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For Peace Prize punters, here are the latest odds fr0m NicerOdds.co.uk. For some reason, I don’t see Clock Boy’s name on the Peace Prize list, although I had him down as a sure bet for the Physics Nobel for inventing Time, so what do I know?
Dr. Mukwege sounds like he’d be a worthy winner. From Wikipedia:
Denis Mukwege (born 1 March 1955) is a Congolese gynecologist. He founded and works in Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, where he specializes in the treatment of women who have been gang-raped by rebel forces. Mukwege has become the world’s leading expert on how to repair the internal physical damage caused by gang rape.
Mukwege has treated thousands of women who were victims of gang wartime rape since the Second Congo War, some of them more than once, performing up to 10 surgeries a day during his 18-hour working days.
Speaking of gang rape, how about Alexis Jay, who wrote the 2014 Rotherham Report that finally broke the omerta in England?
Mussie Zerai is an Eritrean priest who helps organize the Camp of the Saints, even though there’s no war in Eritrea. Speaking of the Camp of the Saints, how about Jean Raspail for giving us a 42-years to prepare? Granted, we totally frittered it away, but still …
You’ve probably heard of Angela Merkel.
By the time you’ll read this, you’ll probably know who won, but it’s fun to look at old odds. How well did the prediction markets work out this time, Professor Hanson?
For some reason, I don’t see Ta-Nehisi Coates on the list, but then I had him down for Medicine/Physiology for being the world’s leading expert on Black Bodies, so what do I know?
For the Literature Prize, it looks like there’s a Year of the Woman thing going on.
“Sorry, old man. Because of the weak imagery, scanty plot, and pedestrian language in your latest, we’ve turned your table over to Joyce Carol Oates.” William Hamilton, The New Yorker, early to mid-1970s
Joyce Carol Oates is an excellent writer but she’s highly prolific, which usually counts as a detriment in winning the Nobel. And she has been publishing books since 1963. American authors usually don’t win lifetime achievement awards, since they don’t lack for opportunities for publicity. To win, they’re usually expected to sober up and write something better than their recent stuff, like The Old Man and Sea helped Hemingway garner his gong.
I haven’t heard a theory about why Oates is so highly ranked this year, but I’ll make up one: giving her the award would strike a blow against the male-biased notion that important writers should write important books that stand out. Oates would represent all the productive female novelists who write lots and lots of novels without a lot of drama about Promethean ambitions.
That’s probably not the worst theory in the world for justifying a Nobel.
Or maybe she’s near the top because she’s on Twitter? (Here are the Nobel candidate’s sensible tweets on Donald Sterling.)
Or maybe sozzled English punters keep hearing from America about the transcendent literary importance of Ta-Nehisi Coates and thinking, reasonably enough, that the Americans must be referring to Joyce Carole Oates? Coates, Oates, let’s call the whole thing off …
Dwight Garner of the NYT would like to see win J.P. Donleavy, who, amazingly enough, is still alive 60 years after publishing The Ginger Man, a novel that inspired everybody from Hunter S. Thompson to Colin Quinn to take up drunkenness as the key to being a Celtic bard.
Obviously, the Literature Award is a near total-crapshoot because how valid are opinions on literary merit across multiple languages? But, if the Nobel Committee wants to be relevant, the novelist who has dominated 2015 is this guy.
Why not Herman Wouk instead of any of those writers? Ursula Le Guin? It would be kind of nuts if she gets a Nobel when neither Arthur C. Clarke nor Frank Herbert did.
Speaking of her:
Wow! I was sure I had caught you in an error, but was I ever surprised--no, shocked-- to find that Wouk is still alive at 100! Apologies for the scathing message I didn't post.
Houellebecq is still too young by Nobel standards. I forget the Turkish guy's age, but they tend to pick 70 year olds who really need an extra mil to spend
There are still good writers producing good stuff, but people don't discuss literature like they once used to. It doesn't get the kind of respect it once did cuz high brow/low brow dichotomy is gone.
What was the great lit events in the past 20 yrs? Harry Potter, Twilight, and Hunger Games. And Fifty Shades of Grey.
It would be more honest to ditch the lit prize and just go with sound/image prize given to those working in music, movies, and TV.
Since 2003, 9 out of 13 individual winners of the NPP have been either black or Muslim. Not much gets by the punters.
Ngugi Wa Thiongo sounds like a name of an African chief from a Kurt Vonnegut or Thomas Pynchon novel or at least someone back in the days when it was ok to make up funny names for foreigners. (No loss, they keep coming up with funnier and funnier names on their own).
