2006 Nobel Prize in Literature

[vili]

As you may know by now, Orhan Pamuk was today given the Nobel Prize in Literature. I am sure some will see it as another politically influenced choice from the Swedish Academy (Pamuk has been accused of "insulting Turkishness" in his native country), but I would be interested to hear from someone who has actually read Pamuk's works and could tell us how he is and where one should start.

It would also be great to hear from our Turkish members regarding how Pamuk's winning the prize has been greeted by the media there.

This summer, I actually almost bought his novel Snow, but ended up putting it back in favour of a Shakespeare biography (which I, in the end, didn't get either, now that I think about it). Now I think I will actually get it.

[Virgil]

I have never heard of Pamuk. My impression is that the Acadamy lately has a tendency to like authors who go against traditional values.

[Turk]

Don't buy Snow. It's one of books i started and couldn't finish because of bored so much. It only happened 1 time before Snow, when i tried to read a Salma Lagerlöff novel.

With this selection Nobel prize has become a little less trustable for me. Since many good writers never get Nobel prize and since many ordinary writers has given Nobel Prize i really don't trust worth of Nobel Prize.

Turkey had much better writers-poets such as Nazım Hikmet, Oguz Atay, Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca (still alive), Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar or Attila İlhan (died short time ago). But none of these writers couldn't get Nobel Prize because none of them said "Turks killed 30.000 Kurds and 1,5 million Armenians". We know weird interest of Sweden about Kurds. I think this prize is completely politic and if one Turkish writer deserved Nobel it should be Yaşar Kemal or Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca.

Orhan Pamuk is really can't use Turkish as well as our great writers too, i think his translators who translated his books to English are better writers than Orhan Pamuk. He also accused of plagiarism many times, but i think Nobel Jury also "didn't know" this accusations too, for example his book "White Castle" has even SAME SENTENCES with a book named "İstanbul In Era Of Kanuni" by Fuad Carım. If you research on google by writing "orhan pamuk+plagiarism".

In last word: worth of art couldn'T decided-appreciated by a stupid jury. A stupid prize wouldn't make people more valuable than they are. Nabokov, Joyce, Proust, Kafka and many monumental personalities of world literature didn'T get this prize but history will always remember their name with their greatest artistic works of 20. century. But today who remembers Emil Silanpaa, Odyyseas Elytis or Par Lagerkvist? Most of writers who has given Nobel Prize are forgotten today.

History is ultimate judge for worth of an artist, and since %70 of their prized novelists-poets forgotten, history shown stupid Swedish Nobel Jury didn't know anything about art of literature.

[vili]

Thanks for your replies, Virgil and Turk. Thought-provoking reading.

The question of course is whether the Nobel Prize is or should be awarded for "best aesthetic quality", or indeed something else. It seems often to be forgotten by the general public that Alfred Nobel's wishes were to give the prize to "the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency". The interpretation of "idealistic" (the Swedish word "idealisk" can also mean "ideal") has changed over the years, and it certainly seems that it is currently seen in a very political light by the Academy.

As for Pamuk's plagiarism, I of course cannot claim to have any knowledge of the matter, but considering that he is a postmodern writer it would not be surprising if he uses other people's material in his own. Whether it is plagiarism or art or both, of course, is open for debate.

Turk also raises the very valid and real point about the Swedish academy by and large being constrained to reading books that are available in translations. They even used to be limited to just Swedish translations, but nowadays it seems that they read at least English, French and German, as well. But even then, it is obviously more difficult for non-European authors to win the prize.

My personal opinion about the Nobel Prize in Literature is that it is just another recommendation -- this one coming from a Swedish academy. Whether you want to trust it more than, say, a recommendation from your friend, is obviously up to you.

[stlukesguild]

last word: worth of art couldn't decided-appreciated by a stupid jury. A stupid prize wouldn't make people more valuable than they are. Nabokov, Joyce, Proust, Kafka and many monumental personalities of world literature didn'T get this prize but history will always remember their name with their greatest artistic works of 20. century. But today who remembers Emil Silanpaa, Odyyseas Elytis or Par Lagerkvist? Most of writers who has given Nobel Prize are forgotten today.

