Nobelisms (Updated)

Tomorrow the Swedish Academy will announce the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature winner. In past years I've posted long musings on potential winners of this arguably most august of prizes, but this year I'm going to keep it relatively simple. There are many writers I think are deserving, almost none of whom have been given the award in recent years, but then, who am I.  Since 1995, the winners mostly been Europeans, and it has tilted in favor of fiction (I love fiction, but there are many extraordinary poets out there too). The award has also been tipped, perhaps more so than in the past, in a political direction, which I don't have such a problem with, but of course not every outstanding writer is overtly so or can be placed in an easy political framework, even if all writing is political.

Over the last ten years the winners have been Herta Müller (Germany and Romania, 2009), J.-M. G. LeClézio (France, 2008), Doris Lessing (South Africa and UK, 2007), Orhan Pamuk (Turkey, 2006), Harold Pinter (UK, 2005--I strongly supported this selection), Elfriede Jelinek (Austria, 2004--a bizarre pick), J. M. Coetzee (South Africa, 2003--one of the most exceptional living writers in English), Imre Kértesz (Hungary, 2002), V. S. Naipaul (UK, 2001--why?), and Gao Xingjian (China, 2000). That is a mostly-European group (either by choice or ancestry), 9 people primarily writing fiction with 1 playwright, and 8, or 9, if you count Turkish, writing primarily in European languages.  (Gao writes in French, I believe, but for was honored for works written originally in Chinese.) 7 of these winners have been men. Unaccountably among them not a single poet.

This year, then, I especially hope that it goes to a poet, and that that poet is Adonis [Adunis] (Ali Ahmad Said Asbar, 1930-), one of the greatest living writers in Arabic. An experimentalist, a writer of lyrical gifts that carry over, despite the linguistic transfer, into English, a person born in the Middle East (Syrian), an Alawite (a Shi'ite group), who has lived in Lebanon and Paris, he is the author of more than two dozen volumes of poetry. He would be only the second writer working primarily in Arabic to receive the prize and, I believe, the second Muslim.  Since the Nobel authorities sometimes like to cause a stir, perhaps they will do so by selecting him, though he is possibly less controversial, I would venture, than some other literary figures living in the Middle East or elsewhere.  (You can listen to an interview Charlie Rose conducted with him in 2008 here.)

But who knows? I either read or dreamt that the prize will be going to Adam Zagajewski, the much ballyhooed Polish poet, or the Swedish poet Thomas Transtromer. On the other hand, according to the original link Reggie H. sent me, Ladbrokes, the betting agency, was listing the great Kenyan author (fiction, primarily) Ngugi wa'Thiongo to win it all. (I once almost had the opportunity to study with him in grad school, but wasn't able to work my schedule out to do so.) The list has now switched to Cormac McCarthy (I am a fan, but he wouldn't be at the top of my list), followed by Haruki Murakami (I am a huge fan, but think he should get it a few years from now), Ko Un (I did post one of his poems a few years back), Transtromer, Adonis, Gerald Murnane (I know nothing about him), Joyce Carol Oates (why she's in this list is beyond me), Les Murray, Peter Nadas, Alice Munro (the greatest living short story writer in English), Juan Gelman, Ulrich Holbein, and my former professor E. L. Doctorow (I adore him and his work). Not many poets, nor many women. Oh well. Others who should be in or high in that list, like Nuruddin Farah, Wilson Harris, Kamau Brathwaite, Assia Djebar, Yoel Hoffmann, etc. are not. Dear Swedish Academy, surprise us. But with a poet, not from Europe (at least this go round), and perhaps a woman (Claribel Alegría? Marjorie Agosín? Anne Carson? Adelia Prado?)....

Update: The 2010 Nobel Laureate in literature is Mario Vargas Llosa, who lives in his native Peru and France. Though widely acclaimed for decades for his fiction and criticism, Vargas Llosa is also a noted political conservative who actually ran for the presidency of Peru in 1990, at the height of that country's battle against different groups of Marxist rebels, and has gained notoriety for his controversial personal life and behavior, which has included punching out fellow Nobel Laureate (and one of the great fiction writers of the late 20th century) Gabriel García Márquez.

Here's what I wrote to Reggie H. and Herbert R. concerning Vargas Llosa (about whom I also tweeted on the day of the announcement):

"Well, many years ago, when I was young and naive, I fell in love with his book The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta, which weaves a queer theme into its narrative. But...oh well.

