Nobel Prize in Literature 2006

[Stewart]

With the announcement of the Nobel Prizes underway (Medicine yesterday, and Physics today for the "discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation", as if you didn't guess!) I thought it might be fun to speculate as to who will be getting the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2006. According the the Nobel site, there's no set date for this one.

So, who do we reckon?

The name I'm going to drop, because I read him recently, is Nuruddin Farah, for his exploration of women's rights. In 1998 he won the International Neustadt Prize for Literature, which has previously been won by Nobel laureates.

Of course, I'll be wrong and they'll give it to someone I've never heard of. Some concrete poet from Djibouti, perhaps.

 

[Shade]

Ah, those Djiboutian concretists!

Let's face it, unless it's a UK or US author, we're unlikely to have heard of them. So my nomination is J.K. Rowling.

 

[beer good]

Orhan Pamuk is apparently the favourite with the bookies - which most likely means he's out of the race too.

Here's Ladbrokes' favourite list right now:
Orhan Pamuk 3.50
Adonis 6.00
Ryszard Kapuscinski 6.00
Joyce Carol Oates 7.00
Philip Roth 11.00
Haruki Murakami 13.00
Inger Christensen 13.00
Ko Un 13.00
Thomas Tranströmer 13.00
Amos Oz 15.00
Claudio Magris 15.00
Hugo Claus 15.00
Antonio Tabucchi 21.00
Milan Kundera 21.00
Thomas Pynchon 21.00
Cees Nooteboom 26.00
Chinua Achebe 34.00
Jean Marie Gustav Le Clezio 34.00
Mario Vargas Llosa 34.00
Assia Djebar 41.00
Gitta Sereny 41.00
John Updike 41.00
Willy Kyrklund 41.00
Bob Dylan 51.00

 

[Stewart]

Reading this old article, there was mention last year of Pamuk winning, but being considered, at 53, to be too young to win the prize. Syrian poet, Ali Ahmad Said, was cited as being the favourite then. (Had anyone actually mentioned Pinter?)

 

[Stewart]

Here's Ladbrokes' favourite list right now:

I've heard of twelve of them. Only heard of Thomas Tranströmer because, like Farah mentioned above, he's won the International Neustadt Prize in Literature.

And Adonis, only because he was the favourite last year.

Haruki Murakami is a strange one, at least to me. I've only read Dance Dance Dance and didn't rate it all that much. And gave up on The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle after three pages. What would he win it for? Drawing to the international community the plight of spaghetti?

 

[beer good]

Haruki Murakami is a strange one, at least to me. I've only read Dance Dance Dance and didn't rate it all that much. And gave up on The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle after three pages. What would he win it for? Drawing to the international community the plight of spaghetti?

I've read two of his - "Norwegian Wood" and "Underground" - and was quite impressed by both. I get the feeling, though, that he's a favourite because the Academy is always under pressure to pick a winner who is not an aging male white Euro/US novelist, and so Murakami is in there because he's the only "serious" East Asian writer who Westerners read in any great number. (Ironically, he's been criticized in Japan for writing novels that are more American than Japanese in tone...)

Tranströmer is a constant favourite since he's considered by many to be the last great living Swedish poet. Of course, that means he won't get it. The Academy still haven't lived down the row they created last time they gave it to a Swede.

 

[Dogmatix]

I've been staring at Murakami's Kafka on the Shore (which sits right next to this computer) for abot 6 weeks. It's getting very close to the top of my TBR pile.

 

[Shade]

The Academy still haven't lived down the row they created last time they gave it to a Swede.

Er... which was?

 

[beer good]

Er... which was?

Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinsson shared it in 1974. Despite the fact that they were both members of the academy.

 

[Shade]

Ew. Naughty.

 

[Heteronym]

Milan Kundera
Gore Vidal
Salman Rushdie
Ismail Kadaré
António Lobo Antunes
Philip Roth

More hopes than predictions

Muramaki isn't considered a great novelist, I'm afraid. I understand he's popular and he gets favourable reviews. But so is Umberto Eco and Paulo Coelho, and countless other writers. But is he a literary genius? I don't know, I'm just asking anyone who's read his work, if you get the impression he's up there with José Saramago, Gabriel García Márquez, Toni Morrison, Saul Bellow, and other previous Nobel Laureates?

Thomas Pynhcon, I hope not

Bob Dylan?