History is ultimate judge for worth of an artist, and since 70% of their prized novelists-poets forgotten, history shown stupid Swedish Nobel Jury didn't know anything about art of literature.
Turk is offline Report Post

While I cannot speak at all to the question of the quality of Orhan Pamuk's literary achievement... let alone in comparison with the other Turkish authors cited... I must disagree with Turk's dismissal of the Swedish Academy as "stupid" and knowing nothing of literature. Indeed, there are a good many authors who SHOULD have been awarded such a prize based solely upon aesthetic worth. Foremost among these I might think of Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, J.L. Borges, Rilke, etc... Of course it is always far easier to judge in hind-sight. Judgements of contemporary works of art are always far more challenging than that of older works. They often challenge expectations deeply held by the most discerning and experienced of the audience. Some of the best critics in every period of history have made notorious mistakes in their criticisms of some of the greatest artists in every field. Nevertheless, the Nobel Prize Committee has been rather strong in its selections in comparison to many other prizes/awards. There are very few prize winners whom I would see as any sort of embarassment, while the great majority were certainly deserving of the recognition... including Par Lagerkvist (The Dwarf is a marvelous little book) and Odysseus Elytis (who is quite a strong poet). A goodly number of the total prize winners are undoubtedly among some of the greatest writers of their time: Günter Grass, José Saramago, Seamus Heaney, Jaroslav Seifert, William Golding, Gabriel García Márquez, Czeslaw Milosz, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Vicente Aleixandre, Saul Bellow, Eugenio Montale, Heinrich Böll, Pablo Neruda, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, Giorgos Seferis, John Steinbeck, Boris Pasternak, Albert Camus, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, André Gide, Hermann Hesse, Eugene O'Niel, Luigi Pirandello,Thomas Mann, William Butler Yeats, Rudyard Kipling... While time will certainly be as mercilous as ever... honing down even these numbers to a few key writers whose works will survive into future centuries, I can't see any on this list whom I would think of as proof of the "stupidity" of the Nobel jury.

[Turk]

