite frankly silly and ill-advised, a point which Engdahl has more or less ceded since the incident. Besides, it's hard to argue with Benji's earlier point: questioning the legitimacy of US literature just seems rather silly when your own institution has already given it recognition in the past.