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"The very existence of poetry should make us laugh. What is it all about? What is it for?"
--Kenneth Koch
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4 oct 2011
Nobel?
Is the Nobel prize for Literature still relevant to anyone? I don't remember any winners in the past few years aside from Vargas Llosa, but I'm in a Spanish department so I would notice that. A prize in the first decade of the 21st century doesn't seem that relevant for a writer who made his main contribution in the 60s and 70s. My undergraduate Spanish majors didn't even know he had won the prize two weeks afterwards. When I asked them what writer had just won, they said "Gabriel García Márquez." An obscure writer who wins will just slip back into obscurity after a burst of publicity.
I don't like Elfriede Jelinek (2004), but I certainly knew about her, and the German professor in my department considers her one of the most important living writers in German language. I don't remember the year, but when Saramago won, my grandmother was very happy (he was her favorite writer at the moment). Not my cup of tea, but he was a good writer.
ResponderEliminarI really like Saramago. Jelinek is not for me but people in Germanic Studies tend to be wildly enthusiastic about her.
ResponderEliminarOrhan Pamuk, a Turkish Nobel winner of the recent years, is brilliant.
What I didn't get is why this Le Clézio guy got the Nobel Prize. Who even heard of him? I remember when he got the Prize, people at the French section of my department had an urgent round table to discover who he even was. :-)
I really like Saramago, but never read Jelinek. However, I have to bring up Doris Lessing (2007). I think she is one of the best writers in the English language alive.
ResponderEliminarLessing made her contributions centuries ago. She should have one when she was a more relevant figure, in my opinion.
ResponderEliminarMaybe, but you have to take into account that by those standards Vargas Llosa shouldn't have won last year either. His contributions were also made a while ago!)
ResponderEliminarYes, that's what I said in my post. Why give a prize that late to someone like that?
ResponderEliminarYou are right, I just like her a lot, and was carried away in my own thoughts forgetting what you said before. That happens when you are trying to blog, watch a movie, and grade at the same time!)
ResponderEliminarThe requirement (never officially relaxed so far as I know) that the prize go to work of an "idealistic tendency", and the combined restriction to authors who are (a) long established and (b) alive, together make the prize a strange artifact. I get the point of awards like the Booker, but the Nobel eludes me.
ResponderEliminar