Year Name Country Language(s)
1901 Sully Prudhomme France French
1902 Theodor Mommsen Germany German
1903 Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson Norway Norwegian
1904 Frédéric Mistral France Occitan
José Echegaray y Eizaguirre Spain Spanish
1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz Poland Polish
1906 Giosuè Carducci Italy Italian
1907 Rudyard Kipling United Kingdom English
1908 Rudolf Christoph Eucken Germany German
1909 Selma Lagerlöf Sweden Swedish
1910 Paul Heyse Germany German
1911 Count Maurice Maeterlinck Belgium French
1912 Gerhart Hauptmann Germany German
1913 Rabindranath Tagore India (British Raj) Bengali
1915 Romain Rolland France French
1916 Verner von Heidenstam Sweden Swedish
1917 Karl Adolph Gjellerup Denmark Danish
Henrik Pontoppidan Denmark Danish
1919 Carl Spitteler Switzerland
1920 Knut Hamsun Norway Norwegian
1921 Anatole France France French
1922 Jacinto Benavente Spain Spanish
1923 William Butler Yeats Ireland English
1924 Władysław Reymont Poland Polish
1925 George Bernard Shaw Ireland English
1926 Grazia Deledda Italy Italian
1927 Henri Bergson France French
1928 Sigrid Undset Norway Norwegian
1929 Thomas Mann Germany German
1930 Sinclair Lewis United States English
1931 Erik Axel Karlfeldt Sweden Swedish
1932 John Galsworthy United Kingdom English
1933 Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin Russia (in exile) Russian
1934 Luigi Pirandello Italy Italian
1936 Eugene O'Neill United States English
1937 Roger Martin du Gard France French
1938 Pearl S. Buck United States English
1939 Frans Eemil Sillanpää Finland Finnish
1944 Johannes Vilhelm Jensen Denmark Danish
1945 Gabriela Mistral Chile Spanish
1946 Hermann Hesse Switzerland German
1947 André Gide France French
1948 T. S. Eliot United States/ United Kingdom English
1949 William Faulkner United States English
1950 Bertrand Russell United Kingdom English
1951 Pär Lagerkvist Sweden Swedish
1952 François Mauriac France French
1953 Sir Winston Churchill United Kingdom English
1954 Ernest Hemingway United States English
1955 Halldór Laxness Iceland Icelandic
1956 Juan Ramón Jiménez Spain Spanish
1957 Albert Camus France French
1958 Boris Pasternak (declined the prize)[1] Russia Russian
1959 Salvatore Quasimodo Italy Italian
1960 Saint-John Perse France French
1961 Ivo Andrić Yugoslavia Serbo-Croat
1962 John Steinbeck United States English
1963 Giorgos Seferis Greece Greek
1964 Jean-Paul Sartre (declined the prize)[2] France French
1965 Michail Sholokhov Russia Russian
1966 Shmuel Yosef Agnon Israel Hebrew
Nelly Sachs Germany/ Sweden German
1967 Miguel Ángel Asturias Guatemala Spanish
1968 Yasunari Kawabata Japan Japanese
1969 Samuel Beckett Ireland English/French
1970 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Russia Russian
1971 Pablo Neruda Chile Spanish
1972 Heinrich Böll Germany (West) German
1973 Patrick White Australia English
1974 Eyvind Johnson Sweden Swedish
Harry Martinson Sweden Swedish
1975 Eugenio Montale Italy Italian
1976 Saul Bellow Canada/ United States English
1977 Vicente Aleixandre Spain Spanish
1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer Poland/ United States Yiddish
1979 Odysseas Elytis Greece Greek
1980 Czesław Miłosz Poland/ United States Polish
1981 Elias Canetti United Kingdom German
1982 Gabriel García Márquez Colombia Spanish
1983 William Golding United Kingdom English
1984 Jaroslav Seifert Czech Republic/ Slovakia (as Czechoslovakia) Czech
1985 Claude Simon France French
1986 Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka Nigeria English
1987 Joseph Brodsky Russia/ United States Russian/English
1988 Naguib Mahfouz Egypt Arabic
1989 Camilo José Cela Spain Spanish
1990 Octavio Paz Mexico Spanish
1991 Nadine Gordimer South Africa English
1992 Derek Walcott St. Lucia English
1993 Toni Morrison United States English
1994 Kenzaburo Oe Japan Japanese
1995 Seamus Heaney Ireland English
1996 Wisława Szymborska Poland Polish
1997 Dario Fo Italy Italian
1998 José Saramago Portugal Portuguese
1999 Günter Grass Germany German
2000 Gao Xingjian China/ France Chinese
2001 Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul Trinidad and Tobago/ United Kingdom English
2002 Imre Kertész Hungary Hungarian
2003 John Maxwell Coetzee South Africa English
2004 Elfriede Jelinek Austria German
2005 Harold Pinter United Kingdom English
2006 Orhan Pamuk Turkey Turkish

Here's full list. I'm a person who reads a lot, but i didn't even hear %50 of writers in this list.

[vili]

Here's full list. I'm a person who reads a lot, but i didn't even hear %50 of writers in this list.

To be honest, I am not sure if that is a good argument against the Nobel Prize in Literature, or rather indicates something else, perhaps how little the global society in general may appreciate and therefore promote their finest literary artists.

I think your argument for the "stupidity" of the Swedish Academy would be more valid if you instead listed the writers that you have heard of and read more or less extensively, and told us whether you find them worthy of a recognition of the scale the Nobel Prize has given them.

[Turk]

Well, i actually didn't mean stupidity in literal meaning, i would expect you to understand what i mean. I know they are not kinda moron or idiot or they have low IQ. But if they give it some writers just because POLITIC reasons it's stupidity. And if they misses writers such as Borges, Joyce or Proust it's another stupidity too. That's what i mean.

[Turk]

And btw, what's the importance of Winston Churchill or bertrand Russel for literature world? I mean if Nobel Jury thinks they 2 are important for literature they should be stupid too...

