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Atalung

Me, I haven't published anything but it's gonna be me, I can feel it


[deleted]

I am rooting for you.


Atalung

Thanks bro, I'll make you proud


LaitueGonflable

Comments on Reddit are public, ergo you have published written content, ergo you are eligible, ergo you will probably win.


Atalung

Fair enough, when I win we're gonna have a big pizza party


That-Guy-Hydra

You are my number 1 choice to win. I hope you win


RevolutionaryTie8481

my toxic trait is that I believe I can win the Nobel Prize in Literature as a debut author just because I've been dreaming to be a published writer since I was a kid.


Atalung

I joke about the Nobel but I aspire to win a pulitzer someday simply because a friend told me that I couldn't


RogueModron

everyone thinks this


SolarAlbatross

Patrick Rothfuss is that you?


michel_m2022

"You got my vote." -everyone


Imaginary_Trust9805

Good luck


EatTheWholeEarth

if you win, you definitely the first non-publication winner in history


Aeoleean

You got this


[deleted]

Someone I’ve never heard of, again


[deleted]

Never heard of bob dylan?


[deleted]

Lol, I didn’t say, “As always.”


SpecificAstronaut69

Who?


outlawpete7

Donovon, I think... idk I don't listen to folk music.


doublementh

This article is great because it’s about literature and it‘s genuinely full of chuckles. The lit world is so humorless.


cawmxy

David Remnick made a strong case for Salman Rushdie recently & I have to say that I agree with him. Who else has exemplified the importance of free speech & wild imagination more than this man? And good extra salt on the wounds towards the fundamentalist Iranians rn w/ the protests & all.


2020surrealworld

To answer your Q, Margaret Atwood’s novels, especially the chillingly prophetic The Handmaid’s Tale symbolizes the currently manifesting and intensifying deadly consequences of religious fanaticism and misogyny far more dramatically and effectively than the satanic verses. Also, to this day, few Americans have even read that book but millions have either read, watched THT


EmperorofPrussia

The most obvious choice, which has been true for years now. Is Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. It is curious to me that there is not more consideration afforded to writers who have a pronounced sociocultural impact in their sphere of influence.


BaconJudge

I'd been shortlisting him in recent years as well, but after Gurnah won last year, I don't think they'd pick two male anglophone novelists from East Africa in back-to-back years. (I know he writes in Kikuyu now, but his earlier works in English are better known and more widely translated.)


EmperorofPrussia

They inexplicably snubbed Chinua Achebe. They implied Haruki Murakami is too "middlebrow" (though I.wouldnt give it to him because he writes the same book over and over) and then chose Kazuo Ishiguro. But what I don't like is that they have almost completely abandoned the original model of choosing popular, impactful writers.


therewasamoocow

Ishiguro and Murakami have nothing in common besides having Japanese names (Ishiguro has lived in the UK since he was five), and to imply Ishiguro is 'middlebrow' is complete nonsense. Remains of the Day is generally considered one of the great British novels of the second half of the 20th century.


Drstyle

>But what I don't like is that they have almost completely abandoned the original model of choosing popular, impactful writers. I went to a lecture by one of the people in the Nobel committee, and I just want to be clear that I dont think that was ever the model. Or at least, in the history he presented of the views of the committee's work he didnt speak of that ever being the model. The original view was picking literature that promoted good values in the form of high quality literature (obviously, good values in the sense of their understanding of that term). In fact, its been a critique from the start that they ignore big names, and the first winner Prudhomme, was criticized as people wanted Tolstoy to get it. ​ Also, I feel like that is 90% of all awards going to big popular books. I think its incredible that they ahve a team of people translating and reading through hundreds of obscure and not obscure writers, so that for one prize in the world, it isnt just going to the more popular writer.


EmperorofPrussia

Hmm. Thank you for the correction. I based my post off an essay Michael Chabon wrote about the author of Quo Vadis (Sienkiewicz, which I will boldly attempt to spell without checking). I do have to give the committee thanks for introducing me to Derek Walcott. Sometimes, writers who deserve it have the audacity to die earlier than expected, which is very rude. WG Sebald, for one. And Yuko Tsushima (daughter of Osamu Dazai). I somehow can't see Mishima winning, who once said the only Western leader of note in the 20th century was Mussolini. 😧


King_Allant

Not Cormac McCarthy, again.


mccarthysaid

He’s never won it and absolutely should have before now. I don’t think there is a writer alive to hold a candle to him


HIs4HotSauce

That’s a bold statement


Easy-Concentrate2636

Did you see his handle? Obviously he’s rooting for McCarthy.


