Do old Nobel prize winners fade into oblivion ...

I bought a book the other day by Anatole France who at one time was considered to be France's most populat novelist. He has, perhaps, an old-fashaioned elegant style, and I never read much about him anymore. He won the Nobel prize in 1921. Another author who is never mentioned on this forum is Sinclair Lewis. I suspect he is little read because many cannot relate to his satire as exemplified by Babbitt and Main Street. He also won the Nobel prize. A book which I have read twice is Doctor Zhivago, another Nobel prize winner. Loved the book and the movie, but it is not talked about much anymore. Is the Nobel Prize the kiss of death?

The Nobel prize is certainly reflective of popular opinion of the time it was given, but I don't think it is necessarily a kiss of death.

W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Bernard Shaw, Ernest Hemingway, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, and Pablo Neruda are just a few of the Nobel winners that are still widely read today.

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Originally Posted by dfloyd

I bought a book the other day by Anatole France who at one time was considered to be France's most populat novelist. He has, perhaps, an old-fashaioned elegant style, and I never read much about him anymore. He won the Nobel prize in 1921. Another author who is never mentioned on this forum is Sinclair Lewis. I suspect he is little read because many cannot relate to his satire as exemplified by Babbitt and Main Street. He also won the Nobel prize. A book which I have read twice is Doctor Zhivago, another Nobel prize winner. Loved the book and the movie, but it is not talked about much anymore. Is the Nobel Prize the kiss of death?

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But seriously, who hasn't read Penguin Island?

I would say practically everyone who reads hasn't read this Anatole France classic. I can only assume that those who think France, W. B. Yeats, and T. S. Eliot are widely read today are members of the Literati. These and many other authors are not read by the ordinary reader who reads Hemingway, Mailer, and others of this ilk. To ask who hasn't read Penguin Island indicates the poster has associated with literature majors and not with the common reader - shall I dare say it - who prefers The Da Vinci Code to Yeats, Eliot etc. To make money, all authors must sell books to people other than college students who generally buy the cheapest they can find.

Halldor Laxness an Icelandic Nobel prize winner, have you ever heard of him?

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Originally Posted by dfloyd

A book which I have read twice is Doctor Zhivago, another Nobel prize winner. Loved the book and the movie, but it is not talked about much anymore. Is the Nobel Prize the kiss of death?

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When I did Russian Lit [in translation] at Uni I asked the tutor why this book was not on the reading list and he said he just didn't think it was that good. I assume that this man knew what constitutes a worthwhile book because it turned out to be an absolutely compelling reading list, but, unfortunately that rather put me off reading Zhivago and I never have got around to it.

Prior to that I always assumed it was one of the biggie Russian novels.

but he's better, in this one book, than Turgenev and some Tolstoy. Tolstoy's first three novels are not much: Childhood, Boyhood, Youth. In 1961, when I first read Zhivago, the stores were sold out. Probably because of the publicity the novel got. I strongly disagree with the prof who said it was not worthy. This may be the reason it's not discussed much anymore: berated by academia. It's too straight forward a love story; academia desires convulted novels like Ulysses to make their job seem wothwhile.

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Originally Posted by Helga

Halldor Laxness an Icelandic Nobel prize winner, have you ever heard of him?

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I love him! If I had a gun to my head and had to pick my top 10 books, Independent People would probably be my first choice...the rest I couldn't pick because there are way too many to choose from but for many reasons, that book is an easy pick.

On a slightly different venue, I was incredibly surprised how hard it has been to find certain books that were once 'great'.

I'm trying to read the novels that made it on to both the Time Magazine and Modern Library Top 100 Books, and some of them are very forgotten. 'The Day of the Locust' has 46 reviews on Amazon and is not even available in paperback by itself. This is opposed to something like 'Angels and Demons' that has 2,300+ reviews.

I think that the real death knell for a book is when it is not topical or read in classes. These are the two things that seem to keep literature alive. And since studies show that shorter and shorter works are being tackled even in universities, even the greatest of works may die off.

I don't think it's a kiss of death but there are certainly some winners who are no longer read very much at all. Patrick White, for example, is Australia's only Nobel Prize winner and yet he is still going out of print in his homeland.

Anatole France is certainly still considered a classic in french literature. And Pasternak's Zhivago is certainly among the most read classic of the 20th century.

