Nobel literature head: US too insular to compete

I see it was two posts in before somebody reset the Hitler clock...

Let's stir the pot a bit more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/oct/01/us.literature.insular.nobel Note the last paragraph of the article.

I think we need to remember that this is a Literature prize, for those who write literary novels. Most of what is published is not literary. Personally, few literary novels can hold my interest beyond the first couple of chapters. And they are insular, regardless of where they were written.

Concerning the Booker: I tried to read one years ago and fell asleep after two pages. In recent years, that particular award seems to have been a ploy to curry favour with certain nationalities.

As for WWII -- come on now, if it hadn't been for John Wayne, we'd have lost the war.

Whether someone enjoys a particular novel is a matter of taste. A lot of people love the excitement and adventure of many popular genre novels, and think books that are labelled "literary" are boring. Personally, I feel exactly the opposite.

Genre books get best-seller lists and large readership. Literary books get industry prizes and, often, recognition as having forged a path into new territory. The nationality of their authors shouldn't influence their eligibility for a international prize (particularly if it comes with a $1.3M purse). Thankfully, the committees that award international literature prizes are typically made up of a cross-section of people who, I hope, can collectively make an unbiased decision. Naive? Maybe.

Carmy said:

Concerning the Booker: I tried to read one years ago and fell asleep after two pages. In recent years, that particular award seems to have been a ploy to curry favour with certain nationalities.

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I'll put aside my reflexive, expletive-laden response and instead ask, simply, "How so? What do you mean?"

mscelina:
I beleive (as an international citizen who spent half of her year in France during childhood) that there is a definite European prejudice against the American arts

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I would respectfully disagree. Culturally, the United States remains dominant in the arts of music and cinema in particular, wielding a critical influence over those mediums in European countries. Now, that dominance has created a fear in certain countries (look at the protectionism that France in particular has with regard to its cinema), but in terms of the medium, film makers and musicians are clearly influenced and respect it.

With literature it's a little more tricky and I don't think that's so much a product of intolerance as it is cultural peculiarities and what a country's population en masse is generally interested in. For example, in the United Kingdom there's still a lingering obsession with class - it touches a great deal of modern literary fiction. Immigration and the integration of immigrants is also a popular theme (as is the case with France as well, I think). Traditionally, they're subjects that are seen (rightly or wrongly) as not being addressed within US fiction.

Then there's the war ... Maybe it's best not to get into the politics of that, but the way in which that shattered the European continent is something that touches and fascinates a lot of European writers and (as is obvious from this discussion) is something that Europeans have a different perspective on than those on the US side of The Pond.

What I'm saying is that thematically, we in Europe are perhaps less likely to completely identify with the issues and perspectives explored by US authors because we're coming at it from a different perspective. I'm not saying that some people don't get wanky about it because they plainly do, but the fact that writers such as Cormac McCarthy or Philip Roth or John Updike are as much respected over here as they are over in the US and as popular, suggests to me that there isn't that much of a prejudice.

To throw petrol on the flames, I will say that there's been a lot of US fiction over the last few years that's been focused on 9/11 and the Iraq war and perhaps there is a sense in which some US writers are turning in and using that as an opportunity to reflect on what US society currently is. I'm not saying that those aren't important events, but they are peculiarly American experiences rooted in American attitudes and it can be difficult for that to resonate with a European (speaking generally).

carmy:
come on now, if it hadn't been for John Wayne, we'd have lost the war.

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Meh, Wayne did everything he could not to fight in the war but then made his cinematic reputation from it. Give me Jimmy Stewart and Clarke Gable any day of the week - those guys were in the shit, doing their missions with ordinary men - Stewart flew bombing sorties over Europe and did his full complement of missions and was determined to sign up to serve. I've got more respect for them than I do for Wayne.

MM

The Nobel Prize *yawns* They still give that out?

Shadow_Ferret said:

The Nobel Prize *yawns* They still give that out?

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Just another insular American...

Shadow_Ferret said:

The Nobel Prize *yawns* They still give that out?

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Isn't there a thread in the Movies and TV forum calling you right now?

Let's keep the discussion on topic.

