2009 Nobel for literature

J. M. G. Le Clezio won last year's Nobel for literature on Oct. 9--so we're probably around about a month away from a new Nobel laureate.

Here are the folks who decide on who that will be:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Academy

A few thoughts:

After last year's controversy over remarks made about American writers it wouldn't surprise me that the Academy tries to appease some of its critics here by naming an American writer. The last American winner I believe was Toni Morrison--some worthy candidates--Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, Don Delillo, Cormac McCarthy.

A Canadian has never won this prize and there are several who could be deemed worthy including--Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje and Anne Carson.

Not likely that a French or British writer wins this year--noting recent winners of the prize--Pinter, Lessing, Le Clezio.

Forget Rushdie--whether you like him or not his winning would cause too much controversy but it's very possible an African, Asian or South American wins. From Africa--the Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong'O, the Somalian Nuruddin Farah, the Nigerian Chinua Achebe. From Syria Adonis, the Lebanese Elias Khoury and the Algerian Assia Djebar. From Japan Haruki Murakami. From India--Amitav Ghosh. Then there is Israel's Amos Oz, David Grossman or A. B. Yehoshua. A favorite of mine from Peru--a perennial also ran Mario Vargas Llosa. Another guy always in the running Mexico's Carlos Fuentes.

I don't think it will be an European year. I will put in a few names:--Ireland's William Trevor, Spain's Juan Marse, Portugal's Antonio Lobo Antunes, Italy's Umberto Eco, Claudio Magris and Antonio Tabucchi, the Czech Republic's Milan Kundera and Arnost Lustig, Sweden's Tomas Transtromer, Holland's Harry Mulisch and Cees Nooteboom and Albania's Ismail Kadare--many of the above being the usual suspects from year to year.

And the Australians Peter Carey, Thomas Kenneally and Les Murray.

Not enough discussion for you over on the Prizes Group, lriley? :-)

Well, my vote goes to Djebar.

I thought I'd bring it here first avaland and Djebar would be a good one. For me it's the literature prize of all literature prizes--even though some of the choices made over the years have been not so good ones.

In a sense Djebar is kind of like Le Clezio--both write in French--though Djebar considers herself Algerian I believe she mostly lives in France--Le Clezio identifies at least as much with his Mauritanian roots as he does his French ones.

I'm sure there are a number of others who will be added to the list but if I were to make a short list off the above group it would be Roth, Lobo Antunes, Djebar, Vargas Llosa and Khoury.

Iriley, what a list in #1!

I love Cormac McCarthy - there would have been a time when I thought he was too genre-locked for the Nobel but recent novels have shown more diversity. If it goes to the US this year then I really hope it's not Roth - sorry but he just doesn't cut it for me. Don DeLillo does write well but I haven't seen the depth to his work that I think the Nobel requires.

For Canadians, I'm not sure that anyone springs to mind. Atwood is good but not that good. Same goes for Australia, I'm sorry to say.

In an ideal world, I'd love it to be Haruki Murakami but I don't think he'll get the nod quite yet. Or McCarthy. I think out of Iriley's list, despite to politics attached, Salman Rushdie truly deserves it ... I guess it partly depends how far the Nobel committee wants to 'stand out' as an independent literary body .. I don't think that they'd be afraid of courting controversy.

Just throwing a few Swedish side notes in the ring here :)

An interesting aspect is that the Academy has changed it's secretary in the past year. While membership in the Academy is for life, being secretary is the most prolific assignment, and one that is usually taken for a decade or so before passing the honor on. The changing of secretary has often marked new directions when it comes to the prize, as the secretary tends to be the academy's most influential member. It's considered a "truth" that resigning secretary Horace Engdahl is behind winners such as Lessing, Jelinek, Pinter, Fo, Grass and Le Clezio.

Perhaps Horace Engdahl stepping down and Peter Englund stepping up will mean other strains of writing than contemporary, stylish, often political prose and drama will dominate? Englund is a historian, and well established as a writer of acessible and popular historical biographies.

Lots of strong names from lriley. Most of them very plausible in my book.

I agree Rushdie is out of the question. There are still empty chairs in the Academy (two members having refused to attend since the controversy around the Academy's passivity when Rushdie became a marked man), and without that internal issue being solved first, it just won't happen.

There's been lots of talk of the under-representation of poetry in the later years. I love Tranströmer, but I think a Swede is out of the question. We threw way too many prizes our own way in the early 1900-s, so that balance is just too tilted. My money is on Adonis this time.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the under-representation of poetry could stem from a lack of great poetic talents out there right now. I'm not saying there is no talent but before I posted in #4, I wracked my brains for a poetic equivalent to Heaney or Szymborska and came up sorely wanting ...

I think Denmark's Inger Christensen would have been very worthy, and she's often been mentioned as a potential, but she passed away last year, alas.

klarasu, Murakami would indeed be an exciting choice, but like you, I'm guessing it's too soon.

I'd like to see Mario Vargas Llosa win the award, due to his productive career, the excellent quality of his work, and his influence on literature in South America and beyond. I think that Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Antonio Lobo Antunes or Ha Jin would also be excellent choices.

I try not to mention people who have died recently. Technically a writer is still eligible if I'm not mistaken up to 5 years after their death. I have serious doubts though that the Academy is going to nominate anyone who has died. It would kind of kill all the hoopla that exists around the award--the dinner, the speeches etc. etc. Not only Inger Christensen but Belgium's Hugo Claus would be another one who would be there otherwise.

Rushdie is a hit and miss writer to me. Some of his work is excellent--some of it not so hot. Vargas Llosa might be somewhat comparable but he's more consistently good IMO. I'd say the same with Roth. Anyway I just don't see the Academy courting the kind of blowback that might come with choosing Rushdie which is one of the reasons I inserted Ghosh onto the list more or less a non controversial Indian replacement with some excellent work of his own.

Personally as far as poets I love the Chilean Nicanor Parra--but he is in his mid 90's so I left him off. I also excluded the Argentinian Ernesto Sabato for the same reason because he is in his late 90's. Yves Bonnefoy is a French poet often mentioned but it's not a year for another Frenchman/woman. Ko Un a Korean poet has been mentioned in the past. Of the list in #1 other poets or writers with a lot of poetry in their work--Ondaatje, Atwood, Carson, Adonis and Murray.

Two other Americans I think might be possibilites--Paul Auster, Thomas Pynchon.

9 - The hoopla: Then again, they gave it to Jelinek, knowing fully well she's a hermit with social phobia... But yes, I'm sure you're right. The prize hasn't been given posthumously since it's very early days (Karlfeldt, back when the Academy loved throwing glory on it's own members...), and I think something exceptional would have to occur for that to change.

Pynchon would be an interesting choice in this aspect...

#8--Relatively speaking compared to many of the others mentioned Ha Jin is a young guy at 53 who has been writing since 1990 and does not have the body of work of many of the others. That's not altogether a disqualifier but it might work against him. My favorite Nobel writer is Halldor Laxness who won it when he was even younger--50 I believe. I think he's a very realistic candidate though and that with time his chances will get exponentially better. For now I think Thiong'O, Lobo Antunes and Vargas Llosa are the better bets.

#10--Of the group you associate with Engdahl in #5 I like Grass, Fo and Le Clezio much more than Lessing, Jelinek and Pinter. There is definitely a left-leaning sway there though if you're looking for it. So one can easily and reasonably argue that more recent choices may have more than artistic merit and some political bias behind them. Pynchon might run against the grain a bit there. Personally I'd prefer David Foster Wallace to him but he's among the deceased now. Some of the writers here I like and some I don't know all that well and some I don't like much. I'm not trying to throw out names. I'm working somewhat off of lists from previous years--the majority of them I have read and some quite a lot of.

I agree with you Larry, Jin is a longer shot...but Pamuk was only 54 when he won the award, and it seems as though his body of work when he won is comparable to, if not less than, that of Jin.

I was also trying to think of other Chinese authors who would merit consideration. Bei Dao? Others?

12 Whereas I clearly prefer Lessing, Jelinek and Pinter to Grass, Fo or Le Clezio :) I think you're absolutely right when it comes to politics. I don't think a political agenda is necessarily a bad thing for a writer, but it's seems to me that the Academy in recent years have been showing a taste for writers involved in current social and political issues.

That was the point I was trying to make with new secretary Englund - it'll be interesting to see if this means the prize will start going in other directions in the years to come. It's often been apparent in the past.

Oh, and when I mentioned Pynchon it was in relation to the "hoopla". I'm guessing you have a better chance seeing a diseased writer at the ceremony in Stockholm than him.

Honestly,

I don't think there are any Americans who measure up to the prize, except for Ana Castillo. Other writers:
Per Olav Enquist (Sweden).
Tahar Ben Jelloun (Morocco).
Josef Škvorecký (Czech)

#13--Asian writers are a particular weak area of mine. Got to say there's other people who could comment on it better. More modern Russian writers are also drawing a blank beyond Victor Pelevin.

#14--In respect to that I tend to lean left myself. So I'm not really interested in arguing about their respective political views though I can see where some might want to. The truth for me is that in the cases of both Jelinek and Fo--they were writers I was more or less unaware of at the time that they won. I think sometimes part of the fun is saying 'Who?' and then going out and finding out what you've been missing. Then again you like it when it's someone whose work you've known and enjoyed for a long time.

#15--Ladbroke's (?)--I think I'm spelling it right--an English betting firm takes odds on writers every year it seems. It's a major list to work off and Pynchon makes the cut. From last years list--the names I haven't mentioned yet include Bei Dao (who Darryl mentions in #13), Gitta Sereny, Herta Muller, Ian McEwen, James Ngugi, Mahasweta Devi, A. S. Byatt, David Malouf, Ernesto Cardenal, F. Sionel Jose, Marge Piercy, Maya Angelou, Willy Kyrklund, Adam Zagajewski, Beryl Bainbridge, E. L. Doctorow, Eeva Kilpi, John Banville, Jonathan Little, Julian Barnes, Mary Gordon, Michel Tournier, Patrick Modiano, Rosalind Belben, Vassilis Aleksakis, William H. Gass and Bob Dylan.

#16--Ben Jelloun IMO would fit in very well as would Skvorecky who could also cover the Canadian angle as he's been living in Toronto for what must be about 30 years. Enqvist I don't know very much about.

I love your inclusion of Anne Carson, who I think is a brilliant and much overlooked poet. I'd also vote for Atwood -- versatile, universal, funny. I'm ashamed to admit I've not read many of the others, but Roth I find very insular. I like Rushdie, but probably not the Nobel's cup of tea.

As for young Nobelists, Garcia-Marquez was 55 when he won.

i'd love to see either Ghosh or Murakami win - but i was thinking they would be perceived as "too banal" - or maybe as i've read just about everything each has put out- too "popular." But thanks for having them on the shortlist!

Poets...who are still living...maybe Miloz? maybe Pinsky? or Gjertrud Schnackenberg?

>15 GingerbreadMan: BTW, James Ngugi was the baptismal name of Ngugi wa Thiong'o.

#18--Carson is probably a long shot. Long shots have won before though. Jane Urquhart and Alistair MacLeod are two other Canadians I like a lot. MacLeod I wouldn't think had any shot as his work has only been published a handful of times.

#19--Czeslaw Milosz is a Nobel winner and he died a few years ago. Pinsky may be a possibility. Schnackenberg I've never heard of. Someone to add to my list though.

#20--You're right. Kind of embarrassed about that one Darryl. I don't know why it didn't register.

urp...obviously need to check before i post. When i was thinking of Miloz, i was actually thinking mostly of his translations of Anna Swir (long deceased) anyway.

Maybe Bei Dao, probably the leading "Misty" poet associated w/ the pro-democracy mvt in China. I've (of course) only read him in translation and the Nobel committee would probably not want to offend China by awarding him, or Gu Cheng (my favorite of the misties(?)) the prize.

>17 lriley: - bookmakers will put anyone on the list if someone wants to place a bet on them. You can walk into Ladbrokes, say what bet you want to place and then will work out appropriate odds - they even have a 'literature' expert that determines the odds for the major literary prizes.

It would seem unlikely that another English language author win will it as there has been a few over the last decade or so. If they were to go down that route the three most likely candidates are Roth, Atwood and Achebe; with Oates, Carey, et al behind them.

No Spanish language writer for 19 years is quite a large time gap considering literature in Spanish is flourishing. There is no lack of candidates here - as well as the ones previously mentioned there is Javier Marias, and two winners of the Neustadt Prize: Alvaro Mutis & Claribel Alegria (both poets).

I like the idea of Skvorecky - he is a good writer and did a lot to publish other Czech writers in English (and Czech) but that shouldn't influence the decision. Bearing that in mind, it would be difficult to give him the award ahead of Kundera.

If Murikami were to win I would demand mandatory drug testing for members of the panel.

Ditto for Atwood. ATWOOD, really? Come on! How about James Patterson?

You are all much more well read than I, so I'm enjoying reading all this but am not really able to comment except with respect to authors I've read. I would be happy to see Roth, Ngugi, Vargas LLosa, or Doctorow win -- I think they not only are great writers but have enough of a body of work. Thanks for all the great ideas for writers I should be reading!

