/lit/ - Literature

Why did Sartre reject his?

Cause shit's gay, son.

plenty of legendary authors have been looked over by the Nobel Prize committee so they could give it to some swedish fuck no one's ever heard of

Hey /lit/, explain this to me:
If Leo Tolstoy, James Joyce, Jorge Luis Borges and Salman Rushdie are so smart, then why they weren't awarded with a Nobel Prize in Literature?

Hey, no fair. We swedes write very well and deserve all our prices!

>>2405278

Sartre later asked for the money and was rejected, so he's probably not the best example to give.

Borges didn't win won either :(

if op is so smart how come he sucks dicks for free and not for crack?

>>2405278
Sartre was a motherfucking hypocrite and a failed writer. I fucking hate that pretentious(I rarely use that word, but it goes along well with Sartre) cunt. He was not a writer, he was a politician. I fucking hate hipsters and kids who think that they're in some kind of an existential crisis overhyping him. He sucked so much. He was nothing compared to Camus. Camus was pretty awesome, however his fanbase today is pretty fucking annoying as well.

>>2405274
His work isn't accessible (and he purposely made it that way, too), and so it simply wasn't picked up by a wide enough audience to make enough of a direct impact on anything in a significant enough way.

Yeah, his work influenced a variety of things. I mean, just look at Cyberpunk and Post-Modernism! Our criticism has even begun to take a shift away from Formalism, and I think Pynchon should be given credit for that.

Nabokov, someone who I feel attempted to do something similar to Pynchon with his work, also didn't win the nobel prize.

My point is: Pynchon certainly had an impact on the world because of his work (particularly, the ones he wrote in the middle of the 20th century), and he will likely be remembered as a cultural icon of America; nevertheless, the immediate enjoyment and influence of his stuff could only reach a select few. The same can be said for Nabokov, to a certain extent.

Actually, I think Pynchon and Nabokov wanted it that way.

>>2405293
No reason to get upset, man. You all seem to worship and love this guy, almost as much as you love DFW. But he is nothing, and the Nobel Committee only confirmed it.
And I'll also quote a fellow /lit/izen:
Pynchon seemed to almost write with the intent of making it something you have to "solve". He was rarely straightforward in his sentence structure and had a tendency towards superfluous tangents that provided nothing for the narrative itself. When one encounters a page of material entirely about bananas or has to spend time looking up something about V-2 rockets, one would naturally assume this has purpose towards the greater narrative. In this case it really didn't and that is obnoxious.

http://listverse.com/2009/09/16/10-brilliant-writers-robbed-of-a-nobel-prize/

Because smartness and writing ability do not exist 1 to 1 with nobel prizes.

The Swedish Academy is populated by literary critics who know more about post colonial theory than they do about literature. They are complete jackasses this is well know in Sweden.

>>2405303
>His work isn't accessible (and he purposely made it that way, too)
Then whom was he writing for? Why did he publish his books then?

Because Jews control the Nobel Prize, same thing with the Oscars. Talent doesn't matter anymore.

>>2405305
It's a matter of taste, I guess.

What the anon you were quoting described is kind of true. But the tangents, allusions, and puns (and meta-tangents, meta-allusions, and meta-puns) that Pynchon incorporates into his writing augment the overarching messages and themes that are crammed into his stories.

But I do agree that Pynchon fans can be a bit elitist at times. He's an author that wants people to read his stuff in a very specific way. He doesn't allow for "leisurely" reading: you can't just whip Mason & Dixon out in a bus and get a few pages in. And it's because of this that many people tend to read Pynchon just to be able to say "I read Pynchon" as if it elevates them in some way.

I like him just because I really like what he does with his text and method of storytelling, and I just think he's a really interesting character.

The Nobel Prize in Literature is for literature in an idealist direction i.e fuck off Pynchon.

>>2405322
Shit, I forgot to put on my tin foil hat, man. What am I gonna do now?

>>2405316
the guy who wrote that list is an ignorant idiot

>>2405318
Personally, I believe that Pynchon was writing for two demographics:

1. Himself
2. Other knowledge individuals, or those that found pleasure in attaining knowledge

The reason I compare him to Nabokov so much is because they both had very similar relationships with readers. I think the two of them really hated the Formalist approach to literature (and, by extension, language) that had settled into Academia at the time (and still today, to a lesser extent).

