The winner of the
Nobel Prize in Literature (2020) will be announced
October 8.
Who's going to win?
Who's not going to win?
Will the committee take any account of the year of protests around the world?
Quote poohbear_nc
Will the committee take any account of the year of protests around the world?
I'm making an assumption and guessing that you're talking about the controversy surrounding Handke, so the most relevant information I can find is from
this Guardian article. Here's a quote:
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Björn Wiman, culture editor at Swedish paper Dagens Nyheter, said: Last year was an exhibition in how not to polish your brand. They followed up a year when they had been explicitly prohibited from awarding the prize with giving it to Handke. Im sure they were aware of the colossal controversy that would follow, and which did, and which further deepened the crisis for the Swedish Academy.
This is important for this years prize because they will, I think, make a safe choice. They will give the prize to a female author, who is not from Europe, and who is, in the political and ideological and appearance-wise sense, the opposite of Handke, Wiman added.
I'm pretty sure there's always drama, like when Bob Dylan won it.
I think that Jamaica Kincaid will get the prize this year. 👍
Louise Glück wins Nobel Prize for Literature
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Glück was recognised for "her unmistakable poetic voice, that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal"
My personal favorite is her collection
The Wild IrisQuote poohbear_nc
Louise Glück wins Nobel Prize for Literature
My personal favorite is her collection The Wild Iris
Its a difficult choice, but I think for me
Ararat edges out
Wild Iris. Both, happily, are in the volume of her collected verse, which is a terrific value as an ebook, but Ill say as an aside that poetry is the one genre where I prefer paper to digital as the layout is so important. However, this is not to try to talk people out of trying her in digital if they havent read her poetry yet.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2010/08/are-our-literary-giants-really-just-overrated-poseursQuote
Exemplary Lines: "This, this is the meaning of / 'a fortunate life': it means / to exist in the present."
She is perhaps our greatest example of mediocrity ascending to the very top (currently hands out the Yale Series of Younger Poets award--oh, how we have fallen from Auden!). As with Sharon Olds, her poetry is an accurate reflection of the abysmal decline of American feminism from its radical incarnation in the seventies. First book, Firstborn, was stillborn Plath, and it only got worse--though she took 17 years between books at one time to figure out her direction, going from Plath's angry confessionalism to pure domesticity. Takes herself so seriously that her domestic travails are the subject of her own mythology (herself=Penelope). Utterly humorless--a characteristic common to the other mediocrities on this list.
On a brief reading, I see nothing that merits a Nobel Prize, or even a prize really.
For sure, Dylan deserved it more:
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Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying
I found this rebuttal of Shivani’s comments quite entertaining. And persuasive.
https://flcenterlitarts.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/anis-shivani-the-most-overrated-arbiter-of-whats-overrated-in-literature/Quote
But I guess Shivani got tired of sitting in neglected glory down in Houston, where his novels, short stories and poems are published by small presses and nominated for second-tier prizes.
In Shivani’s case, as in Peck’s, critical judgment, grounded in a specific, defensible aesthetic, has been replaced with angry subjectivity. And, I suspect, resentment. The entire problem with the 15 writers Shivani assails seems to be that that are more famous, honored and successful than Shivani himself.
Quote issybird
Ill say as an aside that poetry is the one genre where I prefer paper to digital as the layout is so important. However, this is not to try to talk people out of trying her in digital if they havent read her poetry yet.
I'm interested in getting into more poetry, could you give me an example of what you mean?