Murr, I am not as big an Atwood fan as some people here on LT, but come on! I once read about 10 pages of a James Patterson book because someone forced it on me and really . . . no way they should be named in the same breath!

#17> Bob Dylan

lriley, tell me you were joking, please!!!!

Of course I'm joking, but ATWOOD? Puhleeeeeze.
Bob Dylan over Atwood any day.

Bob Dylan over Atwood any day.
Barf. The last thing we need is another populist bow from the keepers of high culture. (How many people realize that David Lang and not Bob Dylan won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2008? Not many, I'd bet, since the newspapers led with "BOB DYLAN HONORED WITH PULITZER" (....Prize committee special citation) and relegated David Lang's prize to the last paragraph, if they mentioned it at all.)

And since I'm here and should contribute productively, I'll be rooting for Ngugi. :)

Barf too.

>27 tomcatMurr: I suspect Murr, that you don't get Atwood. And perhaps there is an assumption that popularity or prolificness (as in the case of Oates) somehow negates literary excellence. These are common barbs thrown at women writers, in particular (see: 19th century, Hawthorne).

Imo, it took Atwood to put Canada on the global map. She is has been a tireless campaigner since the 60s for CanLit, for a CanLit. She's the reason many of us found Munro, Laurence, Urquhart...etc.

I like what I've read of Urquhart, but she doesn't hold a candle to Atwood and Munro.

All this said, I'd still vote for Djebar :-)

#23--I agree. But tell me how strange it is that Claudio Magris for the last two years has been the odds on favorite at Ladbroke's to win the prize when it seems as if there's very few people who have even heard of him let alone read anything by him? I can only think that you're partially right and that there is some other factor involved.

#26--As far as Bob Dylan. There has been some support for that idea for several years. I didn't come up with it on my own.

#31--The other thing with Atwood is she is quite a good poet as well. Some prefer her poetry to her fiction.

As an Italian, and even though I like him, I cannot see Claudio Magris winning the Nobel Prize.

I knew you did not come up with Bob Dylan on your own, lriley, but I was just appalled at the mere idea he might be a candidate. For pete's sake, how can he be compared to names such as the ones mentioned above? Whoever came up with that suggestion must be delusional.
I had no idea the man has written works of relevance or done anything for the literature of the US, but only ever thought he is a songwriter. Am I mistaken?

I hesitate to comment because poetry isn't my area, but I want to say that I've read poetry experts who maintain that Bob Dylan's lyrics do not hold up on their own, and they only have merit as lyrics in combination with music.

>33 lriley: you don't have to sell me:-)

>34 aluvalibri:, 35 I'm pretty appalled at the idea of Dylan as a candidate also. It reminds me of when some of McCartney's lyrics were published as poetry a number of years ago. Oy! Very bad as poetry.

in re Dylan - duh..i love a specific era in his songwriting - the moment when he went electric - Bringing it all back home, Hiway61 Revisited and Blonde and Blonde - and the obscure and oblique, sometimes nonsensical, but often snarlingly bitter words work terrifically well as an integral component of a set of songs. But I don't read them - i listen to them. But then i'd say the same about the clever lyrics of Ira Gershwin, Loesser, Harry Connick. You read them if you want to learn a song and there are phrases you can't pull off the lp/cd.

Dylan like Springsteen is an american icon. His first Woody Guthrie activist stage before he went electric is a bit before my time (or at least I would have been extremely young back then) but addressed many social and political themes. He was unique for those times--a real path breaker. Turning to the electric caused a mini revolt in his own fan base but opened up and expanded that base and allowed the merger between folk, rock and jazz that pretty much set in motion much of what happened in the 60's.

Which is not to say that I think he'd be a good pick either and honestly his activism died down a long time ago and even though now and again he's tried to revive the fire a little he pretty much has had his day.

I agree with you Bob. However, there are some excellent lyrics in the works of Ira Gershwin and Cole Porter that stand alone as poetry, much better than Bob Dylan. BD has had a huge impact on American culture beyond just writing songs, but not necessarily in the world of literature, as Aluvalibri says. And it is after alll a literature prize. I don't seriously think that BD is a Nobel candidate of course, but neither do I agree that Atwood is.

I'm not denying at all that Atwood has done a lot for Canadian lit, and hats off to her for that. I just don't think her work is as profound or as universal as other Nobel winners. And sorry, but her poetry really is dreadful, imo, with no life of its own beyond a momentary arresting of attention. It's little more than advertising copy, like most contemporary poetry.

And avaland, that barb may be thrown at Atwood by others, but certainly not by me. I certainly don't think that popularity and prolificness are incompatible with excellence: my two adored writers of all time were both hugely prolific and hugely popular: Dickens and Dostoevsky, and massively excellent on all fronts!

Nor do I have a problem with the fact that Atwood is a woman. It makes no difference to me at all what gender a writer is: what matters to me is the quality of the writing. of course it's utterly wrong to denigrate worthy writers simply on account of their gender. By the same token, however, please note, it is also wrong to promote unworthy ones for the same reason.

You're right. I just don't get Atwood. But it has nothing to do with the reasons you think. I just don't think she writes well, and her concerns and her vision seem to me to be trite. but I know I am in a minority here. I wish I did like her: there would be more for me to read!!!!

Anyway.

In 1953, Churchill won the Nobel for a non-fiction work. Are there any non-fiction writers that people think might/should win. AFAIK there hasn't been a non-fiction winner since that time.

Magris writes nonfiction. Even his so-called "fiction" is informed by his philosophical, historical and literary studies, and his autobiography. I'd be de-light-ed to see him win.

Murr -
this is one of the odd times i'll stand by my disagreement. Clever rhyme schemes and wordplay are fun, can make for excellent songs, but aren't generally adequate in their own write. (sorry John). Occasionally the reverse works - though most often it fails. But a relatively minor, but still lovely and delicate poem, Sara Teasedale's "I shall not care" became a very pretty, brief, song by the hyper-precious Pearls before Swine, i think when i was still in high school. Since my father had read that to me years before, i imagine i was in a rather small minority of fans of obscure folk rock groups who knew the words...
"when i am dead/ And over me bright April/ Shakes out her rain drenched hair...."

Paul Simon, for example, became a much better songwriter once he stopped trying to be a "poet." ie "The boy in the bubble" vs (ugh) "the sounds of silence" which was ONLY saved by Tom Wilson's(?) great bass line on the 2nd version. Bass player names could well be off..what 42 yrs since i owned that POS? I'll take "The universe is permeated w/ the odor of kerosene" half-scream that opens Gonn's "The blackout of Gretley" 8 days a week instead.

It might just be the impact of a splitting headache, but, right now i suspect that every now and again, a few of Lou Reed's lyrics might end up reading well - BUT i haven't actually approached them that way. But still, his best songs, were "straight" songs - not thematically, perhaps, but structurally. "Waiting for the man" might work alone on paper (no guarantees) ; but Sunday Morning, a pure "song" off the same album, iirc, is a far better song and quite a chillingly brilliant portrayal of paranoia. Obviously my opinion only. Though Reed i get the impression that Reed thinks of himself as a "poet."

You're right. I just don't get Atwood. But it has nothing to do with the reasons you think. I just don't think she writes well, and her concerns and her vision seem to me to be trite. but I know I am in a minority here.

*stands up in defence of Murr's position* I agree!

>41 bobmcconnaughey: - the bass player was Bob Bushnell. (Wilson was also behind Dylan going to electric, in the early 60s he over-dubbed a few of his songs to show him what could be achieved by going that way). The last I heard Reed wasn't comparing himself to poets but to short story writers. Then again, Reed really is a tosser and should shut up and just play his guitar. (I don't hear crap from John Cale and, overall, his solo career has been much more interesting).

Perhaps the committee will be in debate and someone will say that s/he can't sit through another acceptance speech about the importance of literature, the decline of literary thought in the world, etc, and suggest that if they give the prize to Dylan then he could play a short concert and everyone would be much happier.

-->39 tomcatMurr:
Elias Canetti became a Nobel Laureate in 1981 on the basis of his non-fiction, so it is done occasionally. His only novel is, in my opinion, awful.

As an aside, can anyone remember a year in which the public guessed right about the Nobel prize for literature? They seem to enjoy keeping us on our toes.

Lou could've stopped after ... the first 3 post VU lps and I'd hold him in a lot higher overall regard. Some good songs post VU, but not surpassed and often far below the VU quality.

I went back to read a bit about Bei Dao, and his poems have been used for a fair bit of Chinese R&R lyics. And I WISH i could find the first book i read on the history of Russian rock/pop. Some serious poets contributed lyrics and, from what i'd read in translation, taken as a group, the first wave of Soviet rockers really approached and attained poetry in their lyrics. I remember looking several times in the 15 yrs since then for that specific book, sans title, but in the UNC library, but published by a Sov. press, as the translated lyrics were often quite astonishing. Why this personal reading history on this thread IS a good thing...I'm inclined to think the book was deaccessioned or stolen because i really have searched UNC's stacks diligently multiple times. Pre rock, there was a cohort of poet/singers who, too, had some fascinating and highly literate lyrics, drawing more, however, on traditional Russian genres (at least from my reading). Maybe if i retrieve some ancient emails i can dig up this missing book, cause i did copy out and email some lyrics to a on line book discussion group i've belonged to since the mid-90s.

The Czech group, Pulnoc, sort of the successors to the Plastic People of the universe, also sported interesting lyrics. Some were sung in Czech, others English..my cd next door in in our general store..has translations.

"song for Nico" Pulnoc

Terror encircles me
Every night
It plants a black flower
By my side
It covers my breasts
With a heavy hand
And with its long claw
Gouges my sleep
It floods my soul
With black crows
One day, with their beaks
They will peck me to death
In the maw, maw, maw
In the mawning

or It's Dangerous

What once was has not departed
It still remains with me
And bears evil witness
To former shipwrecks
Old wrecks lie on the riverbottoom
A muddy home for fish and crawdads
What's happened? Why am I included?
They say the river never enters
The same person twice
But once you've seen those wrecks on the bottom
You'll never believe that old saw
I sit in the mud withy my eyes popping out
I scare the fish, I hunt the crawdads
What's happened? Why am I included?
I can't remember; it's dangerous

>44 GlebtheDancer: oh yes, thanks, I'd forgotten about Canetti.

Great lyrics Bob!

I'm NOT suggesting that these are "Nobel worthy" - but i do think they're worth considering as both lyrics and as respectable, thoughtful poetry. I happen to like Pulnoc more than their far more celebrated antecedent group, PPotU. But that's just me.

Amyway, this was an aside, triggered by the Dylan comment...apologies if it's too far off the blooded track.

>45 bobmcconnaughey: Bei Dao, World Literature Today did an issue (Nov/Dec 08) featuring him. The issue includes a speech he gave and, of course, poetry.

I found an article which features 13 poems by Bei Dao:

Thirteen poems

And here's the article that avaland mentioned from World Literature Today:

An interview with Bei Dao

This might be of interest, as it addresses the criteria used to make selections:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/articles/espmark/index.html

Don't want to get into a slagging match with others here about Margaret Atwood. Not my style. I am simply going to say that given her entire oeuvre (most of which I have read or studied) of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and her impact on Canadian Literature and expression of our culture, it is my considered opinion that Margaret Atwood deserves to stand proudly with any other nominee.

Oh, get off your high horse tiffin, you look ridiculous from underneath. It's not a slagging match it's a discussion. Some people think like you do, some like I do.

The article is very interesting. Thanks for posting the link.

#44 As an aside, can anyone remember a year in which the public guessed right about the Nobel prize for literature? They seem to enjoy keeping us on our toes.

I'm out of my league in this conversation (I've read maybe 4-5 candidates), but Orhan Pamuk comes to mind. He won in 2006 - and I recall the NYTimes talked about him being the leading Nobel candidate in 2004 or 2005 - after Snow was released in English.

No high horses here. Also not my style. Just making it clear that I wasn't entering into an argument but was expressing my opinion. I'll reword it to "don't want to get into", which should make that clearer.

Thanks, tiffin, you were far more articulate than I regarding Atwood. I felt a bit reticent about making broad statements about CanLit not being a Canadian and all...

And thanks for the link to the (rather long) article. I found it quite interesting, especially around interpretation of "ideal". And I found the bits about the various 'periods' and the history of the criticism, also interesting.

53 Le Clézio had also been a name much talked about for the last couple of years. I think he even had the lowest odds at Ladbrokes, causing suspicions of a leak in the Academy last year...

To toot my own horn a bit I actually got Grass right in 1999. Yessireebob.

Also want to clarify, since I've seen the word used to some extent in this thread, that there are no nominees as such for the Nobel prize. No shortlist, just a lot of hush hush until the announcement. Which is part of the fun, I think. The day of the announcement is the one day all of Sweden revolves around literature - people taking breaks at work gathering around radios and TV sets.

I listen breathlessly to NPR on my drive to work that day.

that there are no nominees as such for the Nobel prize. thanks, GbM. I didn't know what else to call the mysterious group of hush hushees so misused the term.

