I think the basic issue is that the Nobels are chosen by Swedish politicians.

So, they're Swedish, number one, and they hold the social-political prejudices of educated Northern Europeans. It is hardly surprising that, like everyone else on the planet, they largely adhere to their own regional biases, insecurities, criteria for fairness and value, etc.

But they are also politicians, and I think this point doesn't get emphasized enough. It's not just that they wish to score political points with their literary selections (by spanking Europeans with Pamuk, South Africans with Gordimer, and Euro-Americans with Morrison, etc), though they obviously do that. It's that even if they were to try to judge literary works "on the merits," as I would say they did with Coetzee, they would still choose literary writers conforming specifically to a politician's sense of merit. So, look for writers of historical novels on national themes, novels ofpolitical commitment, basically earnest, realistic novels with a social conscience , politically dissident poets from minority world literatures. Nobel writers need to affirm that the political is the central sphere of human engagement and that moral reflection is most seriously a moral reflection on socio-political quandaries.

Nabokov, Pynchon, Delillo, Auster, McCarthy. These are (or were) great, great American writers with a full body of work. But, like Joyce, they are great writers according to criteria valued by lovers of language and imaginative fiction (ie, literary people!). Not one of these writers would straighforwardly pass a Swedish politician's basic question of "how does this body of work affirm the centrality of the socio-political sphere and the sanctity of human rights (politically conceived)?"

Roth, I don't know. It doesn't seem beyond possibility that Swedish politicians might write him a check one day, but probably they'll want to use his award to spank somebody. Maybe Roth should get himself photographed in a t-shirt declaring himself "Willing to perform spanks for Swedes."

This was an excellent analysis.

Even Roth's best novels aren't "Great Novels" that will have much value in 20 years, except for with angry teenaged boys.

We'll see Bob Dylan get the medal before they give it to some guy who sees fit to make biting commentary about the horrors of modern America from his monastic abode on a farm in Connecticut. I've certainly learned a lot more about life and truth and beauty and the power of language from Mr. Zimmerman than I have from Mr. Roth.

But DeLillo is king. KING!

Excellent commentary. Your explanation is certainly more compelling than the author's notion of European condescension and anti-Americanism somehow trickling down through the centuries, which struck me as exceedingly forced.

The true absurdity is expecting any process held in so bright a spotlight to select its winners based on artistic merit, especially in a field in which any measurement of quality is necessarily subjective (I image it's rather more difficult to play politics with the Nobel in medicine).

And B-Real, I have no clue what you're talking about. Angry teenage boys like Philip Roth? I tend to imagine them shooting things in videogames. I don't understand why every third post in response to this article takes the time to belittle Roth, whose writing positively glitters with intelligence even on a sentence-by-sentence basis. I feel like everyone's read Portnoy's Complaint and nothing else -- y'all should crack open The Counterlife some time.

"I think the basic issue is that the Nobels are chosen by Swedish politicians."

"But they are also politicians, and I think this point doesn't get emphasized enough."

Speaking about insular views...actually, the literary Nobel prizes are chosen by the literary delegates of the Swedish Academy (an unpolitical institution; no politicians are involved in the descions).

Oops -- I see I was misinformed. Thank you for the correction, EuGuy. You are right that the prize committee comes from the Swedish Academy, an 18-member institution dedicated to the purity of the Swedish language. They are linguists and historians of Scandinavian literatures; they are not politicians. And, if they sometimes make rather insular judgments, well, so do we all, myself obviously included (and you were kind to reinforce this point, thank you very much).

On the other hand, much of my original point--that the prizes are unavoidably and perhaps primarily political, not aesthetic (though they may also be that)--remains intact. Even leaving aside the inevitable issue of differing regional values, which has embarrassed both sides in the debate this week, the award is significantly and explicitly political due to the very mission of the prize itself, which seeks to recognize "the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency." We might repeat that: "of an idealistic tendency."

Now, of course, one can speak about idealistic tendencies in the conduct of a romance or the pursuit of science, or the aesthetic strivings of art, but I think the Swedish academy, like most people, would justifiably interpret "idealistic tendency" in a socio-political way. I have no quarrel with that. I also have no quarrel with the particular (northern European) way the Swedish academy evidently interprets "outstanding work of a (socio-politically) idealistic tendency." It's their prize, after all.

