Herta Mueller, a member of Romania's ethnic German minority who was persecuted for her critical depictions of life behind the Iron Curtain, won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday in an award seen as a nod to the 20th anniversary of communism's collapse.
I've not reading any of Mueller's books. She may be a wonderful writer. I also think it is great to celebrate the collapse of communism. But it is no way to choose the winner of a literary prize. I find this especially annoying because last night I read the first half of Torgny Lindgren's In Praise of Truth. I will finish it tonight. I would sit down and finish it right now if I didn't have other things to do. Lindgren is one of the most imaginative and original writers at work today. He does desereve the Nobel - on purely literary grounds.
Few of her books are available in English. I have read four of her novels in German and think them quite good. Whether they are better than, say, Bernhard Schlinck's or Krista Wolf's or Christoph Hein's . . . enhhhh, who's to say? I like Schlinck, but I admit it's probably something in his writing that gets to me more than the others. I think it's pretty generally recognized that the Nobel, even more than "smaller" prizes, is awarded for reasons other than pure literature. When Toni Morrison won it, did she deserve it more than Joyce Carol Oates?
ReplyDeleteAnd that is my point, Roger. Is this a literature prize or what?
ReplyDeleteI must say, this is a similar debate to the one that swirled when the author of the Piano Teacher won the Nobel some years ago...(Interestingly enough, I cannot remember her name.)
ReplyDeleteThat would be Elfriede Jelinek, Jesse. I haven;t read that, either. But it seems that the literature prize used to be bestowed most only authors who had achieved an international reputation - Thomas Mann, Bernard Shaw, Hemingway - ans occasionally to someone widely known in the literary world if not to the general public - Faulkner, Saint-John Perse - and very occasionally to an odd but not entirely risible candidate - Bertrand Russell, Winston Churchill, Henri Bergson (all of whom wrote very well indeed). Lately, though, it's become like a film prize that overlooks anything anybody else may have heard of or seen in favor of something by an obscure auteur.
ReplyDeleteI believe it was Paul Theroux who said the Nobel was being awarded on the British principle of "Buggins's turn"; i.e., "Isn't it time for an Albanian?" But that was years and years ago. Now the guidelines, if there are any, have shifted. Myself, I don't much care. At least some worthy author got some money, which is a rarity. Some of the greatest writers ever -- George Orwell, for instance -- never won any prize in their lifetime.
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