Joyce Carol Oates refused to honor the Charlie Hebdo crew because they are racists. That ought to earn her a Nobel Prize for something.
Somehow, I thought Tom Stoppard would be in the running. But, apparently, the committee hates British guys even more than they hate Americans.
Dudette what rewrote the UVA rape hoax should win this and also get the Physics prize for discovering a glass that shards do not cut people.
Speaking of her:
https://twitter.com/frankcottrell_b/status/651291126901678080
What anthology is this? I’m gonna go buy it.
Currently unavailable at Amazon - I'm guessing it's rare and hard to come by.
So this year’s NLP winner is a journalist with no known connection to any literature whose only qualification is being anti-Russian. Next year, Julia Ioffe.
Speaking of her:
https://twitter.com/frankcottrell_b/status/651291126901678080
In Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny he cites, through one of his protagonists, the Jew-skin-lampshade-and-bars-of-soap myth (that’s gone down the memory hole of history lecturers) for “why we fight!” (that theme which Spielberg took up in Band of Brothers).
In the end, the Irish descended Keefer gets the shame, and Queeg a belated glory, of sorts (he knew…why we fight!).
I agree. The Caine Mutiny for 2015 Hall of Honour, Nobel Peace Prize for Literature and all time Immortal—Herman Wouk!
A man right on time.
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2015
Speaking of Merkel, this is what she had to say yesterday in the European Parliament. In summary, no change in course, as long as she is the captain, this ship is going down. And the idiotic arguments she is using to defend her position are a really nice bonus.
Some pearls of Mutti Merkel’s wisdom:
Looks like the prediction markets worked pretty well. Belarusian author Svetlana Alexievich wins 2015 Nobel Prize for literature
Is this a signal that they have given up pretending to be able to judge literature in languages they don't read?
Churchill famously won it of course but that was, it is generally acknowledged, not for his history books but for that other project he was involved in...
Ben Bradlee used to say that the Pulitzers were a crock. My thoughts on the soft Nobels are similar.
of my extended family have read anything by Alexievich yet.
So, no comments.
My vote for the Peace Prize is anonymous-gang-raped-woman-working-for-open-borders.
Maybe Denis Mukwege can help her out.
Synergy: New Science Fiction, Volume 1
Currently unavailable at Amazon – I’m guessing it’s rare and hard to come by.
The Nobel Prize destroyed its credibility when Obama won.
Lots of folks were butthurt when Arafat won.
Author? Not really, she is an historian. Strangely. I read a lot of history books and I could probably think off the top of my head of a score of living historians with better claims to the prize.
Is this a signal that they have given up pretending to be able to judge literature in languages they don’t read?
Churchill famously won it of course but that was, it is generally acknowledged, not for his history books but for that other project he was involved in…
Author? Not really, she is an historian. Strangely. I read a lot of history books and I could probably think off the top of my head of a score of living historians with better claims to the prize.
Is this a signal that they have given up pretending to be able to judge literature in languages they don’t read?
Churchill famously won it of course but that was, it is generally acknowledged, not for his history books but for that other project he was involved in…
Ben Bradlee used to say that the Pulitzers were a crock. My thoughts on the soft Nobels are similar.
The Lit Nobel went to a non-fiction writer for only the second time. Steve, it looks like you’re that much closer.
I'd say that if this trend is real, then TNC with his two memoirs is that much closer.
Neither myself, nor anybody of the Russian-speaking members
of my extended family have read anything by Alexievich yet.
So, no comments.
I wouldn’t mind seeing the Peace Prize go to Snowden.
Given that the Nobel committee awarded the prize to Obama, before he had any proper change to rain death down on recalitrant brown people from half a world away, perhaps they should give him another one now for our recent attack on a hospital in Afghanistan.
I think Obama should be awarded a second Nobel peace prize.
I definitely agree. And they could cite, as justification, his effectuation of the "speedy withdrawal of U.S. troops" from Afghanistan. They can even crib from Colin Powell's second endorsement of Obama in 2012. BTW here is what I posted on TAC back in 2012:
"tbraton says:
December 6, 2012 at 11:40 am
A few months back, retired Gen. Jack Keane, another coauthor of the Iraq surge, was on the NPR program Talk of the Nation along with Andrew Bacevitch. At one point, Keane mentioned the need to maintain a “residual force” in Afghanistan even after “we pull out all our troops” by the end of 2014. When asked about the size of the “residual force,” Keane said “25,000 to 30,000.” [Note: I had actually mistakenly posted "15,000" and subsequently corrected to 25,000.] I believe Keane and the Kagans talk frequently. That occurred a few weeks after the NY Times had a piece mentioning that the size of the residual force, first mentioned by Obama in the spring of 2012, was being discussed in the range of 10,000 to 15,000.
