10.05.2005
Nobelity
Any early bets on the Nobel Prize? Anyone care to create silly analogies to picking Supreme Court justices? Any takers on whom you would choose given the opportunity? I'd love to give it to Old Alice or P Roth, not because they need the attention, or because they need the cash, but because they both can throw down and have been throwing down well for some time. I'm sure some of you have more original picks than those two.
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This is a fun topic. Roth and Munro are good calls. Maybe Franzen and Marcus could arm-wrestle for it. DeLillo? Gass? Any foreign writers getting big props? Rushdie, maybe, or Kundera (is he still alive?). Maybe they got passed by, though. I can't think of anyone else off the top of my head, a sure sign of my ignorance.
My money's on Roth, or if they do a posthumous award, WG Sebald.
NPR was suggesting the Syrian poet Adonis. And they mentioned Joyce Carol Oates! Then I went Googling, which makes me predict a non-European woman...
Found this speculation:
Ahead of the academy's announcement several authors have been touted by Nobel watchers. They include Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth, Margaret Atwood of Canada and Nuruddin Farah of Somalia.
Other perennials include Peruvian-born Mario Vargas Llosa. Europeans have won the literature prize in nine of the past 10 years, so the experts think the academy may look elsewhere this year.
Last year, the prize went to Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek. In 2003, it went to South African J.M. Coetzee.
Other names bandied about as winners, or at least strong favourites for the 2005 prize, include Syrian poet Ali Ahmad Said, known as Adonis; Korean poet Ko Un, and Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer.
Since the prize was first handed out in 1901, only 10 women have won.
You have to be alive to get a Nobel. The father of one of my friends in business school developed one the most famous, used, and adapted models of finance, but he died before he could receive the Nobel. His partner in its development did, and my friend's father would have, had he been alive.
So let that be a lesson to you, Bs, Gs, and Rs: don't die before the genius of your work can be recognized!
That is all.
Anyone know if Joyce Carol Oates is the inspiration for that new Corpse Bride movie? My God, do a Google image search...
If somebody asks to be called Adonis AND people go along with it, that's prize worthy. If he wins he should renounce his past and go as the Poet Formerly Known As Adonis.
The bookies at Ladbrookes had Adonis (no relation to Adrian Adonis of the WWF, I assume) and Tomas Transtormer (just typing his name has caused the Transformers theme song to become inexorably stuck in my head) as the favorites - Adonis at 6/4, Optimus Prime at 6/1. An American hasn't won since '93; JC Oates is 7/1 and Philip Roth is 9/1. (The man who wrote Cosmopolis is 33/1.) I don't believe Elfride Jelinek was really on the bettors' radar last year, so surprises are possible. I would really be thrilled to see Roth win, but he just doesn't seem like what the Swedes are looking for.
We should all be praying, even the athiests among us, that those Internet birdies are correct.
In case the birdies haven't landed on your shoulder yet, read this.
Maybe in a sweeping parallel, Karl Rove could win the Nobel, too. That _George W. Bush As Two Term President_ is a pretty amazing work of fiction, if you think about it: social critique, mimetic, timeless, and epic. The main character is one of the great self deluded hero-villains of all literature, in my opinion.
Actually, Rove is boycotting. It is neither fair nor balanced to provide a prize for peace and not one for war.
I didn't realize I was being prescient about it:
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