Nobel, Snowden, Pynchon

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Could imagine that the political context into which 'Bleeding Edge' is 
published now (and which also gets debated in some of the reviews) will 
raise the probability that Pynchon gets the Nobel Prize this year. They 
always - for better and for worse - consider the political impact of 
their decision. Politically the USA have come, or so it looks to many 
Europeans, to stand for Guantanamo, Abu Ghuraib, killer drones and 
global surveillance (in general: for the disrespecting of international 
law and human rights). But sooner or later the Nobel committee has to 
give its prize to an US-American author again. While Cormac McCarthy and 
Philip Roth, who both would deserve it in terms of sheer aesthetics too, 
are in Europe not observed as representatives of an alternative and 
better America, this is different with Pynchon who earned that dissident 
reputation already during the first phase of his career, especially with 
'Gravity's Rainbow'. And that's of course the book they will give it to 
him for. But 'Bleeding Edge', among all its other benefits, is taking 
the issue of technology & control to the 21st century.

I just called my London bookie and put 10 000 Euros on Tom.