Nobel Schmobel

Elfriede Jelinek won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year. A new winner will join her tomorrow, the rarified ranks of Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Hemingway, Camus, and Saul Bellow.

I haven't read her work, though four of her novels are published in translation by Serpent's Tail, the U.K. publisher of 'We Need to Talk About Kevin.' Serpent's Tail also unabashedly promotes Emily Maguire's 'Taming the Beast,' the cover art of which is erotic enough to make me want to buy.

So what's up this Knut Ahnlund's ass? He says Jelinek winning was a 'travesty.' He said he could no longer be a member of the academy as he sees himself as an 'outsider.'

From what I gathered (this may be compromised by translation), the dude is a Swedish puritan of some sort. I think he finds Jelinek pornographic. Or that she's some sort of Austrian feminist (the Governator would be appalled at that, I'm sure). Or maybe both, an Austrian feminist and pornographic writer. In any case, the fact that an 83 year-old Swede thinks she's unworthy just makes me more likely to read her. What does he make of Toni Morrison, I wonder? She's a Nobel laureate with novels dealing with black-on-black violence, the occult, justifications of infanticide, etc. Jelinek is more outrageous than Morrison? Where's that order form?

In any case, I gather the old fart was past his prime when he got nominated to the academy and has done doodly squat the past ten years or so. But it leads to another thing I've been wondering about.

I have not read all the books that have won Pulitzers in modern times. It'd be a project to try, but I haven't done it. What I have noticed is that there seems to be a formula for winning Pulitzers.

It has to be long, have a homsexual character and/or theme:

A Confederacy of Dunces, 1982, Dorian Green
The Shipping News, 1994, The Aunt
American Pastoral, 1998 (Okay, I can't think of any gay characters, but with all the sex in that book, someone was gay).
Kavalier & Clay, 2001, Sammy is in his own words 'a fairy.'
Middlesex, 2003, is hermaphrodism an overlap with homosexuality? Or do the Pulitzer people just want sexual abberation in any form they can get it?

If you don't have homosexual or other characters, themes, elements to freak out the average American, a Pulitzer can be won if you deal with slavery (the book still has to be long):

The Color Purple, 1983, about black-on-black oppression/battle of sexes (some homosexuality come to think of it).
Beloved, 1988, not only slavery but an apologetics for infanticide.
The Known World, 2004, about Southern 'free' blacks who owned slaves.

I didn't read Ironweed (1984), but I remember seeing a movie of the same title with Jack Nicholson in it a long time ago. Probably the same depressing story, though I can't recall any homosexual or slavery themes in it.

My point? I have to have one, huh? Well, it's that 'critical acclaim' seems to follow books that don't just make you think; the book has to make you think a certain way about certain things. I'm suggesting that if you don't push particular buttons, politically, socially, you won't get considered. I've read too many books that reduced me to cinders in my boots without stirring major critical acclaim or staking a claim on the best-seller list. And I've read too may 'award-winning' books that were only good. And more than one book that won awards like the National Book Award where I get 30 pages in and say to myself, 'why am I reading this shit?'