What I find astounding is that Obama has been given credit (by Gen.Colin Powell, among others) for speeding our withdrawal from Afghanistan more than two years before it actually happened and this was only after he greatly expanded the troop presence in Afghanistan and extended the war by at least six years. (More than 70% of American deaths in Afghanistan have occurred under Obama’s presidency.) I toss his speeding our withdrawal from Afghanistan in the same category as his saving the U.S. from a “second Great Depression” and his great contribution to world peace that was commemorated by the award of the Nobel Peace Prize."
More than a year earlier, I posted the following message on TAC, which goes into more detail tracing the build-up in Afghanistan:
"tbraton says:
June 21, 2011 at 9:58 am
Speaking of math, I have raised this point before, but I was struck reading today’s NY Times’ article on Obama’s pending decision to draw down our troops in Afghanistan by how everyone in the MSM focuses only on the 30,000 troops Obama decided to send in the late fall of 2009 and almost totally ignores the first 20,000 troops he decided to send there within the first month and a half in office.
According to the article “Obama to Announce Plans for Afghan Surge Pullout,” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/world/asia/21policy.html?_r=1&hp :
“. . .Mr. Obama is considering options that range from a Pentagon-backed proposal to pull out only 5,000 troops this year to an aggressive plan to withdraw within 12 months all 30,000 troops the United States deployed to Afghanistan as part of the surge in December 2009.”
” Administration officials said Mr. Obama would most likely pull out the entire 30,000 troops by the end of 2012.”
“Some senior White House officials advocate a plan under which 15,000 troops would return by the end of this year and the other 15,000 by the end of 2012, said an official who was briefed on the deliberations.”
“Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has long pushed for the United States to curtail its military engagement in Afghanistan, favors a plan under which all 30,000 troops would be pulled out within 12 months, said this official, . . ”
Only late in the article is it noted that “Even after all 30,000 troops are withdrawn, roughly 68,000 troops will remain in Afghanistan, twice the number as when Mr. Obama assumed office.” I guess the whole idea is to plant the notion that Obama has started to pull our troops out of Afghanistan when the reality is that even with the fully contemplated withdrawal we will still have many more troops there than when Obama assumed office. I guess it is difficult for the MSM to acknowledge that their “anti-war” candidate has morphed into a greater war-monger than GWB."
“Zerai, 40, an Eritrean Catholic priest, is the founder of an organization that has helped organize the rescue of migrants whose boats have encountered problems while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea. He often takes calls in the middle of the night and relays GPS coordinates to the Italian coast guard.”
In other words, the smugglers have him on speed dial. I kinda wouldn’t mind seeing him win, since (based only on his description) there seems to be a real chance he’ll eventually be busted for working with smugglers and bearing responsibility for thousands of deaths.
Whatever happened to priests working to fix their own fracking countries and making them more livable and free? Giving this guy a Nobel would be like giving an award to a crack ho for giving birth to a child rather than to the parents who adopted and raised him.
My vague sense is that the comrades of the Nobel Peace Prize committee alternate years where they are semi-serious in their selection with years in which they are more overtly ideological. So I guess the answer is related to who last year’s recipient was. Could be that they’ll give it to 2-3 people pushing for the European Immivasion, including Mama Merkel.
Someone on Twitter noted that his bombing of the MSF hospital in Afghanistan was one Nobel Peace Prize laureate bombing another.
OT: The new Steve Jobs movie comes out tomorrow, and I just left “Social Network” running silently in the corner of my eye as a sort of preparation… What an UGLY movie! Every frame is shadowy green, every face is frowning. I enjoyed watching it the first time, but how can anyone stand to watch it twice?
David Fincher, who directed "The Social Network", is knows for being very color-oriented:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/06/23/david_fincher_s_color_palette_supercut_shows_how_the_director_uses_desaturated.html
But that shouldn't affect the Steve Jobs movie, given that Danny Boyle is the director. Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay for both films, but I rather doubt his scripts are responsible for the movies' color schemes.
off topic but amusing – it’s a pity it doesn’t have links to all the (real) stories
http://somuchguardian.tumblr.com/
In the hunt for the peers of TNC, the Guardian often features one Steven W. Thrasher, whose photo looks as if it was taken by that on-air shooter guy, he looks that worried.
Speaking of her:
https://twitter.com/frankcottrell_b/status/651291126901678080
“Why not Herman Wouk instead of any of those writers? ”
Wow! I was sure I had caught you in an error, but was I ever surprised–no, shocked– to find that Wouk is still alive at 100! Apologies for the scathing message I didn’t post.
