{"id":954,"date":"2008-09-30T16:05:01","date_gmt":"2008-09-30T23:05:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2008\/09\/the-nobel-prize-is-for-elitist-blowhards-who-typically-write-the-most-stultifyingly-obtuse-prose-possible\/"},"modified":"2008-09-30T17:47:06","modified_gmt":"2008-10-01T00:47:06","slug":"the-nobel-prize-is-for-elitist-blowhards-who-typically-write-the-most-stultifyingly-obtuse-prose-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2008\/09\/30\/the-nobel-prize-is-for-elitist-blowhards-who-typically-write-the-most-stultifyingly-obtuse-prose-possible\/","title":{"rendered":"Americans Stink, No Nobels For You"},"content":{"rendered":"

from AP via Breitbart.com via Drudge<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n
Nobel literature head: US too insular to compete<\/td>\n<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Sep 30 03:54 PM US\/Eastern<\/span>
\nBy MALIN RISING and HILLEL ITALIE Associated Press Writers<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n
<\/td>\nSTOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) – Bad news for American writers hoping for a\u00a0Nobel Prize<\/a>\u00a0next 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.<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Counters the head of the U.S. National Book Foundation: “Put him in touch with me, and I’ll send him a reading list.”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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.”<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

He said the 16-member award jury has not selected this year’s winner, and dropped no hints about who was on the short list. Americans Philip Roth and\u00a0Joyce Carol Oates<\/a>\u00a0usually figure in speculation, but Engdahl wouldn’t comment on any names.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking generally about American literature, however, he said U.S. writers are “too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture,” dragging down the quality of their work.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature,” Engdahl said. “<\/span><\/p>\n

That ignorance is restraining.”His comments were met with fierce reactions from literary officials across the Atlantic.”<\/span><\/p>\n

You would think that the permanent secretary of an academy that pretends to wisdom but has historically overlooked Proust, Joyce, and Nabokov, to name just a few non-Nobelists, would spare us the categorical lectures,” said David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

\u00a0[ click to read full bit of nonsense at Breitbart.com<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from AP via Breitbart.com via Drudge Nobel literature head: US too insular to compete Sep 30 03:54 PM US\/Eastern By MALIN RISING and HILLEL ITALIE Associated Press Writers STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) – Bad news for American writers hoping for a\u00a0Nobel Prize\u00a0next week: the top member of the award jury believes the United States is too […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}