Here from Ladbroke's via Matilda, culled from the form guide as it stands tonight, is a list of the people I personally would like to see win this year's Nobel Prize for Literature, complete with their odds and their position on the ladder or whatever it is:
Joyce Carol Oates, 4th at 7/1
Les Murray, 8th at 10/1
Michael Ondaatje, 15th at 20/1 (I sat across the table from him at dinner once. Oh, girls. Oh my.)
Margaret Atwood, 22nd at 33/1
Alice Munro, 23rd at 40/1
Cormac McCarthy, 30th at 50/1 (though he is still a bit undercooked, for mine)
A.S. Byatt, 37th at 66/1 (shocking odds, but a truly great writer)
Bob Dylan, 60th at 150/1 (heh)
Carn Les, I say. If he can't win the Nobel Prize on the combined strength of 'The Buladelah-Taree Holiday Song Cycle' and Translations From the Natural World alone, then the game's crook.
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6 comments:
My (imaginary) money is on Joyce, then Margaret, bypassing, I have to say, Les altogether - deserving as the poetry (some of it) is, can't bypass the personality (have you ever sat opposite him at dinner I wonder, and would that sway you?) Just shows my small mindedness... While I'm here - appreciated the Paul Newman quote and clip - quote especially, as my partner's father left the mortal coil same day, same country, and the sentiment works for him too.
But I still want the Nobel to go to a girl.
Love
Tyaakian
My dear, I am so sorry about the pa-in-law, and glad the Newman clip kind of spoke to it. xxx
I'd be happy to see either Bob or Les win
The last few Nobel lit prizes have gone to writers whose primary language is (most recent first): English, Turkish, English, German, English, Hungarian, English, Chinese. Don't know about you but I see a pattern there.
Go with the highest ranked non-English writer, and then it's a toss-up between European and Asian. And I'd go for Asian.
Therefore: Haruki Murakami
Perry Middlemiss
JCO, because I wrote my MA thesis on A Bloodsmoor Romance, and because I think that her best writing is breathtaking. And I like her plotting, and her characterisation. And because I think that she 'gets' irony and applies it to US middle-class life.
I'm going to barrack for the grand old man of Spanish letters, Juan Goytisolo, although his Iberian counterpart Antonio Lobo Antunes might also be in with a shot.
But there is a long list of other deserved winners, apparently one of the members of the Swedish Academy thinks the claims about Albanian writer Kadare collaboration with the Howha regime have some credence, which will probably scuppper the chances of the Man-Booker winner. (Sort of like Borges's dodgy political views about the Argentinian junta and Pinochet probably being a large reason why he was overlooked)
In poetry, Les might be a bolter, or Ann Carson, and then there are all those poets (many not even in English translaction) - like Adonis that seem to be perenial candidates. It will be interesting.
Stephen Hill
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