“Obviously, the Literature Award is a near total-crapshoot because how valid are opinions on literary merit across multiple languages? But, if the Nobel Committee wants to be relevant, the novelist who has dominated 2015 is this guy.”
This sums up the problem with the Literature award very well. A literature prize (in the sense of best writer), where the comparison is between writers in multiple languages, makes no sense at all. How many people can read Byelorussian? A prize given out to the best English language writers would be interesting for Americans. If you want to read Russian literature in translation, maybe the existence of a prize for Russian authors, awarded by a jury of Russian speakers, would be helpful in choosing which authors to read.
However, that is not what the Nobel Prize for Literature is supposed to do anyway, according to Nobel’s original bequest. Its actually supposed to go to the writer who has done the most for humanity. Giving it to a journalist who wrote about the Chernobyl disaster makes perfect sense and is in accordance with the original bequest. You can reasonably give such an award without necessarily knowing the language the author wrote in. They got away from this in the middle of the twentieth century and gave the prize to alot of great authors who wrote in English, German, and the Romance languages, which is what got everyone confused.
In fact, she wrote her works in Russian, not Belarusian (current
spelling- I know, it's hard to keep track of all those changes). She
was also criticized for speaking Russian, and not Belarusian, in a TV
interview in Minsk.
As far as I know Belarus has not produced a great writer who wrote
in Belarusian. The Russian (and to a lesser extent, Polish) cultural
influences have been that strong. Plus it's a small country of only 10
million people which has only been independent for a couple of decades.
Ukraine, despite its much larger population (42 million but falling rapidly)
has only really produced one great Ukrainian-language writer - Taras
Shevchenko - and that was back in the 19th century.
The Nobel Peace Prize surely must go to President Putin. He has shown tremendous restraint in the face of numerous provocations from the US and in fact pulled Obummer’s chestnuts from the fire in Syria back in 2013.
As a side note, I have been taking long luxurious swims in the pools of necocon tears that been have shed over Putin’s latest actions in Syria. These tears, by the way, are salty and redolent of matzoh.
In other important awards…Bruce Jenner is Glamours’ woman of the year.
Will this make feminists happy or enrage them?
“I think Obama should be awarded a second Nobel peace prize.”
I definitely agree. And they could cite, as justification, his effectuation of the “speedy withdrawal of U.S. troops” from Afghanistan. They can even crib from Colin Powell’s second endorsement of Obama in 2012. BTW here is what I posted on TAC back in 2012:
“tbraton says:
December 6, 2012 at 11:40 am
A few months back, retired Gen. Jack Keane, another coauthor of the Iraq surge, was on the NPR program Talk of the Nation along with Andrew Bacevitch. At one point, Keane mentioned the need to maintain a “residual force” in Afghanistan even after “we pull out all our troops” by the end of 2014. When asked about the size of the “residual force,” Keane said “25,000 to 30,000.” [Note: I had actually mistakenly posted "15,000" and subsequently corrected to 25,000.] I believe Keane and the Kagans talk frequently. That occurred a few weeks after the NY Times had a piece mentioning that the size of the residual force, first mentioned by Obama in the spring of 2012, was being discussed in the range of 10,000 to 15,000.
What I find astounding is that Obama has been given credit (by Gen.Colin Powell, among others) for speeding our withdrawal from Afghanistan more than two years before it actually happened and this was only after he greatly expanded the troop presence in Afghanistan and extended the war by at least six years. (More than 70% of American deaths in Afghanistan have occurred under Obama’s presidency.) I toss his speeding our withdrawal from Afghanistan in the same category as his saving the U.S. from a “second Great Depression” and his great contribution to world peace that was commemorated by the award of the Nobel Peace Prize.”
More than a year earlier, I posted the following message on TAC, which goes into more detail tracing the build-up in Afghanistan:
“tbraton says:
June 21, 2011 at 9:58 am
Speaking of math, I have raised this point before, but I was struck reading today’s NY Times’ article on Obama’s pending decision to draw down our troops in Afghanistan by how everyone in the MSM focuses only on the 30,000 troops Obama decided to send in the late fall of 2009 and almost totally ignores the first 20,000 troops he decided to send there within the first month and a half in office.
According to the article “Obama to Announce Plans for Afghan Surge Pullout,” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/world/asia/21policy.html?_r=1&hp :
“. . .Mr. Obama is considering options that range from a Pentagon-backed proposal to pull out only 5,000 troops this year to an aggressive plan to withdraw within 12 months all 30,000 troops the United States deployed to Afghanistan as part of the surge in December 2009.”
