Nobel Prize for Literature 2015

[Anonymous No.7011691]

>Who do you want to win?
>Who will actually win?

[Anonymous No.7011694]

>>7011691
Me, tbh.

[Anonymous No.7011695]

I don't know who I want to win, but who will win is some obscure African poet or something.

[Anonymous No.7011702]

irrelevant to literature

[Anonymous No.7011718]

Pic related is who will actually win

[Anonymous No.7011721]

>>7011691
>>Who do you want to win?
Umberto Eco, Laszlo Krasznahorkai or William H. Gass

>>Who will actually win?
My money is on Ngugi Thiong'o or Adunis. I haven't read either of them, but I think I'll pick up something of Ngugi's soon.

[Anonymous No.7011722]

>>7011691

[Anonymous No.7011724]

Me, tbh

[Anonymous No.7011728]

>An actual, talented writer
>A woman or some non-white (or both) who have disapproving things to say about colonialism

[Anonymous No.7011731]

>>7011718
I'd say that he has a better chance than Pynchon, McCarthy and DeLillo, who have all flirted with "genre fiction" at one time or another. However, Modiano may have fulfilled their "navel-gazing old white guy" quota for the next few years.

[Anonymous No.7011733]

some obscure author no one has heard about

the nobel prize judges love to be contrarian

[Anonymous No.7011738]

>>7011718
No way dude, you can't give Nobels to Americans anymore. You've got to find someone from like other parts of the world, you see? Like Africa or Asia. Yeah it will definitely be an Asian.

[Anonymous No.7011739]

I want Zagajewski to win. Polish poetry has always been strong although i gotta say there a few more popular candidates like
Murakami, McCarthy, Kundera, Ashbery (thta'd be great) and
>Pynchon

[Anonymous No.7011743]

>>7011733
When you say "no one", you actually mean "Americans", right?

[Anonymous No.7011747]

>>7011738
Munro won just the year before last.

>>7011739
>Polish poetry has always been strong

It warmed the cockles of my heart to read Zbigniew Herbert get a shout-out from David Foster Wallace in one of his essays (which is of course a far greater accolade than some stupid Nobel Prize.)

[Anonymous No.7011749]

>>7011747
>Alice Munro
>American

[Anonymous No.7011752]

>>7011743
Sorry, I forgot that other countries exist again.

[Anonymous No.7011753]

>>7011749
>America is only the USA

[Anonymous No.7011755]

why do americans feel the need to shit up every post or thread that revolves around the nobel prize.

[Anonymous No.7011758]

>>7011753
>Meeting a stranger
>She asks where you're from
>I'm from America
>Oh, so you're from Canada!
Things that have *never* happened. Don't try to piggyback on our glory you fucking canuck. Get me another Rush album or another season of Trailer Park Boys or get out of the thread.

[Anonymous No.7011766]

>>7011758
you're probably the same type of retard who thinks Asian = Chinese

[Anonymous No.7011769]

Hope Ishuguro of Eco but I think the former is too mainstream so fingers crossed for Eco.

[Anonymous No.7011771]

>>7011758
>implying that Alice Munro and Anne Carson don't shit all over your precious Pynchon, McCarthy, Roth and DeLillo

[Anonymous No.7011772]

>>7011766
Who refers to China as Asia? Nobody. Who refers to the USA as America? Everyone but dipshit, dickless pedants such as yourself.

[Anonymous No.7011778]

>>7011758
Rush is so good I forget they're Canadian sometimes.

[Anonymous No.7011781]

>>7011753
When people say American, they mean citizens from the United States of America. There is no other country with America in its name. So fucking stow that shit.

[Anonymous No.7011782]

>>7011769
Popular opinion is that it's too late for Eco (i.e. he would have won already if he was going to), but if he does win I guess his work in semiotics will be his saving grace.

[Profane !!aA0k1/YgCq9 No.7011785]

Can anyone tell me about Modiano? I have an okay grasp on French and when I asked after he won last year nobody seemed to know. Worth checking out?

>inb4 a transgendered nine year-old refugee who screams her stream-of-consciousness narrative into a tape recorder wins this year

[Anonymous No.7011790]

Why are Americans such plebs ?

[Anonymous No.7011796]

>>7011771
>Anne Carson
>Better than John Ashbery.