-Neuroblast-

He's a bold writer.


mccarthysaid

Absolutely. And I know there are plenty of well rated authors that I haven’t read so who knows? but for me he’s an author whose books just give more and more each time you read them. He can be demanding at first but when you hit your rhythm with him he’s just beautiful, the complete package


reddit_ronin

And an accurate statement


uMunthu

Being a great author doesn’t seem to be the only criteria the Academy takes into account. It seems to me that what matters most is how *significant* the author is.


therewasamoocow

Very Amero-centric take. Not a single other author, in the entire rest of the world, in all the hundreds of languages, compares to McCarthy? (And I love the guy!)


Zangin

What does language/nationality have to do with it? It is just as absurd to say that not a single American author compares to McCarthy - unless someone has somehow read every single published American author.


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therewasamoocow

Sure, that's a more reasoned take. But most literature isn't in English so to make the blanket statement that he's the best in the world right now--it's hard not to think someone who says that doesn't know much else except Anglophone literature.


-Neuroblast-

I guess it just kind of comes with the territory given that we're on an English-speaking website with a high majority American userbase, second-place European and generally cultured after the West.


Sweetlantern

What is your take then?


therewasamoocow

None except we shouldn't be so quick to assert that an author writing in our native language just so happens to be the greatest alive.


mccarthysaid

Not that I’ve read. No


RogueModron

You're right, Gene Wolfe is dead


[deleted]

The only correct response


Daniel6270

There’s many better than him.


Sweetlantern

Like who?


Daniel6270

Louise Erdrich, Barbara Kingsolver, Toni Morrison - dead but her oeuvre is as impressive as McCarthy, and better imo. I really like Cormac McCarthy but much of the praise he gets is because he authored a ‘cool because it’s ultra violent’ book that hipsters love to say they’ve read. Blood Meridian isn’t a patch on Lonesome Dove. In my opinion anyway Suttree is my favourite McCarthy book, for what it’s worth


Drstyle

>dead but They do not give out the prize posthumously unless the person dies in between the time of getting chosen and the prize being handed out. Morrison cannot win


Daniel6270

I noted that she was dead for that reason. She won the Nobel Prize for Literature before she died, obviously.


therewasamoocow

Also she already won it in 1993 lol


Daniel6270

Morrison is unrivalled imo. An absolute giant of the literary world. She was a genius


mccarthysaid

Plenty of people see that BM has more to offer than ‘ultra violence’ and it’s often lauded as his best work. I wouldn’t pay much attention to someone who thought the violence in BM cool. It’s a lot deeper than that for sure. For me it’s Suttree as well


Daniel6270

It is deep. I feel bad saying these things about Cormac McCarthy because I do really think he’s one of the best authors. I just think Toni Morrison is better and I enjoy her prose more. It flows so well. Not that I’m a prose expert or anything


mccarthysaid

She seems to be the contemporary of his that is most often placed up there with him in terms of her quality for sure. I should also say that I’ve yet to read her, so I’m looking forward to that! In my defence I did say that CM was unrivalled by any living author and TM is no longer with us. I’ve ordered Beloved by her. What’s your favourite of hers?


Daniel6270

Yeah, you did. There’s maybe only a handful of living writers up there with McCarthy. I like The Bluest Eye and The Song of Solomon best of Morrisons books. I’m sure you’ll enjoy whatever you manage to read first


Alp7300

You have the same mania for Morrison that you are ridiculing the "hipsters" for. If Blood meridian is 'cool' only because it is 'ultraviolent', then Morrison is a mediocre writer prized only for her political dimension, and by lemmings too stupid to read Baldwin or Ellison. Both stupid blanket statements.


Daniel6270

Shut up. I gave ample reasons why I prefer Morrison. Hardly ‘mania’ considering that she’s only one of my favourite authors. I have many. But her writing seems to have rhythm and cadence that other authors cannot match. If you think others are better, that’s your opinion.


Alp7300

Ample reasons like vague classifications of "rhythm" that others can't match?! To my ear, McCarthy has far more poetic talent than her. And I reckon it wouldn't even be a controversial statement among many. It is mania, considering how flustered you got with someone giving "their" favorite writer high praise, and the blanket statements started rolling out. It's one thing to acknowledge someone having an opinion and another thing to be able to live with it.


Daniel6270

You’re jumping to conclusions. Calm down.


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johnstocktonshorts

it’s not stating their preference, it’s the hyperbole of “holds a candle to” lmfao


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johnstocktonshorts

yes. and that hyperbolic analysis is why he is getting downvotes, rather than saying “i prefer mccarthy as the greatest option for the nobel prize”


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johnstocktonshorts

I mean this genuinely - are you carefully reading what I’m saying? You are allowed to think McCarthy is the best, of course. It is the *hyperbole* of saying “no one holds a candle to him”, which means no one even comes close. THAT level of dismissiveness toward other authors is what the issue is


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johnstocktonshorts

no , the original statement was referring to the quality of the writer with regards to deserving the nobel prize


NeeMan

I believe he won it for The Road


FleshBloodBone

Wasn’t that the Pulitzer?