When Irena Sendler lost to Al Gore, I gave up on the Nobel awards.

CaroGirl said:

Whether someone enjoys a particular novel is a matter of taste. A lot of people love the excitement and adventure of many popular genre novels, and think books that are labelled "literary" are boring. Personally, I feel exactly the opposite.

Genre books get best-seller lists and large readership. Literary books get industry prizes and, often, recognition as having forged a path into new territory. The nationality of their authors shouldn't influence their eligibility for a international prize (particularly if it comes with a $1.3M purse). Thankfully, the committees that award international literature prizes are typically made up of a cross-section of people who, I hope, can collectively make an unbiased decision. Naive? Maybe.

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See, I like literary novels. I was excited to be given a Booker shortlist novel free, and excited at the prospect of discussing it. I'm just disappointed by this one because I don't see any new trails being blazed; I don't see any universal themes being explored, and I'm not seeing the writing as anything special either. I was looking forward to reading something I could really sink my teeth into, but the book feels superficial. It's not an indictment of literary fiction of English fiction; it's just a comment that just because a book is up for a prestigious prize doesn't mean it's great, any more than you can say American writers are incapable of being great.

Genre books get bestseller lists and large readership? Just about as often as literary novels win big money prizes. Most of us, genre and lit, are grubbing around together in the trenches, so let's dispense with the endless "you sold out" and "you're an elitist" implications and be nice to each other.

Myself, I'm an elitist genre writer.

Phaeal said:

Genre books get bestseller lists and large readership? Just about as often as literary novels win big money prizes. Most of us, genre and lit, are grubbing around together in the trenches, so let's dispense with the endless "you sold out" and "you're an elitist" implications and be nice to each other.

Myself, I'm an elitist genre writer.

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I hope you're not implying that I wasn't playing nice. Sure I'm generalizing to include the TOP of the genre and literary pile and just saying that the accolades for each are different, not the quality of the work. I'm an aspiring literary writer who knows there's no way in hell I'll ever win a prize. Just like most aspiring genre writers know they won't make the best seller list.

CaroGirl said:

I hope you're not implying that I wasn't playing nice. Sure I'm generalizing to include the TOP of the genre and literary pile and just saying that the accolades for each are different, not the quality of the work. I'm an aspiring literary writer who knows there's no way in hell I'll ever win a prize. Just like most aspiring genre writers know they won't make the best seller list.

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I'm saying that most of us are grubbing in the trenches together and should be nice to each other.

As for aspirations, don't KNOW you'll never win a prize. I don't KNOW I'll never make the bestseller list.

I like to think I write the best I can in any genre, and if it remains genre to the reader or become "literary" in another's mind, so be it. It's the pride in work that matters most to me, and the $$$/accolades are secondary. Perhaps it is my age. Most of the people of my parents' and grandparents' generations who wished me well are dead, and more than a few friends of my generation as well.

Priene said:

Orhan Pamuk is European.

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He's from Turkey. Although Turkey is politically part of Europe, the Turkish literary tradition is not part of the European literary tradition. Pamuk was the first Turkish person to win a Nobel.

Momento Mori said:

What I'm saying is that thematically, we in Europe are perhaps less likely to completely identify with the issues and perspectives explored by US authors because we're coming at it from a different perspective.

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That's fine.

And people in Europe are probably equally unlikely to completely identify with the issues and perspectives explored by, say, Cambodian authors, or authors from Gabon, or authors from Trinidad and Tobago, or authors from Yemen, or whatever. And this all makes sense--it's a darned big world.

The Nobel Prize is not supposed to be an award for the best European literature, though.

IceCreamEmpress:
The Nobel Prize is not supposed to be an award for the best European literature, though.

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I never said that it was - my point was to counter the suggestion that Europeans are automatically prejudiced against US arts.

The guy who made that statement about US fiction is clearly a numpty. But he's also achieved what he set out to achieve, which is to get people talking about the Literature prize and who wins it.

MM

I blogged about this yesterday -- and here's the guts of my response to Mr. Engdahl's comments:

Apart from the "I know you are, but what am I?" tone of the remarks, I got a kick out of this because it sounds remarkably similar to the condescending tones Europeans used when tut-tutting American writers in the 19th century.

