Is the US too ignorant and insular to make great literature?

[BurtWorm]

The head of the Nobel Literature Prize committee thinks so.

http://www.amny.com/news/nationworld/world/ats-ap-eu-nobel-literaturesep30,0,7059897.story?track=rss

Nobel literature head: US too insular to compete
Sep 30 03:54 PM US/Eastern
By MALIN RISING and HILLEL ITALIE
Associated Press Writers
99 Comments


STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - Bad news for American writers hoping for a Nobel Prize next week: the top member of the award jury believes the United States is too insular and ignorant to compete with Europe when it comes to great writing.

Counters the head of the U.S. National Book Foundation: "Put him in touch with me, and I'll send him a reading list."

As the Swedish Academy enters final deliberations for this year's award, permanent secretary Horace Engdahl said it's no coincidence that most winners are European.

"Of course there is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world ... not the United States," he told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview Tuesday.

He said the 16-member award jury has not selected this year's winner, and dropped no hints about who was on the short list. Americans Philip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates usually figure in speculation, but Engdahl wouldn't comment on any names.

Speaking generally about American literature, however, he said U.S. writers are "too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture," dragging down the quality of their work.

"The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature," Engdahl said. "That ignorance is restraining."

[Indenturedebtor]

1. Yes the hatred for us around the world knows no bounds

I fear it will take generations to recover from the stain of Republican rule.

[mellowfellowO]

29. I disagree with the Nobel board...

As a Brit who studied English Lit here (I know, I appreciate the irony), some of my favorite writers have been American. I'm not going into detail. There are too many. There are quite a few contemporary American writers who are in the running for the Nobel(IMHO), so that comment from the board is bollocks. Comments like that are made mostly by intellectuals who can be quite insular themselves. They live in their little intellectual bubbles and have no clue what's going on. In fact, many of America's best writers are from the South. I just think that the current administration has embraced anti-intellectualism to rouse the crazies, who are in control now. Everything cycles out, and the truth be told, most people in Europe and UK love Americans. We just don't love your government...LOL!

[Dorian Gray]

31. I totally agree

There are many fantastic writers in the USA today, and there are many immigrant writers in the US who do not, in any way, have any sort of insular American view on the world. Southern writers are fantastic, but there are many throughout the country who are great.

The Nobel Committee seems to be insular and prejudiced in their commentary on the state of American literature.

[SteelPenguin]

2. Ah European Snobbishness. How I've missed you.

I've always been irritated by the general attitude of some Europeans that anything American is crap. Just as I disdain the conservative bullshit that anything French is crap. Both viewpoints are close minded, short sighted, and ignorant. The snobbishness though, nine times out of ten in my experience is based as much out of ignorance as it is out of bias.

[BurtWorm]

4. Personally, I think the Nobel Prize is a sign that the literature it's been awarded to is ponderous

and dull. It's not always the case, but to me, the Nobel prize is not the last word in great literature. And I'm aware that this does not address Mr. Engdahl's assertion about American lit, about which I'm agnostic.

[vanderBeth]

21. They certainly aren't addressing America's best literature if they are choosing among Roth and Oates

Quickly looking at wiki, the Nobel prizes have seem to have taken a nosedive.

They have always been somewhat politicized, so I don't know if this is because America-bashing is en vogue or not, but I can't believe he would just paint American literature with such a broad brush. I would get into why there is a lot of great American writing, but it would just come off sounding nationalistic, so I'll refrain.

And yes, the Nobel literature is certainly not the be all and end all in the literature world.

[Dorian Gray]

32. I find myself liking

Pulitzer winning literature over Nobel winning lit, too. I think you are quite right, with a few notable exceptions. (John Steinbeck and Jose Saramago and Gao Xianjian)

[dmallind]

3. Well Roth's being mailing it in for decades

So if that's the usual stuff the Nobel committee sees he has a point. Must admit my artsy reading preferences (I read all kinds of stuff but limiting this to the kind of "serious" literature likely to catch Nobel eyes) tend to the European more than the American, but that's a fairly recent shift. Past greats like Heller and Mailer were every bit as good as the Euros of their era. But do we have a Rushdie or an Eco now? Not that I've come across. Then again I don't read everything so if I'm wrong happy to take recommendations.

[vanderBeth]

16. !

"Roth's being mailing it in for decades"


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[dmallind]

20. So you don't see a marked decline in the quality of his later work?

It's not like this is a startlingly contrarian opinion.

[vanderBeth]

23. No, I meant I agree with you. I found the phrase funny because it was so true.

You are right. He is getting closer and closer to becoming Danielle Steele.

[dmallind]

33. Ah gotcha

It's not like I take literary disagreement personally, and I kinda liked Plot Against America if I'm honest, but I just thought it would be a bit suyrprising that anyone would argue against a bit of a diminishing return from Roth.

[PVnRT]

5. Define "great literature"

[prayin4rain]

6. haha yeah... maybe american writers are the punk rockers of literature...did mr. snobbo

ever consider that?? haha :+

[BurtWorm]

8. I wouldn't go that far.

The truth is, I can't name any must-read great (in any sense) American contemporary fiction writers off the top of my head. Then again, I can't name any must-read great European, African, Australian, Canadian, Latin-American or Asian contemporary fiction writers either.

