Are US writers unworthy of the Nobel Prize?
By Marjorie Kehe | 10.02.08
Ouch! You could almost feel the hurt. An American writer is unlikely to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel judge and permanent secretary Horace Engdahl told the Associated Press in an interview.
“The US is too isolated, too insular,” the Swedish historian and critic said. “They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining.
“You can’t get away from the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world, not the United States,” he added.
It didn’t take long for America’s book world to spring to the defense. “You would think that the permanent secretary of an academy that pretends to wisdom but has historically overlooked Proust, Joyce, and Nabokov, to name just a few non-Nobelists, would spare us the categorical lectures,” said David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker magazine.
Remnick cited Roth, Updike, and DeLillo, along with “many younger writers, some of them sons and daughters of immigrants writing in their adopted English.” Not one of “these poor souls, old or young,” Remnick said, “seem ravaged by the horrors of Coca-Cola.”
“Such a comment makes me think that Mr. Engdahl has read little of American literature outside the mainstream and has a very narrow view of what constitutes literature in this age,” said Harold Augenbraum, executive director of US National Book Foundation.
Even an unnamed “senior French publishing executive” came to the defense of the US in an interview with the Independent – although rather less vigorously. Engdahl was “partly right but also fundamentally wrong,” he said, adding that “not all American contemporary literature is parochial or ignorant…. there are also excellent modern American authors.”
“Put [Engdahl] in touch with me, and I’ll send him a reading list,” suggested Augenbraum. Of course, there have been a number of US writers who have been awarded the prize over the years, although some argue that that number is much smaller than it should be.
One-hundred-and-four writers have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature was first awarded in 1901. Of those 104, there have been 10 US winners, starting with Sinclair Lewis in 1930. Most recently, Toni Morrison received the prize in 1993.
This year, Nobel Prizes for physiology, physics, chemistry, peace, and economics will all be announced in October. According to tradition, however, the Swedish Academy will set the date for its announcement of the Nobel Prize in literature later.
Each Nobel Prize includes a $1.3 million purse, a gold medal and a diploma. The awards are handed out Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896.
Comments
2. Jamie Etheridge | 10.02.08
Can Mr Engdahl explain exactly what is the “big dialogue of literature”? I wonder if he could provide a clear explanation and how American writers don’t take part in such a dialogue. What is art but an effort to understand and comment upon the complexities and nuances of life in all its forms and varieties? Literature, as far as I know, is the dialogue of sorting out those complexities. There are many American writers who do just that: Hemingway, TC Boyle, Shirley Jackson, John Irving, Kurt Vonnegut, Ralph Ellison …. etc. They may not always be as elegant or boring as European writers (anyone who’s tried to read Blindness by Saramago will get my drift) but they do address all the vagaries of the human condition. What more important dialogue can there be than that?
3. The Late Mitchell Warren | 10.02.08
While Remnick’s comments ring true, one can’t deny that American literature is dominated by commercial attitudes. American publishing houses adhere to a mentality that whatever sells is relevant. Letting American authors, who compromise their artistic standards on a daily basis in exchange for mainstream attention, claim the top literary prize in the world would certainly be setting a lower standard. While you can certainly defend writers like Vonnegut or Hemingway, American authors of today are clearly not on the same level. America should be held culpable for pushing this capitalistic attitude on the world, even if a few individual authors pay suffer the consequences.
5. Mike Pat | 10.02.08
Horace Engdahl’s recent comments concerning American writers are an unfortunate confirmation of what most of us inferred already- the Nobel committee hates American literature. The reasons matter little, however it appears clear that Euro snobbery is at least part of the answer. There is probably a measure of jealousy, mixed with political punishment for the Bush administration policies. Historically, Nobel has largely ignored American writers. When one considers that since 1962, when John Steinbeck won, only three Americans have won-(and one of them was really a European writer- Isaac Bashevis Singer- writing in the Yiddish tradition and language-although we are happy to claim him) it is clear that Nobel disdains America.
Maybe this isn’t so bad when one considers the stunning list of European and Non-European non-winners which leads one to conclude that the Nobel committee knows nothing about literature. Consider this partial list of non-winning European writers who were eligible since the prize was created in 1901: Leo Tolstoy, Emile Zola, Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, Thomas Hardy, August Strindberg, Edmond Rostand, Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, Rainer Maria Rilke, A.E. Housman, Miguel de Unamuno, Marcel Proust, Maxim Gorky, Hugo von Hoffmansthal, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, G.K. Chesterton, Fernando Pessoa, Isaac Babel, Virginia Woolf, Federico Garcia Lorca, Osip Mandelstam, Paul Valery, Aldous Huxley, E.M. Forster, Bertolt Brecht, George Orwell, Luis Cernuda, Isak Dinesen, W.H. Auden, Nikos Kazantzakis, Paul Celan, Jorge Luis Borges, Graham Greene, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jean Anouilh, Italo Calvino, Eugene Ionesco, Stanislaw Lem, Iris Murdoch, Milan Kundera. None of these writers were deemed worthy by the Nobel Committee.
Consider this partial list of North/South American writers who were also ignored by Nobel: Henry James, Mark Twain, Joaquim M. Machado de Assis, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, John Dos Passos, Theodore Dreiser, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Flannery O’Connor, Vladimir Nobokov, Alejo Carpentier, Julio Cortazor, Robertson Davies, Mario Vargas Llosa, Philip Roth, Arthur Miller, Carlos Fuentes, Thomas Pynchon, Norman Mailer, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Ralph Ellison, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Updike, Margaret Atwood, Roberto Bolano etc. etc.