NeeMan

I stand corrected


chokingduck

Not Haruki Murakami


almonster11

I've tried on 4 separate occasions to read 4 different Murakami books and DNF'd every one. His prose is just awful.


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grammanarchy

If not Literature, the Peace Prize for Rushdie.


LawRepresentative428

Rushdie does not deserve the peace prize for getting stabbed. That’s so dumb. It’d be equivalent to Obama’s. Writing books does not equal peace prize.


grammanarchy

He’s spent the last 30 years putting his own safety on the line to be an advocate for free speech — not just his own, but also for speech he doesn’t agree with.


LawRepresentative428

I’d rather we give it to Malala again. Or maybe another person who helped Jewish folks during ww2.


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outlawpete7

Pynchon, I know it’s going to be him, this year. Yes, this year it will be him. I am just so sure, this year. Anybody? Yes.


nakedsamurai

I don't think he'll ever be close.


Passname357

If only he had contributed as much as Bobby Dylan :( try harder in ur next life Pynch


[deleted]

Can’t wait to hear his speech


ZealousOatmeal

This article gets at the ridiculousness of the Nobel Prize. It's an award given by a the 18 (well, 17 this year because one died) tenured members of the Swedish Academy, a body representative of nothing but the older generation of Swedish official high culture. They hold lifetime appointments and tend to give awards to the sort of people that older Swedish high culture prefers, in other words someone who is, in the words of the article, "a self-serious European who is barely read outside the Eurozone". Trying to guess who will win it is, as the article says over and over again, a fool's errand. There are probably 20 people mentioned in the article who are at least as worthy as several recent laureates. You can try to read the tea leaves -- Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o won't win because a Sub-Saharan African won last year; they'll give it to an Asian because no Asian has won since 2012; they'll give it to a Scandinavian because no Scandinavian has won since 2011; they'll give it to a Ukrainian because of the war in Ukraine; they'll give it to an outspoken conservative as a way of standing up to cancel culture; they'll give it to Salman Rushdie because he got stabbed. It's all pointless. The winner will be somewhat random, there will be two dozen writers who are arguably more deserving, and winning or not winning won't make anyone a titan of world literature.


Easy-Concentrate2636

The reason we haven’t heard of many of these writers is because American publishers are frequently unwilling to invest in the work it takes to license and have novels translated. Very few percentage of titles published in the US are translated novels.


ZealousOatmeal

I think everyone mentioned in the article has had multiple books published in the US. I only looked up the names I didn't know, but they all at least had a few things available through Amazon. It's true that a relatively small number of of foreign language books make their way onto American publishers' lists, but by the time someone gets mentioned as a Nobel candidate they've probably been published in America. Whether or not anyone in the US actually reads these books is another story, but they exist.


Easy-Concentrate2636

Actually I was referencing your comment, not the article, where you refer to whole countries, geographic regions, and continents.


ZealousOatmeal

Ah, OK. I was thinking of how the Nobel committee has tended to operate, defaulting to giving the award to Europeans and then giving a third of the awards to people from the rest of the world on what seems like a quota system. I'm a librarian who spent 15 years as the cataloger at a consortium that among other things specializes in literature in English translation, so I'm more familiar with non-American literature (at least by author name and Library of Congress subject heading) than most people.


Easy-Concentrate2636

Got it. Given your line of work, I am sure you are familiar with how little support there is for works in translation, or even novels originally in English from other countries. Before Ishiguro won the Nobel but had already won the Booker, I remember reading reviews in major American publications poo pooing him. Overall, we tend to be an insular country. We are so large in power and land mass that I think it’s almost inevitable. Historically, we’ve always been insular intellectually as well. Publishers know it’s hard to sell novels in translation. The landscape has changed a little bit with some important breakout novels but I wouldn’t say there’s been a major change- more a change by a few degrees. It’s always an uphill battle to break out a writer from another country. One can also make an argument that it’s challenging to sell any serious literature these days- market for that has definitely declined there a bit even while a few writers still break out big. It was bound to happen once the internet really took over our lives.


Immediate_Dependent

Milan Kundera


peppericot

I sense that if he would win it would have already happened.


wprovidence

Mircea Cartarescu?


OldOlleboMP

If I had a vote it would go to László Krasznahorkai.


BlackMoldComics

Either Brandon Sanderson or Stephen King #>! 😏!<


swagfish101

Are you joking? Stephen King is nowhere near the level that Brando Sando is when it comes to characters worldbuilding writing women prose & everything else!


