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

Died?? She wasn't old or anything, was she? And she wrote a respected standard academic book about modernism and the senses or something - years before giving Dylan the prize.

she was 57, which is younger than me hence not old at all :(

the wikipedia write-up (which is all i know about this) somewhat complicates fred's summary of her role (tho of course fred may well be correct and wikipedia quite wrong): The three members resigned in protest over the decision by Sara Danius, the board secretary, not to take what they felt was appropriate legal action against Arnault.

(sorry the blue lines bit shd be in quotes, it's from wikipedia not my judgment)

Yeah, but she was then forced out by the even more pro-rape faction afterwards. While she had cancer. Then shithole Horace Engdahl bragged about how powerful he was, and speculated women just wasn't cut out for this kinda thing.

This is the essential part of the NYT article that that wiki-thing leads to: On the other side are two former permanent secretaries, Sture Allen and Horace Engdahl, who have made lacerating statements in recent days, calling the reaction to the allegations overblown and denouncing Ms. Danius as a weak leader. The 'allegations' lead to a conviction and a sentence of two years, for rape committed in an apartment owned by the academy.

Do you think she was right not to take legal action against Arnault?

(I've run out of free access to the NYT for this month so I can't check up what it says about that)

I don't really think it was her choice. But it's impossible to say, the institution is so secretive.

I can't imagine very many people are happy about the composition of the Academy these days. Based on what Fred's saying it doesn't seem like taking a year off did them any good at all. What are the options here? Who are the Academy responsible to?

Literally nobody. Until recently, they weren't even allowed to resign (two chairs has been empty since they fucked up the Rushdie Fatwa situation). You should see the footage from the big yearly meeting, they have this large table where all these Academy members are sitting, writers, artists, philosophers, and around them every other powerful person in Sweden is gathered. Here to pay tribute to the greatest spirits of the country (and in the corner, the rapist, always there. Rumors have it he groped the crown princess one year). They are supreme, there's nothing anyone can do.

This just seems to me to fit so well into the standard modus operandi of the 21st century right wing. Take advantage of the weaknesses of hated liberal institutions to gain power. Once in power exacerbate those weaknesses. That part I get, but why do they always work so hard to undermine themselves just as strongly as they're undermining the institutions? Fascism is supposed to offer an _alternative_ to liberalism, not a cartoonishly dystopian exaggeration of it!

My question is really about the money. Where do they get their money? Sure, they can stay in power forever, but the prize money, it fluctuates, right? Two years from now are they going to be handing out a coupon for a free Happy Meal?

No, the money will last forever. It's the Nobel heritage, it isn't going to run out. And that's not the only money they have, they are handling tons and tons and tons of art stipend money, and a lot of it goes to their friends. The latest story was that people who had backed them up on the 'rape isn't so bad' take was being paid quite well.

It has changed a bit. Iirc correctly, it used to be an unpaid position, which meant that a lot of members, who really were among the best and brightest on the art scene, were awarding money and prizes to themselves. This culminated in 74, where the prize, and the money, was shared between Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson, both members. I like Martinson's poem Aniara, which was recently turned into a sci fi film, but it was obviously a big scandal. Martinson killed himself four years later.

Before departing from Zurich, I bought a small Langenscheidt's dictionary (1992 edition) . Where it once said "Serbo-Croatian" on the familiar yellow cover, only "Croatian" now stood. I asked myself, while thumbing through, whether I would have found "DIN, Deutsche Industrienorm" in the back under "Common Abbreviations" even during the time when Serbian too played a role. It was newly revised by "Prof Dr. Reinhard Lauer," who, more or less that same year, hired by the F.AZ there repeatedly accused the entire Serbian people, along with its poets (by­passed by the Enlightenment from, shall we say, the Romantic Njegos to Vasko Popa-see identification with the wolf!; see Popa's wolf poems!) , of the most dangerous myth complexes.

This must be the worst writing by any Nobel laureate ever? Apart from Wiggle Wiggle, perhaps

Does anyone have a link to what he actually said about the Srebrenica massacre?

― jmm, 11. oktober 2019 15:37 (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

So this is from the Epilogue of the Justice for Serbia book:

"You aren't going to question the massacre at Srebrenica too, are you?" S. commented, in response, after my return. "No," I said. "But I want to ask how such a massacre is to be explained, carried out, it seems, under the eyes of the world, after more than three years of war during which, people say, all parties,even the dogs of this war, had become tired of killing, and further, it is supposed to have been an organized, systematic, long-planned execution." Why such a thousandfold slaughtering? What was the motivation? For what purpose?And why, instead of an investigation into the causes ("psychopaths" doesn't suffice), again nothing but the sale of the naked, lascivious, market­ driven facts and supposed facts?

