Speculation about the winner focused on many of the same writers who were deemed favorites last year: Adonis, a Syrian poet; Tomas Transtromer, a Swedish poet; Assia Djebar, an Algerian novelist; and Haruki Murakami, the Japanese novelist whose hugely anticipated book “1Q84” will be released on Oct. 25.Ladbrokes is accepting wagers; Roth, McCarthy, Oates, Don DeLillo and Bob Dylan are all at 25/1.
The Americans who have been named as contenders include Joyce Carol Oates, Thomas Pynchon, Cormac McCarthy and Philip Roth. (Mr. Roth is 78, and The Millions, a literary Web site, posted an open letter to the Swedish Academy last week asking it to “stop the nonsense and give Philip Roth a Nobel Prize for Literature before he dies.”)
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
WONDER IF THEY'LL SERVE LIVER AT THE BANQUET: The Nobel Prize for Literature will be awarded on Thursday, and the touts are saying ...
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No odds for Harlan Ellison? Naw, this is for Serious Literature. (Yes, I know Doris Lessing won, but that's a very particular brand of science fiction that's also easily branded Serious Literature by the literary establishment.)
ReplyDeleteBut more importantly, I love that you can get better odds (10/1:25/1 as of 7:54 AM CDT) for Bob Dylan (seriously?) than for Joyce Carol Oates (who's way ahead on the Nobel list than Roth to me, no matter if he's a whole 5 years older).
Though, and I'm going to edge up to The Line for a moment, if the Nobel committee goes with the 'great writer also delivering statements,' I'd be tempted to lay some money down on Amos Oz, who deserves one anyway.
Atwood seems to me a good bet, if not this year then certainly within her lifetime--reasonably prolific, solid work, scores the committee some hipness points, and has generally the sort of politics that the Nobel committee seems to want to award.
ReplyDeleteLast week I got to read an excellent email conversation between two book critics, one a Yankees fan and the other a Red Sox fan, about who they'd lay odds on for the Nobel that used all sorts of Yankees/Red Sox analogies. It was hilarious and sadly, they ignored my advice that they publish the exchange.
ReplyDeleteHas to be in her lifetime if it's to happen at all, doesn't it? This week's medicine guy notwithstanding.
ReplyDeleteThat's almost certainly why Kurt Vonnegut didn't win the price. He had too many tendrils in genre fiction. We could do worse than Harlan Ellison -- and almost certainly will!*
ReplyDelete* Of course, I think Harlan Ellison should win a Nobel Prize for Awesome for telling Frank Sinatra to go f*** himself.