[vili]

But if they give it some writers just because POLITIC reasons it's stupidity. And if they misses writers such as Borges, Joyce or Proust it's another stupidity too. That's what i mean.

I see your point. However, I think that it is important to remember that the Nobel Prize, being an annual event considering only living writers, can award only a very limited number of authors, and it is therefore inevitable that not all great writers can be given the prize. The Nobel Committee does not anywhere suggest that people who have not received the prize are necessarily lesser writers than those who have. What they do propose, however, is that those selected are worthy of the honour.

I think that it is therefore not a very valid argument against them to point at the prize committee and enumerate writers they have not awarded. Like I wrote in my previous post, a more working argument would be to point out any possible writers not worthy of the prize, and if those writers constitute a large part of the list, then clearly something is rotten in the state of Sweden.

And btw, what's the importance of Winston Churchill or bertrand Russel for literature world? I mean if Nobel Jury thinks they 2 are important for literature they should be stupid too...

Both were extremely prolific writers, Russell in logic, philosophy and mathematics, while Churchill is best remembered for his biographies and histories, as well as his oratorial skills. It is, after all, Nobel Prize in Literature, not Nobel Prize in Fictional Arts.

[Turk]

Both were extremely prolific writers, Russell in logic, philosophy and mathematics, while Churchill is best remembered for his biographies and histories, as well as his oratorial skills. It is, after all, Nobel Prize in Literature, not Nobel Prize in Fictional Arts.

I don't agree that, we clearly know what's is ART of literature. And both two wasn't artist.

[vili]

I don't agree that, we clearly know what's is ART of literature. And both two wasn't artist.

Perhaps so -- I would imagine some people to strongly disagree with you there, if I indeed get your meaning. However, as far as I can see this is completely beside the point that I have been trying to make.

Instead, what I am trying to suggest is that the Nobel Prize in Literature is not necessarily awarded for artistic merit. Nowhere in the will left by Alfred Nobel, or in any declarations given by the Prize Committee, is it suggested that the Prize in Literature is or should be given solely for artistic qualities. There is far more to literature than art, after all.

There is, actually, quite a good write-up on the Nobel website about the changing directions the Nobel Prize in Literature has been taking in the past hundred or so years: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/l...ark/index.html Perhaps you might find it interesting reading.

[stlukesguild]

Here's full list. I'm a person who reads a lot, but i didn't even hear %50 of writers in this list.

