13 replies to this topic

[Pamela Moberg]

Tomorrow at 1 p.m. the Nobel Prize will be announced - promise to post at exactly 1.10 p.m. (local time, that is).

Must admit I havent got a clue myself, so many names about. Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth are favorites. Even Bob Dylan!
has been mentioned!

Well, folks, who do you think will get it?  

Fourteen hours to go, I suppose a lot of writers are glued to their phones right now  

[dirac]

Dylan? Oh, brother.

Cormac McCarthy's name has been mentioned as well. We'll see. Thanks for keeping us up to date, Pamela.

The Booker Prize winner will be announced soon, too.

Edited to thank the right person for starting this topic. Thanks to Helene for pointing out my boo-boo.  Sorry, Pamela and Marga!

Edited by dirac, 07 October 2010 - 04:52 PM.

[Quiggin]

Adonis, the Syrian poet, is listed and Ngugi wa Thiong'o the Kenyan writer is also a favorite. Alice Munro of Canada might get it quietly - but also there's Javier Marias, Spain, who just finished a long three-part novel, "Your Face Tomorrow," on the world of British intelligence (for whom the narrator is a translator) and the intricate involvements of the characters in POUM and the Spanish Civil War.

[bart]

Thanks, Quiggin,  Marias sounds fascinating.  The Wikipedia entry is a delight.

I had heard of Marias, but didn't know much more than his name and the country.  Your mention got me to research further.  Marias's work sounds fascinating.  His Wikipedia entry is a delight,

All three books in the Your Face Tomorrow trilogy are available in English from New Directions and available on Amazon, so my order is in.

P.S.:  This won't be the first author I was introduced to on Ballet Talk.  Thanks to all BT'rs for your many fascinating cultural interests.

[Quiggin]

Bart, I apologize if I've encouraged you to dive first into the deep end - the last books are slow going, I haven't finished with them yet. ""Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me" and "A Heart So White" (all the titles are from Shakespeare) are much more focused. "A Man of Feeling," about an opera singer, has a line I appreciate, "Dealing with a married couple is like dealing with one very contradictory and forgetful person"

But who are your picks for the Nobel?

[sunday]

Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa is the winner. Yay!

His Wikipedia page is going to be severely edited now, methinks.

[Pamela Moberg]

Mario Vargas Llosa!

I will add more comments later.

[bart]

Quiggin, don't worry about Javier Marias.  Your mention of him and of the subject matter of his trilogy led me to seek out a couple of reviews.  These confirmed my wish to read him.  Thanks for that quote --  "Dealing with a married couple is like dealing with one very contradictory and forgetful person,"   I love it.  

Of the last 10 or so Nobel Prize recipients, many of them quite worthy I am sure, I was familiar with the work of only 3.  At my age, reading choices tend to be  personal and idiosyncratic.  They are radically unconnected with the criteria used by the Nobel Committee.  So many writers ... so little time.  

Vargas Llosa I will check out further, however.

[Pamela Moberg]

Here in Sweden, if the media is anything to go by, the award of the Nobel Prize has been well received. An author who many people know and have read and not some obscure little unknown poet. There was some moaning about the prize not being awarded to the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer. I, for one, am a great fan of Tranströmer although I am not generally fond of poetry. And maybe time is running out for him now as I have heard that he is not well. And of course, this is meant to be some kind of global prize, so it is very seldom awarded to Swedes.

The actual announcement was made by Peter Englund who is the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy. The guy is rather short of stature and there had been some complaint made by television companies and press that he was hardly visible last year. Problem was solved by a little platform built in front of those famous doors. Also, a rather funny feature was missing this year. Previous years, just after the name being announced, someone in the press crowd has always yelled very
loudly "At last". This year that outcry was missing, though everybody waited for it. Well, it turned out that the journalist responsible for the outburst was sick and could not attend. Anyway, Peter Englund who is a historian and has written a lot of historical tomes himself did very well, but maybe he was not as brilliant as the previous secretary, Horace Engdahl, (who, by the way, is a great fan of ballet) who used to read the announcement in six or seven languages.
Now we are waiting for the ceremony 10 December, with hopefully all laureates attending.

[dirac]

Quote

An author who many people know and have read and not some obscure little unknown poet.

Well, among recent recipients, Doris Lessing and Harold Pinter are pretty well known. I guess this year it was Latin America's turn.

An author who many people know and have read and not some obscure little unknown poet.

Quote

The guy is rather short of stature and there had been some complaint made by television companies and press that he was hardly visible last year. Problem was solved by a little platform built in front of those famous doors.

Very amusing mental image. Thanks for the detailed comments, Pamela.

[kfw]

I read "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter" about 20 years ago and loved it. But I had no idea it was based in part on his own life.

[papeetepatrick]

Quote

The guy is rather short of stature and there had been some complaint made by television companies and press that he was hardly visible last year. Problem was solved by a little platform built in front of those famous doors.

I didn't notice this at all in 2001, just after 9/11, when I heard him read at the 92nd St. YMHA.  I'd just finished reading 'The Feast of the Goat', which is superb, and this was one of the best readings I've been to there.  If he's short, it's not unusually so, and he's extremely handsome, elegant and correct; if I may say, that is not what you nearly always get at those readings, even though that's not the point, of course.  Shortly after that, I saw him on Charlie Rose, they were discussing the attacks.  I also read a series of essays by him, mostly from the 90s and early 00s, but can't remember that too well right now.  He's had that famous feud with the other Latin American author, is it Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who I've never read?  Will go look up...yes, that's who it is.  I think Vargos Llosa is a master, and must read more.  His descriptions of Peru are incredibly vivid.  

Marvelous choice, I'd say, and may spur him onto further fine works.

Edited to add:  It's just been pointed out to me that the 'short guy' was Peter Englund, and indeed I hadn't read carefully (this is a trifle disturbing).  

Oh well, at least I got to describe that excellent reading evening of Vargas Llosa, having had the hardest time imagining him on a platform there, at least.  

Thanks for pointing this out!

[cubanmiamiboy]

Back in the 80's reading Vargas Llosa in Cuba would get you in trouble with the official authorities.  From him I read the powerful "La ciudad y los perros"-(The city and the dogs).

[Pamela Moberg]

Just now, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded. Well, this prize is awarded by Norway (because before 1905 Norway and Sweden used to be one country, that is why the prize is still shared in this manner).
It went to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo who is serving eleven years in prison. This now poses an interesting question.
One cannot assume that he will be given leave to collect his prize in Oslo - normally when a laureate cannot attend for some reason, the ambassador accepts the prize on behalf of the laureate. That will hardly happen now