Forum / Nobel Notes, or Realists Need Not Apply
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strannikovSep 25, 05:58pmThe Swedish Academy has awarded NO Nobel Prize in Literature seven times since the award's debut in 1901.
The Academy has not split the award between two recipients since 1970-something (1974?).
My dig at the Academy's aesthetic disdain for "realism" (however construed) is not utterly my imagination: the Wikipedia article points out that early in the 20th century Academy members strictly (literally, we may say) interpreted Nobel's will to intend only works of enduring idealism. (The article sadly concedes that awarding the Prize has long since become significantly a matter of political calculation: applying purely literary criteria to judge among candidates does not seem intrinsic to the Academy's approach.) Many authors of merit and accomplishment have won the Prize, obviously. (Yet: I've only ever met one single solitary reader of Sigrid Undset, the winner in 1928.)
Murakami is said to be this year's leading contender.
Brave souls have declined Academy Awards in acting but I can't think of one to've declined a Nobel Prize.
For Fictionauters to kick around, if of a mind: do literary awards and prizes actually further the cause of literature? do they enhance literary quality or literary output? (My take on Faulkner's 1949 win is not exactly positive.) do they enhance sales of fiction?
To this I append a note of caution: Professor Cowen or Professor Tabarrok at their "Marginal Revolution" blogsite has lately posted a link suggesting a decline in output to winners of various awards and prizes in economics: the Nobel Prize in Economics was not implicated in the study cited, however. (I shall endeavor to supply the link forthwith.)
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strannikovSep 25, 06:00pm
Professor Tabarrok's post link:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/09/do-awards-reduce-productivity.html#comments
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strannikovSep 25, 06:09pm
--which (whoops) focuses on a prize for mathematics (which admittedly is confusing enough but more so or no less amidst efforts to portray economics as a science).
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David AckleySep 25, 06:33pmJean Paul Sartre declined the Nobel prize in Literature in 1964.
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strannikovSep 25, 06:40pm
Thanks, David, and (arguably) good for Jean-Paul, in which case.
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strannikovSep 25, 06:48pm
A judicious Sartre biographer could perhaps tell us whether literary and political considerations played roughly equal parts in his decision (this was close to the height/depth of Sartre's Marxist convictions).
Maybe if he'd won the Prize before Camus . . . ?
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Chris OkumSep 25, 07:15pmWinning the Nobel Prize is like being elected to the Hall of Fame of Literature, or at least that's how I perceive it.
Murakami's not going to win it. They're not going to give it to a writer of pop fiction who makes millions each time he releases a book.
I know it's not popular to hope for an American to win, since we are such horrible people and don't deserve to be recognized for any kind of artistic achievement by the rest of the world ;), but I think they should give it to Don DeLillo, because not only is he a master stylist, but his work is very political, very attuned to the times we live in, and he seems to fit the criteria for past winners.
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James Lloyd DavisSep 25, 08:13pmI'll second the motion. DeLillo should go to Stockholm. But like Chris says, we are bad people here in the USA, provincial, insensitive, and utterly unworthy.
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James Lloyd DavisSep 25, 08:16pm
I don't want to slam Murakami, but I could never get into his stuff. I have read everything DeLillo has written. Pure gold, American style.
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Christian BellSep 25, 08:36pmI love both DeLillo and Murakami. It would be cool to see DeLillo win, though, as he's become my favorite writer (Okum's description of him matches my feeling). I don't see it happening for either of them though.
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David AckleySep 25, 10:47pm
I'm thinking Philip Roth is due.
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Chris OkumSep 25, 10:57pm
Roth would be fine, too.
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strannikovSep 25, 11:42pm
No American has won since Toni Morrison in 1993.
No Russian has won since Joseph Brodsky in 1987.
I may be looking at the wrong sites: hard to tell whether the Academy awards on the basis of the writer's language or the writer's nationality.
I'll be surprised if Murakami gets it, too, but then I'll likely be surprised no matter who gets it.
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James Lloyd DavisSep 25, 11:45pm
I like surprises.
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Chris OkumSep 26, 12:21am
Maybe Vollman will get it ten years ahead of schedule. Because he's going to get it. Just a matter of when.
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stephen hastings-kingSep 26, 01:07amKamau Brathwaite should be on the list.
DeLillo would please me.
Vollman isn't old enough.
Murakami is a lovely writer, but I don't see it happening.
