Nobel Mexican Standoff
Sergio Leone famous mexican standoff revisited with Philip Roth, Amos Oz and Doris Lessing. Of course Lessing plays the Good!
Gossip is out that some of the Nobel jury members strongly disagreed with the decision. Oh well, you can´t always award the prize just for political reasons (as last year's Pamuk and 2000 Xingjian). And I do not quite remember when was the last time the Nobel was awarded to someone that just wrote excellent books, no strings attached.
Amazingly, Lessing condenses all the reasons literature Nobel prizes have been awarded recently: She may die soon (Like Pinter), she is/was a communist (Like Saramago, Jelinek and Fo), she is/was a feminist (Like Morrison), she lived in different parts of the globe (namely Iran and Zimbabwe. So she´s a global author like Coetzee and Naipaul) and is/was an activist (Like Gordimer), she also has a comprehensive record of good quality publications (mandatory for any serious candidate, something Pynchon unfortunately lacks clearly).
Ironically Lessing received the news 2nd hand , as she was "out shopping" when the announcement was made.
Runners up like Oz, Roth, Updike, Kadare, McEwan, DeLillo, Murakami and Rushdie are either not enough of an activist or not old enough to win, although Roth and Murakami already have a Kafka prize (many Nobel laureates were beforehand awarded a Kafka).
Gossip is out that some of the Nobel jury members strongly disagreed with the decision. Oh well, you can´t always award the prize just for political reasons (as last year's Pamuk and 2000 Xingjian). And I do not quite remember when was the last time the Nobel was awarded to someone that just wrote excellent books, no strings attached.
Amazingly, Lessing condenses all the reasons literature Nobel prizes have been awarded recently: She may die soon (Like Pinter), she is/was a communist (Like Saramago, Jelinek and Fo), she is/was a feminist (Like Morrison), she lived in different parts of the globe (namely Iran and Zimbabwe. So she´s a global author like Coetzee and Naipaul) and is/was an activist (Like Gordimer), she also has a comprehensive record of good quality publications (mandatory for any serious candidate, something Pynchon unfortunately lacks clearly).
Ironically Lessing received the news 2nd hand , as she was "out shopping" when the announcement was made.
Runners up like Oz, Roth, Updike, Kadare, McEwan, DeLillo, Murakami and Rushdie are either not enough of an activist or not old enough to win, although Roth and Murakami already have a Kafka prize (many Nobel laureates were beforehand awarded a Kafka).
Labels: Literature
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