” Administration officials said Mr. Obama would most likely pull out the entire 30,000 troops by the end of 2012.”
“Some senior White House officials advocate a plan under which 15,000 troops would return by the end of this year and the other 15,000 by the end of 2012, said an official who was briefed on the deliberations.”
“Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has long pushed for the United States to curtail its military engagement in Afghanistan, favors a plan under which all 30,000 troops would be pulled out within 12 months, said this official, . . ”
Only late in the article is it noted that “Even after all 30,000 troops are withdrawn, roughly 68,000 troops will remain in Afghanistan, twice the number as when Mr. Obama assumed office.” I guess the whole idea is to plant the notion that Obama has started to pull our troops out of Afghanistan when the reality is that even with the fully contemplated withdrawal we will still have many more troops there than when Obama assumed office. I guess it is difficult for the MSM to acknowledge that their “anti-war” candidate has morphed into a greater war-monger than GWB.”
Angela Merkel now leads the odds.But 73% of the german population think she do not deserve it.Fresh poll.
Ismail Kadaré is actually a pretty good Albanian novelist and a Booker Prize winner. Unlike most other writers on the list, except for Handle, he’s sold a great number of his books, mostly in Europe. But yeah, the probable winner is Ngugi because black bodies cannot be ignored. So, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o it is.
OT: You’ve probably gotten a few dozen comments about it by now, but Kevin McCarthy just dropped out of the Speaker race.
Mussie Zerai is a pioneer of illegal human trafficking from Africa to Europe. He doesn’t feed, house, clothe, and educate the poor, he helps them break into Italy where the Italians are obligated to feed, house, clothe, and educate them for many decades.
Europe is deeply confused: Are the human traffickers bad guys or should they win the Nobel Peace Prize?
It still shocks me that there was such recent 20th century violent and aggressive racial expulsion of any white Italians from North Africa and Ethiopia on the basis of racial land sovereignty, but a short time later and the exact ethnic groups that violently removed the white Italians out of Ethiopia and North Africa and got globally sanctioned racial sovereignty there are supposed to be welcomed into the heart of Italy, the one tiny plot of land on Earth where Italians can claim to belong, and given full Italian citizen and membership rights, and have the pope and the universities pressure regular Italian families to treat them like their own children.
I know Mexican Americans who are fiercely pro Mexican identity and Mexican immigration into the US, but they look at the Muslim and non-integrating black immigration into Europe and they say, that is wrong, those French, Italians, and Germans need to wake the **** up before they lose their countries.
I am also reminded of the Bryan Caplan doctrine that mass immigration involves no obligation of charity and no family should be expected to love a foreigner as much as their own children, but that is precisely what is happening: the pope, government and university elites are forcing mass charity and pressuring small time citizens to treat foreigners as family members.
Speaking of her:
https://twitter.com/frankcottrell_b/status/651291126901678080
Wouk is dead. Only live bodies (of whatever color) get to savor The Prize. Good Newman movie!
OT: Kevin McCarthy affair rumors with Renee Ellmers.
Speaking of her:
https://twitter.com/frankcottrell_b/status/651291126901678080
They already just gave one to a chick sci-fi author, and furthermore with WAY more left-wing internationale cred than Le Guin.
Houellebecq is still too young by Nobel standards. I forget the Turkish guy’s age, but they tend to pick 70 year olds who really need an extra mil to spend
Historically the odds of getting one of the softer Nobels are greatly increased by association with anti-Russian politics. Case in point.
Boooooring post.
The Nobels have no credibility. Like prize day at a high school or the MVP awards in sports, it’s a small group of not-very-intelligent people who are cliquish trying to tell everyone else what the “best” was, but really the voters are clueless, disliked idiots whose views are forgotten the year after.
President Obama’s Nobel was really the final debasement of the award. Absolute garbage.
Joyce Carol Oates refused to honor the Charlie Hebdo crew because they are racists. That ought to earn her a Nobel Prize for something.
Somehow, I thought Tom Stoppard would be in the running. But, apparently, the committee hates British guys even more than they hate Americans.
There’s a rather good actress named Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and I didn’t make that up!
Merkel… looks like a man and acts like a man but out of womanly instincts.
It’s like tranny politics.
It’s like tranny politics."
Austin Powers should pull the wig off of her. Angela Merkel is a man BAYBEE.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgOIEGz7o_s
Speaking of her:
https://twitter.com/frankcottrell_b/status/651291126901678080
The thing is… literature is no longer part of living culture.
There are still good writers producing good stuff, but people don’t discuss literature like they once used to. It doesn’t get the kind of respect it once did cuz high brow/low brow dichotomy is gone.
