Ideal and idealistic

[jbor at bigpond.com]

On 02/08/2006, at 6:57 AM, The Great Quail wrote:

> I honestly think Pynchon will never get it; but not because of his lewd
> humor, but because he is not a team player. The Nobel Prize is above
> everything else, a *political* prize.

I agree. Pynchon's taken a couple of very direct pokes at the Nobels 
and the Prize which I don't imagine would have gone unnoticed up in 
Sweden (V. 324 re. "the first bomb of 8 June 1940" in Valetta: "The old 
Chinese artificers and their successors Schutze and Nobel had devised a 
philtre far more potent than they knew"; and GR 354 re. Baku: "All the 
oil money taken out of those fields by the Nobels has gone into Nobel 
Prizes.") I suspect he'd probably decline it (like Sartre and 
Pasternak) if he did win.

best