[Anonymous No.7011808]

>>7011753
What do you say? United Stateser?

[Anonymous No.7011810]

>>7011785
I live on France and basically he was big and influential in the context of 1980s french literature. I've yet to meet anyone under 40 who liked his stuff. I read Rue des Boutiques Obscures and it was a plain, contentless and worthless novel. A friend of mine read Place de l'Etoile and told me it was the most boring shit she had read in a while and she reads a lot.

[Anonymous No.7011811]

>>7011753
>I don't know what a colloquialism is

[Anonymous No.7011817]

>>7011721
Eco is a hack

[Anonymous No.7011818]

>>7011785
He is popular in France. Very ruminative and melancholic, with an elegant pared-back style. His work should be relatively accessible to a non-native speaker, it's not too complex. Rue des Boutiques Obscures is perhaps his best.

[Profane !!aA0k1/YgCq9 No.7011820]

>>7011810
Yeah I heard a similar story from a French friend of mine. Too bad. I'll probably check him out eventually, but no rush. Appreciate it friend

[Anonymous No.7011825]

>>7011796
Ashberry is pretentious tripe. You can get better poetry from a random generator.

[Profane !!aA0k1/YgCq9 No.7011828]

>>7011818
Also thanks. When I get around to reading him, I'll start with that

[Anonymous No.7011829]

>>7011739
>Murakami
Top kek
Agreed on pl poetry though
>>7011747
This really happened?
Wallace never ceases to amaze me and grow in my eyes.

[Anonymous No.7011866]

>>7011743
oh yeah, i forgot that eucken, prudhomme, deledda, gjellerup, eyvind johnson, harry martinson, carducci, sachs, and muller are the true literary geniuses

jorge luis borges? clearly too mainstream

[Anonymous No.7011874]

>>7011771
I'm not from either country, but Anne Carson is nothing but totally sterile wankery. Munro's very good, but not better than all those others. DeLillo yes, McCarthy maybe, Roth fuck no.

>>7011785
I read a short memoir of sorts by him after he won the prize. His style is very, very dry, but you should give him a shot if you like reflexive, sad-sack literature.

[Anonymous No.7011883]

>>7011829
>This really happened?
>Wallace never ceases to amaze me and grow in my eyes.

He was effusive in his praise and commented that postmodern literature produced in developing parts in the world had retained a human core that he felt had disappeared from American fiction. I think he also praised Olga Tokarczuk and the Latin American Boom writers in the essay.

[Anonymous No.7011887]

Here's a list of people it probably won't be: Svetlana Aleksijevitj
Haruki Murakami
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
Philip Roth
Joyce Carol Oates
Adunis
Ismail Kadare
Jon Fosse
Ko Un
Peter Handke
Amos Oz
Marilynne Robinson
Peter Nadas
Ursula Le Guin
David Malouf
John Banville
Lydia Davis
Milan Kundera
Nawal El Saadawi
Peter Carey
Thomas Pynchon
A B Yehoshua
A S Byatt
Adam Zagajewski
Antonio Lobo Antunes
Bei Dao
Bob Dylan
Cees Nooteboom
Cesar Aira
Colm Toibin
Cormac McCarthy
Daniel Kahneman
Dacia Maraini
Don DeLillo
Don Paterson
E L Doctorow
Eduardo Mendoza Garriga
Eeva Kilpi
Enrique Vila-Matas
F Sioni Jose
Gerald Murnane
Hilary Mantel
Ian McEwan
James Kelman
Javier Marias
Joan Didion
John Ashbery
Juan Goytisolo
Juan Marse
Karel Schoeman
Karl Ove Knausgard
Kjell Askildsen
Laszlo Krasznahorka
Leonard Nolens
Les Murray
Margaret Atwood
Merethe Lindstrom
Mia Couto
Michel Tournier
Mircea Cartarescu
Neil Gaiman
Nuruddin Farah
Paul Muldoon
Richard Ford
Rohinton Mistry
Salman Rushdie
Tom Stoppard
Umberto Eco
William Trevor
Yan Lianke
Yevgeniy Yevtushenko
Yves Bonnefoy
E L James

also wtf captcha

[Anonymous No.7011894]

>>7011866
Carducci is held in extremely high regard in Italy, lol shows how much you know

[Anonymous No.7011895]

>>7011829
>Murakami
He was the odds on favorite last year before Modiano came out of nowhere

[Anonymous No.7011900]

>>7011691
>who do i want to win?
Pynchon
>who will actually win
not Pynchon

[Anonymous No.7011908]

>>7011895
But that's the way it usually is with the Nobel. Murakami/Roth/Dylan/Eco are always the "favorites" (as if the fuckwits on bet365 knew what the Academy was thinking) and then they just pull a Mo Yan out of their ass. Modiano and Munro have actually been some of the better choices in recent years.