"Halldor Laxness an Icelandic Nobel prize winner, have you ever heard of him? "

Yes I have.

"Patrick White, for example, is Australia's only Nobel Prize winner and yet he is still going out of print in his homeland. "

And yet I haven't heard of him. That proves an individual is not a standard. The fact that X hasn't heard of Y in Z country, doesn't tell much about anything.

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Originally Posted by sixsmith

I don't think it's a kiss of death but there are certainly some winners who are no longer read very much at all. Patrick White, for example, is Australia's only Nobel Prize winner and yet he is still going out of print in his homeland.

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Ironically, "a kiss of death" is exactly what some authors think the award represents.

I was reading an article on how the permanent secretary of the Nobel Committee catagorically dismissed American authors as undeserving of the award and came across this quote. It seems relevent.

"Michael Dirda, the Pulitzer-prize winning critic at the Washington Post's Book World," said "The Nobel has the great glamour. It also has the burden of being a kind of kiss of death. Many writers think it crowns your life effort and nothing that you do afterwards is as good".

The article also recognizes the council's shoddy record with recognizing genius--Proust, Joyce and Nabokov.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008...nobelprize.usa

I would say practically everyone who reads hasn't read this Anatole France classic. I can only assume that those who think France, W. B. Yeats, and T. S. Eliot are widely read today are members of the Literati. These and many other authors are not read by the ordinary reader who reads Hemingway, Mailer, and others of this ilk.

Who are these "common readers" who read Hemingway and Mailer but not T.S. Eliot, Yeats, Neruda, Kipling, Faulkner, Hermann Hesse, and any number of other Nobel Laureates... including Hemingway, by the way?

To ask who hasn't read Penguin Island indicates the poster has associated with literature majors and not with the common reader - shall I dare say it - who prefers The Da Vinci Code to Yeats, Eliot etc.

Ah... so by the "common reader" you do not mean the "common reader" as Virginia Woolf would have it: the educated reader who invests the time and effort into the exploration of good literature... for personal pleasure. Instead you are speaking of the masses... the vast majority of whom seldom read at all. And of what importance is their opinion when discussing the aesthetic merits of art? Has no one told you that art is an elitist game... an elitism not of social class or wealth but one of choice... an elective affinity? No literature disappears more rapidly than the popular period pieces. Who would admit to having bought Jonathan Livingston Seagull today... in spite of the millions of copies sold?

Kindred of the Dust- Peter B. Kyne
The Re-Creation of Brian Kent- Harold Bell Wright
The River's End-James- Oliver Curwood
A Man for the Ages-Irving Bacheller
Mary-Marie-Eleanor H. Porter
The Portygee-Joseph C. Lincoln
The Great Impersonation-E. Phillips Oppenheim
The Lamp in the Desert-Ethel M. Dell
Harriet and the Piper-Kathleen Norris
If Winter Comes- A.S.M. Hutchinson
The Sheik- Edith M. Hull
Gentle Julia-Booth Tarkington
The Head of the House of Coombe-Frances Hodgson Burnett
Simon Called Peter- Robert Keable
The Breaking Point- Mary Roberts Rinehart
This Freedom- A.S.M. Hutchinson
Maria Chapdelaine- Louis Hémon
Helen of the Old House- Harold Bell Wright

How many of these books have you heard of? They were all among the best-selling novels of the 1920s. As much as I read I can honestly say I have not heard of or read a single one... (although I've actually heard of Booth Tarkington). On the other hand Ulysses, The Wasteland, Eugenio Montale's Cuttlefish Bones, any number of Yeats finest poems, George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan, Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, Hermann Hesse's Sidhartha and Steppenwolf, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises as well as several volumes of short stories, and Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury were all produced during this same period. I'll venture a guess that many on this discussion board have heard of a number of these writers and their books... and maybe even read a few in spite of their having won the accursed Nobel.:rolleyes:

To make money, all authors must sell books to people other than college students who generally buy the cheapest they can find.

Is this so? You know this for a fact? And perhaps you imagine that the ultimate goal of every author is to make as much money as possible? Or perhaps some of the best writers simply write for an audience that they imagine is not unlike themselves and shares a like passion for the power of the written word.