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Sam RasnakeSep 26, 02:19aminterviews, Paris Review
William T. Vollmann, The Art of Fiction No. 163
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/620/the-art-of-fiction-no-163-william-t-vollmann
~
Don DeLillo, The Art of Fiction No. 135
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1887/the-art-of-fiction-no-135-don-delillo
~
Haruki Murakami, The Art of Fiction No. 182
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2/the-art-of-fiction-no-182-haruki-murakami
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Matthew RobinsonSep 26, 02:47amThe only way the Nobel would mean anything to me is if Cormac McCarthy won it. Nobody since Joyce has anyone done with language and the art of the novel as what McCarthy has done. Blood Meridian is a master novel precisely because it obliterates every convention of what a novel should be, how a sentence should be written, how a story should be told. Child of God, No Country for Old Men are noir masterpieces. The Border Trilogy that made him famous is what made me want to be a writer in the first place. His most acclaimed novel, The Road, might be his fifth best book, maybe sixth. That's saying something.
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James Lloyd DavisSep 26, 03:12am
Cormac McCarthy is an excellent candidate, deserving enough for Blood Meridian alone. Another is Russell Banks, again, if for nothing other than his Cloudsplitter. Both men have a significant body of work besides these two magnificent novels.
I would hate to be a judge, quite frankly.
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James Lloyd DavisSep 26, 03:15am
Matt, I didn't much care for The Road. Loved the trilogy and No Country is one that I've read three times. It never fades. I could die happy if I ever wrote one as good.
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James Lloyd DavisSep 26, 03:17am
Not that I could, but I'd love to aim that high and fall half-short.
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Matthew RobinsonSep 26, 04:32am
JLD, I'm ashamed to admit I haven't read anything by Banks. I'll have to look into him.
The Road is a fine novel, but, compared to McCarthy's previous work, it's soft around the edges, which is another astonishing thing--that novel is bleak all around, and yet somehow it doesn't pierce through your soul like a javelin, as his other books do.
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Javed HayatSep 26, 05:01amHi all, cant help but join in when McCarthy and DeLillo are being discussed.
I agree with Matt on McCarthy's contribution to the language and the art of novel writing. The guy writes like a prophet in frenzy, with so much grandeur. The books that stand out for me are The Blood Meridian and Suttree. Very different in essence, and both fantastic masterpieces in their own right.
I am yet to explore Murakami though. Had a minor fling with bird chronicles, but the writing style didnt seem to work for me.
Any one here tried Suttree? Would highly recommend it.
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Matthew RobinsonSep 26, 06:44am
Suttree for sure.
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stephen hastings-kingSep 26, 01:35pm
O, and as a little historical aside, the most abject period of Sartre's fellow-traveling with the PCF (the very Stalinist French Communist Party of the period) was in the middle 1950s, the period of his essay "The Communists and Peace"...the PCF encountered a bit of a...um...snag with its position on the Hungarian Revolution in 1956...anyway by 1964, he had followed the formation of the progressiste/New Left in opposition to the Algerian War, and then shifted again into a general anti-colonial political position. You can find it in his peculiar introduction to Fanon's "Wretched of the Earth," if yr interested.
Just saying.
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strannikovSep 26, 02:27pm
Much ferment among the French, and Jean-Paul was about as restless as they come. (Obliged to copyedit and proof a book dedicated to his second ethics many years back, I've never taken up his fictional efforts. Or, confessedly, his quest for relevance.)
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stephen hastings-kingSep 26, 03:31pm
I've spent WAY too much time on the history of the post-1945 French Left. If you ever need lint of that order put into little piles, let me know.
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Christian BellSep 26, 05:27pm
I'll have to agree with McCarthy being a good Nobel candidate, along with the greatness of Blood Meridian (and Suttree, and the Border Trilogy). I thought The Road was quite fine. A quite convincing post-apocalyptic tale that only danced around the edges of science fiction.
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James Lloyd DavisSep 26, 06:15pm
I wonder if a petition would help?
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Matthew RobinsonSep 26, 07:14pm
Some good old fashioned slacktivism?
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Sam RasnakeSep 26, 08:35pm
2 of the 10 books that once took off the top and sides of my head -
No Country for Old Men
The Road -
stephen hastings-kingSep 26, 10:05pm
I can see McCarthy.
I could also see Pynchon...The Crying of Lot 49, V and Gravity's Rainbow are all great books. I liked Mason & Dixon a lot too. But I doubt it'll ever happen.
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James Lloyd DavisSep 27, 02:07am
Slacktivism. Haha. I saw that, Matt.
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Gary HardawaySep 27, 02:56pmPynchon might send a comic to unaccept the Prize.
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Javed HayatOct 23, 06:33am
Good one Gary!
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