"I guess they feel he's moved from the narcissism of the early works like Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter to broader and more universal works, in which the political critiques oppose his earlier views, like The Feast of the Goat. That's a pretty amazing book."

***

"I had read that [bit about his break with Gabriel García Márquez], but chalk it up to Vargas Llosa's impetuousness and self-importance more than anything else. He's an unpleasant character from all that I've ever read.  He sort of reminds me of V. S. Naipaul in that regard; someone with great talent, but a very nasty man. But the Nobel Committee has chosen male writers like this (Eliot, Canetti) again and again. Is there even one woman writer they've chosen who behaves like some of these men (liars like Grass; fascists like Hamsun, etc.).

At any rate, there's a great little chapter in Alberto Manguel's book, Into the Looking-Glass Wood, that addresses Vargas Llosa's politics. I use it every year when I teach [the] course on writing, publishing, etc., and I shall be trotting it out anew this January, since it'll be especially salient."

I also sent this to my former student, writer Francisco M., who responded:

I've read only two books by him, AUNT JULIA AND THE SCRIPTWRITER and FEAST OF THE GOAT (a really fun and sensationalistic read). But I don't think he's a "great" writer (or that he doesn't have the criteria to be a "great" writer). This will sound weird, but his writing is too sleek and entertaining for that. He's too "poppy" and sometimes it clashes against the subject matter. (In FEAST OF THE GOAT it felt really disorienting reading about atrocities depicted in such sensational soap opera prose). I think he writes engrossing, page-turning books in barely literary prose, actually. The best way I can think of it is that he's a pop fiction writer trying to write "important" books. If Vargas Llosa would have dropped the pretense, and written crime novels or something, THEN he would have been great and brilliant. But in general his books come off like watered-down "literature." Gregory Rabassa said that Vargas Llosa writes as if he cares what people will think and that the prose is too slick.

I think Rabassa's verdict is an apt summary. Congratulations to him nevertheless. As for poetry and the world's great poets, there's always next year....

Review: Capitalism: A Love Story & Nobel Prize Tips?

On Saturday, C and I went to see Michael Moore's new film, Capitalism: A Love Story (2009), just as we'd caught his last two major releases, the prescient Sicko (2007) and the Academy Award-winning Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), right after they premiered. Like the two prior films, and very much in line with all of his cinematic and TV works, including his début film, Roger and Me (1989), this new film is a passionate, often upsetting and enraging, sometimes muddled, but ultimately very moving attack on the economic and political injustice that plagues this society. Whereas Sicko focused on the broken health care system, and Fahrenheit 911 assayed the Bush administration's misrule and warmongering in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, this film attempts and sometimes succeeds in taking stock of the economic calamity that has befallen us since the waning days of the Bush administration. But Moore expands the window in an attempt to show that last year's collapse, and 2007 initial moment of recession, actually date back to the Reagan years, when fundamental changes in regulation and the economic philosophies that had guided the country shifted, based on politics, to create the toxic brew that has caused a global disaster, and what was nearly the Great Depression 2.0. The film could easily be retitled Capitalism: A Horror Story, since Moore's relentless aim is to show the many depredations that capitalism in its untrammeled US form has wrought, and a series of horrors they are. But he does not, and cannot tie everything together, because he does not address the larger issue of global capitalism and capital flows, or go as far as he appears to want to in terms of the US's situation and propose a solution or alternative, and this, along with his understandably deep faith in Barack Obama's election as a real politically as opposed to symbolically transformational event, ultimately are the film's major weaknesses.

