Nobel Prize

[Steve Smith]

On Thu, 5 Oct 1995, Charles Corlett wrote:

> Okay, nothing against Seamus Heaney and not to appear to be culturally 
> imperialist, but is the Nobel becoming completely irrelevant or what?  
> Quality?  Perhaps, I'm being shortsighted, because of course Forrester 
> won the prize, but the last few winners seem to me a little ridiculous 
> and calculate--funny an Irish writer should win this year?  This 
> especially glaring when there is a major artist from the U.S. who's 
> approaching his mid-70s and who was considered, by his own admission, for 
> a few years in the 1970s.  Future generations are going to look back and 
> wonder what the hell we were doing!  What about Mailer...and Pynchon I 
> don't stress as vehemently because he's much younger, and is going to 
> astonish with a great big book right?
> 
so, a filthy conspiracy rears its horny head again, eh?
maybe its just that the Nobel judges already know
what some on these American shores
have still not figured out:
there _are_ writers of note
scribbling in other places in other tongues
in or out of the canon

yer opening disclaimer may have give ye away

yeah...Mailer should get it
Pynchon one day
but the List (and we all have our own) of those who didn't and should have
will blow the heaviest gauge brain circuits

start with Joyce...

Best, 

Steve