2005 Nobel Literature Prize

[nicky g]

"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."

No offence but your citations of German language literature are a bit out of date in terms of relevance to the most recent Nobel Prize, given that most of them are dead. I apologise for assuming that you paid little attention to foreign language or German language Literature, but I don't see that a former CompLit student who works in a bookshop is necessarily qualified to deny someone's qualification for the Nobel Prize on the basis of whether or not he's heard of them. If you pay a great deal of attention to contemporary foreign writing, then maybe, but... I don't think managing a booskshop means you'll automatically have heard of all the best writers worldwide, especially given that the commercial success/popularity required to receive translation is hardly equal to literary merit.

"That's because the best candidates this year all happen to be English-language authors."

This is seriously ridiculous.

"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."


So is this. It's a very difficult thing to argue. but I don't understand how you could think there's as much thought or intelligence in King's entire opus as a single Melville short story.

[nicky g]

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The anti-war poetry he released a couple of years back was dire stuff.

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Agreed. But I think it's based on a writer's positive contributions rather than the combined net merit of his entire work.

[cognito20]

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Your admiration for King is well placed but, perhaps, there is something beyond mere "entertainment" or quantity of output that makes him worthy of the Nobel.

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My rejoinder to that is, why does there -need- to be anything else? Why does an author who has provided -that much- quality entertainment, who has brought excitement and suspense and has almost certainly introduced the joy and love of reading to millions and millions of people worldwide, and whose entertainment is always of a high order, need to stand by and watch as the Nobel Prize is consistently (not always, but frequently) awarded to authors like Jelinek, whose own mother probably doesn't crack open one of her books unless it's a particularly rainy day in Vienna?

The fact that an author is popular does NOT necessarily imply that his work has less literary merit than some overly-arty hack who gets prizes thrown in his or her direction merely because five or six prominent Comp Lit department chairmen publicly fawn over his or her political agenda. King's popularity should -not- disqualify him from becoming a Nobel laureate....in fact, I would consider it a factor in FAVOR of giving him the honor.

People who think that King's popularity somehow degrades the quality of his work kind of remind me of a lot of the trust fund hippies I see here every day in Ithaca...people who think that just because something is "exotic", "diverse" or "multicultural", "underground" or not popular with the masses, that means it must be of superior quality. I was in the punk rock scene long enough when I was younger to have learned that that ain't necessarily the case.

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Churchill won it with, practically, one book.

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Not true. Although _The Second World War_ (a 6-book series, incidentally, although it can obviously be counted as one complete work) was cited as his magnum opus in the Nobel announcement, Sir Winston won the Nobel just as much for _The History of the English Speaking Peoples_ and _Life of Marlborough_ (OK, maybe the latter to a lesser extent) as for his war memoirs/history.

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Barbara Cartland's output was pure dross but well-written dross.

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Barbara Cartland on the best day of her life never wrote anything halfway as good or compelling as _Salem's Lot_, _It_, _The Green Mile_, _Night Shift_ (admittedly, the latter is a short story collection, but it's one of the best in that genre I've ever read), and we won't even bring _The Dark Tower_ series or _The Stand_ into the conversation. Is she an -example- of the general "class" of writer King is, or was for the first decade or so of his career? Sure, I suppose you could make a case for it. King, though, is the BEST of the class.

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I wonder if you had heard of Giorgos Seferis or of Michail Sholokhov before they won their Nobels. (One was absolutely worthy of it, IMO, and the other one not, by the way.)

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Seferis, I admit, no, I hadn't heard of him until I went to college, and even then I just knew -of- him, hadn't (and haven't to this day) read any of his works. Mikhail Aleksandrovich? You're barking up the wrong tree with that one. I mentioned that my minor in college was Comp Lit...my other minor was in Russian language and my major was in History, with a concentration in Russian and Soviet studies. (My father is of German ancestry and my mother Russian, hence my early and continued interest in both languages and cultures.) I not only have read Sholokhov and have known of him since I was about 13, but have read a number of his works, including _Tikhi Don_ (the Russian name for the 2-part _And Quiet Flows the Don_ and _The Don Flows Home to the Sea_), _Podnyataya Tselina_ (the 2-part _Harvest on the Don_ and _Virgin Soil Upturned_) and _Oni Srazhalis za Rodinu_ (_They Fought For Their Motherland_, his WW2 epic) in the original. I was never a huge fan of his since I was never into the whole Stalinist "Socialist Realism" thing, but I'm quite familiar with his work.