They wrote because they had a great passion - a passion not only for writing, but for storytelling in general. Their respective works not only attempted to capture and comment on their contemporary age, they seemed to be attempting to use mankind's collective progress from all ages to make something timeless and universal. Hell, students who read Lolita and Lot 49 find shit that's entirely relevant today.

Pynchon (and Nabokov, I suspect) also felt that storytelling as an art form was dying. They saw all of literature and poetry as being distilled into a simple formula: an author attempting to project a message to the reader.
(cont)

>>2405360
(cont)
Pynchon and Nabokov went the route of eliminating the author, and putting the responsibility on the reader. This is where all their vague tangents and allusions and puns come in: how will the reader interpret them. Even after you do research on the rockets and bananas and looped-horns in Pynchon's works, you don't get anything concrete before you. How you interpret and detect his references and winks to you is not only fluid, but it also changes the very nature of the work itself. I like to think everyone reads a different novel whenever they read any of Pynchon's stuff, because this is what I see happen at my university: neither professors nor students can agree on a concrete method of tackling any Pynchon work. The same goes for Nabokov.

So why publish it? I think they just wanted to change the art of literature. I think they perceived a death of an art form and wanted to try and breathe life back into it.

But, again, this is only my interpretation.

>>2405274
Pynchon has been a top candidates for several years.

But the swedes have to take the entire world literature in to account not just western literature.

>>2405317
What the fuck does Sweden have to do with colonialism?

>>2405293
because op is a faggot and enjoys it

>>2405294
Which one was the one with dem CRAZY EYES?

That's the one I hate.

Those fuckin' CRAZY EYES.

Pretty sure it's Sartre; I like Camus.

>>2405336
>thinks ad hominem somehow disproves the facts

>>2405294

I mostly agree, but I have to say I enjoyed Nausea a lot. I don't really think it's necessary reading anything else Sartre wrote, however.

The Nobel Prize is highly political. Most of authors who got involved with politics didn't win it, even if it was deserved. That's why Nabokov didn't win. Vargas Llosa was involved in politics in the nineties and had to do a lot of left-wing arm-waving over the last years to get on the committee's good side.

Bottom line is that the Nobel Prize for Literature really shouldn't matter much.

>>2405294
>philosophers having fanbases

>>2405425
What? Vargas Llosa has always been a right wing liberal since Castro's revolution in Cuba. He didn't become a leftist this last decade. If anything, he hardened his conservativism a lot more.

>>2405425

It doesn't matter. What the prize does is award you more exposure internationally, which is quite a nice thing in itself.

>>2405435

For his presidential campaign that was the story, yes, but over the last decade he's advocated for the construction of the Museum of Memory, voiced his support for a left-wing mayor and for Humala, a decidedly leftist presidential candidate who simply took on the guise of a more centric position to win elections. Ever since he left the country after losing the bid for presidency in the nineties he occasionally swoops down to make observations that place him firmly in the left, and that's the place where he's often identified and where all his friends are.

>>2405442
He only advocated for Humala because he didn't want Fujimori to win (which happened to be the daughter of the man he lost the presidency to). Vargas Llosa even went as far as comparing the two as "Choosing between Cancer and AIDS".

Vargas Llosa is a great writer, yes. But he's a bitter individual, and a huge hypocrite. He's not a great person, at all.

>>2405448

My point exactly.

>>2405274
>file name
>down syndrome

THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE IS AWARDED TO NOVELS THAT CAPTURE AMERICAN LIFE WELL.

OF COURSE PYNCHON DIDN'T WIN IT, YOU GOD DAMN PLEBEIANS.

>>2405635

Strike out "American life" and scribble in "the human condition," then strike THAT out and scribble in "being European," and you've got it.

>>2405648
I thought the Nobel Comittee had a hardon for the third world. So you should probably say african/asian life.

