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Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Tarnishing the Nobel Prize, literature edition
Al Gore got the Nobel peace prize. Yeah, Al freakin' Gore. Because combating global warming has something to do with peace.
Since I'm busy writing blog entries that, if read by dictators and military juntas, would take up some of their time--time which could have been spent firing missiles on the enemy--I'm anticipating at least a nod during the next round of Nobel peace prize nominations.
Sarcasm aside, giving the peace prize to Al Gore has tarnished the Nobel peace prize in my eyes. It stinks of pure politics. To be sure, the peace prize was political even before Gore got the nod, but Gore getting the award is so overtly political, so mind-numbingly stupid, that even the most naive news consumer can see through the extraordinarily silly rationalizations.
And now, the Nobel prize for literature is becoming tarnished as well. It has become infected with the anti-American virus:
Yesterday, the literary world on this side of the Atlantic reacted with bemusement and anger to an extraordinary tirade against American writing by Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Nobel prize jury.
"There is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world ... not the United States," he told the Associated Press. "The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature ...That ignorance is restraining."
What a pompous ass. You can read two defenses of American literature here and here.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on October 7, 2008 in Books | Permalink
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Comments
Sarcasm aside, giving the peace prize to Al Gore has tarnished the Nobel peace prize in my eyes. It stinks of pure politics. To be sure, the peace prize was political even before Gore got the nod, but Gore getting the award is so overtly political, so mind-numbingly stupid, that even the most naive news consumer can see through the extraordinarily silly rationalizations.
PM Jaworski
Ever sinse the Rev. Al Gore got this so called "prize" I have thought of it as nothing more than an ugly paperweight.
Posted by: JC | 2008-10-07 4:18:24 PM
They should come up with a prize for environmentalism.
I don't think WE'RE the cause of global warming, I question if it's even happening but that doesn't mean people couldn't stand to green up a bit… even if it's for the wrong reasons and because of wrong information. Global cooling would seem to be much easier to counteract if we were to accidentally run into that.
Getting people to spend money on new and exciting things is always good, just don't force them. Look how happy people are with those squiggly lightbulbs. I don't know too many people who replaced their bulbs for environmental reasons so much as because nobody like changing bulbs or spending more on power. Fancy that.
Whoever invented those needs a nobel prize in environmentalism.
However to defend Al Gore (gross) if global warming is real and as bad as he makes it out to be, there's going to be a lot of killing once the sizit hitzits the fan.
Posted by: Pete | 2008-10-07 5:06:10 PM
Jawsy, Jawsy, Jawsy....
I think you are over-reacting. I don't see anything in the quote that screams "anti-American" or, as Kirsch says in the Slate article, that Roth, Updike, Pynchon, DeLillo need to count out a Nobel just yet. Let's look at what he does say: "They don't translate enough". This is probably quite true. There is less of a tendency in English culture to translate the creations of other languages than there is in European culture. In Europe it is assumed that much of what you get will come in translation from other languages (or, because people understand more languages, will be experienced in the original but in another language).
So if less is translated into English, what about reading the original? But for that, you need to actually know more than one language. I bet that most of the top American writers are unilingual and most of the top European writers are multi-lingual, thus the Europeans are much more naturally able to be immersed in the best that ALL cultures have to offer.
So the idea that American writers (and, let's face it - Canadian and British writers) are more "isolated" and "insular" than European writers are seems like a reasonable thing to say. And if they are more isolated and insular, then it is not crazy to think that they cannot "really participate in the big dialogue of literature" as other writers can. It also would make sense that this "ignorance" of works in languages they don't speak and are not translated "is restraining." But also note that he never suggests that this "big dialogue of literature" is not a dialogue that involves talking about and being influenced by American writing. In fact, one would expect that to be a part of the big dialogue, too.
Unless he said more than was quoted, there is nothing much there to make such a fuss about. He does not say that American writing sucks or that American writers are all undeserving of Nobel consideration. He merely expresses a criticism grounded in the limitations of the combination of being unilingual and not having a lot of work translated into that one language. To call these remarks a "tirade" or "anti-American" is to be overly sensitive to what might well be legitimate critism. I think his words are as true of the Canadian literary establishment (although we do probably have a lot more functionally bilingual writers than the US does) and the British literary establishment. All this can be true while still recognizing that there are some very fine Canadian-American-British writers out there who have written some very fine books. As the disclaimer goes, some of my favourite writers are Americans!
Posted by: Fact Check | 2008-10-07 5:32:56 PM
You could make the link between combating global warming and peace - desertification leads to movement of people - leads to conflict. But it's real stretch. I think the prize becomes more devalued each year. www.skynews.com/foreignmatters
Posted by: Tim Marshall | 2008-10-08 4:57:20 AM
You could make the link between combating global warming and peace - desertification leads to movement of people - leads to conflict. But it's real stretch. I think the prize becomes more devalued each year. www.skynews.com/foreignmatters
Posted by: Tim Marshall | 2008-10-08 5:08:32 AM
Very nice article! I'm agree your points.
Posted by: maria | 2008-10-09 8:16:25 AM
The above ignorance from sdf is an example of what might be grounds for censorship. (IMO) This kind of spew should be bound, gagged and locked away somewhere dark and cold.
Posted by: JC | 2008-10-10 6:04:27 AM
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