Who will be the next American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature?

the empire burles

que jacket

got a lil overexcited there

Murakami looks knocked out loaded on most of his dust jackets.

Mo Yan for the win. Good ol' Mo Yan.

where would we be without him?

For English-speaking audiences, Mo Yan should translate his name and try to package a publicity tour with Gwen Stefani.

Why the sarcasm? I'm really looking forward to checking a couple of his novels..

"where would we be without him?"

i thought you appreciate obscure stuff, or is it just in music?

also, he should tour with No Doubt (Don't Speak=Mo Yan)

hey i like hearing about people i don't know about. which is a lot of nobel winners. i never end up reading any of them though. i DO think its funny/cool that i've never heard of the people who win what is arguably the most prestigious world prize in the world until the day they win it. i've heard of the movie red sorghum at least! that's a start.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/11/gripes-of-roth-nobel-prize-literature

HOW MANY OF YOU GUYS CHECKED OUT THE POETRY OF Tomas Tranströmer AFTER HE WON THE NOBEL LAST YEAR, HUH??? HUH????

yeah, that's what i thought. he does write poetry, right?

and none of the winners are "obscure". not in their home countries anyway.

I did! he's really good!!

Since 1994, though, the Americans have struck out every year. And as the dry spell wears on, the reactions get angrier. So far, Mo Yan has been getting a tiny bit more respect than usual, perhaps because, while Americans are as clueless about Chinese literature as any other, a Chinese winner does at least make the narrative of American decline more historically piquant.

Mo Yan isn't so popular in china, it seems (at least till today that is).

for a body of work - and for what the nobel crowd goes for - roth is the only american i can think of who actually deserves some sort of medal. not that i read all his stuff, but i think he's probably the only "important" american writer alive. and i don't even know why i think that. i just do.

too controversial i guess

(for the noble jury that is)

i've tried to read some nobel winners and...it doesn't go so well. i get sleepy. i always thought i would like patrick white but i've never finished a book of his. i've read very little nobel lit. i look at the books and i just can't commit. i've never even read andre gide. i liked camus and hesse when i was a boy.

i liked some sartre novels when i was in high school. same with hemingway and sinclair lewis.

bellow the exception to the rule. one of my all-time faves.

i never end up reading any of them though.

Well you should you damn provincial ;-)

Lots of great writers haven't won it, from many countries: Borges is possibly the prime example, so nothing special about Roth not having won it.

Doesn't mean anything, merely another avenue to hear about more writers, albeit a very high profile one.

xp = Patrick White and Sartre aren't all that (ok I haven't read seen the plays). Read Oe (who mines Sartre's existentialism) and Laxness' Under the Glacier and tell me if you've slept through that one.

i am really really anglo-centric. i am the first person to admit that. and this is simply because english is the only language i read and write. and i love it. and if i lived ten lifetimes i would never get a handle on it. because i'm too lazy to learn latin, greek, french, and german. and i can have a problem with translations. i get a nagging feeling that i'm missing a lot. i really feel this way when i'm reading books translated from asian languages. i try to ignore it.

Roth, if any. But probably the next American winner will be in like 2067.

i'm actually reading a Lee Child "Jack Reacher" novel right now that my father gave me for my birthday. i shouldn't be on this thread at all! (hey, there's something to be said for chapters that are a page long.)

I've tried two different White novels and given up. The dude's ponderous.

did you try Voss? it's awesome.

my dad loves Lee Child :)

my dad loves all those guys. and "gals" as he would say. that's all he reads. james lee burke up the wazoo.

actually not true. he is kinda particular. there are crime dudes he just won't read.

HOW MANY OF YOU GUYS CHECKED OUT THE POETRY OF Tomas Tranströmer AFTER HE WON THE NOBEL LAST YEAR, HUH??? HUH????

yeah, that's what i thought. he does write poetry, right?

and none of the winners are "obscure". not in their home countries anyway.