1901 Sully Prudhomme France French
1902 Theodor Mommsen Germany German
1903 Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson Norway Norwegian
1904 Frédéric Mistral France Occitan
José Echegaray y Eizaguirre Spain Spanish
1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz Poland Polish
1906 Giosuè Carducci Italy Italian
1907 Rudyard Kipling United Kingdom English
1908 Rudolf Christoph Eucken Germany German
1909 Selma Lagerlöf Sweden Swedish
1910 Paul Heyse Germany German
1911 Count Maurice Maeterlinck Belgium French
1912 Gerhart Hauptmann Germany German
1913 Rabindranath Tagore India (British Raj) Bengali
1915 Romain Rolland France French
1916 Verner von Heidenstam Sweden Swedish
1917 Karl Adolph Gjellerup Denmark Danish
Henrik Pontoppidan Denmark Danish
1919 Carl Spitteler Switzerland
1920 Knut Hamsun Norway Norwegian
1921 Anatole France France French
1922 Jacinto Benavente Spain Spanish
1923 William Butler Yeats Ireland English
1924 Władysław Reymont Poland Polish
1925 George Bernard Shaw Ireland English
1926 Grazia Deledda Italy Italian
1927 Henri Bergson France French
1928 Sigrid Undset Norway Norwegian
1929 Thomas Mann Germany German
1930 Sinclair Lewis United States English
1931 Erik Axel Karlfeldt Sweden Swedish
1932 John Galsworthy United Kingdom English
1933 Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin Russia (in exile) Russian
1934 Luigi Pirandello Italy Italian
1936 Eugene O'Neill United States English
1937 Roger Martin du Gard France French
1938 Pearl S. Buck United States English
1939 Frans Eemil Sillanpää Finland Finnish
1944 Johannes Vilhelm Jensen Denmark Danish
1945 Gabriela Mistral Chile Spanish
1946 Hermann Hesse Switzerland German
1947 André Gide France French
1948 T. S. Eliot United States/ United Kingdom English
1949 William Faulkner United States English
1950 Bertrand Russell United Kingdom English
1951 Pär Lagerkvist Sweden Swedish
1952 François Mauriac France French
1953 Sir Winston Churchill United Kingdom English
1954 Ernest Hemingway United States English
1955 Halldór Laxness Iceland Icelandic
1956 Juan Ramón Jiménez Spain Spanish
1957 Albert Camus France French
1958 Boris Pasternak (declined the prize)[1] Russia Russian
1959 Salvatore Quasimodo Italy Italian
1960 Saint-John Perse France French
1961 Ivo Andrić Yugoslavia Serbo-Croat
1962 John Steinbeck United States English
1963 Giorgos Seferis Greece Greek
1964 Jean-Paul Sartre (declined the prize)[2] France French
1965 Michail Sholokhov Russia Russian
1966 Shmuel Yosef Agnon Israel Hebrew
Nelly Sachs Germany/ Sweden German
1967 Miguel Ángel Asturias Guatemala Spanish
1968 Yasunari Kawabata Japan Japanese
1969 Samuel Beckett Ireland English/French
1970 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Russia Russian
1971 Pablo Neruda Chile Spanish
1972 Heinrich Böll Germany (West) German
1973 Patrick White Australia English
1974 Eyvind Johnson Sweden Swedish
Harry Martinson Sweden Swedish
1975 Eugenio Montale Italy Italian
1976 Saul Bellow Canada/ United States English
1977 Vicente Aleixandre Spain Spanish
1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer Poland/ United States Yiddish
1979 Odysseas Elytis Greece Greek
1980 Czesław Miłosz Poland/ United States Polish
1981 Elias Canetti United Kingdom German
1982 Gabriel García Márquez Colombia Spanish
1983 William Golding United Kingdom English
1984 Jaroslav Seifert Czech Republic/ Slovakia (as Czechoslovakia) Czech
1985 Claude Simon France French
1986 Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka Nigeria English
1987 Joseph Brodsky Russia/ United States Russian/English
1988 Naguib Mahfouz Egypt Arabic
1989 Camilo José Cela Spain Spanish
1990 Octavio Paz Mexico Spanish
1991 Nadine Gordimer South Africa English
1992 Derek Walcott St. Lucia English
1993 Toni Morrison United States English
1994 Kenzaburo Oe Japan Japanese
1995 Seamus Heaney Ireland English
1996 Wisława Szymborska Poland Polish
1997 Dario Fo Italy Italian
1998 José Saramago Portugal Portuguese
1999 Günter Grass Germany German
2000 Gao Xingjian China/ France Chinese
2001 Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul Trinidad and Tobago/ United Kingdom English
2002 Imre Kertész Hungary Hungarian
2003 John Maxwell Coetzee South Africa English
2004 Elfriede Jelinek Austria German
2005 Harold Pinter United Kingdom English
2006 Orhan Pamuk Turkey Turkish

The first 15 or so years of the prize seems a bit "iffy" (although Kipling, Tagore, and Carducci would be obvious exceptions). After that time I have no problem identifying most of the prize winners (up until the last few years), and I would agree that most are indeed deserving of some recognition. By my count there are quite a few writers whom I would have no problem as identifying as major writers: Kipling, Tagore, Yeats ,Shaw, Mann, Pirandello, O'Neill, Hesse, Gide, T. S. Eliot, Faulkner, Hemingway, Camus, Pasternak, Quasimodo, Steinbeck, Sartre, Agnon, Beckett, Neruda, Böll, Montale, Bellow, Singer, Miłosz, García Márquez, Golding, Paz, Mauriac, Heaney, Saramago, Grass, Pinter. (And yes, I have read something by each of them.)