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"Obscure" you say? The Nobel Committee has given the award to Rudyard Kipling, for christ's sakes!

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In 1907. Things were a little different back then. And may I remind you that on each year either side of the Kipling award the Committee recognized such geniuses of longstanding importance as Giosue Carducci and Rudolf Eucken, authors whose timeless works are found in literary companions in alternate universes everywhere. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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And where is James Joyce?

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Six feet underground in a Zurich cemetery, IIRC. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] To paraphrase _The Five-Minute Iliad_ and apply it to the book of his that it deserves to be applied to, _Finnegan's Wake_ is one of the seminal works of literature....and as soon as someone translates it, we'll know for sure. _Ulysses_ is a great novel, though I don't know if I would've ranked it the #1 novel of the 20th century like the Modern Library did a few years back. I didn't get very much out of _Dubliners_, and although I enjoyed _Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ I didn't like it nearly as much as _Ulysses_.

--Scott

[cognito20]

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No offence but your citations of German language literature are a bit out of date in terms of relevance to the most recent Nobel Prize, given that most of them are dead.

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That's because there aren't really any great Austrian fiction writers writing today, at least not of Nobel laureate quality, anyway. Gunter Grass is certainly not Austrian, but he was the last German-language author -before- Jelinek to win the Nobel, so you can't really say that I'm all that far behind there. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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I apologise for assuming that you paid little attention to foreign language or German language Literature,

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Apology accepted. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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but I don't see that a former CompLit student who works in a bookshop is necessarily qualified to deny someone's qualification for the Nobel Prize on the basis of whether or not he's heard of them.

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In general, you're right. In this case, however, this particular one is. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I also played College Bowl while I was at Cornell and was the literature specialist on a team that finished in the top four at the national championships three years running. So, yes, I think I would have at least some clue about any potential Nobel laureate out there.

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If you pay a great deal of attention to contemporary foreign writing, then maybe, but... I don't think managing a booskshop means you'll automatically have heard of all the best writers worldwide, especially given that the commercial success/popularity required to receive translation is hardly equal to literary merit.

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Sure it would, at least in 97-98% of the cases. Not meaning to overly toot my own horn here, but if the author in question was writing in German or Russian, they wouldn't need to receive translation in order for me to recognize them. I'm fluent in both languages and can read them in the original. When I said that I wrote my thesis on the _Danzig Trilogy_, I was not reading it in English translation. You miss things that way. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I'm the store manager. As much as the corporate suits in Westbury allow me to, I make purchasing and merchandising decisions for a 200,000-volume bookstore. I religiously read the _New York Review of Books_, _Publisher's Weekly_ and _The New York Times Book Review_. Forgive me if I'm being presumptuous if I think that any world-class authors whom I might not have at least -heard- of have just slipped through the cracks, and that I know at least 97-98% of them. Maybe Jelinek was one of the 2-3%. It's possible. I just think it's more possible that there were, say, 20 or 30 better candidates available out there. So she stood up against Jorg Haider. Good for her. So did almost every decent Austrian. You don't see them getting trips to Stockholm.

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("That's because the best candidates this year all happen to be English-language authors.")

This is seriously ridiculous.

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Or so you assert. Counterexamples would help to bolster your case some. Non-English language authors who have not previously won the Nobel Prize whose oeuvre is comparable to that of Roth, Pinter, Oates and/or Atwood. Chinua Achebe I'll give you, perhaps, and what has he really done other than _Things Fall Apart_ and _Anthills of the Savannah_?

I will admit, just for example, that I had never heard of Naguib Mahfouz prior to him winning the Nobel in '89 (granted, I was 17 when he won and my secondary school English classes didn't exactly focus on Arabic literature), and he has since become one of my 5 or 10 favorite authors on the planet. There have been plenty of years when a foreign-language author (or multiple foreign-language authors) has been one of the 4 or 5 most deserving potential recipients of the Lit Nobel. This is not one of those years.

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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."


So is this. It's a very difficult thing to argue. but I don't understand how you could think there's as much thought or intelligence in King's entire opus as a single Melville short story.