>>7011894
This is true, some friends majored in Italian lit and they have Carducci seminars and everything.

[Anonymous No.7011915]

>>7011894
And Prudhomme is also excellent.

>>7011895
He is favourite every year because he's the only semi-literary writer that most people have heard of.

[Anonymous No.7011930]

>Alice Munro
>good
tep kok

[Profane !!aA0k1/YgCq9 No.7011937]

>>7011900
Yeah I don't think the Nobel is too keen on giving the award to a guy who won't show up. It's unfair, sure, but I can't see them doing it. Maybe I'm wrong.

This will probably be an unpopular opinion, but if an American wins in the next couple years, I really don't want it to be McCarthy. Make it Delillo, or Pynchon (please), or even Roth. I really just don't enjoy McCarthy and I don't want the first American Nobel success in years to go to him. Yeah, yeah, I know it's a contrarian opinion but I'm not a fan and I think we have better writers.

>inb4 Franzen is eventually a contender (unlikely but a scary thought)

[Anonymous No.7011942]

>who do you want to win
john ashbery
>who will actually win
not john ashbery

fuck the nobel, ashbery deserves it more than anybody else and he'll never get the recognition before he dies. jesus wept

[Anonymous No.7011944]

>If I have not heard of a writer then it must be because he is shit! Because of course I am the greatest literary mastermind in the world, despite that I have read fewer than one hundred authors in total (90% being American) and my only contact with the literary world is /lit/!

[Anonymous No.7011952]

>>7011691
The next American to win will be John Ashbery.
As to who will win this year? Fuck if I know, only that he's going to come right the fuck out of nowhere.

[Anonymous No.7011960]

>>7011952
Ashbery will be dead before another America wins.

[Anonymous No.7011962]

Haruki Murakami was the bookie's favourite to win this thing last year. I don't get why. Sure he's an entertaining writer, but do people actually believe that he's Nobel Prize worthy? He's meme fiction catering to the bookish young adult poseur crowd.

[Anonymous No.7011964]

>>7011866
Do you even know that Borges didn't win because of his political views?

[Anonymous No.7011965]

>>7011691
noble

[Anonymous No.7011969]

>>7011694
>>7011724
them, tbh

[Anonymous No.7011975]

>>7011962
pleb logic -

>i like murakami
>therefore he will surely win the nobel prize
>i'd bet on it!

every. year.

it's like printing money for the bookies.

[Anonymous No.7011976]

>>7011944
Some of their decisions were definitely bullshit. Basically no one knew who Harry Martinson or Eyvind Johnson were until they won, even though Nabokov and Jorge Luis Borges were contenders that year.

There were many authors who won that deserved it, but the judges have dismissed clear contenders like Woolf, Tolstoy, Henry James, Roberto Bolano, Ibsen, and Proust for incredibly petty reasons. They've been criticized all over the world for a reason

[Anonymous No.7011987]

>>7011810
I recommend his novel Dora Bruder
I want Patrick Chamoiseau to win this year.

[Anonymous No.7011989]

>>7011976
Until recently it was an explicitly political prize.

[Anonymous No.7011990]

>all them literally who's from Sweden

[Anonymous No.7011994]

>>7011771
My sides
Pynchon is so far above munro it's hilarious

[Anonymous No.7012010]

>>7011728
>both

[Anonymous No.7012012]

>>7011994
I can see why a teenaged memebabby might believe that.

[Anonymous No.7012016]

>>7012012
Alice 'I-can't-write-an-entire-novel' Munro?