ETA: didn't misuse it after all, apparently. Should have reread my own Nobel link.

#56--I have been a big Le Clezio fan for years so I was very happy with it. Last year I made a list of 5 favorites and he was one of them--though that's not the same as thinking he was going to win. The one year I guessed right was with Coetzee. The year Pamuk won I think a lot of people guessed right but I didn't think he would.

Anyway there have been a number of total surprises for me--like Fo, Jelinek, Soyinka, Kertesz, Saramago e.g. who I'd never heard of before and that can be fun as well. Time to find out what you've been missing.

>56 GingerbreadMan: But the article that tiffin linked to in #51 - on the Nobel site - describes the process: who can nominate, how they whittle down the list...etc. In that article the words 'nominee' and 'shortlist' are used. It may not be a public list of nominees and shortlisted authors, but it certainly sounds like they have them.

>56 GingerbreadMan:/60 - there certainly are nominees. According to the Nobel site details of prize nominees for any year is subject to a 50 year secrecy rule.
I remember when they opened some of the records up and it was revealed that Hitler was a Peace Prize nominee in 1939.

>61 Jargoneer: - Shocking...I'd like to learn more about that.

Stalin was nominated twice.

@58, 60, 61 I stand corrected, and apologise for waving my index finger. But I still maintain that there's a difference between the very public nominations, longlists and shortlists of most other literary prizes, and this secret list of the Academy and the Committee. My purpose was simply pointing out that the names discussed on this thread are not "official nominees", a la "It's got to be one of these".

Again, sorry if I am came off as trying to be a know-it-all.

#64--Ladbroke's betting list is not an official long or short list. There's really no way of knowing--it's just about guessing who may be there. Sometimes it turns out to be someone completely off almost everyone's charts.

I'd like to see Rohinton Mistry take the prize - an Asian born Canadian, so that would cover two parts of the world that have been overlooked. Unlike many authors, I will reread his works - when I get time!
Hats off to CanLit. Like it, love, hate it, whatever - in the past 20-25 yrs it's found its voice, and yes, Atwood has to take some credit if only for being someone to emulate.

>64 GingerbreadMan: I certainly see what you are saying. And if we realize who nominates or puts forth names, it explains the wide variety (of course, I only read about the literature prize, I have no idea who 'nominates' for the Peace prize).

But, if one looks at, say, all the nominations that come into the Impac/Dublin award from all the different libraries... we get an idea of how broad the range might also be for a Nobel.

>66 dihiba: now that would be an interesting tack for the Nobel to take, an era of recognizing great authors whose work is bi-national (I'm sure there is a better word for this but it's escaping me at the moment).

Ladbroke's finally started taking bets. Their top 10.

1. Amos Oz--4 to 1
2. Assia Djebar--5 to 1
3. Luis Goytisolo--6 to 1-->not his better known brother Juan--as far as I know Luis has yet to be translated into English.
4. Joyce Carol Oates--7 to 1
4. Philip Roth--7 to 1
6. Adonis--8 to 1
7. Antonio Tabucchi--9 to 1
7. Claudio Magris--9 to 1
7. Haruki Murakami--9 to 1
7..Thomas Pynchon--9 to 1

Pynchon's odds increase by writing mediocre books - why can't Ismail Kadare's odds increase by having great books translated and become more widely available.

I'm a Kadare fan; he beats everyone I have read on that list hands down (Oz, Oates, Roth, Murakami) save the best of Pynchon, but I think Pynchon is woefully uneven.

I'm heartened to see Djebar high on the list, who is high on my to be read list, thanks to strong recomendations from others here.

A lot of new names on the odds list this year:

http://www.ladbrokes.com/lbr_sports?action=go_generic_link&level=EVENT&k...

#71--Actually checking it against last year's--not too many new names and Kadare for some reason is not there--at least yet.

Luis Goytisolo's (at Ladbroke's site) name mispelled. He's never been translated into English while his more famous brother Juan has been many times. That one is curious.

>72 lriley:,

I have a theory about Goytisolo's inclusion. Last year Le Clezio won the Nobel. In the US at least, most of the people I knew said "Le Clezio - who?" Although his work had been translated into English, the nomination caught the US publishing world at least with its pants down. It's only now that I've begun to see Le Clezio filtering into the bookstores Tennesee bookstores at all. Consider, last year's comment from a member of the committee that US writers (and by implication US readers) are insular. Awarding the prize to a writer who has never been translated into English would deliver a well-deserved slap on the face to the US publishing and reading world. We need to move beyond the 3% mark in our publishing and our reading. This is not to offer any evaluation of Goytisolo's Nobel worthiness. Not having read him, I can't say. I assume he must be a good writer; otherwise people would not have included him as a possible Nobel candidate.

>73 urania1: - Le Clezio was translated for years, through the 60s and 70s, but never found an audience in the Anglophone world so they stopped translating him. It was less a case of publishers not knowing what they were doing than readers.

>70 A_musing: - there is a real problem with Kadare. A great number of people believe that he went along with a repressive regime - he definitely wrote one book praising it's achievements. This doesn't belittle his literary credentials but politically it could be a unpopular choice in parts of Europe.

#73--I agree that Le Clezio was relatively unknown but I had been picking up his books for years. The only one I don't have is Terra Amata--though I have read it. Le Clezio as well has had a home in New Mexico for quite some time and has taught off and on in American universities.

Like most I'm only familiar with Luis Goytisolo as a name. He merited mention in the Spanish section of the Oxford Guide to contemporary writing which would mean there is some regard for his work in his own country and I wouldn't mind checking him out. His brother Juan has quite a lot of his work translated into English and he is a high quality writer.

I'm not holding out to much hope that we're going beyond the 3% though--and keeping in mind that there are plenty of best selling authors--writing in series or genres who sell massive amounts of books even if the literary quality some of us sometimes might think leaves a little bit to be desired. (Hopefully people take that with the humor intended). More than most some here might wonder why Danielle Steele or Stephen King are never mentioned for the prize. But thankfully it's not a matter of just selling tons of books. Part of the appeal that the Nobel brings for me anyway is that people will open their eyes and minds to something beyond the usual. Anyway I think there are several American writers deserving of the prize along--as well as many, many non-Americans.

@68 Not a completely new direction, looking at (fairly) recent times. Naipaul springs to mind.

>74 Jargoneer: and 75
The publishing business has changed a lot over the last 40 years. Since the turn of the 20th to the 21st century, I have found it increasingly difficult to find good books in bookstores (i.e., books I felt were worth the money I spent on them). The market strategies used today set up certain books to be best-sellers before they ever come out. Special deals with bookstores in return for prominent displays, speaking tours, etc., all help form the best seller and almost everything else in publishing. To some degree, best-sellers are decided in advance.

The change in tax laws regarding unsold books, mergers between many of the major publishers, lack of quality editors, and the accountant mentality running the book business have all served to reduce our choices. If Le Clezio had been put before the public the way certain other writers have been, I think the sheer presence of his books on the shelf would have made an impact. I think that is now changing although the major publishing houses are stuck in a late 20th century mode of thinking. I would still argue that US publishers were caught with their pants down when Le Clezio won the Nobel. If anyone in the publishing industry had been ready, his books would have been on the shelves in the major book chains within weeks. At least in my part of the country, they have only arrived within the last two months.

#77--the major US publishers avoid the Le Clezio's because they don't sell enough. It's a niche that more specialized publishers like Dalkey Archive or New Directions (for two examples) have exploited for years. Throw in Archipelago as well. The major publishers want to hype what they're trying to sell. Not so much interested in something new or different--more interested in safe and comfortable. It's best for the bottom line. Foreign writers are 'foreign' especially if their source language is something other than English. There are some writers who have at least broken somewhat through that barrier.

The kind of hype that comes from winning the Nobel for an unknown writer like Le Clezio makes these publishers look like they got caught with their pants down. They would like to be in on it too though because at the end of the day business is business. The real sources though of international fiction and poetry made available in the United States though are going to continue to be the smaller publishers--like those mentioned above. I don't see that changing and it's probably for the good. If they became (or got gobbled up by) just another huge multi-national publishing company things would no doubt get a lot worse.

October 8th:

http://nobelprize.org/prize_announcements/literature/index.html

A speculative article from the people at yahoo:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091002/stage_nm/us_nobel_literature

>80 lriley: Interesting yahoo article. Thanks.

I note that Ladbroke has added Ismail Kadare to the list and put his odds near the top.

I'm going to bet, though, that it's Assia Djebar's year, based on the traditional metric that it is the person with the best odds whom I haven't read (yet).

>82 A_musing: If Djebar happens, I will be dancin' !

So when do we start the LT betting? How many books does one need to buy into the pool?

An alternative method of betting for those inclined to Djebar--a look over at Abebooks finds very few signed copies of her work. There is a trade paperback of Fantasia that can be had relatively cheap. It won't be around two minutes after her name is announced if she is the one. BTW I do have a signed copy of her So vast a prison.

Complete Review says it will be Herta Muller:

http://www.complete-review.com/new/new.html

Hmmm . . . I've only read Muller's The Land of Green Plums. It was good as I recall, but Nobel material? Of course, one can't judge an author by one book only.

I would not ever want to disagree with Complete Review which I usually admire BUT

I would bet my mortgage on it NOT being Herta Muller.

Can you say "Elfriede Jelinek"????

Muller is too much like that in too many ways.

It will not be a German-speaker for a long long time.

Oz is likelier, Adonis, Djebar, Magris, the Americans, Lustig, Kundera....

or perhaps even someone we have not thought of.

I can't really comment on Muller. I've never read her. I've heard comparisons to Jelinek however. I've read Jelinek three times and I don't think that I'm going down that road again. I wouldn't say she was completely undeserving though. She has talent and a certain verve. There are worse Nobel laureates IMO.

Personally it's been a long time since an African, or a South American/Spanish writer won. We're still waiting for a Canadian--and there are really not a lot of Asians either.

I was going to look up books by Muller, until Andrew's comparison of her to Jelinek. I hated The Piano Teacher, and you would have to pay me before I read another book by her.

One problem with the Piano Teacher is that it's not really any different in tone, style or content than the other two books of her I've read. Can Muller really be the same?

Herta Muller is the winner.

I would bet my mortgage on it NOT being Herta Muller.
You didn't, did you polutropos?

She won the Impac Dublin prize some years ago.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gn-_m0gOLDlyXymX2CJHcV5HexsgD9...

Oh well, after the excellence of last year's pick, we must resign ourselves to a year of relative mediocrity. The Land of Green Plums is good. You might like it kizdoc.

WOW!!!!!

It is a damn good thing I no longer do serious betting.

I am stunned and obviously could not be any more wrong.

I continue to think of her similar to Jelinek in many ways and she is a German speaker just a few years after another German speaker. I would love to have been there during those deliberations.

So many deserving candidates and...

So do the people at the Complete Review have an inside tip?

Herta who?

Disappointed here.

Well, my favorite (Kadare) and some of our friends' favorites (like Djebar) didn't make it, but it's an opportunity to discover some new stuff. I have a sister who is at a theatre festival in Belgrade as we speak (write?) and I'll be interested in thoughts from the Balkans.

Any good translations of her poetry? Good reviews or discussions?

Baffled here. I am not the best read person on earth (and certainly not in this group), but I had never heard of her before yesterday.

I picked up a Herta Muller after noticing that she was one of the few women who have won the Impac Dublin prize. I'm not sure how much of hers has been translated.

citizenkelly is on location in Germany, and a translator to boot, we should entice her over here to say more. . .

Never Herta her! Get it? Get it?

OK, I'll go grade papers now.

Herta Muller Bibliography from The Complete Review

Highlighted titles are under review at the complete review

Nadirs - stories, 1982 (Niederungen, translated by Sieglinde Lug (1999); University of Nebraska publicity page;Amazon: US, UK, Deutschland)
Drückender Tango - stories, 1984
The Passport - novel, 1986 (Der Mensch ist ein großer Fasan auf der Welt, translated by Martin Chalmers (1989); Hanser publicity page; Amazon: US, UK, Deutschland)
Barfüßiger Februar - prose, 1987
Traveling on One Leg - novel, 1989 (Reisende auf einem Bein, translated by Valentina Glajar and Andre Lefevere (1998); Northwestern University Press publicity page; Amazon: US, UK)
Wie Wahrnehmung sich erfindet - 1990
Der Teufel sitzt im Spiegel - 1991
Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger - novel, 1992; Hanser publicity page; Amazon: Deutschland
Eine warme Kartoffel ist ein warmes Bett - 1992
Der Wächter nimmt seinen Kamm - 1993
Angekommen wie nicht da - 1994
The Land of Green Plums - novel, 1994 (Herztier, translated by Michael Hofmann (1996); International IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award (1998); Northwestern University Press publicity page, Metropolitan Books publicity page, Hanser publicity page; Amazon: US, UK, Deutschland)
Hunger und Seide - essays, 1995
In der Falle - 1996
The Appointment - novel, 1997 (Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet, translated by Michael Hulse and Philip Boehm (2001); Metropolitan publicity page; Amazon: US, UK, Deutschland)
Der fremde Blick oder Das Leben ist ein Furz in der Laterne - 1999
Im Haarknoten wohnt eine Dame - poetry, 2000
Heimat ist das, was gesprochen wird - 2001
Der König verneigt sich und tötet - essays, 2003 (Hanser publicity page; Amazon: Deutschland)
Die blassen Herren mit den Mokkatassen - collages, 2005 (Hanser publicity page; Amazon: Deutschland)
Atemschaukel - novel, 2009 (translation forthcoming; information page at new books in german; excerpt; Hanser publicity page; Amazon: Deutschland)
Please note that this bibliography is not necessarily complete.

