Contra-Nobel

No, not for Paul Krugman (congrats, Professor!) I mean the recent assertion by Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Jury for the Nobel Prize in literature that:

"There is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world... not the United States... The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature... That ignorance is restraining."

There's an interesting rebuttal here from the Telegraph that you should check out.  And here in the Telegraph is another article about the controversy (my favorite quote: "Put him in touch with me, I'll send him a reading list" touche!).

So since its been well covered elsewhere, I will simply throw open the comments to American writers we think are good Nobel candidates.  I'll start things off with Don DeLillo, whose influence on (at least English language) writing is hard to understate and who has written at least three Great books (White Noise, Underworld and Libra). I would also say that, should his two theatrical works-in-progress works turn out to be as good as he's capable of, Tony Kushner would definitely be a good candidate in a couple of years (he's also written three Great plays: Angels, Caroline or Change and Hydriotaphia). 

Over to you guys in the comments.

Comments

[Paul Rekk]

Wait, wait, wait... we feel the need to assert our superiority over entire continents now?

"Fuck you, Europe, our culture is more cultured than all of your little tiny baby country cultures combined!"

I mean, yeah, it was a silly thing for Engdahl to say, but not because it was overly dismissive or derogatory. It seems like it should be self-evident. Europe's a god-damned continent, i.e. comprised of a number of different peoples with entirely divergent histories and cultures and etc. and so forth. America is the melting pot -- we have all those things, too, but we put them in one place.

So yeah, if you compare the two looking for the 'center of the literary world', Europe should get the auto-win mathematically. Doesn't mean America's any lesser, just less sprawling.

'Sides, he's got us on the translation thing. Even if early century avant garde isn't the prime seller, can't we get some of this shit in English, too? Please?

[Ben TS]

I have my share of issues with American literature (many many MANY issues). However, Engdahl's comment is staggeringly stupid. First of all, in what way is a whole continent, with the number of official languages in the three digits, a center of ANYTHING?

Secondly, I don't want a "big dialogue" of any art form, frankly. "Dialogues" lead to popularity contests, and if there's one paradigm shift that has to take place in 21st-century creativity it is the blockbuster mentality that ruined the artistic lanscape of the post-WWII era.

Thirdly, the statement that America is "isolated" and "insular" may seem harmless, but is actually based on aprofoundly Western-centric notion: America is isolated from the rest of the RICH countries, you see, and literature, effete and ponderous as it is, has no place amongst the uneducated masses of that "other" section of the world.