The strongest aspects of Capitalism: A Love Story are the many powerful, disturbing, though sometimes hilarious, set pieces. These include the jaw-droppingly macabre "Dead Peasants"--this is the actual name, not something either he or I thought up--insurance policies corporations take out on their workers; the workers at Chicago's Republic Doors and Windows who refused to accept the horrendous terms of their dismissal, staged a strike, and forced JP Morgan Chase's hand to ensure that they at least got the pittance they were owed before watching their jobs vanish before their eyes; the appalling imprisonment of teenagers with due process in a for-profit private Pennsylvania prison in which two judges overseeing the cases had a financial stake; the "shock doctrine" attempts by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, in collusion with the firm he formerly led, Goldman Sachs, to seize control of the entire Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds, without any legal or legislative oversight, the popular outrage that temporarily stalled the bill, and the Democrats' capitulation and collaboration in making the theft possible only a little while later; and his designating a huge swathe of Wall Street as a crime scene, with police tape, a megaphone, and confrontations with the door people to boot. Other scenes, such as the ones of people being thrown out of their homes, were redolent of Roger and Me, and as Moore noted, many parts of the country were being transformed into versions of his hometown of Flint, Michigan. The set pieces do succeed in provoking your emotions: disgust, rage, awe, and revenge are among the responses, and validly so, since what becomes clear is that the unalloyed pursuit of money to the exclusion of everything else, which has become what American and global capitalism are, has left a trail of destruction in its wake, and our federal and many state and local governments (bought and paid for) and our mainstream corporate media (collaborators) have actively and passively colluded in making it all possible.


Moore interviewing Indiana Congressperson Baron Hill

Around and through these moments, Moore tries to construct a narrative that can offer a cogent account of how corporate and wealthy interests, in cooperation with both the Republican and Democratic parties, rewrote laws, pushed failed economic policies, robbed the country blind, and then, after devastating everything, managed to salvage as much money for themselves as possible. To his credit, he doesn't just slam the GOP nor does he omit the Clinton administration's participation in all of this. Though the country experienced an unprecedented period of economic growth and expansion from 1994-2000, Clinton's economic team also played a central role in gutting the economy's foundations by pushing for the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the imposition of NAFTA, championing outsourcing and the smoke-and-mirrors industrial-structural transformation to a service economy, and generally accepting the false logic of neoliberalism and conservative/supply-side macroeconomics. He only touches upon part of this, though, and he could easily have gone further back than Reagan; in fact, in the period after the US began large-scale industrialization, the fin-de-siècle battles around monopolization, the Gilded Age and go-go laissez-faire capitalism leading up to the 1929 Stock Market crash and Great Depression gave an instructive, unforgettable preview of what we would be facing if we followed the same terrible patterns of the past.

Along the way, the film identifies a few heroes in this horror story, chief among them Ohio Democratic Congressperson Marcy Kaptur, who clearly and defiantly lays out the stakes and makes clear who is really running the country. There are also some liberal-minded clergy people, including a veritable hippy priest, who condemn capitalism as contravening the Gospels. I really wish he'd gone further on this score, and pointed out not only the Christianist hypocrisy of the contemporary right-wing, but the silence of so many people of faith in the face of the growing economic inequalities we witnessed, the rampant unfairness, unethical and immoral behavior, the amorality of destroying others' lives to enrich one's own, and so forth. Where were the bishops, the rabbis, the imams, as W Bush was bleeding us all dry? Not only was the Iraq War a festering debacle, but also those tax cuts and the attendant spending binges and, even worse, insane borrowing, the refinancing and buybacks, the incessant building, and the shell games and Ponzi schemes that have left us trillions of dollars in the hole, and 7 million jobs poorer. The silence of these clergy people also was as "evil," if you accept the term Moore bandies about, as the hazy "capitalism" that he indicts. I take his point, but find the term, and those uttering it, too simplistic, since it shorts out any real discussion about the nature of economic systems and what they can and cannot provide. Yet Moore also suggests that we might have "capitalism" that isn't so out-of-control when he speaks with Socialist-turned-Independent Bernie Sanders of the "gay state" as he cheekily calls it, of Vermont. In fact Sanders calls himself a Democratic Socialist, and Moore points to European models that might offer a better, or at least more economically and socially equitable way. To get it, we may need a revolution, but in reverse from the one we've endured in unbroken form since the Reagan era. Moore however cannot bring himself to go that far--and doesn't much cite our own national history of early 20th century Progressives, American Socialism and Communism, as well as a much more empowered and radical Democratic Party, particularly during the 4-term tenure of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Instead he suggests that "Democracy" is the answer. But that simply doesn't make sense, and I gathered throughout that Moore knows this. But to call for a socialist revolt beyond the ballot box would, unfortunately, be beyond the pale even for a man so vilified by those on the right. He wants--and I think we need--lots of Americans to see this movie. Badly.


