Nobel or Ignoble?

[Dave Monroe]

Remember, too, the Nobels in other areas have an erratic history. I
can’t speak to the awards in the sciences, but their literary judgment
is riddled with anomalies, misjudgments and politics.

Many of the last century’s literary giants won: William Butler Yeats,
George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Mann, Andre Gide, T.S. Eliot, William
Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. But look who lost out: James Joyce,
Henry James, Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf among others.

In England the middlebrow macho of Rudyard Kipling won but the genius
of D.H. Lawrence and Joseph Conrad lost. Graham Greene had the double
whammy of being Catholic and leftist, so the award he deserved went to
William “Lord of the Flies” Golding.

In the states, F. Scott Fitzgerald, our finest stylist, was denied,
but Pearl S. Buck (!?!) won. Philip Roth is still waiting, along with
Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis and Joyce Carol Oates. Hold your
breath.

The Israeli novelist Amos Oz is a strong candidate, but he’s a leftist
peacenik in an increasingly conservative state. Politics anyone?

http://www.cdobs.com/archive/featured/nobel-or-ignoble,75933