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Fred Dungan
Unity Member
Post Number: 2031
Registered: 10-2002

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Posted on Monday, March 24, 2008 - 11:40 pm:

From: Fred Dungan
To: comments@nobelprize.org
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2008 10:34 PM
Subject: STUFFY EGGHEAD LITERATURE

Have you considered leveling the playing field for the Nobel Prize for Literature? Why not have open competition? Nomination is a joke and judging is an exercise in elitism. How about allowing publishers to nominate writers for the award? If you want this to be a public event, then you need to involve the public in the process. Conducting a contest in the same way year after year after year is lacklustre. Alfred Nobel dealt in nitro and dynamite--explosive stuff--but the awards are simply stuffy. Blow it up and start again.

Sincerely,

Fred Dungan
http://www.dunganbooks.com

Frank Mazur
Wandering Member
Post Number: 288
Registered: 02-2005

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Posted on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 - 04:43 am:

Baloney, Fred. And "elitism" is the comfortable term applied kneejerkingly to those who use their intellect by those who know little and are proud of it. And I don't believe you are one of those, so that's why the warning. Anti-intellectualism is very prevalent in America. A lot of people are damn proud of their ignorance. Examples of it show up on this board, which is purportedly a WRITERS board. One would think ALL writers would want to know more. I may not have read every Nobel winner and all their works, but I've read enough to know by own judgment that most are deserving of the award. I've also read sufficiently of authors that have "won" much lesser known awards. Most of these should be done away with as they are but an exercise in flatulence. None of this is to say that there isn't some stuffy egghead literature out there--I've read some of that too. But thankfully, most of it usually does not get nominated.

Having written the above, it occurred to me that most of those Nobel winners I read were from decades past, and so I checked out the winners of the past 25 years. I'm quite behind, as there are several who I've not even heard of. So thanks for the reminder, Fred. I'll have to engage myself with some of the more recent winners.

3-dollar gas. Writers' strike. Read a great book by F. E. Mazur.

SPINE
THE BUCKSELLER
"A BIGGER CASE"

Bill Nelson
Unity Member
Post Number: 2909
Registered: 10-2002

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Posted on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 - 07:09 am:

"...elitism" is the comfortable term applied kneejerkingly to those who use their intellect by those who know little and are proud of it."

But, enough about you, Frank.....

Laurel Johnson
Unity Member
Post Number: 4498
Registered: 01-2002

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Posted on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 - 08:16 pm:

My thoughts, as always, are different from those of true thinkers.
I don't see such prizes as elitist or anti intellectual. I see them as a waste of time, energy, and attention.
As in everything else in life, the ones who control the money get to play and the rest of us can read about it in the newspaper or see a sound bite on the news. Literary prizes are like politics, big business, or international banking. It is not always the brightest and the best who are allowed to teeter on the pinnacle, but those the money holders decide to bless.
Yes, read the list and see how many of these writers we've heard of.

Laurel Johnson
http://laureljohnsonblogs.blogspot.com

Frank Mazur
Wandering Member
Post Number: 289
Registered: 02-2005

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Posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 - 10:30 am:

If anyone of us were to list off our 10 most favorite writers to a friend, that friend might respond with "There's a few of those authors I never heard of." To which you might say, "That's why I'm telling you. Now you have heard of them and you might want to consider reading some of their works."

That, very basically, is what the Nobel Prize for Literature does. Keep in mind it is not an American prize. The award has gone to writers from countries all across the globe. And it is an award for a body of work, not a single book. I'd be amazed if any author ever won it while in his/her 20s or 30s. Even 40s. If we haven't heard of some of them before, that should be no surprise. It doesn't mean, however, that they didn't acquire a following in their own country. And it might mean that few if any of their works were offered in translation in this country. Even when that does occur, a publisher will think twice about how big a run to do if the story is in some distant land that Americans don't pay much attention to. Moreover, there have been some winners who did not have any following to speak of, but only because their governments were repressive.

The Lit award, like the others for medicine, economics, and so on, became a spin-off from the original award. But all are considered with regard to the human condition and the circling philosophies. I'm sure there are differing opinions on who each year's winner should be, but the Nobel has been around a long time and has long been considered the Numero Uno prize. I doubt those in control of the Nobel trust would jeopardize its fine reputation.

