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2013-05-21 09:45 3779045 Anonymouse (trolly.png 407x286 81kB)
> The Nobel Prize Since it's only going to be awarded to an author who has provided "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction," most Americans are out. Roth, McCarthy and Pynchon simply don't fall within the parameters. To be fair, international authors are excluded as well. Coetzee is probably deserving and would be a hip pick as a South African, but isn't optimistic enough to qualify as 'ideal' under the current committee's understanding of Nobel's will. My bet is that Achebe wins it posthumously this year, even though Things Fall Apart is a downer. Louise Erdrich is the only American dark horse, really. Anyway, > ITT: The most prestigious literature award is only given to happy endings and who will win next? no one is talking about books, comeon now. is it just nighttime?

2 min later 3779047 Anonymous
probably some chink or swede no one's heard of

36 min later 3779079 Anonymouse
o god please talk to me about books

38 min later 3779082 Anonymous
I say Cees Nooteboom for this year.

40 min later 3779085 Anonymous
Er... Coetzee has already won the Nobel in Lit. Do you know what you're talking about?

43 min later 3779091 Anonymous (fffff.gif 500x372 114kB)
You rustlin'? Coetzee won in 2003.

2 hours later 3779195 Anonymous
>>3779045 >Louise Erdrich What?? She's utter shit. Even by standards that made the likes of McCarthy and Pynchon quote-unquote-literary-masterpieces .

3 hours later 3779238 Anonymous
>>3779195 It's a troll thread. I hope.

3 hours later 3779246 Anonymous
>>3779045 You can't win a Nobel prize posthumously.

3 hours later 3779255 Anonymous
>>3779045 Oh, god, the thread from OP's pic best /lit/ thread ever

4 hours later 3779290 Anonymous
Aha, a fellow Grauniad reader

4 hours later 3779322 Anonymous
>>3779255 link?

4 hours later 3779338 Anonymous
They'll give it to a norwegian I say Jan Kjærstad or Karl-Ove Knausgaard

4 hours later 3779358 Anonymous
>>3779322 After digging a little, I found it. Damn, that looks good; I can't believe I missed it.

4 hours later 3779363 Anonymous
>>3779358 Aaaaand, as always, forgot the link. Goddammit, I'm still half asleep: http://fuuka.warosu.org/lit/thread/ 3748579#p3748731

5 hours later 3779425 Anonymous
>>3779363 Jesus, /lit/'s OC is pretty good. We should do this more often. & thanks for finding the thread.

6 hours later 3779529 Anonymous
We're probably due a female winner. Alice Munro? Olga Tokarczuk? I'd prefer if it went to Kundera or Eco, though.

7 hours later 3779617 Anonymous
>>3779195 Why do you write out "quote-unquote" instead of using citation marks? Tranströmer should be given another one

8 hours later 3779659 Anonymous
An American won't win it because Europe is desperately clinging to its status as the so-called "last bastion of culture." If by some divine intervention an American did win, I'd hope they would have the decency to turn it down.

8 hours later 3779676 Anonymous (average american.jpg 400x592 157kB)
>>3779659 There have been more American winners than anywhere else, you moron. Will you not be happy unless a yank wins it every year?

10 hours later 3779909 Anonymouse
>>3779085 >>3779091 I didn't know he had won! >>3779195 Louise Erdrich fits the criteria and would be a hip choice as a native American/French mutt. She's also my favorite American writer since Steinbeck, come at me bro. >>3779676 It's been too long and we have too many quality writers to be getting passed up with such regularity. >>3779529 Munro would be a good choice, but who is Olga Tokarczuk? Should I fuck with her?

10 hours later 3779947 Anonymous
>>3779909 >It's been too long and we have too many quality writers to be getting passed up with such regularity. Every other country has their share of quality authors as well. You only think yours are better because you have more exposure to them. >who is Olga Tokarczuk? Should I fuck with her? If you like One Hundred Years of Solitude, check out Primeval and Other Times.

11 hours later 3779960 Anonymouse
>>3779947 There's a gulf between the level of talent and the level recognition a notoriously and admittedly Eurocentric institution is giving to the writers of my country, and to argue anything otherwise would reflect a deep lack of critical capacity. If it means anything, I also think Ireland keeps getting a stiff shaft. Thanks for the recommendation.

11 hours later 3779968 Anonymous
America might be due a winner, but I can't think of any good candidates. I suppose Munro is from the continent of North America, so she might suffice. Or how about Ozick? She is surely qualifies as a stalwart by now.