So he is not so much a 'no genocide' person as he is a 'yes genocide, but...' person. Also, whatever you think about the war and the massacre, he never deals with the idea of 'ethnic cleansing', which is the very common explanation I saw for the genocide.

wiggle wiggle is good writing

^^^

Sometimes he's a no genocide person: he told Bosnian Muslims that the Srebrenica massacre was faked and said “You can stick your corpses up your arse!” when questioned further about it.

Danius was also pro Bob Dylan, so she should have been fired for that alone.

bob dylan seems better than this guy. i think they should give it to him again next year to be safe and avoid this kind of error.

I hate Bob Dylan, but I would agree he's a better human being than Handke.

"better human being"? but that is not what the nobel prize for literature is about. as wordsmith handke has definitely a bigger stamina than dylan. he is very obsessed by himself though. like dylan.

let's have a quick selection of nobel literature laureates and bad stuff about them:

knut hamsen: eulogized hitler
thomas mann: paedo who fancied his son
t.s. eliot: anti-semite
winston churchill: responsible to some extent for a famine, suggested gassing arab villagers.
pablo neruda: praised stalin in his obra maestra canto general
gunter grass: member of the waffen ss
bob dylan: domestic abuser

alice munro: is canadian

hey buddy

Wasn't Sartre a worse stalinist than Neruda?

just a random sample off the top of my head

Plus Sartre was French. You really haven't thought this through, Jim

Neruda recounts raping a maid in his memoirs.

naipaul was a racist
bellow was verging on intellectual dark web territory in old age

Neruda recounts raping a maid in his memoirs.

― by the light of the burning Citroën, Thursday, October 17, 2019 1:18 PM (two minutes ago)

i had forgotten about this!

well not really forgotten - i've both read the book and followed the controversy last year around the plan to rename the main airport in chile after neruda - more slipped my mind when compiling this list.

kipling! by a long way the greatest eng lang writer of his day (say 1890-1915ish), very very terrible politics

if sartre was a stalinist at all he was a VERY weird stalinist (and whoever awarded it didn't IMO plough through long reaches of being and nothingness, which no one can really call well written)

i daren't even read up on gjellerup and pontoppidan

Pontoppidan was cool! Lucky Per is a masterpiece. I have no idea about Gjellerup, but he was probably a massive racist. Most Danes are.

"thomas mann: paedo who fancied his son"

He wrote about fancying boys in his diaries but he didn't actually do anything, right?

Sartre probably got the prize for his considerable literary work (Nausea, his plays, some of his stories pushing his philosophy along...a hybrid of French absurdist and his own philosophy), and then for his stance on Algeria, as far as the politics was concerned.

I was going to say Anne Carson but it turns out she's Canadian

https://medium.com/@___adn/index-of-articles-on-peter-handkes-nobel-prize-515060442ca5

This is the twitter of the person who compiled it. You get the whole deal:

This is getting better by the day:

Peter Handke was a groomsman for the Remove Kebab accordion player's wedding (aka 'Dat Face Soldier', a convicted war criminal) https://t.co/oA7VYP5T6b

— from bosnian woods (@___adn) October 13, 2019

Wow

https://theintercept.com/2019/11/14/peter-handke-nobel-prize-bosnian-genocide-conspiracy/

He wrote about fancying boys in his diaries but he didn't actually do anything, right?

I don't know anything about Mann. But quotations from André Gide (Nobel Prize 1947) available on request.

let's have a quick selection of nobel literature laureates and bad stuff about them:

https://electricliterature.com/we-need-to-talk-about-derek-walcotts-sexual-harassment-scandal/

People are giving up: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/02/nobel-prize-for-literature-hit-by-fresh-round-of-resignations

Libs are dying so this big king lib prize dying is good too

Former permanent secretary boycotts the ceremony: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/06/nobel-swedish-academy-peter-handke-ceremony-peter-englund-literature

Can't believe they're cheapening the prize awarded to Knut Hamsun and T. S. Eliot by giving it to an apologist of oh never mind you know

It's stupid that people keep talking about Knut Hamsun getting the prize as if he were actively supporting the Nazis when he got it. In 1920. Three years before the Beer Hall Putsch. It's not like the prize committee had a magic ball to see the future.

They should start giving it to dead people only

Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk is using her prize money to set up a foundation in Poland that will support writers and translators, promote Polish culture abroad, advocate for women's and animal rights, and fight discrimination https://t.co/QXFBZ2144v

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) December 5, 2019

Soon..

BREAKING NEWS:
The 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to the American poet Louise Glück “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.”#NobelPrize pic.twitter.com/Wbgz5Gkv8C

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 8, 2020