What was the great lit events in the past 20 yrs? Harry Potter, Twilight, and Hunger Games. And Fifty Shades of Grey.
It would be more honest to ditch the lit prize and just go with sound/image prize given to those working in music, movies, and TV.
“For some reason, I don’t see Ta-Nehisi Coates on the list, but then I had him down for Medicine/Physiology for being the world’s leading expert on Black Bodies, so what do I know?”
Ta-Nehisi Coates is not on the list because of the impact of institutional racism on his Black body, people who think they are White, a White woman telling his Black kid to move and there for scarring him for life, Emmit Till, Jim Crow, the war on drugs, etc whatever.
“The Lit Nobel went to a non-fiction writer for only the second time. Steve, it looks like you’re that much closer.”
I’d say that if this trend is real, then TNC with his two memoirs is that much closer.
It's like tranny politics.
“Merkel… looks like a man and acts like a man but out of womanly instincts.
It’s like tranny politics.”
Austin Powers should pull the wig off of her. Angela Merkel is a man BAYBEE.
Bit hard to knock Joyce Carol Oates as a potential Nobel Prize winner for literature when Pearl S. Buck won before her.
Totally agree with you re: the worthiness of Denis Mukwege.
Alas, the Nobel Prize Committee is unlikely to give out an award that underscores the savagery of black Africa.
Masha Gessen
Keith was apparently Alexievich’s translator or editor or something.
This isn’t a part of the modern PC movement though, the Swedish elite has always hated Russia with a passion that you can’t possibly understand before you witness it. Even in the first years of the prize they ignored Russian giants like Tolstoy and Chekhov and only started giving it to Russians when dissidents started writing about how horrible Soviet Russia is (granted, they were right).
They must love it that there’s going to be a whole new generation of Russia critics that they can reward.
It's been said that there is no greater visceral fear in Sweden
than the fear of Russia. They still remember how Sweden was
humiliated, after repeatedly invading Russia and Poland, by
Peter the Great of Russia in the Battle of Poltava (1709).
Poltava is just north of Kiev. What were the Swedes doing
north of Kiev? Good question. They were suffering, just
like Napoleon and Hitler a century or two later, from
delusions of grandeur - is one possible answer.
After the decisive defeat at Poltava, the Swedes thought it
wise to turn neutral
That betting market needs to investigate insider trading. How the heck did the actual Lit Prize winner, otherwise a near-total unknown, come to have the lowest odds?
“Obviously, the Literature Award is a near total-crapshoot because how valid are opinions on literary merit across multiple languages?”
I disagree with that, it’s nice to have an international award, and not that hard. For instance, I’m reading Goethe in translation since I can’t read German, and it’s still pretty good. Dante and Shakespeare are a pale approximation in translation to other languages, but still, better than most writers in the original. And what about Homer? How many people can read ancient Greek anyway?
The real problem with the literature Nobel is that prizes are given for political reasons, not for literary reasons. Borges didn’t get it because he was conservative. And recently it only became worse, prizes are given to authors that no-one ever heard about, and who probably are not even very good even in the original language (Elfriede Jelinek?)
I agree that Houellebecq would probably deserve it more than most, but maybe he has to wait 20 years to start being considered.
I disagree with that, it's nice to have an international award, and not that hard. For instance, I'm reading Goethe in translation since I can't read German, and it's still pretty good. Dante and Shakespeare are a pale approximation in translation to other languages, but still, better than most writers in the original. And what about Homer? How many people can read ancient Greek anyway?
The real problem with the literature Nobel is that prizes are given for political reasons, not for literary reasons. Borges didn't get it because he was conservative. And recently it only became worse, prizes are given to authors that no-one ever heard about, and who probably are not even very good even in the original language (Elfriede Jelinek?)
I agree that Houellebecq would probably deserve it more than most, but maybe he has to wait 20 years to start being considered.
“I agree that Houellebecq would probably deserve it more than most, but maybe he has to wait 20 years to start being considered.”
And by then he’ll be over the hill so he can’t win then. And he won’t have any teeth, but he’ll have four wives and will be a professor of literature at the U. of Paris, so he’ll be happy.
In other words, the smugglers have him on speed dial. I kinda wouldn't mind seeing him win, since (based only on his description) there seems to be a real chance he'll eventually be busted for working with smugglers and bearing responsibility for thousands of deaths.
Whatever happened to priests working to fix their own fracking countries and making them more livable and free? Giving this guy a Nobel would be like giving an award to a crack ho for giving birth to a child rather than to the parents who adopted and raised him.
