American Nobel?

[Mark Kohut]

Ladbrokes' frontrunner is currently the Italian scholar Claudio Magris, who is 3/1 favourite to take the SEK10m prize, trailed by the Syrian poet Adonis at 4/1. Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth are the highest placed Americans, at 7/1, while Don DeLillo is at 10/1 and Thomas Pynchon at 20/1; Ladbrokes is also offering 40/1 odds on the generally reclusive Pynchon both winning and attending the prize-giving on December 10.
Last year's winner was the UK's Doris Lessing, a rare female choice. Over the last 10 years the Nobel laureates have had a distinct European flavour, with Turkey's Orhan Pamuk, the UK's Harold Pinter and VS Naipaul, Austria's Elfriede Jelinek, Portugal's José Saramago, Hungary's Imre Kertész, France's Gao Xingjian and Germany's Günter Grass all taking the prize. South Africa's JM Coetzee won in 2003.
In 2005, Knut Ahnlund, a member of the Nobel committee, resigned over the choice of Elfriede Jelinek as winner, describing her writing as "whining, unenjoyable public pornography". Engdahl gave no indication as to what he might do should an American author take the prize this year. 



--- On Wed, 10/1/08, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: American Nobel?
> To: "János Székely" <miksaapja at gmail.com>
> Cc: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Wednesday, October 1, 2008, 9:36 AM
> I sometimes think part of the reason she 'won' may
> have been because they could NOT award the Nobel to TRPjr
> 
> TRPjr. is what they wrote about her---as she might
> admit!--kicked up a few notches to GREATNESS level.
> 
> 
> --- On Wed, 10/1/08, János Székely
> <miksaapja at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > From: János Székely <miksaapja at gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: American Nobel?
> > To: bandwraith at aol.com
> > Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
> > Date: Wednesday, October 1, 2008, 9:07 AM
> > Well, Pynchon's German translator received the
> prize 
> > "for her musical flow
> > of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that
> with
> > extraordinary
> > linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's
> > clichés and their
> > subjugating power."
> > Now what's the difference? (Except for the gender
> and,
> > if you forgive me,
> > the quality?)
> > 
> > János
> > 
> > 
> > 2008/9/30 <bandwraith at aol.com>
> > 
> > > Forget about it-
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/30/nobel-literature-chief-ba_n_130619.html
> > >
> > > Where's the Kieselgur Kid when we need him?
> > >