Nobel or Ignoble?

[Mark Kohut]

yes, but for suggesting that it was Greene's leftist politics that barred him. The Nobel Academy loves leftists, in general. One member hated and vetoed Greene for his Catholicism.

--- On Wed, 10/14/09, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> Subject: Nobel or Ignoble?
> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2009, 10:29 AM
> 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
> 
>