11 hours later 3779972 Anonymous
>>3779960 >I also think Ireland keeps getting a stiff shaft. William Trevor is a perennial candidate; perhaps this will be his year.

14 hours later 3780397 Anonymous
They are overdue to give it to an Arabic writer, especially considering recent history.

14 hours later 3780410 Anonymous
I don't think "Ideal" means what you think it means, friend.

14 hours later 3780419 Anonymouse
>>3780410 My interpretative opinion doesn't much matter. The present committee, on the other hand, seems like they've made their view on the matter clear.

14 hours later 3780435 Anonymous
>>3779960 Contemporary American literature is not as good as you think, at all.

14 hours later 3780445 Anonymous
>>3780419 Substitute "interpretation" for "interpretive opinion," then we can talk. On a more serious note, I don't believe that's the case. Hemmingway's winning text goes against your interpretive opinion, for example. To put the final nail in, "ideal" is meant in the sense of an artistic ideal, not a narrative one.

14 hours later 3780485 Anonymouse
>>3780445 Nigger I'll emphasize degrees of subjective variance as much as I damn well please, and if it ruffles your feathers go have a cup of tea over Strunk and White until you feel better. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_pri zes/literature/articles/espmark/ind ex.html While the "happy ending" point made in my OP is admittedly a simplified look at the selection criteria, it's not inaccurate. The Hemmingway example is a good one -- ultimately human will triumphs. Pessimism or misanthropy isn't going to qualify.

15 hours later 3780595 Anonymous
>>3780485 Are you forgetting Elfriede Jelinek? Her work has a very dark view of human interactions.

15 hours later 3780596 Anonymous
>>3780485 Hmm. Who comes across as most ruffled here? And since when is the theme of "will" central to Nobel Prize winning art? There are plenty of poets and writers whose finest works have been WILL-LESS. Drop your hypothesis, enjoy the Nobels for what they are, get over yourself.

15 hours later 3780612 Anonymouse
>>3780595 Dunno, haven't read any of her, though she sounds like a more talented Sebold based off her wikipedia page I'll read a couple of her plays and respond if the thread is still up in a few days. The darkest I know of that won the prize is Beckett and wole soyinka lel

15 hours later 3780626 Anonymouse
>>3780596 Dude, as I've said in three posts running, it's not a personal hypothesis. It's their selection criteria, as set forth by Nobel's will and executed by the committee. I'll find you a second official site where they say as much, since one source isn't good enough for you. Secondly, the triumph of human will isn't a perquisite theme to winning the prize, and I didn't claim as much. I was simply pointing out that your example of Old Man doesn't in any way go against how they have traditionally selected the winners in the past.

16 hours later 3780675 Anonymous
>>3780612 You don't seem to "know" many of the winners though. You weren't even aware that Coetzee had won. Why are you making such sweeping statements when you know so little?

16 hours later 3780686 Anonymous
Wait why don't you like Pynchon sorry I'm not really hip or anything I read The Crying Of Lot 49 and thought it was pretty good.

16 hours later 3780691 Anonymous
>>3780485 >pessimism or misanthropy isn't going to qualify Andre Gide, Albert Camus, Kenzaburo Oe, Heinrich Boll, Eugene O'Neill?

16 hours later 3780694 Anonymous
>>3780686 He just doesn't think they're going to win a Nobel Prize. Because he's angry America isn't getting yet another one, when they've already won too many compared with how many better non-American authors are out there.

16 hours later 3780700 Anonymous
>>3780694 Oh. So people don't mind Pynchon then? Okay. Is the Nobel Prize very important in the literary criticism world kind of thing? Like how seriously do people take it? I know William Faulkner won it and I really like him, but I don't know that many other people who won it. And I don't think it really did much for Faulkner, it's not like people think of him as Nobel Prize-winning William Faulkner, he just is who he is. Is it just nice for money or something?

16 hours later 3780704 Anonymous
some random Scandi with just a stub article on Wikipedia

16 hours later 3780708 Anonymous
>>3780704 They really don't give it to Scandinavians that often. They did when it was established about a century ago, but not anymore. It's ridiculous how many people are still hung up on Transtromer winning.

16 hours later 3780711 Anonymous
>>3780704 >>3780708 Since 1956, it has been awarded to Scandinavians twice (though one of those was for two authors combined). 1955 was Halldor Laxness. That is not over representation.

16 hours later 3780770 Anonymouse
>>3780675 I'll take the sophistry as a sign that you're ceding the initial argument. Do you need that second source, or are we all cleared up? >>3780694 One in the last twenty years is simply not proportionate to the level of talent that America has to offer.