3-dollar gas. Writers' strike. Read a great book by F. E. Mazur.

SPINE
THE BUCKSELLER
"A BIGGER CASE"

Fred Dungan
Unity Member
Post Number: 2033
Registered: 10-2002

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Posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 - 09:07 pm:

The current prize winner is a self-educated novelist in her 80's who never graduated from high school. Admittedly, after having been nominated for four decades, it was about time she won the award. But this year's award was an exception to the rule. More typical was the 2004 award when the committee selected Elfriede Jelinek, a largely unknown Austrian novelist who was said to have won because the Nobel committee wanted to give it to a politically active woman who opposed US foreign policy in order to make a political point. Both the author and the committee denied this. Jelinek says that the committee "assured me that I received the prize because they value my work, not because I am a woman." Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Nobel committee, denied that the selection of Ms. Jelinek amounted to political commentary.

Nonetheless, in 2005, Knut Ahnlund, a member of the Nobel committee, abruptly resigned. He did not depart over that year's winner, British playwright Harold Pinter. Mr. Ahnlund resigned over the previous year's winner, Elfriede Jelinek.

Mr. Ahnlund told the Swedish press that Jelinek's writing is "whining, unenjoyable, public pornography," and," a mass of text shoveled together without artistic structure." Giving Jelinek the prize, he said "has done irreparable damage to the Nobel Literature Prize, both to those who came before Elfriede Jelinek and those who come after her.�Artistic ability has been set aside simply to play lackey to ideology."

Ms. Jelinek is a militant left-wing feminist openly hostile to the United States and her play, Babel, deals with Abu Ghraib prison. Jelinek joined the Austrian Communist Party, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Soviet Union, in 1974. This is something nobody committed to democracy, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech could possibly do. Recall the travails of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, chronicler of the Gulag Archipelago, right about the time Ms. Jelinek joined up. She remained a member until 1991, the same year USSR ceased to exist. It takes a special kind of person to show such staying power when Eastern Europeans were fleeing to the West at any opportunity.

Readers can judge for themselves whether someone of this profile, who is also a bad writer, belongs in the same league as the other nine women who have won the Nobel Prize for literature in its 103 years.

As for Mr. Ahnlund, his protest and resignation should not be seen as a move against women. His protest focused upon the merits of Jelinek�s work. He is hardly the first Nobel committee member to quit: in 1989, academy members Kerstin Ekman and Lars Gyllensten quit because, in their view, the academy had failed to support Salman Rushdie against death threats issued by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini.

In my opinion, the award should be based solely on literary merit rather than how well it meshes with socialist foreign policy. Frank is right, this is "the Numero Uno" prize. It's sad to see it get awarded to a political hack who has spent most of her life telling the world how much better the Marxist economic model functions than capitalism.

http://www.dunganbooks.com

Tom Elkins
Wisdom Member
Post Number: 926
Registered: 01-2005

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Posted on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 - 09:57 pm:

The Nobel committee(s) actions speak louder than words. Peace prizes for Jimmy Carter and Al Gore? Give me a break!

Tom Elkins
NORTH of TEXAS
www.authorsden.com/tomelkins

a1207005745773 (Unregistered Guest)
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Posted on Monday, March 31, 2008 - 05:45 pm:

good

a1208013074202 (Unregistered Guest)
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Posted on Saturday, April 12, 2008 - 05:11 pm:

good & gone

Fred Dungan
Unity Member
Post Number: 2050
Registered: 10-2002

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Posted on Saturday, April 12, 2008 - 10:12 pm:

I knew it! a1208013074202 is an agent for the Nobel Literature Prize Committee. He does their dirty work for them.

http://www.fdungan.com/moreau.htm

Harry Simenon
Unity Member
Post Number: 1845
Registered: 10-2003

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Posted on Sunday, April 13, 2008 - 12:49 am:

I think the next Nobel prize for literature should go to a1208013074202, or one of his/hers/its many relatives.

I liked the 'soma' work better than the recent work, as that showed more depth and emotion.

a1208151124790 (Unregistered Guest)
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Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 - 07:32 am:

a1209517857131 (Unregistered Guest)
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Posted From: 210.188.216.67

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Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 - 03:11 am:

a1209517902347 (Unregistered Guest)
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Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 - 03:11 am:

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