[Anonymous No.7012019]

>>7012010
you mean
>pick one

[Anonymous No.7012020]

>2014
>old french guy called Modiano
>not old french guy called Michel Tournier
wtf I mean wtf, this guy is spectacular. he knows everything. his ideas are excellent. His work truly IS the philosopher's stone

[Anonymous No.7012022]

>>7012016
Not him, but you don't want to go there.

[Anonymous No.7012024]

>>7012020
Would be cool if a French person won two years in a row. Even today the best literature comes from France

[Anonymous No.7012025]

>>7012016
It's called concision, something that Thomas "I-am-a-faggot" Pynchon clearly never learned.

[Anonymous No.7012028]

>>7011976
Is it true that Harry Martinson tried to kill himself due to the backlash?

This move was totally retarded though, like, beyond retarded. We can't decide which great author to pick from so let's award it to our own judges whose works nobody outside of the educated Swedish elite has ever read and will ever read. What the fucking fuck?

[Anonymous No.7012029]

>>7012012
>teenaged memebabby

[Anonymous No.7012040]

>>7012028
Who knew that writers are so fame hungry? But yes, it is very fucking stupid.

[Anonymous No.7012062]

>>7011691
I would give it Amos Oz

[Anonymous No.7012079]

give it to Shakespeare tbh

[Anonymous No.7012090]

>>7012022
Take me there. Let's go there.

Why can't she wrote a novel?

Would I compare a director of shirt films to a director of full-length films? No.

[Anonymous No.7012094]

>>7012090
Write
Short

Aw fuck it. Too drunk. Just fuck my shit up

[Anonymous No.7012098]

>>7011785

I read Honeymoon and really liked it.

I want Vollmann to win. He satisfies the political requirements with his seven volume treatise on violence.

[Anonymous No.7012102]

>>7012028

According to Wikipedia, Martinson cut his stomach open with a scissor

Not to read too much into it, but this seems like his take on seppuku (out of shame)

[Anonymous No.7012118]

>>7012090
I don't like Alice Munro myself but insulting her because of her choice to work in a specific medium is stupid.

Faulkner once said something in an interview along the lines of novelists being failed poets, who decide to take up short story writing, and, failing that, only then do they take up novel writing.

[Anonymous No.7012122]

aniara was really good though, to be fair.

[Anonymous No.7012125]

>>7012118
Im saying they aren't comparable

You said it yourself: it's a different medium

[Anonymous No.7012126]

>>7012098
Vollman is shit and everything about him is ugly.
>>7012118
Faulkner was a fucking drunk

[Anonymous No.7012132]

I vote for giving a posthumous and very overdo Nobel to Joyce. The fact that he never got one shows what a joke the prize really is.

[Anonymous No.7012139]

>>7011887
Interesting list.

[Anonymous No.7012140]

>>7012125
Wait, I was assuming you're this guy
>>7012016
If not, then yes, you're right, they aren't comparable.
>Why can't she write a novel?
It's not a matter of capability.

[Anonymous No.7012147]

>>7012140
We agree

:)

[Anonymous No.7012162]

>>7012132
If you do that you'll have to do the same for Woolf, Proust, Valéry, Rilke and a solid bunch of German and Czeh who were put aside because of WW2 politics (not even talking about the pessism thing).

At least Joyce was passed over because the Committee thought he wasn't going to die so early (that was also the case for many others).

[Anonymous No.7012167]

>>7011785
I've read a few of Modiano's books - Out of the Dark, Honeymoon and Accident Nocturne. All repeat the same themes of memories and meetups separated by many years. I liked the first two, but with the most recent one I've read (Accident Nocturne) it felt really slight. I don't know whether it's because it's weaker or because I'm getting tired of the samey nature of the books.

The books do have good atmospheric style and settings, though, and all are short novellas, so they make for quick reads when there isn't much reading time.

[Anonymous No.7012172]

>>7011702
The Nobel Prize for Literature is irrelevant to literature?

[Anonymous No.7012180]

>>7012126

Well that's your opinion.

[Anonymous No.7012201]

>>7012172
Pretty much. Will probably disappear be forgotten in a century or two

[Anonymous No.7012208]

>>7011976
>>7011989
A prize with big jury and big money, particularly an international one, cannot be not political. And the necessity of "an ideal" was a condition of Nobel's legacy. So kinda hard to dodge this one requirement (even though the committee has tried to do it at times).