I would go on to suggest that there are quite a few more who are indeed very good, if not great. Anatole France, the Spanish poet, Juan Ramón Jiménez, the French poet, Saint-John Perse, Seferis, Solokhov, Lagerkvist might all be examples of such.

As for Churchill, I have never read anything of his biographies and scant little of his history of the Second World War, but I understand from many who are more into such history than I, that it is a major historical document. I have no problem qualifying it as "literature" any more than I might think of the works of the philosophers Plato, Nietzsche, or Sartre, the critics Walter Pater and John Ruskin, the historians Herodotus, Josephus, and Plutarch, and the biographer Burton as literature.

[stlukesguild]

vili;

The link to the explanation of the various directions taken by the Nobel jury over the years is quite interesting. I must say that I quite admire the recent direction toward recognizing unknown literatures and authors of the world at large. My own focus as a reader has ben upon Western literature... and especially poetry. As such, I must admit that I was aware (without the Nobel Prize) of a good many authors who certainly deserve greater exposure (St. John Perse, Lagerkvist, Marquez, etc...) I don't doubt, however, that the prize most certainly afforded them greater recognition... in more ways than one. Undoubtedly, many have first been exposed to certain writers through the Nobel Prize. In my own case, I will admit to having first heard of the marvelous Czeck poet, Jaroslav Seifert, the Polish poet, Wisława Szymborska, the brilliant novelist, José Saramago, and (I'm almost embarassed to admit) the great poet Seamus Heaney. I don't doubt that many others have similar experiences. I will also admit that I don't doubt that the award affects the accessibility to many writers on the list. I doubt that Szymborska, Seifert, Milosz, Saramago, Elytis, Agnon, Singer, Lagerkvist, and even Montale might have been as well translated had they not been afforded such a prestigous award. Obviously, the award is neither here nor there in influencing which artists will stand the test of time... and undoubtedly having won such an award means as little for the reputation of certain writers (Mann, Hesse, Grass, Faulkner, Hemmingway, Eliot, etc...) as not having won it means to others (Borges, Kafka, Rilke, Proust, Joyce). Nevertheless... I do think it has been of some real value in garnering further attention to underrepresented writers and literatures. I will admit to having made futher explorations into various Hebrew and Yiddish authors after having "discovered" Agnon and Singer. Perhaps the Pamuk award may have a similar effect upon readers wishing to explore Turkish... and Middle-Eastern writers in general.

[vili]

Thank you for your comments, stlukesguild. You are clearly rather well read, especially in the area that I am personally most ignorant about: cotemporary poetry. I have, actually, only recently started to have the urge to begin exploring this vast territory that remains almost completely uncharted for me, save for the English-speaking poets that are standardly taught on the MA level in English Studies.

While about a quarter of the names on the Nobel list are unknown to me (I am generally more knowledgeable of the newer authors, and less so of the older ones), and I cannot claim to have seriously read more than a handful of the authors listed, I can personally thank the Nobel Prize for introducing at least two authors to my life. One is Patrick White, whom I finally got around to reading after reading about his Nobel Prize and the reponses to it. White is now perhaps the one author I would take to that legendary uninhabited island, if I were allowed just one writer.

The other major find I have made through the Nobel Prize is Naguib Mahfouz, who I had never heard of until finding a collection of his novels at a second hand shop. The fact that the book said "Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature" stirred my curiosity, and I ended up buying it. He was an amazing novelist, or that is the conclusion I have made based on the translations of the handful of novels that I have so far been able to treat myself with.

Finally, my own experiece with Churchill's histories comes from reading parts of History of the English-Speaking Peoples. To be honest, I personally found it somewhat tedious and might also have retitled it to History of the English-Speaking Peoples: The Churchills' Journey, as Churchill's ancestors make a fair number of appearances. Yet, I understand that the work, as well as Churchill's multi-volume histories of the two World Wars, are generally consider as some of the most important works in history written in the 20th century. This, even if the reader needs to approach them understanding that, for obvious reasons, they are largely written from Churchill's own point of view. A historian friend of mine once told me to read them, but not believe a word of them before I double check the facts.