Literature ain't what it used to be. Anywhere.

[PVnRT]

13. That's kind of the point

For one, ultra-popular books would not be considered great literature anyway, and even people who read a lot may not know what all is out there. Besides that, it's all subjective.

[HamdenRice]

19. Have you actually checked out African literature?

In the last two decades there have been three Africans -- four if you include Egypt (and we should, it's in Africa, duh!)

Wole Soyinka
Nadine Gordimer
JM Coetzee
Naguib Mahfouz

It's five if you include Doris Lessing who lived in southern Africa and whose work was shaped by the experience.

[El Pinko]

7. Could you do me a HUGE favor and change the link?

Here is a link to a non-Drudge source.

http://www.amny.com/news/nationworld/world/ats-ap-eu-nobel-literaturesep30,0,7059897.story?track=rss


"Breitbart" is an ultra-rightwing political operative and partner of Matt Drudge. By clicking his links, we give those assholes money.

Besides, all he does is reprint stuff from other sources and masquerade as a News Outlet, when he is not.

[BurtWorm]

9. Thanks! I didn't know that.

:toast:

(PS: I got the link from mediabistro.com.)

[El Pinko]

12. No, thank you!

Half the links on Drudge's stupid page go to Breitbart, the other half to real news outlets (with an occasional one going to WorldNutDaily). It's his way of trying to make right-wing hack sites look like they are legit news outlets.


Strangely enough, he never links to commondreams or truemajority or any of the other LEFT-leaning news sites...

[mulsh]

10. Scandinavia-lands of literary inovation and greatness.

n/t

[closeupready]

11. They're probably right, but I don't care - I read what I want, what entertains me.

Life can be boring and stressful (though not at the same time) - reading should be fun. The fact that any of us even READ puts us ahead of almost 95% of Americans.

[McCamy Taylor]

14. Wallace Stevens has had more effect on late 20th century thought than any other modernist

writer. If you are having trouble understanding Roland Barthe, the most important 20th century literary critic and philosopher, read Wallace Stevens, because Stevens said it first, 30-40 years earlier and much more eloquently. All social sciences, such as anthropology rely upon theories of culture and identity which Stevens explored in his writing and which people like Barthe developed. I notice that the Noble people completely overlooked Stevens.

William Faulkner is the best novelist ever. And that includes the South American writers who owe so much to him, as well as earlier novelists like James, Dostoevsky and Joyce. Absalom, Absalom will never be rivaled. At least he got a prize.

William Burroughs had one of the finest ears for the poetry of language ever. He also had one of the keenest eyes for the foibles of society that we have seen since Thackeray. Where was his Noble Prize?

Gore Vidal's essays are soooo insular. Noam Chomsky is such an imperialist US pig. And Hunter S. Thompson should have done more to revolutionize the art of journalism.

Has anyone looked a list of the masters of the science fiction genre? How many of them come from Europe? How many from the United States?

The Nobel Committee can blow it out their ass. Except for the writing of its immigrants and communists, Europe has offered the world little in the past fifty years.

[BurtWorm]

15. Set aside the dead ones, your point is well taken about Vidal and Chomsky especially.

[mainegreen]

17. THANK YOU!

I hate this literature is dead or the US can't write literature crap.

Hell, half the time nobody realizes someone was great until they're dead.

[EFerrari]

24. Roland, is that you?

There is a much stronger argument for Pound than for Stevens or Barthe, imo. But, Pound was also an American.

[jpgray]

25. Pound's extracurriculars for Italy perhaps make him a less comfortable mention

[EFerrari]

26. The modernists were pretty much all fascists of one kind or another.

By Engdahl's measure or by McCamy's, the Cantos are unrivaled in English letters.

[jpgray]

27. No denigration of his achievements intended, I'm just saying politics has an impact

Pound was rather more prominent in his support when compared to others. I'd never argue that this alone makes his work de facto better or worse. Lots of great artists have been hopeless assholes in terms of their politics.

[EFerrari]

30. They sure have been and especially in that generation!

:)

[jpgray]

18. The US is often too ignorant and insular to appreciate its true literary talent

That's not to say it doesn't exist. The Don Adams thriller factories and the Oprah book club obsession are major culprits, for example.

[Marie26]

22. "to compete with Europe"?

There's no other regions of the world worth mentioning? Talk about insular! That's why Latin American writers keep winning the Nobel Prize for Literature...

[EFerrari]

37. It's funny, isn't it? Maybe they need a new map!

[alcibiades_mystery]

28. The goings on in Yoknapatawpha County, for instance

Come on, Faulkner won a Nobel Prize for Literature on a distinct Southern pronvincialism (hell, the only character who left the South killed himself!). All literature, like all politics, is local.

I don't know how somebody could read Against the Day without falling down at its expansive and beautiful qualities.

This is just a silly argument.

[EFerrari]

34. Toni Morrison.

:shrug:

I don't know why Kingsolver didn't get one for The Poisonwood Bible. In fact, I need another copy because mine keep disappearing.

[alcibiades_mystery]

35. You don't get one for one book

:-)

[EFerrari]

36. LOL! May be time to smudge the house.

:)