Michael Moore callling out the robber barons on Wall Street

Perhaps his most misplaced hope in the film is on Barack Obama's election. On the one hand, it was a remarkable event, and if one were to have vaguely followed Obama's rhetoric during the campaign, he seemed to promise real change. But closer listening showed him to be a pragmatist at best (even if a progressive on some issues at heart), and he has followed his Democratic predecessor in doing little to dismantle many of the worst aspects of the right-wing apparatus he's walked into. In fact, he basically hired the people who helped initiate the economic collapse! Moore does point out that the financial industries showered Obama with cash once he became the nominee and later won the election, but doesn't delve deeply enough into this. We can see the effects with the health care debate; the administration, along with Democrats like Max Baucus, appear to want nothing more than a symbolic bill that would primarily reward their corporate funders. They pay lip service to their constituents, who are overwhelmingly in favor of a more progressive bill, but have done everything they could, as Reagan, HW Bush and W would, to appease the wealthiest and thus most powerful interests. Not even doctors or nurses have had as much input as the insurance, pharmaceutical, hospital, and nursing home industries and their lobbyists, and that input--influence--takes the form of money. I understand Moore's idealism, which is a powerful undertow here, as in all of his films, but more clearsightedness, on Obama as a politician like every other one, would have strengthened the film's overall argument.

Nevertheless, as I said, Capitalism: A Love Story, is a film I hope millions of Americans, especially middle, working-class and poor ones, do get an opportunity to see. I fear not enough of us will see this film; even with its problems, it provokes a great deal of thought and soul-searching, and its revelations, even though many of them are well known, are worth seeing set forth as only Michael Moore can do. As he might say, Thank God for him.

***

I must add a link to three New York Times stories on the private equity industry shell game that has now ensnared institutions like Harvard, Yale and Stanford Universities. Moore did not touch this at all, except tangentially, but as each piece shows, the people who engineer these disasters rarely if ever lose.

Private Equity Industry: Another Horror Story
Profits for Buyout Firms as Company Debt Soars
An Executive Who Ruled from Afar and Walked Away Rich
Videos on private equity industry

===

Congratulations to this year's Nobel Laureates in physiology or medicine, Elizabeth H. Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco; Carol W. Greider of the Johns Hopkins University Medical School; and Jack W. Szostak of the Harvard University Medical School and Howard Hughes Medical Institute for their "discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase." According to several reports I've read, their work is central to understanding the biological mechanisms involved in aging, as well as in cancer research. I also saw that their award marks the first time that two women have jointly received the Nobel Prize in this category.

Today's announcement of this year's first Nobel Prizes means that at some point later this week or early next, the Nobel Prize in Literature will be awarded. Every year (or almost) that I've posted this blog, I've offered my speculations about the winners. Usually it's been a miss, though I did include Harold Pinter among my predictions--he was one of a vast cast--the year he won. Like most prognosticators and littérateurs, however, I was caught off guard by last year's award, J. G. M. LeClézio, who, from all that I can tell, remains in obscurity--not that fame or notoriety should ever be qualifications for this award. Still, his selection was surprising (especially over better known, influential French writers including Yves Bonnefoy, Michel Tournier, Anne-Marie Albiach, and Jacques Roubaud), and made me wonder what the committee, whose machinations have involved public uproars during the last decade, was thinking, and what the LeClézio pick might in terms of subsequent years.

In recent years the Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize in literature, has neglected poetry in favor of fiction; no author primarily writing poetry has received the award since Wyslawa Szymborska in 1996. Only two women have received the award over the last 10 years (Elfriede Jelinek in 2004 and Doris Lessing, two years ago). I'd thought these imbalances would be righted last year, but they were not, and so I believe they will this year. Also, despite Lessing's award in 2007, there have been very few winners from Africa; there has also been very few laureates named from Asia (only two from Japan and one from China), and in recent years almost none from the Middle East, Central America, South America, or the Caribbean. There are many reasons why, not the least being the Academy's European location and slant, another being the ways the global literary system works. Nevertheless, I think this year will be different, and am tipping a woman poet or playwright from South America or the Caribbean, Asia, or Africa, though at theOr another country in North America other than the US. One possibly and great choice, I think, would be Margaret Atwood. I'm not sure if Alice Munro's US links disqualify her, but I she ought to be a top candidate.

