Lest we forget ...

... the Nobel Prize for literature is likely to be announced this week, making it time once to ask: What's So Funny About the Nobel Prize for Literature? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

One could answer, simply, Gjellerup and Pontoppidan - who shared the prize in 1917 and are not exactly household names, at least in any household I've ever visited. They may, however, for all I know, be fine writers. After all, how many people recognize the name Pär Lagerkvist, but I can assure you that Barrabas and The Dwarf ("Most dwarfs are buffoons. They have to make jokes and play trick to make their masters and the guests laugh. I have never demeaned myself to anything like that. Nobody has even suggested that I should. My very appearance forbids such use of me. My cast of countenance is unsuited to ridiculous pranks. And I never laugh. I am no buffoon. I am a dwarf and nothing but a dwarf.") and The Sibyll are well worth reading.

My own choices for the prize? I'm already on record as thinking that a truly representative choice among American writers would be not one of usual suspects - Roth, Updike, Pynchon - but Elmore Leonard, in whose every phrase one hears pitch-perfect mastery of the American language's distinct inflections - and the point of view to go with it. I have also suggested that the Swedish Academy look nearer to home and give it to their fellow Swede Torgny Lindgren. But they wouldn't care what I think even if they were aware of it.

Update: Dave Lull also sends along Some last-minute suggestions. The most interesting is Bill Kristol's.