Ideal and idealistic

[jbor at bigpond.com]

See also:
"[...] The formulation about the literary prize, "in an ideal 
direction" (Swedish i idealisk riktning), is cryptic and has caused 
much consternation. For many years, the Swedish Academy interpreted 
"ideal" as "idealistic" (in Swedish idealistisk), and used it as a 
pretext to not give the prize to important but less romantic authors, 
such as Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg and Leo Tolstoy. This 
interpretation has been revised, and the prize given to, for example, 
Dario Fo and José Saramago, who definitely do not belong to the camp of 
literary idealism.

When reading Nemesis in its original Swedish and looking at his own 
philosophical and literary standpoint, it seems possible that his 
intention might have been rather the opposite of that first believed - 
that the prize should be given to authors who fight for their ideals 
against such authorities as God, Church and State. [...]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Nobel

Alfred N. sounds like someone who might possibly get a guernsey in the 
new book too.

best

> 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
>