Well, I don't really belong to this group, but I wanted to say that I find it very interesting to read the reactions to today's announcement, and it really shows how different the contemporary literary scene appears in various locations. From my swedish horizon Herta Müller has appeared to be one of the most probable choices for the award, especially this year but also earlier. Many critics here have mentioned her name in connection to the Nobel prize. Ladbrokes, the brittish booker, speaks of a "Schottenius effect" when Swedes started betting on Müller as the winner, after speculations on Swedish TV by said critic some days ago. (The odds eventually dropped fom 50/1 to 3/1 once the snowball got rolling.) It also caused some buzz when the entire Swedish Academy showed up to listen to a talk by Herta Müller last year. I watched a web-cast from the Swedish Television today when the laureate was announced. There were commentaries from a studio where a host was accompanied by one critic and one publisher. Minutes before the announcement they were asked who they thought would win and the critic (Ulrika Miller) said Herta Müller while the publisher (Stephen Farren-Lee) said Herta Müller or Amos Oz ...

I have not yet read anything by her and thus have no opinion regarding her merits.

#95: Thanks urania; most copies of that book seem to have been scarfed up earlier today. Lois (avaland) received information that The Passport, Müller's first book to be translated into English, will be re-released by Serpent's Tail Press on October 19th.

-->104 Annix:
I agree. There seems to be an element of 'we don't really know her so she can't be any good' going on. The Academy have never kowtowed to the English language publishing scene, and are right not to. The fact that Muller isn't big name in the English-speaking world doesn't preclude her being a great writer, or worthy laureate.

The NYT books page has a similar sentiment: "The winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature isn’t always a bolt-out-of-the-blue surprise, a writer whose work is known only to an elite fraction of American readers. It only seems that way."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/books/09prize.html?_r=1

@ 96 Then again, there has been four english language winners since the milennium (Naipaul, Coetzee, Pinter and Lessing). German is a big literary language after all. And let's not forget Müller is actually Romanian (even though the lack of sense of nationality seems a central part of her writing) - from a country never before awarded a prize.

Interesting to me is the fact that the prize has been given to three women in six years. Could be seen as the Academy being bent on shaping up some rather poor statistics. Or that a generation of female authors who have struggled and elbowed their way into the literary canon have finally reached an age where their careers are "Nobel material". Either way I applaude it.

The fact that Muller isn't big name in the English-speaking world doesn't preclude her being a great writer, or worthy laureate.

German is a big literary language after all.

Oh my freaking god, Ay-men!

OP - A Canadian has never won this prize

I was thinking Saul Bellow was Canadian. According to wikipedia he was born there and lived in Lachine, Quebec until he was 9. But, he's considered American.

German is a great European literary language, with a number of very deserving Nobelists, but unlike Arabic, Chinese, French, Spanish, English and even Urdu/Hindi, Portuguese and Persian, it is a fairly localized European language. Muller is actually interesting as a choice because she comes from the German-speaking but non-Germany based heritage, a heritage clearly on the decline.

So I don't dismiss >96 polutropos:'s surprise that there would be two Germans chosen in eight years, though I share >108 GingerbreadMan:'s dismay that there would be four English speakers in the same eight years (three of them residing in the UK at the time of their selection).

111 "a fairly localized European language". Oh, no argument there. Still, I would claim that as a literary language, looking at the writers that have used it and with it's tradition, it IS one of the big ones, bigger if you will than it's number of speakers or it's geographical spread would imply.

That said, the languages you name are in many cases extremely underrepresented. As far as I can recall (I could be wrong though) Mahfouz is to date the only Arabic writer awarded the prize. The same goes for Chinese and Xinjang.

Since 1999 we've had 4 English language winners and 3 German. Of the other winners, 3 have been European - the other Chinese but based in France. Interestingly, English and German language companies dominate the publishing landscape (but that's one for conspiracy theorists, as are the betting patterns for the last two years - both winners starting at 50-1 and then getting heavily backed close to the announcement).

Muller wasn't just a surprise in English language circles; other countries reported her win as surprising. She is currently not widely available in French and Spanish (nor has been translated much into Eastern European languages, according to one report).

It shouldn't be about the language or the availability to me, it should be about the quality of work. I haven't read Muller so I can't comment on that.

There is also a big difference between a surprise, which may well be very pleasant, and dismay or disappointed.

Muller surprises me - and I am looking forward to figuring out how pleasantly so. It may well be that the surprise comes from the incredible myopia of American bookstores and publishers.

But the Eurocentrism of the Nobels is beginning to mildly dismay me. I begin by assuming that there are deserving writers in every world language and in most significant localized ones, and that the Committee is blessed with a difficult choice from many great writers. I think we need more top worldwide prizes, and we need to recognize that the Nobels are not the apogee of global writing. Just a collection of really wonderful Western and Westernized ones.

As to the relative literary weight of German, Arabic and Persian -- I only wish I had the tools to figure that one out!

I'm only disappointed that Gore Vidal didn't win again. He is getting on a bit now and I had hoped this would be his year before he leaves us. I think that might have been the thinking behind the award to Doris Lessing: she should have had it yonks ago.

I congratulate Muller on her win, and look forward to reading some of her work when it reaches Taiwan.

Meanwhile, I have been reading this article by her, which seems as good a starting point as any.

http://www.signandsight.com:80/features/1910.html

>115 A_musing:
A_musing wrote "But the Eurocentrism of the Nobels is beginning to mildly dismay me."

Amen to that!

And the fact that Chinua Achebe has not yet been awarded the prize raises an increasing number of eyebrows over here.

Excellent article, Murr. Thanks for posting the link.

It shouldn't be about the language or the availability to me, it should be about the quality of work.

At that level the "possibles" are always worthy of the prize--in the literary sense. It's not like anyone's proposing that, e.g. Philip Roth is a worse writer than Vargas Llosa than Lessing than Le Clezio etc. And it doesn't reward a single work--although it sometimes cites a single title--which makes it even less like judging a 100-meter sprint, or even like other prizes given for a single novel, play etc.

#116

But didn't Vidal effectively stop writing quite some time ago?

I regret Kis and Sebald dying before they got it, most of all.

>119 LolaWalser: Well, he's recently only written essays and polemic and memoires, but he should still get it for the body of work he produced in his prime, just like Lessing did.

I agree about Kis, but can't say about Sebald. Haven't read him.

I love Vidal personally, but my impression is that he was little read outside English... unlike Lessing.

Thanks for that link, Murr!

Started reading Muller's The Appointment today. There's nothing here so far like the strident tones to be found in Jelinek's ouevre. I think it's going to be pretty good.

>123 lriley: I've started Land of the Green Plums. I don't have much time for personal reading lately, so I expect to progress slowly (probably just as well as I've read the first 10 pages or so twice now...) It's coming across as very artful, clever use of metaphor and imagery; sometimes I think she's going surreal, other times it feels like a fairy tale (at one point, one turn of phrase made me think of a nursery rhyme); but I cannot help but think that this all has to do with saying something about freedom of speech... Well, I'll get back to you ...

#124--Land of green plums should be on the way to my house. As soon as Complete-review called it for Muller--the night before the announcement--I was on the booksites figuring what was out there. The Appointment and Passport arrived first.

Anyway the thing is already I think the Jelinek comparison is way off. Jelinek's novels are very loud to read. I don't get that here at all. She does have a good metaphorical sense.

'Back then Paul and I used to take his motorcycle to work every morning at five on the dot. We'd see the drivers with their delivery trucks parked outside the stores, the porters carrying crates, the vendors, and the moon. Now all I hear is the noise; I don't go to the window, and I don't look at the moon. I remember that it looks like a goose egg, and that it leaves the city on one side of the sky while the sun comes up at the other. Nothing's changed there; that's how it was even before I knew Paul, when I used to walk to the tram stop on foot. On the way I thought: How bizarre that something so beautiful could be up in the sky, with no law down here on earth forbidding people to look at it. Evidently it was permissible to wangle something out of the day before it was ruined in the factory. I would start to freeze, not because I was underdressed, but simply because I couldn't get enough of the moon. At that hour the moon is almost entirely eaten away: it doesn't know where to go after reaching the city. The sky has to loosen its grip on the earth as day begins to break. The streets run steeply up and down, and the streetcars travel back and forth like rooms ablaze with light.'

I just placed an order for Nadirs, which Alibris has for $15.98. Serpent's Tail Press will be re-publishing The Passport next week, so I'll look for that at City Lights.

My apologies for voicing the Jelinek comparison here. I have not read any Muller at all, and had come across the Jelinek comparison somewhere, but can't even remember where. I should not have repeated it without myself reading the works.

#127--So far the story is about a factory worker who wants out of Romania's communist dictatorship. She sews some notes in men's suits to be exported to Italy. Asking anyone to marry her. A factory supervisor who once had a fling with her discovers them and turns her in to the authorities and now she gets summoned to the offices of a secret policeman from time to time and/or whenever he's in the mood to explain herself. She's made out to be a whore who is dragging down the name of Romanian women. There's a bit of sarcasm for sure and a lot of linguistic gamesmanship between the two antagonists.

From my research this morning
-------------------------------------
The Land of Green Plums
Herta Müller; Translated by Michael Hofmann
Metropolitan Books (MacMillan), November 1996
ISBN: 978-0-8050-4295-5, ISBN10: 0-8050-4295-4
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, 256 pages hardcover

Land of the Green Plums, paperback
# Publisher: Northwestern University Press (November 11, 1998)
# ISBN-13: 978-0810115972, $14.95
available on the publisher's site
------------------------------
The Appointment
Herta Müller; Translated by Michael Hulse & Philip Boehm
Picador, September 2002
ISBN: 978-0-312-42054-3, ISBN10: 0-312-42054-4
--------------------------------
Nadirs
paperback, $16.95, 9780803282544
# Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr (September 1, 1999)
-----------------------
The Passport
paperback being reissued this month
Paperback: 96 pages, 9781852421397
Serpent's Tail (September 1, 1989)
---------------------------
Traveling on One Leg
Northwestern University Press/Hydra Books
Hardcover, 0810116413, $28., shows as available on the publisher's site
-----------------------------
***I do want to encourage people to buy directly from the university/small presses whenever possible. It might cost a bit more but it supports their mission to translate and publish international literature.

Thanks for that info, avaland. I've just ordered The Land of Green Plums from NU Press; it's temporarily out of stock, but the expected ship date for my book is November 2nd.

#129--Land of green plums showed up today. I have the same list as you Avaland. I ordered all of them. Sometimes the university presses are very expensive though--Columbia University for one which has done some great work with spanish authors like Miguel Delibes and Carmen Martin Gaite in the past but sometimes they go into the $50-60 or even more range which is way too much for me.

>131 lriley: This is true about price. Some books are clearly aimed at an academic marketplace. But some of the paperbacks in some of the presses seem to be more reasonable.

#132--usually when they're trade paperbacks they're about the same as everyone else. Some of those mentioned with Muller--Northwestern and U. of Nebraska (Bison Books) have done a lot of literature in translation in the past. Sometimes you find university translation departments having worked with smaller publishers. For people interested in world literature this service is invaluable.

>133 lriley: amen.

Just as an example--Suny Binghamton where my daughter started as a freshman in late August has a translation department. One of my favorite books of all time Raymond Queneau's (one of the founders of Oulipo) Children of Clay (definitely in my top 10) was translated in the late 90's by Madeleine Velguth in conjunction with Binghamton's translation department. It was the Queneau book that other of his translators shied from because doing it meant a lot of research in the Bibliotheque National in Paris tracking down the very obscure works of his pre-20th century literary madmen (and then translating some of them as well) which make up a significant part of the story.

So, lriley, did you finish Land of Green Plums yet? I finished it Friday; will try to leave some thoughts about it on my thread. The book has certainly stayed with me through the weekend...

There was a lovely and provocative article in the Times yesterday suggesting the National Book Awards were becoming more worldly than the Nobel, with a majority of the finalists born and currently living outside of the US: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/weekinreview/18schillinger.html?_r=1&scp=4...

Indeed, in thinking about it, the problem with US literature (and there is a problem) is not its insularity (which only a European could imagine) but its commercialism. But, as always, perhaps a new round of immigrants will save us.

Avaland - how 'bout a Muller thread on Reading Globally? There are enough people reading her, and it would be nice to see a discussion going. Especially for those of us who have only just ordered...