>>2405680
Nope. The Nobel Committee has actually verbalized its belief that Europe is the last bastion of culture and literary merit, which is basically them frantically grasping at something in the deluge of American influence. I mean, to be honest, I don't think American writers really need to win it (the last American they gave it to was Toni fucking Morrison), but a little recognition would be nice. Since, you know, a lot more interesting literature just happens to be produced there.

>>2405274

Ask yourself, do you think he'd even turn up?

I imagine Nobel has passed Pynchon by because it would hire some prankster to accept it for him, like he did with the National Book Award in 1973.

>>2405922

Prankster? I'll have you know that "Professor" Irwin Corey is alive and well (as of 4 months ago) and working as an extremely well-respected 97-year-old panhandler in Manhattan.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/a-familiar-figure-begs-on-the-street-but-not-for-himsel
f/

Pynchon obviously wouldn't go there to receive it. He'd either decline the prize or send someone to troll the crowd. Either way the committee doesn't look good.

>>2405844
Is that Dylan Moran?
I really like his comedy.

>>2405986
That's Bernard Black, to be precise.

>>2405992
>Black Books

>>2406004
I thought I told you to get out of my shop.

>>2406014
Be on the lookout for things that make you laugh. If you see nothing worth laughing at, pretend you see it, then laugh.

2deep4 the committee

Gee, i don't know, maybe because he's not that good and his books are pretty incomprehensible?

>>2405844

>Since, you know, a lot more interesting literature just happens to be produced there.

>americans

>>2406682
>Haley Joel Osmet ate another hamburger on gmail chat. Fuck public health care commies USA USA

>>2405360
This is a very good summary of what Pynchon accomplished with post-war literature.

>>2405360
Pynchon was also Nabokov's student I think. Though I don't see any similarities between the two.

Glad to see this thread is still alive.

>>2407081
Well, the reason I compare the two is because of three reasons:
>They both love literature, and aren't afraid to show it.
>Going along with the above, they both inject countless references into their works.
>They have faith that their readers are capable of asking questions and being critical of their work, and so they don't give and leeway to them. I see this as a gesture of respect, rather than purposefully obscuring a text for the sake of frustrating readers (as is the common complaint of both authors).

>>2407081
I read that he just attended a lecture or two of Nabokov's and couldn't understand a word he was saying because of his thick accent. I'm sure he was a fan, but I think 'student' may be stretching it a bit.

>>2405922
Haha, what did he do?
Also I was just reading his Wikipedia article and this made me laugh:

An article published in the Soho Weekly News claimed that Pynchon was in fact J. D. Salinger (Batchelor 1976). Pynchon's written response to this theory (reported in Tanner 1982) was simple: "Not bad. Keep trying."

>>2407103
For some reason I always imagine Nabokov with only a trace of an accent, I guess 'cos he was such a nomadic guy.

>>2407126
I lol'd heartily.

>>2405336

Because Pynchon's work is essentially superficial and self-obsessed. His novels are a sustained exercise in technique and distraction which distract middle-brow readers with their pyrotechnics. He's simply not of a high enough quality to qualify as a nobel laureate.

Also, the fact that he would probably turn it down or troll the committee and they wouldn't be happy with that.

Plus politics - an American won't win the prize probably for another decade, by which time Pynchong will probably be dead.

>He's simply not of a high enough quality to qualify as a nobel laureate.

Unlike Pearl S Buck, or Imre Kertesz, or Herta Müller, or Naguib Mahfouz. Each of whom practically redefines Quality Lit.

Keep trying.

>>2408013

You've obviously never read Mahfouz. He's a sensational writer. Pynchon is a tenth as good.

He's also published about 50 novels and plays and screenplays and fuck knows what else. He has a serious body of work, rather than wanking out shit like Inherent Vice and Vineland every 10 years to keep himself in fucking weed money.

>>2408037

>He's also published about 50 novels and plays and screenplays and fuck knows what else.

If that kind of productivity is what makes you eligible for the Nobel Prize, then it's astounding that Dame Barbara Cartland was never even nominated.

>>2408050

>implying that it's empty productivity

you pynchon fanbois are the fucking worst.

im gay

>>2408060
But are you worthy of the title "queen of /lit/"?