At that time, of course, Americans had something to prove. Despite defeating the most powerful army in the world during the American Revolution -- and even as a teeth-gnashing Thomas Jefferson provided foreign skeptics with skeletons to prove that American mammals were as large, or larger, than their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic -- Europeans were convinced that Americans, for the most part, had merely gotten lucky. As far as Europeans were concerned, Americans were mentally, physically, and culturally deficient.

While Horace Engdahl might sniff that American writers are "insular" or "too sensitive to trends," his complaints are strictly amateur hour when compared to those of 19th century critic Sidney Smith, who blasted all things American in the January 1820 issue of the Edinburgh Review:

Suffice it to say, Americans were not amused--and it was in this rather poisonous atmosphere that an upstart American writer named Washington Irving dared to publish The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon in London in the spring of 1820.

The Sketch Book had been well-received on its publication in the United States in 1819 -- rightly so, as it's the book that contains "Rip van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" -- and now, in an effort to protect his copyright from European piracy, Irving nervously issued a version of his book in the English market, under the imprint of London's most distinguished publisher, John Murray.

The Sketch Book not only sold spectacularly well -- it can, in fact, rightly be called America's first international bestseller -- but it won over even refined British readers, who grudgingly conceded that this American upstart could write. "Everywhere I find in it the marks of a mind of the utmost elegance and refinement," wrote a surprised William Godwin, "a thing as you know that I was not exactly prepared to look for in an American."

So, there you go, Horace Engdahl. European disdain for American writers is as old as American publishing itself. American writers have heard it all before, and they've generally proven the critics wrong. I'm confident that American writers will continue to rise above such condescension and defy such expectations -- for their ability to do so is also as old as American publishing itself.

Generalisation, from either side, sucks. I don't see how you can cut an entire nation out.

<silly hat>
...but anyway, what about Australia? Are our countrymen and women still in the running?
</silly hat>

April Hollands said:

Generalisation, from either side, sucks. I don't see how you can cut an entire nation out.

<silly hat>
...but anyway, what about Australia? Are our countrymen and women still in the running?
</silly hat>

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Naw, you're just a bunch of whippersnappers, too. Pretty much everyone outside of Europe must be, according to this guy.

Momento Mori said:

I never said that it was - my point was to counter the suggestion that Europeans are automatically prejudiced against US arts.

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No, and I get that. This gentleman is clearly a rear end in a top hat. But I think that there were folks on the thread who were overlooking the broader negative implications of his comment.

The guy who made that statement about US fiction is clearly a numpty. But he's also achieved what he set out to achieve, which is to get people talking about the Literature prize and who wins it.

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I doubt he set out to get people talking about what an insular dipstick he is, though, and that seems to be a chief feature of the response to this.

IceCreamEmpress said:

I doubt he set out to get people talking about what an insular dipstick he is, though, and that seems to be a chief feature of the response to this.

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Yes. Irony is obviously lost on rear ends who wear top hats.

Ol' Fashioned Girl said:

When Irena Sendler lost to Al Gore, I gave up on the Nobel awards.

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Literature and Peace aren't even awarded by the same country.

Momento Mori said:

Pick someone at random from the street and ask them to name 5 Nobel Laureates for Literature and they're going to struggle.

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Doris Lessing, Saul Bellow, William Golding, Patrick White, Toni Morrison. That's without looking any of them up - and I've read more than one novel each by the first four. (I keep meaning to try Morrison sometime.) I realise I'm not someone random in the street though

Two of those five are American. (Lessing and Golding are/were British and White was Australian.) Also, one of my favourite writers, living or dead, is frequently mentioned as a Nobel contender (Joyce Carol Oates) so yes I do have an interest in this. Funny that American writing is now being called insular - for at least the past two decades, probably longer, it was English (not necessarily British) writing that was on the end of that particular stick, often by British critics in thrall to the wide open spaces of the American novel.

You cannot generalise about literary prizes. There isn't a typical Booker novel, as is implied elsewhere in this thread. I've read some wonderful novels that have won or been nominated for the Booker. And no doubt there are others which approach the consistency of dishwater.