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September 30, 2008

Nobel Committee: We're Not Ashamed of Our Snobbery

Huh. I thought Americans were supposed to be the close-minded slack-jawed yokels.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - Bad news for American writers hoping for a Nobel Prize next week: the top member of the award jury believes the United States is too insular and ignorant to compete with Europe when it comes to great writing.

Counters the head of the U.S. National Book Foundation: "Put him in touch with me, and I'll send him a reading list."

As the Swedish Academy enters final deliberations for this year's award, permanent secretary Horace Engdahl said it's no coincidence that most winners are European.

"Of course there is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world ... not the United States," he told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview Tuesday.

There's only one response to this. Nuke Sweden. The American literary community should simply refuse to participate in what's clearly a Euro-centric sham of a competition. Two of the best books I've read in the past year were written by American (born and naturalized) writers - The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. I'm only a quarter through A Thousand Splendid Sons by Hosseini, but it's very good so far.

Meh. I guess it's their right to be snobs, but such prejudgment calls the integrity of the competition into question.

Posted by slublog at September 30, 2008 08:54 PM

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Posted by: coldmexican at September 30, 2008 10:33 PM

Posted by: Kath at October 1, 2008 06:07 AM

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