>137 A_musing: A great article, thanks, A_musing. I particularly liked this bit:

Any open-minded critic who regularly receives offerings of new books or translations from Europe, the Middle East or Asia knows the bitter experience of opening a book by an unknown foreign author with anticipation, only to cast it away in irritation or boredom, finding it impossible to engage with a novel that was esteemed in a distant land.

And it’s also true that there are limitations to how much a reader can appreciate cultural preoccupations that differ too greatly from the reader’s own. Many French readers have a passion for short, self-serious, faux-philosophical novels that stupefy American sensibilities. Many German and Northern European contemporary novels zestfully catalogue bleak, pessimistic realities that strike an American audience as profoundly depressing. Middle Eastern fiction at the current moment lacks a Jane Austen who could win over an American female readership. By the same token, why should anyone be surprised if the Middle East couldn’t care less about the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and its divine secrets; or if the Germans don’t share our obsession with the Vietnam War (just as we tire of their revisitations of World War II); or if the French don’t care for the meditative descriptions in the tomes of American short stories that emerge from M.F.A. programs from Iowa to the Atlantic Ocean. Not every taste travels. But that doesn’t rob it of its intrinsic value, or of its appeal to the land that produced it.

>ok, I'll pop over to RG and start that thread. It will be a good place, as you say, to gather all the current reading of her.

Thanks, A_musing, for that article; I love it.

I would think, Lois, that it is particularly resonant for you.

Yes, of course, as you quote above, "Not every taste travels". No doubt. The Middle East couldn't care less about the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, and so it shoudn't. The French don't care for "meditative descriptions...from M.F.A programs", and so they shouldn't. As the article also says, " not all fiction rises to this level; not all American fiction, and not all foreign fictions."

If it is trite, cliched, obvious writing, it does not matter whether it is American or otherwise, it does not merit our attention.

But it seems to me that the whole raison d'etre of Belletrista, is to expose English-speaking readers to fresh writing from other cultures. Sometimes even the fresh writing from the other cultures may deal with cultural preoccupations not shared by Americans, and then the American reader can "cast it away in irritation" and that's a perfectly valid response.

But it is our duty, as well as the raison d'etre of Belletrista, to show good writing from other countries to an English-speaking audience.

Some of those cultural pre-occupations may just be acquired tastes for others, requiring a bit more history or background to appreciate fully. Casting it away in irritation may be a fairly self-limiting response.

>140 A_musing: I agree. There are certainly a plethora of factors that come into play.

#137

I can't decide whether that article's more stupid or arrogant. I'd go with stupidity--its intensity and quality is such the arrogance is almost neutralised, like invective from the batty street drunk. What's sure is that it's highly offensive. But also comic. The writer sounds so, um, juvenile it would be a waste of energy to work up some serious disapproval.

"And what does it mean to write an “American” book, if you don’t need an American address to do it?"

So, this is about "worldly" literature... that is really "American"? Because America=The World? (Picturing the so-called Rest of the World hunching beneath America's windows and serenading it with "YOU Are The World, We Are Chopped Liver"...)

An award given to "American books", written in the "American idiom" (and a language known as English, which may or may not be what she meant) is "worldlier" than an award covering the entirety of world's languages and nations? Please look up "hubris" in some worldly dictionary.

You don't need an American address to win a Nobel either. Or a Goncourt--assuming a prize from faux-philosophy loving French isn't beneath worldly, real-philosophy loving Americans. (Why insult only the French and the bleak, pessimistic Germans? Don't tell me the Africans, the Asians, the Scandinavians, the Slavs, the Latins are a frivolous, lightweight bunch specialising in happy ends and optimism!)

"the American idea not only translates, it disregards national boundaries."

Can someone help me out here, what's "the American idea"? And how does it get packaged into "American" books?

"why should anyone be surprised if the Middle East couldn’t care less about the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and its divine secrets"

Interesting choice of a title. Why should anyone care about that crap book? Or the rest of American "bestseller" crap so copiously and continuously flooding book markets everywhere? Some of us prefer faux philosophy and bleak pessimism over insulting idiocy and commercial junk anytime. Maybe the Middle Eastern readership has taste? Maybe they are tripping on Faulkner and Pynchon instead? Ya ya indeed.

"or if the Germans don’t share our obsession with the Vietnam War (just as we tire of their revisitations of World War II)"

To each their own war! Right-o! You'd think one could see a connection, a universal, everlasting concern with problems of killing and devastation, crime, the burden of the past, the guilt--but not this worldly American! A preoccupation with Vietnam, she gets. With World War II, not so much.

"or if the French don’t care for the meditative descriptions in the tomes of American short stories that emerge from M.F.A. programs from Iowa to the Atlantic Ocean."

Well, of course they don't care, the French can't hack REAL philosophy, such as purveyed by the M.F.A. programs from Iowa. Keep it "self-serious", faux and short for them! If the worldly, unconditionally serious and philosophical Americans can manage such a style, that is.

"Will it be the Dubliner turned New Yorker? The Ugandan-British Yank? The Pakistani-American? The Michigander? The West Virginian? Whoever it is, he or she will be a writer who expands the versatile adjective “American,” enriching the world’s understanding of itself."

Such variety. The Michigander. The West Virginian. The Irishman from New York (formerly Dublin!) The... *drumroll* PAKISTANI-American! All enriching the "world's" understanding of itself! Doesn't make much sense until you think of the definition of "the world" in American baseball championships (also see above). The "world" being formerly known as the U. S. of A.

Well, thanks for the laughs!

#136--Sorry Avaland--to take so long get back. I actually finished The appointment. Green Plums showed a day or so later and I'd already started the other one. I liked it but I have to say it didn't knock me out. The story is about a textile worker who runs afoul of the communist regime--a jealous boss (and former lover) turns her in to the authorities for sewing messages (advancing the idea of marriage to whoever will get her out of Romania) into the linings of men's clothing earmarked for export to Italy. She has to explain herself over and over again to a secret policeman--or that is whenever the mood strikes him. So she's always on call for that. Examples of torture and harrassment going on in the background amid the more than less boring routine daily existence of Romanian life around her. She has very good touch and a nice metaphorical sense that she fits in pretty well with her sometimes sarcastic way of expression--another way of saying there is some black comedy involved. The second half of the story seemed to go in and out of focus for me though. One could say there are elements of magical realism afoot and to be honest I'm not always the biggest fan of magical realism. I prefer straightforward Vargas Llosa to Garcia Marquez--though politically I like GGM better than MVL. Just saying.

Oh it was a provocative article!

Existanai, I think you've noted something important here. This is an article in the Times - the purveyor of best sellers lists! She is indeed selling lifestyle. She sells the Ya Yas.

Still, she's a smart woman and makes some points. I think Lola's reaction is what she's looking for - a tweak of the Euro-centrics, something on par with the silly charge that American literature is "insular" from the Secretary of the Academy. This is tit-for-tat stuff.

Still, the point that the nominees for the National Book Award are more geographically diverse than recent nobel selections, where 9 of the last 10 have been resident in Europe, is a good opportunity for the tweak. She's pointing out that despite a couple good decades of trying, the Nobels really are an award of the Swedish academy, not world literature. Perhaps even some little national award is as diverse (and, yes, she's engaging in hyperbole).

It does appear to me that the Nobel Committee has given up on the world literature thing in the 21st century, regardless of how hard they may have tried in the last two decades of the 20th century. And it probably makes sense for them to give up and focus on Europe - I don't think the Academy is equipped for more than a token effort at tackling Arabic or Chinese literature.

And I buy her point that America's problem is not insularity - any more than Europe's is. Some of her characterizations strike true enough to land as a broadside attack - I love Heinrich Boll but will Germans ever stop writing him? It's like the number of Americans who keep trying to write Pynchon. We all have a bit of a rut in our literatures and the great literature will jump out of the rut or change its direction.

No, America's problem is not insularity. There are all sorts of interesting threads of diversity running through American lit. America's problem is commercialism. Of course, the article itself is written by a purveyor of such. I don't think she'd agree with me on this point.

Lola, my reaction to your reaction, other than noting that she seemed to get under your skin too much for someone you're laughing at (and I think that's what she wanted to do), is that Pynchon would undoubtedly love the Ya Yas. Pynchon oozes Ya Ya. Reading him without them is like reading Joyce without Homer. If there are a bunch of European Pynchon readers (praise them all!) out there ignoring the Ya Yas, please, let me send them a copy so they'll have an outside shot at getting Pynchon.

Existanai, you've deleted your post! I enjoyed it.

>America's problem is not insularity

A_musing, your problem may not be insularity, and you may be American, but I don't think your rejection of the charge represents America (or many other societies) very well.

The majority (in any country) cannot see past the bridge of their noses. Neither a judgement nor something to celebrate, but mere fact. You can't even interest many people enough in anything outside the pop culture domain if you pay them.

I did delete my post, before I thought anyone had read it. Although I still have a draft, I figure the post is probably condescending and inappropriate.

Oh,

come on, Existanai, even if it is condescending and inappropriate, share it with us. I think that is Lola's charge against the original article.

And we can fence, and have lots of sparks discussing empires and arrogance and short-sightedness.

As long as nobody takes anything personally, it is all great fun.

Fine - since you're both interested and I can't resist appeals to vanity for too long, the deleted post follows, with a minor modification I was going to add but which led me to delete the post instead; I do realize this may offend some people, but my intention is primarily to emphasize one aspect of this debate which others gloss over because they may be too polite to dwell on it.

Re: the article in 137 and the responses to it.

An unacknowledged element at work here is that the majority are not actually interested in literature, but in accessories to their lifestyle; the same attitude could be extended to potentially everything (including philosophical ideas and political opinions) that lies outside their profession or their specific daily activities.

Thus, the bulk of notable literature (Mann, Kafka, Gide etc.) does not make for an interesting read because it might interrupt a particular mood, sense of well-being, an impression of easily-imbibed and lightly-worn cosmopolitanism, and so on and so forth.

On the other hand, books from diverse authors and various lands that are not too difficult and easily recognized as foreign if not exotic flatter the intellect. They do not have any "creepy" or otherwise strange characters, situations, acts and so on. The themes are either grand and panoramic or very miniature and domestic, the issues are well delineated and part of popular, superficial debates in newspaper columns and internet forums, and the language is quite accessible; in brief, many of these books are an Oscar-worthy version of literature.

The article's author cannot possibly see the provincialism, irony or silliness inherent in believing that a hyphenated-American provides some sort of genuine insight into experience, whereas foreign literature (rather, her colour-by-numbers notion of foreign lit as handy stereotype) presents a formidable barrier. She sells lifestyles; anything genuinely different would threaten the seamlessness of the lifestyle she has in mind. She, her editors and her readers understand well that this is precisely what most "smart, educated people with busy lives" are looking for because they too want the same - it is an example of a representative of the median demographic offering approved consumables to other members of the median demographic.

I have now reread the article. I have reread Lola's and Existanai's posts.

And trying awfully hard not to upset anyone, or personalize this, it seems to me that we have here the story of the blind men and the elephant. One blind man feels the trunk, one the ear, one the tail, each convinced he now knows what "elephant" is.

The article is shallower than I thought on my first reading. She generalizes too much. She throws around words without being clear about her definitions of them. The most obvious example is pointed out by Lola, "the American idea", but there are others as well. Her attitude is undoubtedly somewhat smug; as E. says, "she sells lifestyles." Lola talks of "insulting idiocy and commercial junk", which I think is the same point as A_musing's "commercialism" and E.'s "accessories to their lifestyle."

I think the article's author and all of us who have commented on it here are dismayed at the Ya-ya phenomenon in all of its guises. I think all would hold Mann, Kafka and Gide (as well as a string of non-Europeans) as vastly superior. Much of what is published in all parts of the world is trite and shallow. Her argument is that these five novels show that Engdahl is wrong, that American writing is not insular. But perhaps insular is not the most serious criticism anyway, and the real issue is, as E. points out, only wanting one's seamless lifestyle authenticated, literature of other countries worn as comfortable accessories. Maybe instead of discussing her article, and even these books which we have not read, we should be reading Muller, LeClezio, Seifert, Naipaul , Oz and Adonis.

But I thought it was only just getting going!

The problem of what's wrong with American literature is, of course, a problem those of us who are American's live. So it's always interesting to me.

The problem of what's wrong with the Nobels lets us file this question in this thread. And they deserve a few well-placed blows.

The ruminations on what hyphenated-Americans may or may not add to the stew is actually quite interesting. And that's I think something Existanai added to his post that I find rather interesting. Hyphenated Americans I think do bring a very unique, broad, and worldly point of view into the American mainstream - some of which can be commercialized by the Times, some of which can't. Think of Charles Simic and Li Young Lee, for example, who greatly broaden our literature, and who have differing degrees of "foreignness".

On the other hand, I think the criticism of the arm-chair travellers not wishing to drink too deeply at the spring is both accurate and overstated. A little taste is often the first step to a deep draught, and it often provides the hospitable environment for deeper interaction to occur within. Maybe Kiran Desai is a gateway drug to the Mahabharata and Khalidasa? I hate it sometimes that Oprah has actually selected some (I'm not saying all) pretty good books to read. Sometimes I'll have to watch her and see if some of her points are interesting, too.

