Unfortunately, Engdahl is right about American literature's provincialism. This provincialism is self-conscious and self-enforced. I have a PhD in a European literature, and I am now studying for an MFA. I find that my writing teachers not only have no knowledge of or interest in European (Asian, South American, etc.) literature, but that they have an active hostility towards anything foreign.

There is a simple reason for this: Their authority as writing teachers comes from their having been "trained" in the American academy, and any acknowledgment of alternative traditions undermines their bread-and-butter interest in maintaining the fiction that their techniques represent the one and only correct way to write. Since the rise of the MFA Mafia a few decades ago, a small coterie of academically trained "writers" has had a strangle-hold on literary life in America, and since then it's been Kmart realism or schlock postmodernism across the board. Basically, these academic writers produce predictable, standardized books that certify their competence in the prescribed methods--hence helping secure academic appointments--but that hold little interest to a non-academic audience, much less a Nobel committee or people around the globe.

I often find that even the semblance of populist appeal can kill a works chances of attaining literary prizes. Judges appear to award accolades to the most esoteric works, regardless of whether they are actually the most outstanding. It seems to augment their own view of themselves as intellectually refined. Thus the Booker prize over the past few years has consistently bucked expectations, with difficult, some would say, interminable novels winning out over those with more popular appeal. I think the word for it is snobbery.

The Booker Prize has no popular appeal? OK you said populist, but considering the anti-intellectual sentiment couched in that word, a sentiment that does not belong in a discussion about what makes literature great, I'll assume you meant popular. Anyway, let's look at few recent Booker prize winners: Yann Martel, Arundhati Roy, Kirin Desai: all bestsellers. And the Nobel: Orhan Pamuk, Jose Saramago ("Now a Major Motion Picture"), V.S. Naipul, Kenzaburo Oe, Seamus Heaney and yes, as mentioned in the article, Morrison, Grass and Pinter. All bestsellers. Seems pretty popular to me.

There may be politics in the choice of Nobel laureates (esp. Peace: Gore and Carter, not to mention Arafat), it doesn't mean the writers who do win are not worthy. Some, though not all, American literature is frozen in a bland realism, mostly by the MFA machine. It is true that much of the world is no longer interested in our dull sentence crafting. Roth is OK. But as experimental as Calvino? That's just absurd.

All this doesn't mean I don't think any American writers are deserving. Pynchon is. The only other one I can think of just died, so he can't win.

If a dead guy can give a prize, no reason why a dead writer can't receive one.

BTW, what have YOU written?

Sounds to me that literature is going the way of poetry.

to wit: total trash.

Except for the comic novel, a non-european genre.

A) They don't award Nobels posthumously.

B) Isn't it kind of beside the point what I've written when I'm talking about what kinds of writing I like, and point out that some of this not-so-populist writing is actually quite popular?

The problem with your arguement satorian, is that the winning novel, and those shortlisted, always get a major boost in sales as a result of all the attention garnered. That doesn't mean that the Booker is either popular or populist; it means many people buy novels out of curiousity. Also the Booker adds a certain cachet to a novel- some people read works purely because they've won a major literary award.

It would perhaps be more illuminating to view the sales figures of works both before and after the announcement of the winner. In the two recent cases, that of Anne Enright and John Banville, sales went from a trickle to a flood in the week after the awards. Incidentally, both novels, and especially Banville's The Sea, were at the esoteric end of the scale compared to the other contenders, and both were surprise winners. Such prizes are all about the personal taste of the judges of course, and it seems to me that it can sometimes be about the vanity of the judging ommittee also.

I see your point, Einhard. Coupla issues, though. First, literature, except for a few exceptions, is not marketed very well, or indeed very much at all. The imprimantur of a major award is basically a marketing tool. Yes, I agree that people often buy awarded authors out of curiosity. Sure. But that's because they probably haven't heard of the author before the award. Most people don't invest their time and money in a book without SOME vetting process. Most don't have time to read the NY Review of Books. So yeah, they pick up awarded books. That in itself doesn't make the books unreadable or unpopular or whatever. It may have been the award that go the name out there, but it's word of mouth that keeps a book popular. I remember being on a plane 6 years ago, and seeing eight different people reading Blindness. Mind you, this was a few years after Saramago got the Nobel. That Nobel probably made him famous. But writing good and enjoyable books made him a bestseller.

The other issue. I don't see why you have to chalk up literary prference to vanity or pomposity or anything else. I, for one, really only like books with at least a hint of the experimental, be they magical realist, surrealist, structuralist, or whatever. Such books excite me. Books without that tinge of the new do not excite me. I just don't want to read stories about growing up in the South with and alcoholic father. If the Mississippi Review likes it, I likely will not. That doesn't make the MR anti-intellectual jerk-offs. It just means they have a diffrent literary taste from mine. Now I could say that they are pretentious gits with no interest in a forward looking literature who are massaging their inflated sense of blah blah with their blah blah. But why? I think the Booker people, more than anything else, LIKE the books they award. Just like the realist leaning American journals, and with very few exceptions (i.e. this year) Pulitzer committee award American realism because they LIKE it more than experimental or fantastical stuff.

Yes . . . European writing is SO FULL OF . . . I'd like to write shit, but that's being too real for them.

You have to make it esoteric. So hard to read, with their metaphors and symbolism, it's boring.

Give me Erica Fromm any day! Carlos Castaneda . . . Kurt Vonnegut!! Mark Twain. Now those are some FINE American writers.

TrollingForDummies:

Yes . . . European writing is SO FULL OF . . . I'd like to write shit, but that's being too real for them.

I love that the outrage of many American's over the somewhat ignorant and condescending dismissal of American literature by one Swedish intellectual, is manifested in exactly the same type of general dismissal.

Actually, asshole, it is right on point. Is your "PhD" thesis even readable, "doc"?

eeros:

Actually, asshole, it is right on point. Is your "PhD" thesis even readable, "doc"?

Who is that directed at?

I think the Booker people, more than anything else, LIKE the books they award. Just like the realist leaning American journals, and with very few exceptions (i.e. this year) Pulitzer committee award American realism because they LIKE it more than experimental or fantastical stuff.

As you suggest, satorian, it's often a matter of discriminating among awards. Some feel the National Book Awards, for example, are more prestigious (and better selections) than the Pulitzers.