Alo there's WWI and WWII who fucked up the politics and made the deliberations harder. Basically any possible contender that died in the 40s was potential stoel a Nobel because of timing and politics.

We should really consider the Nobel as a way to shed light on a good but underecognized writer. That's what they're best at. They did it for Faulkner. Did Joyce need a Nobel to be recognized ? Do I need a Nobel to know wether I consider Joyce (or Proust or Tolsty) a great writer ?

Of course they're gonna try to hit some big names because credibility, relevance, etc. But the "a wild quality author appear" approach at least make the prize a tad more useful than a masturbation on who's been able to recognize whose genius. So I hope they keep on, though perhaps with less emphasis on quotas and more on stylistic and themes differences.

[Anonymous No.7012211]

>>7012201
Good fucking riddance. The Nobel Prize for Literature was a mistake.

[Anonymous No.7012222]

>>7012208
you clearly don't know anything about olympic judging then with this idealist fantasy. nobel laureates are selected based on practically everything but their writing.

>>7011691
I can guarantee it's someone that nobody has heard of.

[Anonymous No.7012226]

>>7012024
Source ?
Seriously interested, because as a French too busy with maths and old literature to read contemporary literature, I always assumed semi-consciously that recent French /lit was shit.

[Anonymous No.7012228]

>>7012208
The problem is that their mission statement is intentionally vague.

[Anonymous No.7012238]

>>7011718
People have been naming him for the past, what, 55 years? Just not gonna happen.

[Anonymous No.7012239]

>>7012208
The argument against people like Joyce, Proust, Woolf, and others from the war years not getting one because they died too soon is bullshit. The no posthumous rule is from the 1970s.

[Anonymous No.7012252]

>>7012222
>you clearly don't know anything about olympic judging

When we can measure literary strength with the same accuracy as Olympic performances this will perhaps be relevant to the thread. For now I don't see why you're mentioning them.

Also, do you really believe politics has no impact on Olympic judging (like who is more liekly to be suspected for dopage and the like) ? How about the location choice, then ? When I say politics I also include money-related considerations of course.

> with this idealist fantasy

What fantasy ? What idealism ?

>nobel laureates are selected based on practically everything but their writing.

How would you know ? Are you a member of the committee ? Have you read all laureates in recent years and can testify that none of them would qualify on the strength of their writing alone ?

[Anonymous No.7012284]

>>7012252
several of the olympic competitions are subjective, like diving and all of the gymnastic competitions, especially the floor exercise
this gives rise to nationalistic bias
https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~aldous/157/Old_Projects/duong.pdf

it's very relevant, as you can imagine, when looking at other large multinational competitions and awards

[Anonymous No.7012311]

>>7011722
I'd want to attend the cerimony.

[Anonymous No.7012319]

>>7012239
Except they have been only one posthumous prize in history (in 1931), and with that exception, all writers selected amongthe 5 finalist who died before the deliberations were put aside.

That was the case the year Steinbeck was awarded for instance (he got it because all others contender were recently dead, politically against their perceived mission, or from countries recently awarded).


That was also the case for Valéry who was nominated ten times until 1945, where he was very likely to get it, but who died three months before.

Gide was selected at only his second nomination because, the committee argued, "it was about time" (Gide was 78 at the time).

So even if there's was rule there was at least a very strong repugnance that hasn't been overcome one in the past 80 years. The "no posthumous prize" argument is no bullshit, and it already was no bullshit in the 40s.

[Anonymous No.7012322]

>>7011722
You jest of course, but with all these Genre Fiction-is-legitimate tumblrinas running around I wouldn't be surprised to see Rowling winning it in a few years.

[Anonymous No.7012323]

>>7012284
>several of the olympic competitions are subjective, like diving and all of the gymnastic competitions, especially the floor exercise

My bad, I hadn't thought of those particular disciplines. But then you agree, if you say there are nationalistic bias ?

For other disciplines the measurement methods leave rather little room to bias, as long as they're safe, which doesn't prevent of course any other part of the process to be biased.

[Anonymous No.7012332]

>>7012322
I'm sure they have a lot of influence over the opinions of a few old Swedish people

[Anonymous No.7012353]

>>7012332
It's Sweden m8, they're corrupted already. As some of the oldest academy members die off in the next years, some younger, more tumblr-friendly ones will take their place.