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Give me a break. This is the same sort of assertion I hear from "lit snobs" practically every other day, and the reason they use it is because they know they probably won't be called on it because it's based on opinion, not fact. They SAY that Melville's stories have more "intelligence" in them than King's, but yet they fail to PROVE that to any reasonable person's satisfaction.

It IS a well-known fact that Herman Melville, while he was alive, was never considered to be a great writer and purveyor of "intelligent literature". He was considered a travel writer, along the lines of Captain Frederick Marryat then, and perhaps somewhat comparable to, say, Bill Bryson now, albeit with much less humor. There is nothing whatsoever ridiculous about it. No less an authority than Jorge Luis Borges, who counted Melville among his favorite writers, alluded to it in an interview with William F. Buckley, Jr. on the -Firing Line_ TV program.

--Scott

[Cyrus]

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The fact that an author is popular does NOT necessarily imply that his work has less literary merit ... King's popularity should *not* disqualify him from becoming a Nobel laureate.

[/ QUOTE ]I agree wholeheartily.

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In fact, I would consider [his popularity to be] a factor in FAVOR of giving him the honor.

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I strongly disagree. In the sense that popularity should play no role whatosever in the choice; neither, in favor of the candidate (for, as you say, "introduc[ing] the joy and love of reading to millions and millions of people worldwide" -- sorry but this would be the Humanitarian Award for Helping Literacy or something), nor against him on account of snobbery.

I asked for something beyond mere "entertainment" or quantity of output - but you seem satisfied when these two criteria are met.

What did Alfred Nobel himself think? His guidelines to the Swedish Academy were, IMHO, sufficiently balanced between the specific and the vague, thus enabling the award to change with the times and the personalities (of the Academy) : The candidate should have bestowed "the greatest benefit on mankind" with "the most outstanding work in an ideal direction" (the latter term being the cause of much debate ever since).

I suppose you could find grounds to argue in favor of awarding the Nobel to "popular" writers, on the merits of their popularity alone and I could find grounds in favor of others, in the criteria of Alfred Nobel... Nobelprize.org

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...authors like Jelinek, whose own mother probably doesn't crack open one of her books unless it's a particularly rainy day in Vienna.

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Any critic who comes down inappropriately hard on an author in order to praise another, loses both the argument and credibility, in my book (if you'll excuse the pun). I have been guilty of that practice myself in the past, but I do try to mend my ways. My point? Don't knock Elvis to praise Chuck Berry.

As to the Austrian writer who got the Nobel award in 2004, I did not know Elfriede Jelinek's work either before she got it, though I knew she was the author of the novel on which The Piano Teacher was based, directed by one of the most interesting European directors, Michael Haneke. I had seen the movie in 2001 and thus got to know the name -- the same way I was turned on to Patricia Highsmith when I laid eyes on (and was mesmerised by) The American Friend of Wim Wenders.

My point? The 2004 recipient was seemingly unknown to most, but probably not as obscure as you make her out to be.

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Seferis, I admit, no, I hadn't heard of him until I went to college, and even then I just knew -of- him, hadn't (and haven't to this day) read any of his works.

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Similar to what I said about Elfriede Jelinek, though, by now, I have been intrigued enough to buy into her "output".

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Mikhail Aleksandrovich [Sholokhov]? You're barking up the wrong tree with that one.

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I was making a point about generally unknown writers, you understand. In any case, I am glad to have landed in that "minefield", where you have worked on Soviet and Russian literature specifically!

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Finnegan's Wake is one of the seminal works of literature....and as soon as someone translates it, we'll know for sure.

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[img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Seriously, after getting to know how the process is carried out, I see that un-translatable writers do get to be nominated and awarded the prize. (Seferis is but one such example. A Greek poet whose merit, as a poet, relies heavily on the very words themselves! I mean, any poet cannot be translated, by definition. It's as if the committee members for the Oscars decide on the award without seeing the films but getting the main story told to them, in detail. Ergo, we compromise -- and award.)

Speaking of the Oscars, and your point about Giosue Carducci and Rudolf Eucken [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] (I second the emoticon!), this is precisely (although for somewhat different reasons than yours) what the Nobel Literary Prize reminds me of : They both get it somewhat right and spectacularly wrong in equal measures.