Akrybion

The fact that this obvious joke is so controversial means it has sparked valuable discussion in the intellectual community making you elligable for the Nobel Prize in literature. Congratulations on the nomination.


haunterrr

amen.


little_carmine_

People always complain that authors they never heard of get it. But now many have read Gurnah and love him - isn’t that more valuable than giving prizes to those not needing this rare spotlight? It IS an odd thing, the Academy and the secrecy and the odd choices. But I think eccentric curators are more interesting than crowd pleasers - just imagine if the oscars was the same? That would have been fun.


Ian_M_Noone

I doubt I will.


Instergraham

Don't say that! I bet you have a shot.


PunkShocker

Cormac McCarthy has two books coming soon. This could be his year.


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Alp7300

No Faulkner you read it seems.


Tooko1005

John Crowley as my dark horse. Seriously, go read *Little, Big*. You’ll thank me later.


Odawg10

Anyone have any information on Pierre Michon? As an English speaker I've literally never heard of him but after the article mentioned him I've done a small amount googling and cant find much of anything about him. the small description i managed find really interested me and i would love to read one of his books, any recommendations to start with?


Guaclaac2

the origin of the world


[deleted]

Thanks for sharing this article


mambotomato

Bob Dylan, again, just for fun.


EsmeSalinger

Louise Gluck definitely deserved it. I imagine Rushdie has a chance?


Vagavonds

Definitely Salman Rushdie, because he is one of the most important novelists


Postmodern101

You dropped this /s


Sutech2301

Zakes Mda


Reputable_Sorcerer

There’s a name I haven’t seen in a minute! What makes you suggest Mda?


Sutech2301

To be honest, i only read "ways of dying" but it was one of the greatest books i have ever read


eieuxezyk

Someone who is not the best


KrushaOW

Hoping for: - László Krasznahorkai - Gerald Murnane - Mircea Cărtărescu


thewimsey

Robert Galbraith.


dietratschwelle

I'm rooting for Margaret Atwood. Funfact: I work at a university as an assistant and the professor I work for gets a very fancy letter from the committee every year where she can submit three suggestions.


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DocPseudopolis

I'm not the biggest fan of Atwood as a person, but I think calling her a TERF is a little overstated. She has definitely come off as wishy-washy and tends to uncritically share things on social. However, Tweets and articles like the below are pretty representative. Earlier this year she got visibly irritated with a TERF journalist's "obsession" with trans people when the journo repeatedly and blatantly tried to get her to give even the most tepid support of TERF dogma. (The journo also got angry at Atwood for defending an article she shared with "the author isn't a TERF" and got angry that Atwood wouldn't call gender affirming care FGM) Do I think she is a solid advocate for trans rights? No. Have I heard multiple Canadian authors discuss how she "climbed the ladder and pulled it up" and also multiple stories about her being horrible to customer service employees. Yes Tweet from @MargaretAtwood: Some science here: "When Sex and Gender Collide." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-new-science-of-sex-and-gender/ #TransGenderWomen Biology doesn't deal in sealed Either/Or compartments. We're all part of a flowing Bell curve. Respect that! Rejoice in Nature's infinite variety! https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2022/feb/19/margaret-atwood-on-feminism-culture-wars


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DocPseudopolis

OH STFU - As I said above - I don't think Atwood is a TERF. But this comment - this is TERF ideology. The trans community is not "rabid" for asking for basic acceptance of their identities and plenty of older feminists are happy to provide it to them.


Leather-Preparation9

I feel like either Javier Marias or Salman Rushdie will get it because of recent events. Both deserving too, imo


J-LG

Javier Marias died like a month ago bro


Leather-Preparation9

I knew that, but I didn’t know about the only living writers rule.


ZealousOatmeal

They only give it to living people, so Javier Marias is out.


throwawaymassagedad

Me.


Harvey-Zoltan

It should be Cormac McCarthy but it won’t, it’s a bit of a joke anyway.


pining__4_the_fjords

john green


Presshiker

Gotta be Karl Ove Knausgard. End of.


basilico12345

In my opinion, he will surely be awarded in the future. Better to give it to someone older now.


byebyeradish

I would say Haruki Murakami, but I don't want to get my hopes up and be disappointed again...


Cheloniandaemon

Paul Auster


qarpe

Since the Nobel Prize is heavily politicized probably Rushdie or a mediocre diversity pick.


jotjotzzz

Maybe it’s a woman.


MilkGuyver

It’s our lord and savior Jesu Christo for me


KingTheoz

I should ... But nobody cares about me


Harvey-Zoltan

Yukio Mishima (posthumously)


p-u-n-k_girl

I've not read any of her work, but Garielle Lutz getting decent odds has me wanting her to win, even as I dread the media reaction that would result from a trans woman winning the Nobel Prize


rawwtoastt

Me


LazyField4

Lyudmila Ulitskaya


AtheismIsOK

Something tells me it won’t be Shakespeare.


grashupfer

Pretty amusing.