>>2408063

We all know who is the queen of /lit/

>>2408068
She licked semen off of a toilet bowl.
Of course she's the queen of /lit/

>>2408068
>>>/tv/

>>2408083

Fuck off you idiot - she's a writer now.

bump

>>2408096
bullshit

>>2408345

That's the cover of her book, you fucking numpty. Post the cover of your book, or GTFO.

>>2408096
>writer
>photography book

>>2405305
Banana Rockets.

>>2407985
fucking /thread

I think:
1. In general all artist are very self-aware in their literature, but that's not an argument for their quality.
2. The Nobel Prize Commitee to me is nothing more than a sing of appreciation to a not so common ly appreciated writer, not the best writer there is in current literature

why is this guy such a social recluse? i read its because hes very insecure about his teeth, but dunno if true

Why didn't Joyce win one? Or Nabokov, Or Proust, Or Virginia Woolf, Or Kafka?

won't win.
doesn't deserve it.
probably would show though.

>>2410135

Because they were all rubbish (with the exception of Nabokov, who is OK in a clever-clever way).

The Nobel prize is supposed to go to the person who's work has changed literature, or reflected the world in which they live the most effectively. Yeats got it, but Joyce didn't, because Yeats was the greatest poet of his generation, and Joyce was a dilettante and a bore who produced one tortuous work every 10 years.

It helps to be politically engaged as well, and none of the writers you talk about have that.

Although in Proust's case, he died too quickly after finishing his masterwork. He would almost certainly have won the prize, because the French always do.

>>2410499
Nabokov was nominated in 1974, but that year the prize was won by two Swedish writers, Johnson and Martinson. They were also on the committee who selected the winner.

So that's legit then.

He did but it was overturned

Sure, he didn't win one, but thanks to him no prize for lit was given out at all that year, so

"It's because Pynchon's not much better as a writer than James Michener, but he's got a better rep and somehow managed to kid a load of lolcore literati wannabes that he's hip and a cult writer. Don't get me wrong, he writes entertaining enough stuff, but he's no Adonis. And he's certainly not better than Robert Coover or John Cheever. "

>>2410529

Who are you talking about?

>>2410588
whoops I meant Pulitzer nvm

>>2410601

>"Pulitzer Jurors Dismayed on Pynchon", New York Times May 8, 1974.

>> All three members of the Pulitzer Prize jury on fiction expressed distress and bewilderment yesterday that their unanimous recommendation for a prize for Thomas Pynchon's 'Gravity's Rainbow' had been turned down and that no fiction award was given this year.

> ... Other members of the 14-member board, which makes recommendations on the 18 Pulitzer Prize categories ... had described the Pynchon novel during their private debate as "unreadable," "turgid," "overwritten," and in parts "obscene." One member editor said he had tried hard but had only gotten a third of the way through the 760-page book."

>>2405274
My two favorite authors are Julien Gracq and Thomas Bernhard. Awards mean nothing when their influence is felt by generations of actual writers. Robert Walser spent his time in an insane asylum and didn't a huge amount of respect in his time either. The point of this thread, which I agree with, is awards are useless pats on the back. I write myself and I just want readers to respect me. The reader and other writers are what's important.

>>2407985
>dazzling middle-brow readers with pyrotechnics

I think you're thinking of Barth. But you're right about the rest, the Nobel Committee suddenly considers the U.S. some backwater yokeltown while Europe is supposedly some last bastion of culture. I mean, Hemingway is the only Nobel winner I can think of whose blurb actually credits him with an entire stylistic contribution to literature. Everyone else from the past twenty years got it because of their political stance.

>>2408355

>dat file name

>>2408096
>>2408068
>dat human reproduction movie actress

>>2410644

>human reproduction movie actress

It sounds rather sweet if you phrase it that way.

>>2410754
That should be "human mating movie actress". They don't reproduce on those movies.

>>2410774

Yeah, especially the ones where they come up her ass.

brb, fapping.

>thomas pynchon
>reiterate bloated receptacle

>>2405284

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Rushdie got it one day.

>>2410840
go away fake d&3

>>2405281
Instead they should give it to some "Legendary" american fuck no one outside america has ever heard of?

bump

>>2405274

>implying nobel prize means anything

Feynman would like a word with you superficial artsy types

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f61KMw5zVhg