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

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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

Frederik B, Sunday, 13 October 2019 16:29 (four years ago) link

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.

Frederik B, Monday, 14 October 2019 16:59 (four years ago) link

wiggle wiggle is good writing

mark s, Monday, 14 October 2019 17:04 (four years ago) link

^^^

difficult listening hour, Monday, 14 October 2019 17:06 (four years ago) link

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.

Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Tuesday, 15 October 2019 00:50 (four years ago) link

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.

treeship., Tuesday, 15 October 2019 15:08 (four years ago) link

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

Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Thursday, 17 October 2019 01:01 (four years ago) link

"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.

walking towards the sun since 2007 (alex in mainhattan), Thursday, 17 October 2019 19:06 (four years ago) link

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

Seany's too Dyche to mention (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 17 October 2019 19:18 (four years ago) link

alice munro: is canadian

Muswell Hillbilly Elegy (President Keyes), Thursday, 17 October 2019 19:59 (four years ago) link

hey buddy

Seany's too Dyche to mention (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 17 October 2019 20:00 (four years ago) link

Wasn't Sartre a worse stalinist than Neruda?

Frederik B, Thursday, 17 October 2019 20:08 (four years ago) link

just a random sample off the top of my head

Seany's too Dyche to mention (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 17 October 2019 20:11 (four years ago) link

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

Frederik B, Thursday, 17 October 2019 20:14 (four years ago) link

Neruda recounts raping a maid in his memoirs.

by the light of the burning Citroën, Thursday, 17 October 2019 20:18 (four years ago) link

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

Muswell Hillbilly Elegy (President Keyes), Thursday, 17 October 2019 20:18 (four years ago) link

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!

Seany's too Dyche to mention (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 17 October 2019 20:21 (four years ago) link

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.

Seany's too Dyche to mention (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 17 October 2019 20:23 (four years ago) link

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)

mark s, Thursday, 17 October 2019 20:34 (four years ago) link

i daren't even read up on gjellerup and pontoppidan

mark s, Thursday, 17 October 2019 20:38 (four years ago) link

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

Frederik B, Thursday, 17 October 2019 20:44 (four years ago) link

"thomas mann: paedo who fancied his son"

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

xyzzzz__, Thursday, 17 October 2019 20:56 (four years ago) link

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.

xyzzzz__, Thursday, 17 October 2019 21:03 (four years ago) link

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

plax (ico), Thursday, 17 October 2019 21:37 (four years ago) link

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

xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 23 October 2019 15:16 (four years ago) link

Wow

Seany's too Dyche to mention (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, 23 October 2019 15:33 (four years ago) link

three weeks pass...

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.

alimosina, Thursday, 28 November 2019 20:46 (four years ago) link

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/

... (Eazy), Friday, 29 November 2019 02:42 (four years ago) link

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

xyzzzz__, Monday, 2 December 2019 16:12 (four years ago) link

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

Frederik B, Friday, 6 December 2019 14:11 (four years ago) link

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

éminence rose et jaune (Noodle Vague), Friday, 6 December 2019 15:11 (four years ago) link

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.

A is for (Aimless), Friday, 6 December 2019 16:21 (four years ago) link

They should start giving it to dead people only

Muswell Hillbilly Elegy (President Keyes), Friday, 6 December 2019 17:37 (four years ago) link

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

xyzzzz__, Saturday, 7 December 2019 08:21 (four years ago) link

ten months pass...

Soon..

xyzzzz__, Thursday, 8 October 2020 09:39 (three years ago) link

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

xyzzzz__, Thursday, 8 October 2020 11:03 (three years ago) link

I don"t think I have ever read her. Should rectify this.

Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison), Thursday, 8 October 2020 11:05 (three years ago) link

Yup!

xyzzzz__, Thursday, 8 October 2020 11:07 (three years ago) link

Lol @ the guardian forever:

"Glick, cited for “her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal”, is the 16th woman to win the Nobel, and the first American since Toni Morrison took the prize in 1993."

I guess autocorrect needs time. And everyone ever wants to forget Dylan won it.

xyzzzz__, Thursday, 8 October 2020 11:16 (three years ago) link

Louise Glück on the terrible human responsibility of trying to grow tomatoes ❤️ pic.twitter.com/CluleyY6zy

— Cécile Varry (@CecileVarry) October 8, 2020

xyzzzz__, Thursday, 8 October 2020 11:42 (three years ago) link

Love her but this seems like a very odd choice

handsome boy modelling software (bernard snowy), Thursday, 8 October 2020 12:04 (three years ago) link

Mircea Cărtărescu gets robbed again.

pomenitul, Thursday, 8 October 2020 12:23 (three years ago) link

If Pynchon doesn't get it..

xyzzzz__, Thursday, 8 October 2020 13:39 (three years ago) link

I've never read her either. Just clicked over to poetryfoundation.org to read a few poems - not bad!

o. nate, Thursday, 8 October 2020 22:55 (three years ago) link

I think I should not be encouraged to grow tomatoes Apparently not, but will have to read more before deciding. All the reading the jury has to do, or is supposed to do---the thought of choosing one author makes my head spin, might as well use a roulette wheel. I dunno, I was okay with Dylan winning. Wondered if Sam Shepard ever would, but then he disqualified. Maybe Patti Smith someday? I mostly know her pages from when she takes them to the stage (most of those that I know are pretty good).

dow, Friday, 9 October 2020 01:23 (three years ago) link

Thinking about the ins and outs of a group of people who, at a point very recently, decided that Kazuo Ishiguro was a good writer, rather than what he is, is a fruitless task.

Gerneten-flüken cake (jed_), Friday, 9 October 2020 02:05 (three years ago) link

The only one I've read is Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall, which is scruffier, funnier, shrewder than imposing title had me expecting.

dow, Friday, 9 October 2020 02:23 (three years ago) link


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