4 ms·
There are many writers who deserved the Nobel prize but never received it. Joyce, Kafka, Borges, Proust, Tolstoy, to name a few. The prize has been so consisten
by briga 7y ago
There are many writers who deserved the Nobel prize but never received it. Joyce, Kafka, Borges, Proust, Tolstoy, to name a few. The prize has been so consistently politicized over the years that it's hard to see it as a measure of much of anything other than how much a bunch of Swedish academics happen to like that author.
If it were up to me I might pick Thomas Pynchon or Cormac McCarthy over DeLillo for a Nobel prize, but there are many other worthy non-American candidates
- PunchTornado 7y agoHow many Nobel prizes have been so far? 120 or something like that. For more than a century of literature. By definition there will be great writers left out. It is nobody's fault or bias.
- edjrage 7y agoI don't know, maybe it is someone's fault if a system with arbitrarily defined rules expressly made for awarding those who deserve recognition doesn't award all those who deserve recognition?
- gowld 7y agoNobel Prize is just some dude who wanted to do something nice with money he made selling dynamite. There's no reason to imbue it with responsibility for picking which authors deserve to be immortalized.
- edjrage 7y agoSure, it may be too much to say it's someone's "fault". My point is just that even the people who give Nobel prizes probably agree that the aforementioned authors deserve getting something at least very similar to it, they just didn't get it because of some fake scarcity that implies someone else deserved it "more". So although no one has any obligation to change the tradition, it might be a good idea to do so.
- gregcoombe 7y agoThis is exactly the opening argument of the article, and the writer's response (in part) is, "Nevertheless the Nobel continues to exceed the Booker, the Pulitzer, and all other literary awards in its prestige, global impact, and ability to tip the scales toward immortality."