― scott seward, Thursday, 11 October 2012 21:59 (1 hour ago) Permalink

you should

I read some Tranströmer, and I thought it was excellent (I'm Danish, though, and that might help in knowing what all the nature-descriptions are about). And good on Mo Yan. Here is a short story of his: http://www.granta.com/New-Writing/Frogs Haven't read it yet, but I'll get to it some time this year.

Everybody should go and read Octavio Paz, and not just the poems either cos his essays on art & lit are just wonderful too.

The market for global fiction's declined since the fifties and sixties, no?

National Insecurity

The Under Secretary leans forward and draws an X
and her ear-drops dangle like swords of Damocles.

As a mottled butterfly is invisible against the ground
so the demon merges with the opened newspaper.

A helmet worn by no one has taken power.
The mother-turtle flees flying under the water.

read one! i do enjoy turtles...

i'm not sure what an ear-drop is but its evocative.

drop earrings yeah?

transtromer translation problems. apparently. buyer beware!

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/books/review/tomas-transtromers-poems-and-the-art-of-translation.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

"drop earrings yeah?"

yeah i mean that's what i guessed but i've never heard anyone use the words ear-drops to describe earrings before. makes me think of medicine.

for a body of work - and for what the nobel crowd goes for - roth is the only american i can think of who actually deserves some sort of medal. not that i read all his stuff, but i think he's probably the only "important" american writer alive. and i don't even know why i think that. i just do.

― scott seward, Thursday, October 11, 2012 6:03 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

what about pynchon...

Maya Angelou maybe?

they will never give it to pynchon in case he doesn't turn up

I read Conjunctions and Disjunctions by Octavio Paz. It was cool, but also seemed quite old-fashioned anthropology. Some good stuff about sex in christianity vs hinduism. I've read stuff by only four of the people who have won the nobel prize this century: Kertesz, Pamuk, Vargas Llosa and Tranströmer. And I've studied comparative literature...

I'm really rooting for Pynchon. They've given it to people who probably wouldn't show up before, though that was mainly dissidents... Also, because they gave it to someone from east asia this year, we won't have to listen to all the people who say that murakami should win for a few years. yay.

it'd be so awesome if they gave it to pynchon and he actually showed up.

Scott is not a Pynchon fan iirc?

this is gonna sound mean and i swear i'm not trying to be mean but i think i'd need to be a bigger nerd to be a pynchon fan? i just suck so bad at math and science. i feel the same way about zappa. basically: all that brain power in the service of a titty joke? why, frank, why? i think you need to think that pynchon is funny AND that he is worth following through all the twists and turns. i'm down with borges though. but basically i get all my pynchon-esque needs met by science fiction and stanley elkin novels. and peter de vries is way funnier to me. i don't learn anything from pynchon either, i guess. not that that's a prerequsite for me, but it helps. like nabokov, he feels like a closed system. or a locked room. or an airless room and everyone else in the room doesn't need to breathe air and i do. i could completely change my mind in ten years time. it happens with me. i am constantly changing and evolving. i love eating mushrooms now. i was really enjoying a nina simone album the other day. i would never rule out liking pynchon someday. i should probably try one of the later shaggier ones. i dunno though....i'll look in one of his books sometimes and its like someone gave tom robbins smart drugs and some PKD books to read. for some this is heaven.

good overview: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/11/hallucinatory-realism-of-mo-yan-the-first-official-chinese-winner-of-the-nobel-prize-for-literature.html

I read The Crying of Lot 49 and V. (and earlier short stories he was embarrassed about later, in the intro to Slow Learner) while I was in high school, where I also was noooo good at math (kicked in the head by a mule). But I also had nooo probs with those books (also np w first couple Mothers Of Invention records--later met a muso who said Frank told him he started playing guitar in the mid-60s; if true, that may well be why he didn't get very freaking fancy on the good old early stuff)

Oh yeah and I (more recently) enjoyed the poems of Tomas Tranströmer too. Must've lucked out w the translator, whose name I forget (this was in the New Yorker).