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Originally Posted by Etienne

Anatole France is certainly still considered a classic in french literature. And Pasternak's Zhivago is certainly among the most read classic of the 20th century.

"Halldor Laxness an Icelandic Nobel prize winner, have you ever heard of him? "

Yes I have.

"Patrick White, for example, is Australia's only Nobel Prize winner and yet he is still going out of print in his homeland. "

And yet I haven't heard of him. That proves an individual is not a standard. The fact that X hasn't heard of Y in Z country, doesn't tell much about anything.

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Patrick White, though I haven't read his work, is very well regarded...

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Seriously, up until recent times the award has been pretty accurate in terms of guessing authors who have had significant contributions, though the Scandinavian over-representation has perhaps limited the extent of that (countries with so few people ultimately, though very literary, won't get the same exposure as English speaking countries) but if you were really going to smack the list, you'd probably be better off talking about Eurocentrism and Western Bias in general than anything else.

For instance, the only Chinese author on that list is an ex-pat, despite China being one of the most literary countries, throughout the 20th century.

Most "Serious readers" or whatever you want to term them don't particularly care about the awards - they thank them for giving wider ranges of translations and publications of authors they perhaps hadn't heard about, but I think most people don't particularly care. As it is the Nobel Judges have done far better than the Pulitzer ones.

Seems like a bit of snobbishness without cause at any rate, so I'll take my leave. If you are really going to criticize the awards, at least come at it from an angle that is worth critical attention.

A book which I have read twice is Doctor Zhivago, another Nobel prize winner. Loved the book and the movie, but it is not talked about much anymore. Is the Nobel Prize the kiss of death?

When I did Russian Lit [in translation] at Uni I asked the tutor why this book was not on the reading list and he said he just didn't think it was that good. I assume that this man knew what constitutes a worthwhile book because it turned out to be an absolutely compelling reading list, but, unfortunately that rather put me off reading Zhivago and I never have got around to it.

Hmmm... and yet we had a discussion not long ago here on LitNet (I guess we're all "literati":brow:) about Pasternak's poetry. Pasternak is largely known in the US for Dr. Zhivago (thanks to the movie, no doubt) but in Russia he is THE great 20th century poet. While the Nobel is not always brilliant in its choices there are any number of writers among the ranks who I have read and have no problem seeing as deserving of recognition:
Harold Pinter, V. S. Naipaul, Günter Grass, José Saramago, Wislawa Szymborska, Seamus Heaney, Kenzaburo, Toni Morrison, Octavio Paz, Naguib Mahfouz, Joseph Brodsky, Jaroslav Seifert, William Golding, Gabriel García Márquez, Elias Canetti, Czeslaw Milosz, Odysseus Elytis, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Vicente Aleixandre, Saul Bellow, Eugenio Montale, Heinrich Böll, Pablo Neruda, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Samuel Beckett, Shmuel Agnon, Jean-Paul Sartre, Giorgos Seferis, John Steinbeck, Ivo Andric, Saint-John Perse, Salvatore Quasimodo, Boris Pasternak, Albert Camus, Juan Ramón Jiménez,
Ernest Hemingway, Pär Lagerkvist, William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, André Gide, Hermann Hesse, Eugene O'Neill, Luigi Pirandello, Ivan Bunin, Sinclair Lewis,
Thomas Mann, George Bernard Shaw, William Butler Yeats, Anatole France,
Rabindranath Tagore, Rudyard Kipling, Henryk Sienkiewicz...

As another has noted a great many of the writers were non-Anglo (as should be expected) and one is dependent upon available translations. A great many of the writers are also poets, playwrights, or writers in genre outside of the novel which puts them at a definite disadvantage in the opinion of many "common readers".

The article also recognizes the council's shoddy record with recognizing genius--Proust, Joyce and Nabokov.

Joyce was almost certainly far too experimental for the Nobel committee to recognize... his merits are still hotly debated among academics and "literati". Nabokov is certainly no greater a genius than any number of Noble Laureates (Beckett, Faulkner, Eliot, Hesse, Mann, etc...) and many others who did not receive the nod: J.L. Borges, Kafka, Italo Calvino, Rilke, Pessoa, etc... Proust, on the other hand, died before the vast majority of In Search of Lost Time was even published... let alone translated and available to Noble jurors etc...