[Anonymous No.7012366]

>>7012353
>implying the Swedish Democrats won't come to power and purge Scandinavia of leftists and immigrants
Soon

[Anonymous No.7012367]

>>7012353
Hmm you never know, maybe the next one will actually be a 4channer!!

[Anonymous No.7012415]

If Ali Smith wins, I'll be happy.

[Anonymous No.7012522]

I want either Laszlo Krasznahorkai or Ismail Kadare. Kadare is very underrated, go read The File on H and The Palace of Dreams, good books.

Mo Yan, even if it was political, is a fucking great writer. Big Breasts and Wide Hips is fantastic, so is Red Sorghum. Fans of Marquez should read him.

[Anonymous No.7012648]

>Zagajewski

[Anonymous No.7012693]

>>7012648
Funny thing is that the "jew" is pronounced "yev" and he's not even Jewish

[Anonymous No.7012836]

Pynchon.

He would send Norm Macdonald to accept it for him.

[Anonymous No.7012844]

>>7012836
That would be the most incredible event ever to occur.

[Anonymous No.7012895]

>>7012836

This board, for one, would lose its collective shit

[Anonymous No.7012912]

>>7012836
I don't think anyone saying Pynchon has actually read GR. The one scene when Katje shitting into Pudding's mouth is alone enough to have it thrown out by the Nobel committee.

[Anonymous No.7012926]

>>7012912
They've probably awarded an author who's written worse stuff

[Anonymous No.7012945]

>>7012926
Feel free to read the complete works of all Nobel laureates to check.

But honestly I'd agree with >>7012912, they refused the prize to Durrell because he displayed a "monomaniac interest towards erotic developments".

[Anonymous No.7012953]

>>7012912
>The one scene when Katje shitting into Pudding's mouth
Why have I not read this book yet

[Anonymous No.7013012]

>>7012912

I did. Have you ever read Jelinek's The Piano Teacher?

[Anonymous No.7013029]

>>7013012
There was a huge internal uproar when Jelinek won it, some academy members resigned because of it.

[Anonymous No.7013034]

>>7013029

Because her lead character in that is a sexual degenerate

[Anonymous No.7013040]

>>7013012
No, but considering its a book about sexual relationships, I am sure it has some graphic scenes. Is it really worse than the coprophilia, pedophilia, bestiality, incest, masochism, etc. that is found in GR?

[Anonymous No.7013047]

>>7013029
LOL old people

[Anonymous No.7013061]

James Green will win it.

[Anonymous No.7014803]

>>7013034
She took her whole shtick from Pynchon. She won what should have been his prize, really.

[Anonymous No.7015092]

>>7011962

What Murakami does is pop art. It's like Warhol or Jeff Koons or something —they're good but they always do the same trick and you never know to what extent their apparent shallowness is ironic, or wether is only apparent. Also, plebs like them because it's approchable and so elitist retards think it's not art.

[Anonymous No.7015133]

Are the Nobels bad because they are too Kantian? I heard that said about the EU. That it became a Kantian ideal instead of the "Good Europeans" alternative theory.

Unfortunately, the Nobel Prize has been awarded to many minor writers, at the expense of many important writers. On the other hand, absolutely minor (and sometimes terrible) writers have been awarded the prize. Since the 1990s, the winners of the Nobel Prize for literature have been chosen mostly for being "politically correct" (like Fo, Grass and Pamuk at the turn of the century). But many are simply mysterious decisions. It is difficult to understand what makes the jury prefer mediocre, provincial writers to so many greater writers. The Nobel Prize is awarded by a Swedish Academy. The writers of Sweden (a country of 30 million people) have won more prizes than the writers of all of Asia (a continent of one billion people). Is it the rest of the world that is illiterate and uncreative, or is it the Swedish academia that is provincial, nationalistic and anachronistic?

Of all literary prizes for literature the Nobel Prize has become by far the least meaningful.

[Anonymous No.7015141]

>>7015133
>Since the 1990s, the winners of the Nobel Prize for literature have been chosen mostly for being "politically correct" (like Fo, Grass and Pamuk at the turn of the century)

>Grass
>politically correct

ayy

seriously, why did you mention those three of all people? they are legitimately good. le clezio, jelinek and kertesz are clearly the three weakest winners since 1990 imo

[Anonymous No.7015143]

>>7015133
Yeah this is accurate.

