JCO: It's Nobel Time!
October 6, 2004
The New York Times Online
The Nobel Guessing Game: A Mystery in Literature
By ALAN RIDING
PARIS, Oct. 5 - The annual Nobel Prize in Literature,
which is to be awarded in Stockholm on Thursday,
assures the happy laureate a gilded place in
posterity. Or does it?
The Swedish Academy is so eccentric in its choice that
the astonished winner often enjoys 15 minutes of fame
and is quietly forgotten. No less bizarrely, the
academy has overlooked some pillars of modern
literature, like Proust and Joyce. Then there are
those well-known writers who year after year are
considered to be contenders only to be disappointed.
How the 18-member academy reaches its decision is
something of a mystery. Some members are known to
favor worthy but little-known authors, like Gao
Xingjian of China in 2000 and Imre Kertesz of Hungary
in 2002. In other cases, political favoritism has been
suspected: Dario Fo of Italy in 1997, José Saramago of
Portugal in 1998 and Günter Grass of Germany in 1999
all have leftist views.
This year the word in Stockholm is that it is time for
a woman to win again: only nine have since 1901, the
last being the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska in 1996.
Names being mentioned include the Danish poet Inger
Christensen and three novelists, the American Joyce
Carol Oates, the Briton Doris Lessing and the Algerian
Assia Djebar. But this speculation may also be off the
mark.
J. M. Coetzee, the South African who won the 2003
prize, was in fact among a short list of writers whose
names are often mentioned. These include Philip Roth,
Ismail Kadare of Albania, the Paris-based Czech
novelist Milan Kundera, Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru,
the Syrian-Lebanese poet Adonis and the Canadian
writer Margaret Atwood. But the name announced on
Thursday could just as easily provoke the response: who?
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-------------------------------------------------------------------
Tone Clusters: The Joyce Carol Oates discussion group
To send a message to the group, email jco@usfca.edu
To subscribe, email majordomo@usfca.edu: subscribe jco
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The New York Times Online
The Nobel Guessing Game: A Mystery in Literature
By ALAN RIDING
PARIS, Oct. 5 - The annual Nobel Prize in Literature,
which is to be awarded in Stockholm on Thursday,
assures the happy laureate a gilded place in
posterity. Or does it?
The Swedish Academy is so eccentric in its choice that
the astonished winner often enjoys 15 minutes of fame
and is quietly forgotten. No less bizarrely, the
academy has overlooked some pillars of modern
literature, like Proust and Joyce. Then there are
those well-known writers who year after year are
considered to be contenders only to be disappointed.
How the 18-member academy reaches its decision is
something of a mystery. Some members are known to
favor worthy but little-known authors, like Gao
Xingjian of China in 2000 and Imre Kertesz of Hungary
in 2002. In other cases, political favoritism has been
suspected: Dario Fo of Italy in 1997, José Saramago of
Portugal in 1998 and Günter Grass of Germany in 1999
all have leftist views.
This year the word in Stockholm is that it is time for
a woman to win again: only nine have since 1901, the
last being the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska in 1996.
Names being mentioned include the Danish poet Inger
Christensen and three novelists, the American Joyce
Carol Oates, the Briton Doris Lessing and the Algerian
Assia Djebar. But this speculation may also be off the
mark.
J. M. Coetzee, the South African who won the 2003
prize, was in fact among a short list of writers whose
names are often mentioned. These include Philip Roth,
Ismail Kadare of Albania, the Paris-based Czech
novelist Milan Kundera, Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru,
the Syrian-Lebanese poet Adonis and the Canadian
writer Margaret Atwood. But the name announced on
Thursday could just as easily provoke the response: who?
_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
http://vote.yahoo.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Tone Clusters: The Joyce Carol Oates discussion group
To send a message to the group, email jco@usfca.edu
To subscribe, email majordomo@usfca.edu: subscribe jco
To unsubscribe, email majordomo@usfca.edu: unsubscribe jco
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5:41 PM
