Re: JCO: RE: Nobel Prize

JCO has been interviewed today at KCRW's Bookworm. The show can be accessed through their web or itunes (podcast).

Silvia

jandsmerritt <jandsmerritt@earthlink.net> wrote:

Hi Bob:

 

I would have been far happier with Updike, Roth, or certainly Pahuk, the brilliant Turkish novelist.  Snow is one of the finest novels I've read in recent years.   

 

 

I agree that Orhan Pamuk deserves the prize.  This year would have been a good time to give it to him, as his legal position is precarious, and he could use whatever protection that the status of Nobel prizewinner might have offered.  However, he's younger than most people are when they get the prize, while his Turkish nationality may be poison in the present climate in Europe, and even specifically in Sweden (where I gather that they're having a lot of trouble accepting the existance of a significant immigrant community, which is a new experience for them). 

 

Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I don't think that any Americans will win the literature prize while the Iraq war is still going on.  I'm reminded of how Steinbeck won shortly before the U.S. got heavily involved in Vietnam, and then no American won until Bellow did right after the Vietnam war ended.  Stay healthy, JCO!

 

Steve