They don't even attempt to feign objective judging

[Anonymous No.7015151]

>>7015133
Honestly, I think you are taking it too seriously. Judging who is "the best" is an impossible task, so all they can really do is award someone who is good, and for the most part they have done that. I think Jelinek is the only Nobel winner I've read that I outright didn't like. The prize has introduced me to some great writers that I may not have thought to read otherwise.

[Anonymous No.7015157]

>>7011790

[Anonymous No.7015162]

>>7015141
>Kertesz
>weak

Oh come on. He's a great writer. Or is it that you think they gave it to him because of the Holocaust?

[Anonymous No.7015171]

>>7015151
>Honestly, I think you are taking it too seriously
why?

>Judging who is "the best" is an impossible task
People do it all the time. You're "being too serious" if you think to judge one must do so in an infallible way. Although attempting that might be part of the fun or rules of the game!

>all they can really do is award someone who is good, and for the most part they have done that
Or they could award even "more good" people by accounting for their ideological, provincial, nationalistic and anachronistic biases?

>The prize has introduced me to some great writers that I may not have thought to read otherwise.
It's funny how little you realise what this says both about the Nobels, and yourself.

[Anonymous No.7015185]

>>7015162
I guess I'm just butthurt that he took the prize when it could have gone to Krasznahorkai, Nadas, Esterhazy or Bodos. I read Fateless and found it compelling but I just don't think that he was as novel or ambitious as the others I mentioned. I think that where Kertesz may have pushed the boundaries and challenged the conventions of the Holocaust memoir genre, the others did that to the form as a whole.

[Anonymous No.7015194]

>>7012912
hmm does the word corn cob mean nothing to you in relation to Faulkner?

[Anonymous No.7015196]

>>7014803
???
I see zero connection between the two besides both being writers.

[Anonymous No.7015214]

>>7015185
I see what you mean. I think Krasznahorkai still stands a good chance of getting it at some point though.

[Anonymous No.7015218]

>>7015171
But on what basis have you come to the conclusion that e.g. Pynchon is superior to e.g. Modiano? It's totally arbitrary, and the people who determine the winner just happen to not agree with your opinion.

>Or they could award even "more good" people by accounting for their ideological, provincial, nationalistic and anachronistic biases?

From its inception the award has been explicitly about awarding not just "the best", but the best who also happens to represent the liberal humanist values that Alfred Nobel espoused. Although since Englund took over from Engdahl they have been moving away from that, e.g. by awarding the controversial Chinese author Mo Yan and the basically apolitical writers Modiano and Munro.

>It's funny how little you realise what this says both about the Nobels, and yourself.

Yeah, I hadn't heard of Mueller or Mo Yan before they won and now I like them a lot. What's wrong with that?

[Anonymous No.7015464]

>>7011721
Wizard of the Crow is p. good.

[Anonymous No.7015506]

Kundera will die without a Nobel tbh. After Le Clézio in 2008 and Modiano last year, they'll wait a few years to give to another author who writes in french

[Anonymous No.7015510]

I want McCarthy to win but that'll never happen.
Some guy writing obscure poetry from Norway will win.

[Anonymous No.7015513]

I've said this before here, but I believe Svetlana Alexievich will win soon, especially since she's Ukrainian and anti-Putin, it's a fitting statement for the relatively left-leaning committee

And her writing's actually good, even though I don't know how often investigative journalism/interviews won the prize

[Anonymous No.7015533]

>>7012016
Getting to novel length with sections about scat orgies is much more literary.

[Anonymous No.7015535]

>>7015506
Kundera also won't win because he's got no "idealism", and his oeuvre is patchy as hell.

I've said this before, but I think Kelman should win. He's the best British writer currently alive. Won't happen though.

[Anonymous No.7015536]

on the one hand i think krasznahorkai deserves it, but on the other hand i don't want him to get more press because i am a terrible hipster and don't want other people reading him

[Anonymous No.7015562]

>>7011721

Gass is too good for the Nobel

[Anonymous No.7015633]

>Toni Morrison is a Nobel Laureate
Don't these hacks feel any shame in accepting the award?