My vague sense is that the comrades of the Nobel Peace Prize committee alternate years where they are semi-serious in their selection with years in which they are more overtly ideological. So I guess the answer is related to who last year's recipient was. Could be that they'll give it to 2-3 people pushing for the European Immivasion, including Mama Merkel.
Then he’s well-named. “Mussie” is Eritrean for “Moses”.
Of course, they should be crossing the Red Sea, instead. From Eritrea (which is from the Greek for “red”) to warm, welcoming, wealthy Saudi Arabia.
I disagree with that, it's nice to have an international award, and not that hard. For instance, I'm reading Goethe in translation since I can't read German, and it's still pretty good. Dante and Shakespeare are a pale approximation in translation to other languages, but still, better than most writers in the original. And what about Homer? How many people can read ancient Greek anyway?
The real problem with the literature Nobel is that prizes are given for political reasons, not for literary reasons. Borges didn't get it because he was conservative. And recently it only became worse, prizes are given to authors that no-one ever heard about, and who probably are not even very good even in the original language (Elfriede Jelinek?)
I agree that Houellebecq would probably deserve it more than most, but maybe he has to wait 20 years to start being considered.
And not in the spacey Byzantine minuscules, as wonderful as those are, but in the Flintstoney block bidirectional boustrophedon of Homer’s day!
Joyce has fallen to #797 on the Social Security Administration’s annual list of names given to children; Carol has fallen out of the top 1,000. (Yes, that’s thousand, not hundred.) Herman is equally defunct.
I’d like to say give ‘em a prize just to keep their names afloat. But nothing makes you look older than a Nobel Prize. (Nothing, that is, but the Papacy.) it would just be a nail in the coffin
I don’t believe that the committees giving out the various prizes don’t talk to each other. They generally don’t make confrontational choices both for literature and peace in the same year, so Rape Doctor Guy must now be favoured over Invasion Bridgehead Guy.
“OT: The new Steve Jobs movie comes out tomorrow, and I just left “Social Network” running silently in the corner of my eye as a sort of preparation… What an UGLY movie! Every frame is shadowy green, every face is frowning. “
David Fincher, who directed “The Social Network”, is knows for being very color-oriented:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/06/23/david_fincher_s_color_palette_supercut_shows_how_the_director_uses_desaturated.html
But that shouldn’t affect the Steve Jobs movie, given that Danny Boyle is the director. Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay for both films, but I rather doubt his scripts are responsible for the movies’ color schemes.
This sums up the problem with the Literature award very well. A literature prize (in the sense of best writer), where the comparison is between writers in multiple languages, makes no sense at all. How many people can read Byelorussian? A prize given out to the best English language writers would be interesting for Americans. If you want to read Russian literature in translation, maybe the existence of a prize for Russian authors, awarded by a jury of Russian speakers, would be helpful in choosing which authors to read.
However, that is not what the Nobel Prize for Literature is supposed to do anyway, according to Nobel's original bequest. Its actually supposed to go to the writer who has done the most for humanity. Giving it to a journalist who wrote about the Chernobyl disaster makes perfect sense and is in accordance with the original bequest. You can reasonably give such an award without necessarily knowing the language the author wrote in. They got away from this in the middle of the twentieth century and gave the prize to alot of great authors who wrote in English, German, and the Romance languages, which is what got everyone confused.
… How many people can read Byelorussian? …
In fact, she wrote her works in Russian, not Belarusian (current
spelling- I know, it’s hard to keep track of all those changes). She
was also criticized for speaking Russian, and not Belarusian, in a TV
interview in Minsk.
As far as I know Belarus has not produced a great writer who wrote
in Belarusian. The Russian (and to a lesser extent, Polish) cultural
influences have been that strong. Plus it’s a small country of only 10
million people which has only been independent for a couple of decades.
Ukraine, despite its much larger population (42 million but falling rapidly)
has only really produced one great Ukrainian-language writer – Taras
Shevchenko – and that was back in the 19th century.
… The Swedish elite has always hated Russia …
It’s been said that there is no greater visceral fear in Sweden
than the fear of Russia. They still remember how Sweden was
humiliated, after repeatedly invading Russia and Poland, by
Peter the Great of Russia in the Battle of Poltava (1709).
Poltava is just north of Kiev. What were the Swedes doing
north of Kiev? Good question. They were suffering, just
like Napoleon and Hitler a century or two later, from
delusions of grandeur – is one possible answer.