 

[unKeMPt]

I like Murakami a lot, having read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Sputnik Sweetheart. He's seems a bit more of a "pop" novelist, and I wouldn't put him in the company of the aforementioned writers, but he does have an uncanny talent for rendering marvelous symbolism.

I'm pulling for my favorite author, Philip Roth (not likely on the heels of Pinter), or Milan Kundera.

 

[beer good]

Muramaki isn't considered a great novelist, I'm afraid. I understand he's popular and he gets favourable reviews. But so is Umberto Eco and Paulo Coelho, and countless other writers. But is he a literary genius? I don't know, I'm just asking anyone who's read his work, if you get the impression he's up there with José Saramago, Gabriel García Márquez, Toni Morrison, Saul Bellow, and other previous Nobel Laureates?

Are you suggesting Coelho is even worthy of spit-shining Eco's shoes? Nevermind. Personally, I thought the two Murakami books I've read were a lot more interesting - both as literature and as entertainment - than the one Saramago book I've read. Genius... probably not, but then again, that's not one of the criteria. (Hell, Winston Churchill got it.)

Thomas Pynhcon, I hope not

As fun as that would be, there's no way. They're not going to give it to someone they KNOW will refuse to accept it.

Bob Dylan?

Has been nominated every year for the last 5-10 years or so, since people consider his lyrics poetry. Don't worry, he's never going to get it either.

I doubt Rushdie will get it either, which is a pity. Too controversial and too popular.

 

[Gem]

I'll go for;
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Amos Oz

The first because Shah of Shahs has been sitting on my desk since July and the second because he is my current read. So yes, I've really thought my choices through.

Of course if a miracle should occur and they give it to Ishiguro, then drinks are on me.

 

[Heteronym]

Beer good:

I compared Coelho, Murakami and Eco in so far as they both sell a lot and get favourable reviews. Although Coelho is the nadir, I can't say I have much appreciation for Eco either. His essays triumph over his fiction.

Genius has certainly influenced several Nobel choices. But genius being rare, really fricking good will just have to do in most occasions; and I don't think Murakami qualifies for that either. Mind you, my whole problem with this gentleman is that I'm a snobbish literary elitist who smells 'pop' all around him

Churchill wrote masterful speeches, and I believe he won the Nobel for oratory. It's a matter of stretching the limits of literature, I suppose, and not necessarily difficult if we remeber Betrand Russell and Henri Bergson won Nobels without writing a single piece of literature. For this same reason, I think it'd be fun to see Dylan winning one too

 

[Phlebas]

On the Winston Churchill thread; I wonder if the oratory of any of our current political leaders could ever catapult them to Nobel Laureate status

 

[abecedarian]

On the Winston Churchill thread; I wonder if the oratory of any of our current political leaders could ever catapult them to Nobel Laureate status

Careful..you'll launch us into a Mature Discussion really fast with that line of thinking

 

[Phlebas]

Careful..you'll launch us into a Mature Discussion really fast with that line of thinking

Immature discussion more like ... anyway serious point was what are the odds of someone outside the usual literary sources (authors, poets, playwrights) winning and who could they be?

 

[Heteronym]

Philosophers used to have good chances of winning:

Rudolph Christoph Eucken, Henri Bergson, Bertrand Russell never wrote literature. Camus and Sartre's non-fiction work outweighs their literary output too.

I don't think that happens anymore, a pity; I like diversity.

Some modern day orators are worthy of the Ig Nobel Prize

 

[mrkgnao]

Actually, I believe Churchill got it for his autobiography (-ies?).

Myself, I've stopped bothering about the Nobel Prize, except professionally (I'm a bookseller). I can't muster any interest in it any more, it's just the same old same old, especially so here in Sweden, because "we" are so damn proud of it... But the money aside, it is simply - as the Academy's chairman openly admits - 18 (though I think they're down to 15 or so at the moment) Swedish authors who pick a winner from their Swedish, Western, Bloomesque perspective of literary quality. *shrug*

Then again, the chairman (Horace Engdahl) has also said that what they want to reward is rebellion - the ideal winner should be an exile, and an enemy of the state. Er... go Pynchon!

I'm glad the prize got me to read e.g. Morrison and Jelinek, but then Coetzee bored me utterly. So, basically, *shrug*.

*mrkgnao*