7th
The literary world is up in arms over comments by a member of the Nobel Prize literature committee about the insularity of American writers compared to their European counterparts.
Now, I take it as a truism that American literature as a whole since WWII has been the best literature in the world: the most diverse, the most ambitious, the most contentious, and constantly replenished by recent immigrants who somehow failed to get the memo that literature doesn’t matter anymore. As Martin Amis once said of the quality of American book reviewing—it has been “chasteningly high.” There’s really no serious argument there.
But what if you took Europe as a whole, just as one takes Europe as a whole when calculating the relative size of its economy vs. the US? That would be tougher, especially if you threw in the Russians. On the other hand, if you gave us the English and the South Africans (and Australians, and Canadians)—lots of whom live in America!—then we win again. Anyway, lots of food for thought here, clearly.
Speaking of living in America, there’s a pretty good short story by the famous Dutch writer Arnon Grunberg up at the website of the pretentious literary magazine n+1.
He spent one whole evening scouring the ads in fascination. This, in fact, was scientific research too. He was studying the fantasies of others. But it went no further than studying. Not until one week later, when he resumed his scientific research into the fantasies of others and responded to an ad. The answer was silence.
It’s a warning to all would-be online daters. And also all would-be Tumblr daters. Which reminds me that I’ve been meaning to apologize—I had no idea, until recently, that Tumblr was just a glorified dating site. And here I’ve been writing long philosophical essays. I’m like one of those people who in a fit of desperation writes a long screed about “what’s wrong with dating” in the Craigslist dating section. I’ll tell you what’s wrong with dating, dude. But, yeah, that’s me. If I’d known this was a dating site I’d have just gotten a Wordpress blog, like a dork.
Anyway, to get back to this Nobel business. I have to confess that it’s a bit of a relief, that no American is going to win the prize this year, because it means Bob Dylan is not going to win. I’ve been convinced for years that Bob Dylan was up next. And of course I like Bob Dylan as much as the next guy, but it’s going to be a real drag when he wins the Nobel Prize for Literature. It’s just going to be really annoying. So I’m happy that’s being put off for at least a year.
On the other hand, I just watched Paul Newman as Andrew Craig, the raffishly charming Nobel Laureate—for literature—in The Prize. And I would like to ask the Swedish Academy: If you don’t choose an American, who, exactly, is going to charm the press, save the kidnapped German physicist, and get the girl? Mm?
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