After the decisive defeat at Poltava, the Swedes thought it
wise to turn neutral
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Swedish_War_(1741%E2%80%9343)
...and then they invaded Russia a generation later to try to regain some power:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Swedish_War_(1788%E2%80%9390)
...and then they lost the final bits of Finland in a war where it's not really clear who to blame for aggression since it's a part of the general chaos of the Napoleonic era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_War
Sweden would have lost everything in 1809 if it weren't for the British freaking out about the idea of Russian ports in Scandinavia and sending the Royal Navy and a team of diplomats to bail them out. Sweden turning pacifist and neutral is all about geography - Britain doesn't want to annex a large territory on the mainland but it wants to deny it to Russia, hence Sweden has good reasons to expect aid even in the absence of a treaty.
Svetlana Alexievich isn’t well known in Russia (apart from professional literati circles). From what I’ve read on her in the past day suggests she is a classical Russian liberal/pro-Western Belorussian nationalist type who moves in Dmitry Bykov’s circles. This is not surprising since she was born in Ivano-Frankivsk, far west Ukraine.
But Bykov at least is famous for his literary work and would have been a plausible Nobel Prize candidate from the (liberal) Russian-speaking world. As I said above, her existence was news to me and all the other Russians I’m familiar with. So this is an obviously political decision, probably motivated by some combination of (1) the Belorussian elections being this weekend and (2) the desire to increase the percentage of women getting Nobels.
Novaya Gazeta is the flagship liberal publication in Russia. Whenever Russia has some dispute with the US, it can be counted upon to take an editorial stance in favor of the latter. Useless Nobel Peace Prize continues to be useless.
If the Father of Lobotomy can win a Nobel, then why not the Obamediocrity?
Lots of folks were butthurt when Arafat won.
It's been said that there is no greater visceral fear in Sweden
than the fear of Russia. They still remember how Sweden was
humiliated, after repeatedly invading Russia and Poland, by
Peter the Great of Russia in the Battle of Poltava (1709).
Poltava is just north of Kiev. What were the Swedes doing
north of Kiev? Good question. They were suffering, just
like Napoleon and Hitler a century or two later, from
delusions of grandeur - is one possible answer.
After the decisive defeat at Poltava, the Swedes thought it
wise to turn neutral
Sweden didn’t turn neutral after Poltava, they remained an aggressor and invaded Russia a few decades later to try to regain their power:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Swedish_War_(1741%E2%80%9343)
…and then they invaded Russia a generation later to try to regain some power:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Swedish_War_(1788%E2%80%9390)
…and then they lost the final bits of Finland in a war where it’s not really clear who to blame for aggression since it’s a part of the general chaos of the Napoleonic era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_War
Sweden would have lost everything in 1809 if it weren’t for the British freaking out about the idea of Russian ports in Scandinavia and sending the Royal Navy and a team of diplomats to bail them out. Sweden turning pacifist and neutral is all about geography – Britain doesn’t want to annex a large territory on the mainland but it wants to deny it to Russia, hence Sweden has good reasons to expect aid even in the absence of a treaty.
It took them awhile to get around to it but I think most
historians would agree that the Battle of Poltava was a decisive
inflection point, particularly because it established Russia
as a power not to be trifled with.
In the Slavonic world the Battle of Poltava is celebrated for
the decisive Slavic victory over the Germanic colonialists,
similarly to the Battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg) (1410)
in eastern Pomerania in which the Polish-Lithuanian forces
won a decisive victory over the Teutonic Knights (those
cuddly crusading monks)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Swedish_War_(1741%E2%80%9343)
...and then they invaded Russia a generation later to try to regain some power:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Swedish_War_(1788%E2%80%9390)
...and then they lost the final bits of Finland in a war where it's not really clear who to blame for aggression since it's a part of the general chaos of the Napoleonic era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_War
Sweden would have lost everything in 1809 if it weren't for the British freaking out about the idea of Russian ports in Scandinavia and sending the Royal Navy and a team of diplomats to bail them out. Sweden turning pacifist and neutral is all about geography - Britain doesn't want to annex a large territory on the mainland but it wants to deny it to Russia, hence Sweden has good reasons to expect aid even in the absence of a treaty.
Yes, the Swedes thought it wise to turn neutral eventually.
It took them awhile to get around to it but I think most
historians would agree that the Battle of Poltava was a decisive
inflection point, particularly because it established Russia
as a power not to be trifled with.
In the Slavonic world the Battle of Poltava is celebrated for
the decisive Slavic victory over the Germanic colonialists,
similarly to the Battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg) (1410)
in eastern Pomerania in which the Polish-Lithuanian forces
won a decisive victory over the Teutonic Knights (those
cuddly crusading monks)
Coates just won a Kirkus Prize ($50,000). One more needed for a Trifecta. The National Book Awards will be announced Nov. 18 in New York.