slaggin' pynchon pre-Nobel

[Burns, Erik]

foax.
see graf 12. 
etb

+++++

UPDATE 1-Nobel literature winner to be named October 10.
By Patrick McLoughlin
479 Words
08 October 2002
10:15 GMT
Reuters News
English
(c) 2002 Reuters Limited

STOCKHOLM, Oct 8 (Reuters) - The winner of the 2002 Nobel Literature
Prize, the world's most coveted award for writers, will be revealed on
Thursday, the Swedish Academy said on Tuesday.

The 18-member Swedish Academy has awarded the prize, worth $1 million
this year, since 1901 after it was created in the will of Swedish
industrialist Alfred Nobel.

In keeping with tradition, the winner will be announced at the ornate
Swedish Academy in Stockholm's mediaeval Old Town.

As usual, the highly secretive academy would give no word of which
writers were under consideration for the prize, whose winner gains
worldwide publicity and a huge boost in sales.

"It's a whirlwind and you can never be sure who's going to be on the
list," said academy member and author Per Wastberg.

The talk in Stockholm's literary salons this year is that an Arab or a
relatively unknown American could win.

Favourites for this year's award, according to literary experts in
Europe and the Middle East, include Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas
Llosa, Hungarian novelist Imre Kertesz, U.S. poet John Ashbury and
Syrian-born poet Adonis.

"Vargas Llosa would be good, John Ashbury would be interesting. But to
second-guess the Swedish Academy is a perilous task," said London Times
books editor Erica Wagner.

British novelist Doris Lessing is again mentioned as a contender, as
are South Africa's J.M. Coetzee, veteran U.S. author Philip Roth and
Canada's Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro.

"They are good but maybe the time for them to win has passed," said Asa
Beckman of Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter.

"But I think it could go to Thomas Pynchon of the U.S. or
Italian-American Don DeLillo. Pynchon is a writer no one knows but he
has been really important for the American novel."

Tension in the Middle East could help an Arab writer win, some literary
experts say.

"They will deny it but as human beings the judges are political
creatures and I wouldn't be the least surprised if they gave it to
someone like Adonis," said Svenska Dagbladet literary editor Kaj
Schueler.

Like the works it has celebrated for over a century, the Nobel
literature prize has often aroused passion and its winners have
sometimes taken controversial political stands.

China once accused the committee of being biased against Asians, there
has been criticism that the award has been rotated on a geographical
basis.

V.S. Naipaul, whose works have been criticised by some Muslim leaders,
launched a virulent attack on Saudi Arabia after winning the prize,
accusing the conservative Gulf kingdom of trying to lead Islam to world
domination.

Egypt's Naguib Mahfouz, who won the prize in 1988, last year called the
U.S. strikes on Afghanistan a "despicable crime".