Nobel Bias

Slate has an interesting discussion about anti-American bias for the selection of the literature prize:

When Saul Bellow learned that he had won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1976, he reacted to the news in the only way a great writer can or should: He tried hard not to care. "I'm glad to get it," Bellow admitted, but "I could live without it." This month, as the Swedish Academy prepares for its annual announcement, Bellow's heirs in the top ranks of American literature—Roth, Updike, Pynchon, DeLillo—already know they're going to live without the Nobel Prize. Horace Engdahl, the academy's permanent secretary, made that clear this week when he told the Associated Press that American writers are simply not up to Nobel standards. "The U.S. is too isolated, too insular," Engdahl decreed. "They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining."

Comments

[Edward]

So, when are you going to win a Nobel Prize for America? At least you couldn't be accused of being insular.

[MC]

Well, I'd actually have to write a novel first...perhaps someday.