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"The Literature prize last year was given to some left-wing Austrian hack that I'd never even HEARD of"

How many Austrian writers have you heard of?

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Quite a few, actually. I did an undergraduate minor in comparative literature at Cornell, and wrote my honors thesis in that subject on Gunter Grass's _Danzig Trilogy_, so I'm rather well-versed in German-language literature. There aren't a great number of well-known Austrian fiction writers (the Austrian-born American Vicki Baum, the playwright Arthur Schnitzler, and Austrian Jewish dissident writer Stefan Zweig are the three that come right to mind) but quite a few in other fields, like Sigmund and Anna Freud, Alfred Adler and Viktor Frankl in psychology, just for starters. My point was that I had never even -heard- of Elfriede Jelinek before she won the 2004 Nobel, and you're talking to a guy who spends 1/3 of his waking life with his family, 1/3 playing poker, and the other 1/3 working and living in and around the literary world. It's no big deal if the -average American-, or even the average 2+2er, hadn't heard of Jelinek. But if a person who manages a Barnes and Noble for a living and studied comparative literature in college HAD NEVER EVEN HEARD HER NAME before she won the Nobel, maybe that signifies that the Swedish Academy is going a little obscure and political with their selections.
Just a thought to ponder.

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There are bound to be worthy recipients that the English-language public won't have heard much about.

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True, but -I- certainly would have heard of them. Maybe not read their works (and in most cases, probably not, but there's only so many hours in the day), but the name of any worthy candidate for the Nobel Prize would at least have reached my ears.

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APologies if you are a prolific reader of foreign literature, but I note that you don't mention a single non-English language author in your list of other suggestions.

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That's because the best candidates this year all happen to be English-language authors. Why? Dunno. Joyce Carol Oates has been at or near the top of the literary world since she was an undergrad at Syracuse, although the fact that she's never really written an out-and-out classic novel hurts her. Few authors are more consistent, though. Atwood has one novel (actually, not one of her better ones), _The Handmaid's Tale_, that has received far more attention than anything else she's written, plus the fact that she's Canadian probably hurts her in the "American publicity" department, but she is almost as prolific and consistent as Oates. My vote would go to Roth basically because of four novels..._Goodbye Columbus_, _Portnoy's Complaint_, _The Great American Novel_ and _The Plot Against America_. His work may not be as consistent as Oates or Atwood, but the highlights are incredible. And the actual winner, Pinter, is almost indisputably the greatest absurdist writer living (I think Albee is incredibly overrated, and while Tom Stoppard's best stuff is great, he's also written some real clunkers). I cannot think of a single non-English language author who has not already won the Nobel who's achieved anywhere -near- what any of these four have. If you gave me a while, maybe I could come up with a couple, but I have a limited amount of time here. If there was a Gao Xingjian, Kenzaburo Oe or Jose Saramago (or Gunter Grass :-) ) out there this year, I certainly would have mentioned them. But there isn't.

Incidentally, I think that the greatest black mark on the Nobel Literature Prize's history is that it was never awarded to Jose Luis Borges. So I don't have anything against non-English language writers.

"You might like some less than others, but they're all -at least- entertaining. "

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I don't think that's what the Nobel prize is really about. I enjoy my trash as much as anyone else (mainly spy and crime stuff rather than horror, although I did used tor ead a lot of King) but I don;t think King is likely to be remembered much in 100 years time.

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Anyone who thinks that Stephen King is a writer of "trash" stopped reading his work after _It_, or just hasn't been playing close attention. I think King is similar to Herman Melville in that, while he's certainly a popular writer while he's alive, he will really begin to be taken -seriously- as the all-time great writer he is only after his death. (Melville, while he was alive, was basically thought of only as a travel writer, much like King is pigeonholed as a horror and "trash" writer now.) You're right, though, that the Nobel Prize doesn't generally recognize writers of his "reputation", deserved or not. Incidentally, another writer who would also be a worthy Nobel laureate although he is generally pigeonholed as a "spy novelist" (although his reputation among the "literary elite", whatever that is, is much higher than King's) is John Le Carre. I also would be very happy to see him win it, and unlike King I think there's a chance in hell that that might happen.

Also, to the person before who implied that anti-American views help one to win the Literature Nobel...if that is the case, why did a universally-respected writer like Graham Greene (certainly deserving in a literary sense) never win it.....a man who, when asked in an interview what word in the English language he disliked the most, replied, "America"?

--Scott