My point, however, is that the prize rewards the political in art, a fact usually obscured or lost in how people understand the award. It is not strictly for the most outstanding work. It's for outstanding work of an idealistic tendency. The point is, further, that many of the most outstanding and most distinctive living American writers (in my view) don't really direct their energies and their passions to socio-political idealism. McCarthy, DeLillo, Pynchon, Robinson, maybe Auster, maybe Chabon: I think they're among the best writers in the history of literature (and Engdahl was indeed insular to suggest otherwise), but their devotions are too aesthetic or too domestic or, when political, too little in conformity with socio-political idealism to satisfy any prize with the Nobel's mission.

Roth I don't know well enough to comment on.

McCarthy, DeLillo, Pynchon, Robinson, maybe Auster, maybe Chabon: I think they're among the best writers in the history of literature

Good grief, Rob, that's an awfully rash statement. As good as Shakespeare, Flaubert, Dostoyevsky, TS Eliot, Nabokov, WBYeats, Coetzee? (and I've only named a few of the best writers in the history of literature).

Roth I don't know well enough to comment on.

Then how can we possibly take your list seriously? Read something like American Pastoral.

Speaking of your list -- do you mean Mary McCarthy? Marilynne Robinson?

Well, I didn't intend my list to be comprehensive. I just wanted to assert, with a list that seemed to me absolutely defensible, that living Americans have written great literature that doesn't very comfortably fit the requisite "idealistic tendency" of the Novel prize in literature. And why not, after all? Americans have the wealth, the leisure, the literacy, the literary tradition, and a population of 300 million to support a living literature.

But, since you ask, :) I do think (Cormac) McCarthy is fully the equal of Coetzee, though one may of course prefer one to the other. I do indeed think Delillo's Underworld is as great as Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment--and better than The Brothers Karamazov. I think Pynchon's best is the equal of (his teacher) Nabokov's best. And Marilynne Robinson sits unembarrassed on my shelf with Flaubert. I waffle a bit on Chabon and Auster. I hope Chabon's magnum opus is yet to come. Are they as great as Shakespeare's best? Unless you put Shakespeare's best in a lonely class of its own, again, I don't see why not. King Lear? Waiting for the Barbarians? Blood Meridian? How different are these really? But probably this isn't the forum to answer that question.

I'd be very happy to read American Pastoral (and I plan to). I didn't care for Goodbye Columbus, but I don't take that (early) piece as the last word on Roth, whom so many people admire.

Is it just me, or did the McGrath piece on this same subject in the NYTs today sound, well, familiar?

_Beloved_ will live for as long as there are "re-memories" of slavery. And then it will go on living. Coetze's _Disgrace_ is a masterpiece and a half--and by a cosmopolitan, not a South African, an Australian. Yeesh, the guy writes regularly for the NYRB and lived for years in Saul Bellow's old neighborhood.

Coetze's "Disgrace" is a masterpiece and a half--and by a cosmopolitan, not a South African, an Australian. Yeesh, the guy writes regularly for the NYRB and lived for years in Saul Bellow's old neighborhood.

Not so. Coetzee lived most of his life in South Africa, and only moved to Australia after he retired in 2002.

He got his Ph.D. at the Univ of Texas at Austin and taught for a few years in Buffalo NY. He wanted to stay in the US but was turned down because of his anti-Vietnam activities.

He spent less than a year at the Univ. of Chicago after he retired. He became an Australian citizen in 2006.

Thanks for the correction MaryAnn. Not sure how that long stay in Chicago got into my head. Probably out of wishful thinking/pride for my old hometown. And I was not aware of the retribution for his anti-Viet Nam, what? actions? speeches? "paling around with revolutionaries"?

If you insist on ranking works of literature (which I dont approve of doing) and list the best, shouldn't you include the rest of the world, you know, Asia, Africa, etc etc? And what about all the past works that were lost? And could a single human being read all of it so as to speak authoritatively of the "history of literature"?

Hi Kati—

Thanks for the note! I only listed Americans since that was the topic at hand (whether living Americans were writing great literature, even if maybe not, as the prize requires, great literature “with idealistic tendencies”).

As for the idea of lists in general, you’re right that they can’t be taken too seriously. For me personally, it’s not exactly a matter of ranking, which seems ridiculous, but a matter of category: is this book a work of art? or is it a different kind of creature? Not that “art” is the only category of writing people should read or enjoy. Many interesting, or curious, or important, or enjoyable narratives don't fall under the heading of art--and that's okay! It’s obviously Harold Bloom’s loss if he can’t enjoy Harry Potter. But there is in fact a distinction between art and non-art, literature and non-literature, and that distinction matters to me.