{This is a long post, irrelevant to the rest of the thread, but a sort of meandering prompted by the replies directly above. Please feel free to scroll past it if you're short on time!}

I'm glad I haven't ruffled any feathers so far, and I'll take that as encouragement to post a few more thoughts and clarify a couple of things.

To start with, my post wasn't intended to supplant Lola's criticism, but to supplement it; predictably enough, I agree with what she says, and I feel her scathing tone is more than well-deserved.

Next, yes, I think the Nobel is Eurocentric, by and large (always has been) and in its choices - whether European or not - there are other tendencies which would make a perceptive, broad-minded critic scowl.

Firstly the choices are never truly obscure in the way a young writer self-publishing modest but respectable poems is obscure - contrary to how the Nobel choices are received by newspapers and many posters here. They're obscure only if you skim bestseller lists or depend on the recommendations of friends, not if you dig around as either a student, academic or keen amateur in libraries, bookstores, or on the internet etc. Secondly, the names are usually recognizable to European literati, even if that is not the case in other segments of society or other parts of the world. Thirdly, obscure writers simply don't get selected for the Nobel. It's not part of the Nobel mandate to award work for being experimental, intellectual or disturbing, etc. but, in a sense, for any or all of these things - 1) highlighting experiences that are historically and politically relevant but which may or may not be part of the popular/media consciousness at any given moment; 2) being a consistently notable (even if underrepresented) addition to literary history, as filtered through the tastes and trends of the time; hence, 3) being influential in some respect.

Contrary to what many readers and middle-brow newspaper columnists assume, the Nobel Prize for Literature has always been contentious, if not - on occasion - a joke, among certain critics and writers. It is seen more often as an award that acknowledges established or at least respectable tastes. In fact, to many critics, most Nobel laureates represent specifically that median reader in Europe that likes a little bit of everything but not too much of any one thing, who is analogous to (but not the same as) the American reader that alternates between, for example, some Major Literary Prize winner, some instructional tome, and the book of the week that friends and acquaintances have been insisting is heartbreakingly beautiful.

Continuing from there, it is also safe to say that the Nobel is by no means a guarantee (since it isn't intended to be) of literary merit; as a corollary, a body of work does not suddenly become interesting because it comes from another country having garnered a major award. These things should be obvious; unfortunately very little is obvious when you are trying to sell not just goods but "concepts" that can be very abstract and require some degree of prior exposure, an exposure which is often missing - hence, the issues of culture and education and so on. The more those concepts can be simplified or evaded with the constant mention of accolades, "serious" issues, etc., the greater the chances of selling the material goods (the books) and making a minimal income, even if the concepts (the subject matter) have failed to get through; conversely, the concept may sell so well (exotic faraway countries, the various horrors of communism, one person's survival against the odds) that any type or number of material goods (deluxe editions, paperbacks, embossed paperbacks) will be produced to meet the demand for that specific "concept" (hence, the almost endless variations of the same epic family story, set in exotic locales during periods of conflict or unrest).

As Dubravka Ugrešić writes in Thank You For Not Reading, none of this has anything to do with literature; some of the so-called "concepts" above are just "recipes for success", and they are not even reliable - if you want to be a successful author, your safest bet might be to write a self-help book. This brings us to the precarious notion of what literature is; and without stepping into that quagmire I'll just say that whatever it is, it is not many of the things that are packaged and sold to us in the form of books; and neither is it some negation of all these things it is not (i.e. you could put together a book that skips the over-familiar themes, but you may still not have a book that is interesting - because it is really very hard to judge, to predict, to simply state without sounding like a fool, what makes a notable book, precisely because there is no recipe or special ingredient.)

This irresistible tendency to reduce of all literature (which at its best is nothing more than a concentrated dose of experience itself, together with all of the questions and confusions and emotions that any unfamiliar experience throws at us) to some recipe, or some technically formidable construction, is at the core of many of these issues, and this effort at reduction becomes transparent during the constant races to make some table or list or canon of "great literature". People are usually not willing to be suspended in some unfamiliar state, to be drawn too far out of their lives, to be put on the defensive where their knowledge or world-views are concerned; if they were, they would understand how bizarre and pointless it is to rate or match up one particular, intense experience against another; instead, they prefer to strip things down to trivia, to square themselves with the fundamental strangeness that is literature, or any other artistic experience, by falling back on a vetted reductionism (plot; themes; language and so on).

Does the Nobel serve a function, i.e. does it offer a sort of public service for the overall betterment of society by rewarding the exemplars of praiseworthy achievements? Undoubtedly; this self-arrogated role is perhaps implicit in every award, and it was part of Alfred Nobel's goal. Awards may fall short of the ideal in trying to fulfill this implicit expectation, but they serve the function nevertheless; one could say that is their main justification, their raison d'etre; and from that perspective the bickering of critics, journalists and forum posters etc. are moot, because the function is essential and the exact values it takes on are not as relevant; the social institution must be perpetuated no matter how farcical its practice may appear to be.

Further, does practically anything become worthwhile simply because it may lead to some superior experience or knowledge? In other words, are Tom and Jerry cartoons redeemed because someone might have been introduced to Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody through them? I think this is another attempt at an unreliable formula (equating potential consequences with inherent worth) and I don't believe we even need these formulas (maybe they're a way of making us feel better about time we've wasted, in a society where time is the holy grail of capitalistic industry and self-indulgence and laziness are sin.) I prefer to skip such categorization. Hierarchies always turn out to be artificial and unnecessary.

In brief, I feel these debates are not solely about geography or literary education, but about entrenched world-views, initially engendered by a cultural context perhaps, but extending well beyond to a nebulous complex of economic circumstances (we are, after all, largely talking about the middle-class), lifestyle choices (and the confirmation of the validity of this lifestyle people constantly seek around them), intellectual boundaries, vague opinions and beliefs about the "world outside" and the corresponding tastes.

interesting debate. I have read the article. It's exceptionally stupid and arrogant, and worse, badly written. What is her point? What are her main points? But I have come to expect nothing else from literary journalists/critics, especially American ones, I'm sorry to say.

I think Lola and EXistanai should write articles for the NYT. you guys are more lucid, more thought provoking and write much better.

It's worth bearing in mind that all great literature is very insular. Think The Leopard, think Notes from Underground, think Dubliners: all written to specific historical circumstances and places, and yet transcending them. The reason why we read Dostoevksy, Dickens and others is precisely because the world they describe is soooooo completely different from our own. When American readers throw aside books from the World (not America's back yard, btw) that they can't relate to, they just show how shallow they are, and how badly their sensibilities have been rotted by yaya/YA 'lit'.

'not all tastes travel' this is not writing or even thinking. it's just sloganeering.

#153--Dario Fo may be the exception to the rule or as close as they ever got to an exception.

Anyway to go back to the National Book Award. I for one was glad to see Colum McCann's Let the Great World spin make the cut. It is a great book and it doesn't really matter to me that much where he comes from. Anyway as I've been noticing over the last decade or so--national literary prizes or ones that honor longevity or quality are more and more inclined to opening themselves up to writers from other countries. If the NBA follows that pattern--it's okay with me.

#153

Existanai, your post deserves a more thoughtful response than I have time for right now. Many excellent points.

I have just come across a book on Niels Bohr. Bohr conceived the principle of complementarity: that items could be separately analyzed as having several contradictory properties. For example, physicists currently conclude that light behaves either as a wave or a stream of particles depending on the experimental framework — two apparently mutually exclusive properties — on the basis of this principle.

I wonder if complimentarity might be a useful concept in our discussion. American literature can perhaps be both insular and not insular. The Nobels might be Euro-centric and not Euro-centric. Or perhaps not....

TCM - I'd be careful about positing that "all great literature is insular" while attacking "not all tastes travel..." And do you really want Existanai and Lola to be condemned to pushing memoirs by sidekicks of late night talk show hosts and big books about baseball's greatest summer, hoping that someday they might manage to score the privilege of getting to review an actual fiction best seller, perhaps even book four in the Ya Ya series? Please, lets not wish the Times on them.

Existanai, I find your summary of the Nobels and what they are and are not quite agreeable. Of course, they claim more than this; they claim, particularly in recent decades, to be honoring the greatest of world literature. I'd be happier with them if the claims were more in line with the reality, as it would leave the field open for someone else. And put Mr. Liesl Engdahl's statements in proper perspective.

As to the positive service of the award, in the years when they choose from a non-English language it does a wonderful job of encouraging English language publishers to put someone new out there, generally fertilizing the literary field. I look forward to sampling their choices in those years. I hope and fear that it has the same effect in other languages each year, leaving much of the Swedish speaking world with an image of Toni Morrison as the greatest living American author. Thank the Lord so many people speak English and can discover the truth!

A_musing, I assure you I laughed, LOLed even. A_musement mixed with disbelief. Are you seriously serious about liking that article? As Murr pointed out, on top of everything else it's badly written--even that doesn't bother you? "The American idea?" (Speaking of skins, have you considered surgery to get rid of your little Engdahl problem? It's been a year. Speaking of Engdahl, have you considered that your recent posts have done more to confirm his accusation of "American insularity" than not?)

Just to be clear--I don't want to be placed in the false position of "defending" the Nobel or any other literary prize, none of which I follow--I was focussing strictly on A_musing's bizarre (for I took him for an intelligent person) endorsement of that article, or his interpretation of it, to wit, in his own words, emphasis mine:

"There was a lovely and provocative article in the Times yesterday suggesting the National Book Awards were becoming more worldly than the Nobel, with a majority of the finalists born and currently living outside of the US"

I can't believe I had to point out the laugh-out-loud idiocy of this even once--let alone twice. Must we? Really? A_musing, you aren't pulling our collective leg? The line-up for this "National Book Award", including, unforgettably, a "Michigander, a West Virginian, an Irish New Yorker from Dublin, a Pakistani-American..." trumps the "worldliness" (as you say) of a group of potential winners including (copying from lriley's betting posts above) Amos Oz, Assia Djebar, Luis Goytisolo, Antonio Tabucchi, Adonis, Thomas Pynchon, Claudio Magris, Javier Marias, Gitta Sereny, Herta Muller, Ian McEwen, James Ngugi, Mahasweta Devi, A. S. Byatt, David Malouf, Ernesto Cardenal, F. Sionel Jose, Marge Piercy, Maya Angelou, Willy Kyrklund, Adam Zagajewski, Beryl Bainbridge, E. L. Doctorow, Eeva Kilpi, John Banville, Jonathan Little, Julian Barnes, Mary Gordon, Michel Tournier, Patrick Modiano, Rosalind Belben, Vassilis Aleksakis, William H. Gass and Bob Dylan.

No comment necessary.

Well, I'm all question-marked out on this.

I hope and fear that it has the same effect in other languages each year, leaving much of the Swedish speaking world with an image of Toni Morrison as the greatest living American author.

It's sweet of you to fear that the Swedish-speaking world's literary experience of American-idiom-speaking world may boil down to Toni Morrisson, but it may be unnecessary. It may be--just may be--that the Swedish-speaking world actually reads far more than the Nobelists. Why, I'll venture on a limb and bet they've heard of (read, even!) considerably more American authors than you did Swedish ones.

I thought it was an amusing broadside making a rather fun point. But I'm willing to laugh with as well as at it. I wouldn't elevate it beyond that.
My apologies if some of my humor in discussing this was too dry.

For what it is worth, the word I regret in my original descriptoin was "lovely", but not "provocative", which I think has proven entirely accurate. It was meant to and did provoke. As to the language you've bolded, it's entirely accurate: that is indeed what she said and what is provocative. Do I think she proved her point? I don't think she even tried. Do I think it's well written? It's on par with plenty of blogs and web posts, and I don't generally look to that publication for much more. I remain entertained by the article.

But I rather liked my fertilizing the literary fields image, no? And I did note that I was quite glad so many Swedes speak English and can read American literature: I hope you'll see some irony in my comments on both getting the benefits of works from elsewhere through the Nobel while hoping others aren't using it for the same purpose on the other side of the linguistic equation. P is right that we can be insular and not insular at the same time, and I embrace the notion that some of my own comments reflect the insularity side of the equation.

But, Lola, if you don't follow the prizes what are you doing on a prize discussion thread?! It's what we're here to talk about! (Yes, I follow them, and even get a bit excited before the Nobels come out - but please, let that be our secret!).

When any book award starts being a line-up of the politically correct - a woman this year, a man next year, a different country every year - that too can compromise the validity of the award. I keep up with current affairs, I try to read contextually (learning about the political/social/cultural background informing the world literature I read). However, a mediocre book is a mediocre book even if it does happen to come from Lebanon or some other "exotic" (apologies for the word) place. I won't name a particular book for fear of offending some people on this forum. This book is politically correct, but it offers nothing new. It could as easily be set in the American south with the main character an African American child. I suspect it makes it into translation for political reasons (i.e, the view of certain countries that certain publishers (mainstream in particular) want to push at any given time. However returning to Lebanon, I have been reading a book by a Lebanese author Rabih Alameddine The Hakawati. It's a wonderful book; it utilizes an Arabian Nights strategy (tales within tales within tales), moves back and forth between Arabian Nights sort of stories as well as the story of an extended family in Beirut, living through the same period as the aforementioned but unnamed book. Each set of stories offers subtle but powerful political and social commentary without hitting one over the head with it. And yes, Americans write a lot of "hit-you-over-the-head" political/social commentaries. There's nothing unique about that genre. Taking the long view, the awards mean little. The really excellent literature will trump the crap or the B-list books. Of course, some B-list books will make the cut. But who cares.