--Cyrus

[John Cole]

I'm not sure how you don't get much out of The Dubliners, especially after reading Ulysses. Did you get as far as The Dead, for my money, perhaps the best short story in English?

[Cyrus]

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The Dead, for my money, perhaps the best short story in Englis.

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And the John Houston film is superb.

[Triumph36]

Typical fallacy - because Melville wasn't regarded as intellectual, King may fall under the same category.

The only work of Melville's I have read - Benito Cereno - is a tightly-written story that touches heavily on themes of class and race, written in splendid language.

I have read much of King's catalog, and it does not come close to this. Much of King's work is sprawling and filled with unnecessary details - plus the man cannot write a good ending to save his life. You're trying to tell me that works like Desperation and Insomnia are worthy of the Nobel Prize? If they gave out a Nobel for work most in need of an editor, King might win that one.

Stephen King is an excellent storyteller - but most of his work only lightly grazes the serious themes other writers are exploring, and does so only to advance the plot.

[cognito20]

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The only work of Melville's I have read - Benito Cereno - is a tightly-written story that touches heavily on themes of class and race, written in splendid language.

I have read much of King's catalog, and it does not come close to this.

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Perhaps. It's really a matter of taste and opinion. Even if I was to concede your point that Herman Melville was a better writer than Stephen King (which I don't, necessarily, but just the sake of argument), that would have absolutely no bearing on whether or not Stephen King deserves to win the Nobel Prize. Stephen King's work does not -need- to be better than Herman Melville's to be honored with the Nobel. Even if King is no Melville, neither are too many other writers today, to understate the point just a little bit. In fact, it's kind of analogous to the time late in Joseph Heller's life when some book critic snidely mentioned to him that he'd never written another _Catch-22_; Heller's immediate comeback was, "Neither has anybody else." [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] It's kind of like arguing that Pinter was an unworthy recipient of the prize because he couldn't have carried Bill Shakespeare or G.B. Shaw's literary jockstrap (whatever one of those may be).

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Much of King's work is sprawling and filled with unnecessary details

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Actually, I kinda like the "unnecessary" details, they add a healthy and sometimes-needed (especially in the early works) dose of realism to his works.

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- plus the man cannot write a good ending to save his life.

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And Melville had this annoying habit of taking fifteen pages to say "The cat sat on the mat". Every writer has weaknesses. You've pinpointed King's. His endings aren't that bad, anyway.

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You're trying to tell me that works like Desperation and Insomnia are worthy of the Nobel Prize?

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Nope. That's because the Nobel Prize is not given for certain works. The Pulitzer, National Book Award, NBC Circle Award, and Booker Prize are. The Nobel Prize is a -lifetime achievement award-. Yet another reason the award to Jelinek in '04 was a joke. I don't think even the most rabid internationalist here could claim that the quality of the totality of her works matches the quality of someone like, say, Joyce Carol Oates. Or Stephen King. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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If they gave out a Nobel for work most in need of an editor, King might win that one.

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Not as long as David Foster Wallace is still writing (and footnoting), he wouldn't.

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Stephen King is an excellent storyteller - but most of his work only lightly grazes the serious themes other writers are exploring, and does so only to advance the plot.

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I agree. God forbid that the plot be advanced in a novel. That might actually keep the reader's attention and inspire him to do something drastic like, say, finish and enjoy the book rather than throw it aside and watch "The Apprentice: Martha Stewart".

--Scott

[Cyrus]

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Much of King's work is sprawling and filled with unnecessary details.

[/ QUOTE ] Actually, I kinda like the "unnecessary" details, they add a healthy and sometimes-needed (especially in the early works) dose of realism to his works.

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So?

I agree with cognito20 on this one. This kind of thing is not necessarily bad.

Think Marcel Proust - and all the majestic "unnecessary details".

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[sarcastically] God forbid that the plot be advanced in a novel. That might actually keep the reader's attention and inspire him to do something drastic like, say, finish and enjoy the book rather than throw it aside and watch "The Apprentice: Martha Stewart".

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To paraphrase Mason Malmuth, do not get married to the plot! I mean, the point of literature should not be to drag people from the TV. In fact, there is no ulterior point in literature. I think the criteria of the Nobel prize are appropriately, sufficiently vague on this.

Think (alas) Milan Kundera and his anti-plot plotting.