And you are right to note that (of course!) there are fine writers from many parts of the world, not just from Western Europe and the U.S. I wish publishers and readers would support more translation of other literatures into English. For that matter, I wish Americans were more curious and knowledgeable about other cultures, even if the vastness, population, and cultural self-sufficiency of anglophone North America make their insularity pretty understandable.

On the other hand, I think that literary, or artistic, writing flourishes best under conditions that have been pretty stable in Western Europe and in the U.S. for the last two hundred years or more, but that have prevailed less commonly elsewhere. Ideally, for example, such a culture has a large, literate, middle-class readership and minimal government or church interference in what gets published. Ideally, such a culture contends with its existential dramas in art, rather than exclusively in religion and philosophy. Ideally, the young persons of such a culture are not always being conscripted to fight and die in wars and invasions. And it helps for a culture to have some cultural self-confidence, such that art is not thought to be something that people do only somewhere else.

There are exceptions. Of course there are exceptions. Police states will occasionally throw up a Dostoevsky or a Bulgakov or a Pelevin. Sometimes theater economics can trump an unfavorable publishing or literacy situation, as with Sophocles or Shakespeare. Sometimes a culture more inclined to understand its profoundest problems in terms of spirituality or philosophy will give us a Tanizaki or a Mishima. And there will always be small language groups who may produce a prodigy, a Tammsaare or a Lem, but who, regrettably for the rest of us, cannot command the attention of a great big world mostly focused on its own problems.

The issue of the entire history of literature, like the issue of ranking, is less important to me than the assertion that some writing is art and that, within that category, there is much to admire by living American writers.

Nice to see Coetzee is widely admired around here...

On the other hand, I think that literary, or artistic, writing flourishes best under conditions that have been pretty stable in Western Europe and in the U.S. for the last two hundred years or more

I disagree in the sense that one reason I think Europeans have written so much great poetry (and prose) in the middle of the 20th century is because of their direct experience with World War II. American writers, by contrast, have not had such dramatic experiences to write about (especially the second half of the 20th century) -- and it sometimes shows in their less-than-inspired works.

As the article on the Swedish academy shows insularity is a great American problem.

And this insularity is politics at its very core.

Just take a look at American television and you never see an international program on the networks and a pitiful few on the cable channels. News from another angle than the American is an impossible dream. International news channels such as the excellent France 24 with its channel in English let alone the equally excellent English branch of the Al Jazeera and the Englishspeaking Russia Now -all prevented from

a free distribution into American homes by the owners of the cable. Where is the opinion against this preventing the public from its rights to information?

As for the Swedish academy its l8 members are chosen representing the humanities in accordance with the desires by its founder, the Swedish king Gustav III in the l780´s. He in turn was inspired by Sweden´s ancient ally France and its Academy. Both institutions have as its main task to compile a language dictionary (a favourite idea during the Enlightenment).

The formidable task still not finishd by either academy.

No member of the Swedish Academy is a politician.

Highly placed civil servants have been members from the beginning which explains that the UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld was a member with a vivid interest in the choosing of the prize laureates.

As the prestige of the prize rose the Academy has indeed found itself a subject of a tremendous pressure from very strong interests from the outside as within itself.

I have seen a letter by the hand of Hammarskjöld in New York warning the Academy that giving the prize to Albert Camus would "threaten world peace" . He succeeded in delaying the Academy but did not stop its decision to give Camus the prize.

Alfred Nobel chose the Swedish academy to execute his will as for the literature prize and, when the Academy accepted also agreed it has had to follow Nobel´s conditions . The prize should be given a writer concerned with the condition of man and yet give hope.

But a small country in a sea of much bigger players has most certainly tried to use the goodwill of the Academy for its own purposes. It is hard not to see giving the prize to Winston Churchill in l953 and to Ernest Hemingway shortly afterwards as a useful sign of reverence to the Anglo American condition of man after WW II.

As the protocols of the Academy are not public we can only speculate on the choices made. It is a help to know the conditions of the Academy and of that Europe which Sweden has always been a part. It is a world very different from the Sweden imagined by American insularity.