>158 LolaWalser:,

I have relatives in Sweden. Whenever I visit bookstores there, I see tons of American and British novels translated into Swedish. When I go into Swedish homes, I see lots of American books on the shelf as well as books from other countries. Having been to Swedish reading groups, I find the Swedes (the ones I know at least) really interested in American culture, in cutting through generalizations to particulars, to discussing the English nuances of certain words as they understand them and as I understand them. And vice versa.

#159

I prefer intelligent provocation, the stupid kind at best leads only to brawls.

#160

And yes, Americans write a lot of "hit-you-over-the-head" political/social commentaries.

Please give us some examples, I read so little contemporary literature...

Re: #154

Thank you for the compliments.

>It's worth bearing in mind that all great literature is very insular.

I think I understand what you're trying to say, but insular has very specific connotations in the above context, and I don't think they apply to 19th century European writers writing in a 19th century European mold; one might as well criticize Sophocles for being Greek. The difference might be subtle or relative but it's not insignificant (here.) The writers you mention were more or less writing within a cultural context they considered the "known world", where they could expect to be understood on some level by people of a similar cultural background, even if they were original/radical, and even if they arrogantly maintained ethically wrong, but contemporaneously self-righteous imperialist, sexist, racist or other dubious sensibilities. Obviously, this is not an attempt to justify whatever they believed. Like the rest of humanity, they were creatures of their circumstances, whatever their talents or insight. However, even within that narrow context, it is possible to differentiate them from writers of the time who thrived on producing/selling junk (Flaubert complains somewhere that if people took literature seriously, there wouldn't be so many books/authors.)

The insularity Lola and I are complaining about, and that many here agree with, is the insularity of the 'pop' world, which has superseded any other cultural domain by its sheer overpowering mass and distribution; and since the most visible perpetrators of this pop are in the Anglo-American realm, there is a blurring at some point where everything appears to be synonymous, especially to those who are content to remain within the bubble of this world. Thus, quite a few important American authors fall off the radar (since no one regularly mentions them on TV, talk shows, or in papers) or are simply rejected (cf. Henry Miller and others) whereas middle-brow authors who have all the pretensions of literature and a few awards or some commercial success behind them and who stand above the genre-writers, are somehow equated with the wholesomeness or righteousness of the pop-American world-view (not even American, but a parody of what it means to be American, as one sees in right-wing politics) and they become standard-bearers for the pretentious elements within this pop-trash-jingles world.

>The reason why we read Dostoevksy, Dickens and others is precisely because the world they describe is soooooo completely different from our own.

I agree, and strongly disagree. I think this is a very interesting question on its own, i.e. what draws us to literature, or anything else (music, travel, etc.) Of course, the idea of "difference", of something being unknown and foreign and new (the novelty itself being a new kind of knowledge) is one attraction; but I think if literature were simply about seeking the thrill of the different or the new, it would become quite tedious quite fast (which explains why many superficially clever bestsellers are in fact tedious); besides, the opposite holds true as well. After all, we are still talking about people gravitating to the spheres of familiar taste. I couldn't enumerate all the possible reasons why people read literature, but I think one fundamental reason is simply curiosity - to know what it is that so many others have praised so often before; and another one is pleasure - not literally the pleasure of a happy ending perhaps, but the pleasure of encountering something that lives up to one's expectations, for example.

>When American readers throw aside books from the World (not America's back yard, btw) that they can't relate to, they just show how shallow they are, and how badly their sensibilities have been rotted by yaya/YA 'lit'.

I think you agree with me that the problem is not simply Americans; however, this laziness is most visible and predominant in America, and America draws some ire because - as the world's most powerful cultural disseminator - its representatives usually insult the intelligence of its own citizens, and the intelligence of foreign populations, by being the most pervasive peddlers of cheap sugary soda bottled to look like wine, by attempting to attach some extra metaphysical value by slapping on the label "American", and then emphasizing some irritating cliches about America. Again, to many within the bubble (American or not), there is no contradiction here because it all seems synonymous (American culture= pop culture, pop culture= everywhere, everywhere= universality, universality= best, hence the pop American culture you find everywhere is universal and therefore the best, and the home team wins again.) Except the formula is just wrong.

TCM - I'd be careful about positing that "all great literature is insular" while attacking "not all tastes travel..."

I don't see the contradiction. One is about the production of literature, the other is about its reception. It was more a comment on the banality and thoughtlessness of the writing. I wrote my post on the fly: it's not as coherent, perhaps as I could want it to be, rather like the article?...
but I agree I don't want to condemn Lola and existanai to the life you describe. Sorry guys!!!!!

The 'fertilizing the literary field' image is all very well, but I think it needs to be qualified with the adjective 'American' It seems from other posters that the European literary field is already flourishing nicely, with abundant translations in and out of English and other languages. It's the contemporary American/British literary field that is still lying fallow under its load of cheap manure.

But I want to know more about Iriley's remark about Dario Fo? Iriley, what did you mean please? And, like Lola, I also hardly read any contemporary 'lit', so I'd also like some examples from Urania.

156>American literature can perhaps be both insular and not insular. The Nobels might be Euro-centric and not Euro-centric.

Of course; and yet, we can continue to make distinctions, however slight or possibly irrelevant.

I won't blather on - though I'm glad to see the comments and replies above, I've had a pretty full day and little sleep. I'm sorry, but I can't reply to everyone properly - later perhaps...

I don't know whether I'm following everything correctly, in the way the posters intended their words to be taken, or that I can go along with this "insularity" discussion, because I disagree with the very first angle under which the term was brought up, by A_musing, I think, remarking upon Engdahl's remark, and saying he (A_musing) agrees that there is a problem with American literature. Literature, mind you, not culture, and not pop culture. At least I think I disagree, we haven't heard what this problem was supposed to be.

In short, I don't believe American literature (and here I consider "true art" only) is insular. The arts are the best of every culture, and the artists are the best, most enlightened, most curious, most cosmopolitan of citizens. I admit my attitude is idealistic, as I said, I read little contemporary literature and am in no position to have strong opinions about whether there is or isn't some "problem" with American literature.

Anyway, to repeat, I was strictly concerned with literature, not American culture as a whole, a very large and varied beast, such as I personally have no skill nor interest in analysing in one piece.

I don't mean to obstruct the very interesting discussion that ensued after the portion I took part in, just to clarify that my opinions have no place in it.

Incidentally, A_musing, you were wonderfully patient with my sarcastic tone, thanks. What can I do, I love sarcasm, but it does conceal how much fun I'm having at the same time.

This because I happened to reread my previous posts. Note to self: do not reread your posts in the future!

Good responses, existanai, thanks for provoking my thoughts! There is much to agree with in what you say.

I, like others, am on the fly, but in quickly perusing (ah, a misused word, that) the above, I've got one question I certainly can't answer myself: do people (particularly those of you are or have lived in a European country) think the broader European reception of English language literature is the result of broader translation or of greater ability with English as a second language (or conceivably both)? Will I find Melville's more obscure works translated into Polish, or will a Pole wishing to read Pierre or Clarel be more likely to read them in English?

And, Lola, thank you, but I have enjoyed the conversation - it is all food for thought.

#169

If a work is obscure in its source language, I wouldn't bet on finding it in translation, at least not frequently. It's not that the European market "specialises" in obscure stuff, it's that much of European stuff (including editions of translations from non-European languages) is perceived as obscure in, say... the USA. So, if Clarel is obscure in the US (rare editions, rare readings, rare ownership), it's probably not on everyone's shelves from Spain to Ukraine. In contrast, the Estonian epic Kalevipoeg, say, is going to be "obscure" in the US and to varying degrees everywhere else outside Estonia, although every Estonian kid has it.

Sometimes it does happen that there's a vogue for a foreign writer longer than that in the writer's homeland. Recently I saw a young (twenties) poster from Russia remark how popular O. Henry was (is?) in Russia, how he grew up on his stories. I don't think many US kids have heard of O. Henry, let alone read him. There are more such examples (I should look at the catalogues of Einaudi and Adelphi for some beauties), but it's not a general rule.

I don't think knowing English is a determining factor in the spread of English literature in continental Europe. It's a commonly (perhaps universally) taught language in school, but I doubt the majority is equipped or willing to read in the original. Perhaps in Holland or Scandinavia.

The translation rates are much higher than in the US (if I remember the stat from an old discussion of this, ten times higher in, say, France--and France is actually among the "lower" European percentages). The differences in education probably play some role.

Let me be more specific. I see a couple of big reasons for what we seem to be calling "insularity": (1) the unavailability of translated literature; and (2) the inability to read untranslated literature.

With respect to (2), I believe a review of the statistics would prove out that Americans don't learn foreign languages to the same extent as almost anyone else in the world.

(1), however, is more interesting. What is the availability of translated literature? There is an enormous amount of literature translated into English. It may be a lesser percentage of our overall reading, but I wonder just how much depth you can get in another language anywhere in the world limiting yourself to literature in translation.

An example. I was recently in Greece, and there are any number of bookstores there with English language books available, and it was clear that many Greeks as well as the English language tourists read these. The selection of English language books greatly outpaced the selection of Greek translations of English books - there were relatively few of these. You could get an excellent high school and perhaps even college education in English literature from the English language books available.

If the Greeks themselves were only reading English language books in translation, well, they would not be tasting very deeply, probably no more deeply that an American could read Greek literature, and probably even less deeply. But to the extent they were reading English language books, they could penetrate our literature much deeper.

All of which says, to me, that if I want to throw bric-a-brac at Americans, I would throw it over linguistic skills more than translations.

But I have limited experience abroad, spending most of my time in airports and conference rooms that all look the same.

There is an enormous amount of literature translated into English.

I strongly contest this statement. as a specialist in Russian literature, but someone who doesn't have Russian, I am constantly aware of the huge proportion of Russian works, contemporary and old, that are NOT translated into English. Those that are, are a drop in the ocean of Russian lit. And that's just one European language.
The same goes for Chinese. In bookstores here, the number of Western books translated into Chinese far far far outnumber the Chinese books translated into English. Translation is a big industry here in Taiwan: mostly all of it INTO Chinese.

It is my fond (and foolish) hope that one day more publishers (and those archcriminals the chain bookstores) will realise the huge market that lies under their noses and make more of the world's lit available in English.

Consider the statement relative to other languages. I believe I can get close to everything written by Dostoevski in English - can I get all of Melville in Russian? I don't know this - so it is indeed a question.

Of course there is an even more enormous amount of literature in either language not translated into the other.

Less well known works of a lot of classic European writers can be found in English translation if one is willing to look for them. Often though they may have been out of print for decades. Still I had the ambition of reading the entire Rougon MacQuart series and I eventually did (thought not in order) and I have at least a half dozen translated by Vizetelly copyrited back into the 19th century. Sometimes they're not that expensive. Sometimes they were not that good. Hamsun is another. I've run into Sillanpaa (the only Finnish Nobelist) a couple of times (once at the local library--the other at the Ithaca library sale--Cornell U had discarded it).

Anyway I think we in the United States really started trending away from other literatures about 30-40 years ago. Over that period there has been at least IMO a parallel rise in American arrogance--for instance the idea so many of my fellow countrymen have of us as an infallible superpower sometimes and sometimes not ordained by an even higher heavenly power. We (again IMO) do have a superiority complex. Truly I wish we would see ourselves more as just one (even if still very powerful) among many other nations. The thing with reading world literature for me very much revolves around seeing others in yourself and vice versa and I don't think going back a century or so necessarily has to change that point of view.

171>There is an enormous amount of literature translated into English.

As a pure number, yes; but this is like saying a local bookstore "has a lot of books", the implication being they probably have any book you want or you can think of. As book readers here are aware, the latter kind of bookstore would probably fill a skyscraper, not a box on the corner of a street.

As a percentage of the amount of literature that could or should be available in English, the amount of translated literature is very small. It is a source of frustration for even a non-specialist. According to LT stats, about 30% of the books I own were written in English, and I think this illustrates how skewed my library is towards the English-language world I inhabit; if I were fluent in a few other languages, and could afford (and read!) all the books I was keen on, I could probably bring that figure down to 15% or so. Why? Simply because most of the world's writing is and has been done in a language other than English. I could go a decade or longer without reading a single book originally in English, and I'd still exhaust only a small portion of the major classic works, not to mention the lesser known writers, scholarly tomes, historical arcana, notable contemporaries, or specialized works of interest.

In fact, the very idea that there is "enough" translated literature, and that we don't need more of the latter, whereas apparently we do need tons more of the same genre crap defines the English-language world of letters as insular.