16 hours later 3780792 Anonymouse
>>3780691 You know what -- I'll be fair. If the "ideal" guidelines can be bent enough to include O'Neill, then Pynchon and Roth could well get the nod under them. McCarthy is probably still out.

17 hours later 3780795 Anonymous
>>3780792 You think McCarthy pushes things in a bad direction?

17 hours later 3780797 Anonymous
>>3780770 In the same period as I took for Scandinavia, US has had three winners. I don't think you are very familiar with contemporary world literature, else you would realize how many other countries out there are producing literature that is just as worthy of winning.

17 hours later 3780824 Anonymouse
>>3780795 >>3780795 Oe's best book, A Personal Matter, straight up has the happiest ending serious literature can afford. Camus is a tougher sell for "ideal," but in his acceptance speech he rails pretty aggressively against the nihilists of his age. Boll seems to use various strains and brutalities only to trumpet the strength of human dignity and endurance, but I've only read the one book. Never read any Gide. They can all be put under the "ideal" parameters relatively easily, but McCarthy? Not to have a rushed interpretation of a contemporary masterpiece, but Blood Meridian argues pretty convincingly for a fundamental violence and hatred lurking in the spirit of man. The Road doesn't quite redeem it.

17 hours later 3780829 Anonymouse
>>3780797 You wouldn't happen to be Scandinavian by any chance?

17 hours later 3780832 Anonymous
>>3780829 No, I'm from the Southern US.

17 hours later 3780834 Anonymous
>>3780824 Okay, I like that. Thanks. I thought The Plague was oddly life-affirming and positive.

17 hours later 3780841 Anonymous
>>3780700 Faulkner actually received most of his renown after winning it. The French discovered Faulkner. He was mostly ignored in America till then.

17 hours later 3780845 Anonymous
>>3780841 Really? I had no idea, I apologize for my ignorance. I think he's just great

17 hours later 3780854 Anonymous
>>3780770 I'm not sure how many American authors need the recognition. In my opinion the Nobel should attempt to spotlight authors who deserve a global audience but have been hindered by language or cultural barriers.

17 hours later 3780861 Anonymous
>>3780854 That's not the point of the award though, is it? Maybe you should start another award whose goal is to do that.

17 hours later 3780873 Anonymous
>>3780861 From the link posted above it would appear to be part of the Academy's criteria: >Another policy, partly coinciding with the one just outlined, partly replacing it, is "the pragmatic consideration" worded by the new secretary, Lars Gyllensten, and, again, taking into account the "benefit" of the Prize. A growing number within the Academy wanted to call attention to important but unnoticed writers and literatures, thus giving the world audience masterpieces they would otherwise miss, and at the same time, giving an important writer due attention. We get glimpses of such arguments as far back as the choice of Rabindranath Tagore in 1913 but there was no programme until the early 1970s. The full emergence of this policy can be seen from 1978 and onwards, in the Prizes to Isaac Bashevis Singer, Odysseus Elytis, Elias Canetti, and Jaroslav Seifert. The criterion gives poetry a prominent place. In no other period were the poets so well provided for as in the years 1990-1996 when four of the seven prizes went to Octavio Paz, Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, and Wislawa Szymborska, all of them earlier unknown to the world audience.

17 hours later 3780877 Anonymouse
>>3780854 >>3780861 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_pri zes/literature/articles/espmark/ind ex.html ^Says there that the committee is, in part at least, trying to do a little of that, actually. I'll admit that there is a little bit of huffy foot-stomping here, but the indignity isn't because they don't have recognition -- regardless of the criteria, the Prize is regarded as literature's highest honor, and I think Americans are writing some of the finest literature today. Llosa over Pynchon? "Herta Who? Wherta Who?" over Roth? Be it critical instinct or patriotism, I'd like the greatest prize to go to the greatest authors.

17 hours later 3780879 Anonymous
>>3780873 I'm an idiot. Sorry. I agree with you then

17 hours later 3780885 Anonymouse
>>3780861 That prize exists, it's called the Man Booker lel [

17 hours later 3780891 Anonymous
>>3779617 you have better taste than anyone I've ever seen on this board

17 hours later 3780901 Anonymous
>>3780397 TAYEB SALIH TAYEB SALIH TAYEB SALIH TAYEB SALIH TAYEB SALIH TAYEB SALIH

17 hours later 3780916 Anonymous
>>3780901 Too dead.

17 hours later 3780962 Anonymous
>>3780397 Probably Adonis. He's been high on the betting lists for a while, and the academy's library has a lot of volumes of his poetry.