[Anonymous No.7015643]

>>7015633
What's wrong with her? I mean, other than the fact that she writes predictable literature that furthers the stereotype that black writers write about nothing but muh slavery, and that her works are very similar in theme, and that she doesn't really move out of her comfort zone.

[Anonymous No.7015745]

>>7012019
No :)

[Anonymous No.7015765]

>>7015643
She's one of the few laureates who is actually among the greatest writers alive, but your average 4chan browser is >le epic white master race

[Anonymous No.7015768]

>>7015765
I'm black and she's a hack nigger.

[Anonymous No.7015773]

>>7015765
I'm not white you fucking dipshit. Keep trying. And I recognize she's a good writer, albeit with flaws.

[Anonymous No.7015798]

>>7015765
>I haven't read any other nobel laureates

[Anonymous No.7015806]

>>7015773
>>7015768

[Anonymous No.7015833]

>>7015806
But >>7015773 never said he was african, you idiot, he could be Vietnamese for all you know. Hell, I'm Mexican and Toni Morrison is nothing more than pandering melodrama. Well-written, sure, and occasionaly poignant, but she's not the writer-to-end-all-writers that she's made out to be. She's been writing the same book for over 20 years.

[Anonymous No.7015838]

>>7011731
And Roth just writes le funny Jewish culture books, its all genre shit

[Anonymous No.7015842]

Generally speaking the best writers never win it

[Anonymous No.7015843]

>Americans will never EVER win another lit nobel price

[Anonymous No.7015848]

>>7015806
Good to know that you've got no fucking leg to stand on.

[Anonymous No.7015851]

>>7015133
>Sweden (a country of 30 million people)

u wot m8?

[Anonymous No.7015854]

>>7015842
I second this. Who the fuck cares? Marias, Pynchon, Krasznahorkai, Lobo Antunes etc. never win this thing and the folks who do win are often mediocre at best. It's like the Pulitzer prize but with a stronger political angle that's all about exploring cultures and experiences one might be unfamiliar with. I don't care about awards that have terrible track records.

[Anonymous No.7015866]

they should give it to Gene Wolfe tbh

[Anonymous No.7015889]

I think Knausgård is a realistic contender.

Either him or some completely unknown faggot like every other fucking time.

[Anonymous No.7015904]

>>7015889
Maybe in twenty years.

[Anonymous No.7015911]

Sinisalo, Oksanen, Passilinna (or however you write it, inb4 gogle). Finland Ylilauta will get prized

[Anonymous No.7015930]

>>7015889

The living embodiment of "my diary tbh"

Not saying it isn't a good diary, of course.

[Anonymous No.7015937]

>>7015745
Actually, yes.

[Anonymous No.7015941]

>>7015930
it really isnt a good diary

[Anonymous No.7015977]

if borges was so good then why was he unable to write an entire novel? and if he was so good then why didn't he win the nobel?

[Anonymous No.7016062]

>>7015977
He translated Ulysses into Spanish so that's good enough.

[Anonymous No.7016088]

>>7015977
Because he didn't want to. Because politics.

[Anonymous No.7016099]

>>7011937
Elfriede Jelinek didn't show up when she won, though. Don't know if they actually expected it.

[Anonymous No.7016108]

>>7016099
They didn't expect it. She had to tell everyone she was scared of other people in order to excuse herself.

[Anonymous No.7016124]

>>7015930
Probably some anons have better diaries tbh if they could write it out.

[Anonymous No.7016519]

>>7016108
I would have done the same thing

[Anonymous No.7016554]

>>7011964
He supported Pinochet right? And there's some frustration with this because the Prize has been awarded to writers who supported Leftist dictators, IIRC

[Anonymous No.7016560]

I want Pinecone to win and then reject it and put out an essay in VICE about how the NP for Lit is defunct and people shouldn't give a shit, while on that very page there is an insert advertising "Selected Tweets"

[Anonymous No.7016569]

>>7011937
i agree. mccarthy is a mediocre writer and pynchon deserves to win

[Anonymous No.7016570]

>>7012028
Have you read any Harry Martinson? He deserved just as much as many of the other winners.

[Anonymous No.7016650]

You people don't actually want them to give the prize to your favourite authors. You'd rather just have that false sense of superiority, knowing you have "patrician" taste