171>I wonder just how much depth you can get in another language anywhere in the world limiting yourself to literature in translation.

I'm not sure that I understand this sentence correctly. If I do, then - while there are many valid and thorny issues surrounding translation - I find this often mentioned statement slightly bizarre and quite irrelevant. There is immeasurably more to be gained from reading a translated work by Kafka, than from reading almost any Anglo-American book published in the last couple of decades, picked at random from your average neighbourhood bookstore.

Addendum: I just read the last two posts above after I wrote this, so the note "Consider the statement relative to other languages" changes my criticism a bit; though the English language world is insular in many ways, at least more insular than Europe when it comes to publishing, I am not sure how one would go about comparing the sum total of books available to English language readers, including the rare and out of print ones, and the sum total of books available to, say, French speakers or Spanish speakers, a comparison that might verge on futility and that, in my opinion, doesn't really address the issue at hand.

But that's just my point, A-musing, there's is soooooooooo much more to Russian literature than just Dostoevsky.

I can't answer your question about Melville, I don't know.

And Iriley, I don't think it's necessarily an American problem only, I think it's an Anglo Saxon problem. The Brits are just as bad in their attitude to foreign literatures and languages.

>175 Existanai: There is immeasurably more to be gained from reading a translated work by Kafka, than from reading almost any Anglo-American book published in the last couple of decades, picked at random from your average neighbourhood bookstore.

* wild applause*

I don't think that there is an enormous amount of literature translated into English.

Earlier this year I went to an event run by the London Review of Books in which four translators were on a panel discussing the fact that 'only 3 per cent of books published in English are translations' (quotation from the event literature).

Addition: I've been thinking about that stat and of course it can be argued 3% of, say, a billion would be quite a large number of translated works. However, I found this in a 2004 press release from Bowker, a bibliographic information organisation:

'The English-speaking countries remain relatively inhospitable to translations into English from other languages. In all, there were only 14,440 new translations in 2004, accounting for a little more than 3% of all books available for sale. The 4,982 translations available for sale in the U.S. was the most in the English-speaking world'
(http://www.bowker.com/press/bowker/2005_1012_bowker.htm)

It was very clear from the panel discussion that getting publishers to champion authors who don't write in English over the long-term is very difficult.

(ETA: sorry, don't know how to turn off the italics that Murr used!)

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The "linguistic" argument doesn't convince me. Books in English in Greek bookstores say nothing about what and how Greeks read, for that you need to talk to people. Bookstores with a high percentage of foreign material cater primarily to tourists, students, and the odd person with a taste for literature in the original--and the ability to afford it. Books are much more expensive than in North America, and books in foreign languages even more so. (By the way, take a look at the prices asked for foreign-language books in Cambridge, MA-based Schoenhof's. Rather pricey, compared to more common fare, and positively prohibitive for an average polyglot library building Joe.)

I think lriley's correct in pointing to the underlying attitude towards everything foreign dominant among Americans. My first impression, oft recalled, was of a gigantic desert island afloat in total vacuum (and pre-Internet!) Americans, generally speaking, do not pay much attention to the rest of the world, in any form—not to international news, politics, arts, social life, nor, of course, literature. It follows that they generally don't know much about these things and can't come up with any good, pragmatic, pays-off-in-money reason to learn. Anyway, not to go on and on, I’ve said elsewhere I think American upbringing is at the root of this attitude, the indoctrination into the belief that the US is the “greatest” country in the world, already perfect as it is, containing all any normal person could ever wish in the way of… well, you name it, creature comforts, wealth, “opportunity” and so on, the Shangri-La of unfortunate outsider masses etc. And of course every Anglo has heard a million times that English is the most magnificent, richest, complex etc. language of them all. You wouldn't believe how many times I heard this from people who spoke no other language. They just knew. Now why would a person believing that bother with foreign languages, literature, foreign prizes etc.? You may want to look at old discussions in the... In translation group, I think. Some interesting attitudes come to the fore (everything worth translating is translated, literatures in "small" languages are by default inferior etc).

And of course this situation is self-reinforcing. Big publishers rarely expect translated books to become bestsellers (as if there were no other reason to publish books), except for the handful that's marketed as "American-like" bestseller material.

Now that I said all that, I absolutely need to mention the splendid and admirable efforts of many people on LT, individual and collective, as in the Reading Globally group and elsewhere, to break through the isolation. Please don't take my remarks as a blanket judgement or something.

I believe I can get close to everything written by Dostoevski in English - can I get all of Melville in Russian?

Yes, well, there you go—to an American Melville may be on a par with Dostoevsky, but hardly to anyone else. ;) However, there’s a good chance that Melville IS available in Russian in toto—you could search through Russian libraries online, perhaps Worldcat…

And, I think lriley is right in this:

Anyway I think we in the United States really started trending away from other literatures about 30-40 years ago.

Based on observations during my fanatical and constant book-browsing in secondhand shops, I’d say that’s definitely true. But who knows, maybe trends will yet change thataway from thisaway again. The Internet for one thing is a major force in de-blinkering, all around, internationally.

If only one is willing to look...

To be clear, I'm happy to complain about either what is translated into English, the quality of the translations, the availability or the expense, and of course I'd rather read Kafka than a book picked from random (does anyone pick books at random?).

In particular, I'd love having a really good writer tackle English language translations of the Four Great Classics from; I'd love having someone actually finish a translation of the Mahabharata; and I am deeply dissatisfied with the many available translations of the 1001 Nights - and those are just a few outrageously enormous holes. I haven't touched on wanting to get that Ukranian epic Lola referenced. Yes, I could bitch and moan about the state of translation for quite some time. And I do realize there are many sources for books and its good to talk to people, which is why I asked my questions focusing on people who either are not American or who have lived abroad.

BUT, my question still remains: should one bitch and moan any more loadly in English than in any other language? Or, like Existanai suggest, is the question really irrelvant?

Milan Kundera has a very nice discussion of some of the problems of widely spoken and less widely spoken languages and their literatures and of what translates and what doesn't in his The Curtain that I've kept returning to since reading it. Part of the issue is whether there is a difference in the reception of other country's literature when your own body of literature is smaller - a different role for, for example, references and influences; a different role for filling out a syllabus and canon in teaching literature. He interestingly is focused more on French versus Czech, for example, and the degree to which he views Czech literature as NECESSARILY more international in reference; while he sees this as enriching in some ways, he also sees this as more somewhat limiting and problematic for Czech (perhaps this is the point on there being much insular great literature). He struggles both ways.

But to take an interesting small vignette that I think highlights some of the issues: My sister just performed a play in English in Serbia at a theatre festival. The play was written in English by a Serbian expatriate. Of course one can't imagine the equivalent production in the US. This seems to me to be an interesting question for both Serbs and Americans as to how their literature will develop (and if any of you will be in Northampton, Massachusetts in two weeks you can see a production there - we're hoping to get it to NY sometime).

As to whatever equivalency there may or may not be between various great 19th century authors, I will note that Melville was a Nabokov favorite but Dostoevski not so much. For me, they're both indispensible.

There is a myth growing in this thread that Europeans are all sitting round reading each other's literature - it is patently not true.

France and Germany are the number 1 & 2 translating countries in Europe according to the last study (for some reason the UK wasn't included in it) - in both cases more than 70% of the translations were from English (which is probably due to textbooks etc). When the other major languages are added, that accounts for between 85-90% of all translated works. Works from Russian account for less than 2%, as do works from the (Communist) Central Europe. This figure has actually in the last 20 years - the theory being that the publishing trade hit problems post-1989 but also because people seem less interested in them now - life under communism was interesting to the general reader, life under democracy less so.

According to Three Percent there were 342 new translated (literary: fiction & poetry) books in 2008, 326 (so far) in 2009. (Note - this figure does not include classics and writers like Kundera, Calvino, Eco, etc, who are also in print). These figures are quite similar to the major European countries. The reader who wants only to read language in translation can quite happily do so. Can they get obscure material? No, but neither can their counterpart elsewhere in the world.

Despite her subject matter the first Herta Muller book available in Romania was published in 2005. She is a popular writer in a few northern European countries but hardly available elsewhere (including France & Spain - like the Anglo-world she has been published but her work had drifter OOP). She was not being read by the masses of Europe - the difference between Europe and the US was reaction - European papers didn't run articles on obscure winners, etc.

What are the peoples of Europe reading? Dan Brown & J K Rowling, et al. They were given a choice and that's what they choose.

>181 A_musing: - In the last couple of years the opposite has happened, with US writers in Germany and France producing popular (literary) works in those respective languages.

In the end, the only way to truly open up other literatures is to learn to read other languages, and that truth doesn't alter whether you speak English, French, German, Russian, etc.

Jargoneer, thanks, all interesting - I find the 342 number a bit scary, though I have some comfort in its exclusion of classics. I'm interesting in the Americans writing in German and French - who?

182 Jargoneer,

thanks so much for that.

Can you please give me the link to the stats from Three Percent. I got distracted there by all kinds of other great stuff, but the article you quote did not immediately jump out at me. (And I am puzzled by methodology which says this is a stat but it excludes "classics and writers like .... " which could mean anyone, and how do we know who is included and who is not, and does it perhaps wreak havoc with stats??? Just wondering.)

The spreadsheet and criteria are here. (Scroll down for spreadsheet - the authors listed were examples I plucked out of the air, they could equally have been Balzac, Tolstoy or Cervantes). The idea is that they are only tracking the availability of new books.

Jonathan Littell is the American writing in French; I made a mistake with the author having success in Germany, she is a Briton writing in German, Charlotte Roche.

I will note that Melville was a Nabokov favorite but Dostoevski not so much.

So what?

There is a myth growing in this thread that Europeans are all sitting round reading each other's literature - it is patently not true.

I'm not aware of this "myth". Europeans--I exclude the British--have at their disposal a wider selection of translated literature, and also read translated literature more often. You can concentrate on those who are most likely to read Stephen King and Dan Brown, or you can look at what's available to those who choose more rarefied fare.

In the end, the only way to truly open up other literatures is to learn to read other languages

Utter nonsense. How many have had their lives enriched by books originally written in languages they don't speak? And what difference does it make whether one is reading Danielle Steele in Georgian or English?

#185

The only spreadsheets I see at that link are for translations in the US.

A_musing, it may amuse you to hear that the count of 342 of translated titles for the US (whatever the year that was) matches pretty well that of 337 translated titles in Iceland in 2007.

Population of Iceland: 319,756

Population of the US: 304,059,724

Iceland: an island

United States: also an island

Oohoohooohooo, look:

STATISTICS!!!!!!! wow! incontrovertible, uncontestable numerical truth!!!!!!!

In the end, the only way to truly open up other literatures is to learn to read other languages.

Yes, that is indeed utter tosh. and patently daft.

In Jargoneer's defense, the statement is self-evident if he meant it this way: you will not be able to access everything you are interested in unless you take the extra step of learning more languages. Which, for now, in practical terms, is correct. I found the rest of his post a bit grating because it seems to be addressing a straw man, and not really what has already been said in this thread before - I think we already agreed that Continental Europeans translate more, whether or not it leads to more refined literary sensibility or more cosmopolitanism, and that pop culture is the same in most places.

>190 tomcatMurr: - that would be compared to anecdote - I know that's why I rely when I make any decision. Stuff any details, give me anecdotes.

Anyway here's more fact - from German website...

In addition, German readers proved to be quite open to translated books: 8.8 per cent of new titles produced in 2008 were translations, whereby the most translated language was, as might be expected, English (66.9 per cent). The following places went to French (11.5 per cent), Italian (2.8 per cent) and Spanish (2.6 per cent). Studies have shown that 76 per cent of the books on the German bestseller list were by foreign, predominantly American and English authors; in France or Italy the figure is only about 40 per cent, and in Finland only 20 per cent. When it comes to suspense and entertainment, the German reader obviously prefers to put himself in the hands of foreign rather than native writers.

This means that only 16.2% of new books come from the rest of the world. As Germany publish roughly 15000 novels a year that means the rest of the world is represented by around 200 novels. Not too different from the US figures.

>191 Existanai: - that's what I was referring to. If you are serious about literature in another language, the only way you can fully access it is by learning to read that language.

>187 LolaWalser: - according to the official site, there were 284 translated literary works in Iceland in 2007, 191 of which came from English. Take away France, Germany and the Scandinavian countries there were 20 literary works from the rest of the world. Hardly a literary utopia.

The idea that the Anglo-world is culturally insular (in terms of availability) is patently rubbish - the English reader has as much access to the literature of the world as other countries.

>The idea that the Anglo-world is culturally insular (in terms of availability) is patently rubbish - the English reader has as much access to the literature of the world as other countries.

Sigh.

Looking at all those numbers, my biggest conclusion is that European cultures, including Anglo-American, are astonishingly insular from the non-European. It doesn't seem there is much room in there for Chinese, Arabic, or Hindustani, Turkic, Persian, etc., etc. Among the various iterations of the pale, there's a lot less difference.

>European cultures, including Anglo-American, are astonishingly insular from the non-European.

Yes, certainly.