18 hours later 3781154 Anonymous
>>3780686 Unbeknownst to OP Pynchon has a history of antipathy towards the Nobel. I think (wasn't reading anything near Pinecone-tier back then) people saw GR as a strong candidate for the nobel and were disappointed when he didn't get it. If you follow his career after GR you'll notice he pokes fun at the academy and the prize. >after GR is released TP settles down in northern California to begin work on his next novel, 'Vineland' >Wanda Tinasky (a.k.a. TRP) begins indicting local poets and figures by writing letters to Bruce Anderson, editor of a local paper >Makes fun of the Nobel academy numerous times, suggest that Anderson should get the peace prize, etc. >Vineland is released. The principal character is intimately involved in a rebel enclave of artists who succeed from the US. I haven't finished M&D or started any of the later works so who know if the thread goes on.

30 hours later 3782122 Anonymous
>>3780795 >>3780824 McCarthy won't win because he's plain not good enough. I mean he's borderline genre fiction.

30 hours later 3782125 Anonymous
>>3780877 Pynchon and Roth are not that great. Seriously. Get your heads out your asses, yanks.

30 hours later 3782132 Anonymous
>>3781154 Pynchon might have had a shout based on his '60s and '70s output, but everything after that is just not up to scratch. To win the Nobel you usually need a long career of consistent quality behind you. No one who has published an Inherent Vice stands a chance.

30 hours later 3782157 Anonymous
>>3782122 >I mean he's borderline genre fiction. That's an insult to genre fiction.

31 hours later 3782195 Anonymous
>>3782125 Who is better in America?

31 hours later 3782205 Anonymous
Who was on the shortlist, anyway? The Nobel Prizes completely went over my head, this year.

31 hours later 3782215 Anonymous
Who the hell are cnosidered the elite in the American sphere, anyway? I don't really pay attention to modern literature, except for a select few authors.

34 hours later 3782468 Anonymous
>>3782205 It's not for a few months, yet. And we are not privy to the shortlist until decades afterwards.

34 hours later 3782471 Anonymous
>>3782195 Don't know. But I know plenty of non-American authors who are better. Most of the ones who've already been mentioned ITT are better, in fact.

34 hours later 3782527 Sunhawk
You know what I've NEVER seen on this board, which surprised me a lot? All things considered, it's surprising. People complaining about David Foster Wallace never winning the Nobel Prize (while alive, obviously). I mean, what's the argument or arguments against him winning it? People here think Infinite Jest is manna from Heaven.

34 hours later 3782537 Anonymous
>>3782527 DFW's worship has now gone full circle. Now, people who have not read DFW dislike him as a sort of backlash against people saying good things without reading him. I suspect this cycle will continue for some time.

35 hours later 3782548 Anonymous
>>3782527 Because he was too young. He was never a realistic candidate. I'm pissed off that the Pulitzer snubbed The Pale King, though.

36 hours later 3782815 Anonymous
>>3782132 I definitely agree that he isn't Nobel material. Perhaps that is why his work is decreasing in literary merit. It seems to me that he is just a huge literature/science/history nerd who loves to write. Either he has a deep seated resentment for the Nobel institution or he is making of a joke of it, in my opinion.

37 hours later 3782834 Anonymous
>>3782815 I think he is just doing what he wants, which happens to be not what they want. I doubt he is that hung up on the whole thing, and nor should he be.

37 hours later 3782843 Anonymous
>>3782132 The Nobel isn't just about quality and having written many great books, some authors have won with only one truly great work. It's about showing "idealism" in your books. In the past the requirements were much stricter and some great authors missed out because of it, but nowadays it's more about writing about humanism and even political idealism (if it's left winged). I haven't read much of Pynchon, but what I've gathered is that his themes aren't too focused on lofty ideals. That's why he doesn't have a legitimate chance.

37 hours later 3782847 Anonymous
>>3782527 One novel does not constitute enough to win the nobel prize

37 hours later 3782859 Anonymous
>>3782843 Pynchon is pretty political, actually. He's just not Serious enough for the Nobel Committee.

37 hours later 3782873 Anonymous
>>3780834 Did we read the same book? The fucking dog died.

37 hours later 3782875 Anonymous
>>3782843 >some authors have won with only one truly great work Who? I'm sure they are exceptions rather than the rule.

37 hours later 3782899 Anonymous
>>3782875 They probably are the exceptions, but if you read the citation on wikipedia, with the reason behind the award, you will notice that some of them have received they with special appreciation of a single work.

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