Instead of some of these names we get unbelievable selections like Dario Fo, Elfriede Jelinek, Gao Xingjian. The simple fact of the matter is that while many Nobel laureates have richly deserved the prize (like recent choices such as Pinter, Coetzee, Saramago, Grass) these choices are the exception rather than the rule. In light of the comments of Engdahl coupled with the total lack of North/South American winners since Toni Morrison’s win in 1993 it is time to wipe clean the Academy and find new and qualified Nobel selectors. The award is so tainted at this point it seems to be an international joke. I love European literature but to annually award the prize to European writers while virtually ignoring the rest of the world is not acceptable. If you want to have a European award go right ahead but don’t pretend that this flawed award is the height of international acclaim. Nobel virtually missed the “Latin Boom”, has all but ignored North American literature, Asian literature, Australian literature and African Literature. How do you justify the choice of someone like Jelinek while not picking Chinua Achebe or Philip Roth or Roberto Bolano? A new international award is needed to properly reflect literary greatness. Engdahl’s ridiculous comments only confirm the misguided selection process that has resulted in choices that will seem as bizarre as the terrible early choices made by the committee.
7. gene obrien | 10.03.08
wonderful, brilliant american writer’s equal to any other of other countries…Thomas Pynchon…Jeffery Lent….Barbara Kingslover…Michael Chabon to name but a few…; these writers, for their output and mastery of serious storytelling deserve serious consideration for any literary awards..especially Pynchon, who, let us hope, doesn’t pass away before he is inevitably awarded a Nobel award. and, as someone above mentioned..this is an organization which ignored others who certainly , with the test of time and the enduring works they produced, were passed over in favor of lightweights whose works are all but forgotten…Mark Twain, James Joyce, John Dos Passos, Fitzgerald, and, do we dare forget that greatest prose stylist ever–Joseph Conrad, and, of other countries…Tolstoy! the literature committee should read the works of authors before they select the awardees….
8. Elizabeth Horan | 10.03.08
I regularly teach a university course in the Fall that surveys the work of recent Nobel Laureates in Literature, in which I ask students to predict and compaign for those likely to win the Nobel. My undergraduate students regularly ask a question that hasn’t occurred to the critics of Mr. Engdahl: what exactly is an “American writer” or a European writer? The great writers of Europe and of the Americas remind us that “Language is the only homeland” or as Gabriela Mistral (Nobel Prize 1945) put it: “lengua si, raza no.”
What are the following Nobel Laureates who have made the United States their residence, not included on the list of Laureates to which the CSJ links.
Joseph Brodsky who wrote in Russian and English, a brilliant poet and essayist, won the Nobel in 1987, when he was living in the U.S., as a U.S. citizen; Derek Walcott, a poet and highly original playwrite, Nobel Laureate 1992, who was born in St Lucia, lived for a number of years in Trinidad, but who currently splits his residence between Boston and St Lucia.
The writers chosen for the Nobel are or tend to be multilingual, multi-state, working in a range of activities including translation, poetry, performance. May the United States continue to attract and even develop such writers and artists in the years to come.
9. riymh | 10.03.08
France won one Nobel prize since 1964, and it happened in 1985.
Russia won one Nobel prize since 1970, and it was back in 1987.
In last 35 years, only once writer from Germany won.
Dutch-speaking writers never won.
After 1974, none of Nordic European countries author won.
So, obviously they gave much more prizes to US writers since mid-70’s then to many great literatures from Europe.
10. Ed Nicholson | 10.03.08
NOBEL: No One Beats European Literature
Is the Nobel Prize for Literature too important to be left always to the attitudes of some provincial Swedes? Or is it not so revered anymore?
The logic that American literature is somehow not as good because of commercial pressures is phony and flawed. The best American (or Russian, or French, etc) writers/artists tend to buck the system, not conform to it. The more there is to rebel against or criticize (especially in the U.S.) sometimes the better conditions to produce outstanding work.
As for the U.S. being insular, is the New York Times insular? Are the lit departments at Harvard, the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa (just as a selection) insular? Was Norman Mailer or Arthur Miller insular? And was Gabriel Garcia Marquez unworthy of the Nobel Prize simply because his work is popular? Ugh…
11. Kathleen de la Peña McCook | 10.08.08
The Nobel Prize winner for 2008 should be Joyce Carol Oates. She has written intensely and brilliantly for many decades and her writing becomes stronger and more enduring with every new work.
12. Dustin Johnson | 10.14.08
I would also add that book publishing in the United States is almost exclusively controlled by European Publishers. Hachette, Random House and NewsCorp represent the lion share of companies investing in literature in the United States, and they are all European companies. Their decisions are based exclusively on market forces. There is no strong marketing base or reason for these companies to propel American writers into the world and most of the publishing companies that publish our best writers are too small to gain recognition on a global scale.
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1. Anthony | 10.02.08
Given how the Nobel Prize is selected should we really give it the status it holds as an achievement? If a prize is going to have such a global perspective, then the selection of its winners should be global as well. Anyone as bigotted and closed-minded as one of the current selection committee members is shouldn’t be allowed to make such a decision.