Other leading candidates include poets such as Claribel Alegria, Adélia Prado, Vénus Khoury-Ghata, and Shu Ting. Other leading candidates include fiction writers (some of whom write poetry and plays) like Assia Djebar, Hélène Cixous, Luisa Valenzuela, Patricia Grace (who received the 2007 Neustadt International Prize), Duong Thu Huong (above right, http://kobason.spaces.live.com/blog/) Mahasveta Devi, and Andrée Chedid. Despite the heavy Eurocentric cast of recent years, I wonder if it would not have gone to Danish poet Inger Christensen had she not passed away earlier. I also keep in mind that no writer from India, Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia, New Zealand, Argentina, Thailand, or many other countries, has ever received the award.

Considering male writers, Adonis/Adunis, who would be the first male poet writing in Arabic to win, remains a contender. Other less likely choices that I could foresee include: Wilson Harris, Haruki Murakami, Ko Un, Bei Dao, Antonio Lobo Antunes, Kamau Brathwaite, Jay Wright, Javier Marías, Homero Aridjis, David Malouf, Nuruddin Farah, Philip Roth, Édouard Glissant, and John Ashbery. Most are international known and renowned, some more so than others. Whether they're registering--well, Roth is--on the Swedish Academy's radar is another matter. There are former teachers, colleagues, and even some friends whom I think ought to at least be nominated, but you have to be on the Swedish Academy's hotlist to make that occur.

Reggie sends a link saying that British bookies have tipped Amos Oz, Assia Djebar, Joyce Carol Oates, Roth, and Adonis as their top 5. Oates? Really? (Among Israel writers, I think Aharon Shabtai, David Grossman, Yoel Hoffman, and even Aharon Appelfeld would be stronger candidates.) Among their other picks: Antonio Tabucchi, Claudio Magris, Murakami, Herta Müller, Luis Goytisolo (not Juan?), Pynchon (very unlikely), Ismail Kadare, Un, and Tomas Tranströmer. They put William Gass at 100/1...

Le Clézio, le Nobeliste

Several weeks ago, Reggie H. wrote about the newest Nobel Laureate in literature, J.M.G. Le Clézio, who sparked the same question--"WHO?"--that attended his previous French Nobel literature predecessor 23 years ago, the most Faulknerian of the nouveaux romanciers, Claude Simon. (I am not counting 2000 laureate Gao Xiangjin, who lives in France but whose award came for his Chinese-language prose and plays.) In an email exchange, I told Reggie that I'd never read any of Le Clézio's works (unlike Simon's) and had few thoughts about him either way, beyond my immediate criticism of the neo-colonialist and exoticist comments from the Academy and some of the initial commentators. (Not everyone was surprised by the victory, though, and the French thought the award fitting and due.) I added, in agreement with the end of Reggie's post, that there are a number of significant writers across the globe, and in particular outside Europe, some even writing in French, who were and are quite deserving of this top honor.

In the early 1980s it appeared that the biennial Neustadt International Prize for Literature, presented by World Literature Today, was a tip for the Nobel, but successive winners since then, from 2006's Claribel Alegría, backwards through Adam Zagajewski, Álvaro Mútis, David Malouf, Nuruddin Farah, Assia Djebar, Kamau Brathwaite, the late João Cabral de Melo Neto, and so on, have not been Nobelized. The last Neustadt Nobel laureate was 1982's winner, Octavio Paz. All of these writers have been widely acclaimed, and as I noted in a previous post, there are many others for whom you could make a strong case.

Nevertheless, Le Clézio does, as I said, have his champions, and at least one British critic celebrated the backhanded slap at the US's self-regard and American imperialism. He lives in the US part of every year, but he is, it's fair to say, not really on this country's literary radar in the same way that some other French writers, like the highly controversial Michel Houellebecq, for example, are. And he doesn't appear to be well known by our bilingual neighbors to the north, though according to the article you could find his French-language texts in Québec's bookstores. Just after the announcement I informally checked at several bookstores in New York City and Chicago, though at least a handful of US presses, like the University of Chicago Press, University of Nebraska Press, David R. Godine, and others, have published translations of his novels, and not one had a single translated Le Clézio text, though not too long ago, I think I saw a copy of one of his books on the long smorgasbord of remaindered books at one of my haunts, Powell's in Chicago.

Neither the brief, translated New York Times excerpts or the Nobel website's snippet of Le Clézio's work were encouraging (the New Yorker will for the first time be publishing one of his stories this week), so I went to the library and, in lazy fashion, looked at the several of his books that were available in English translation. (Interestingly, I thought, given the number of students and colleagues who read French, almost none of the French ones had been checked out.) His award-winning début novel, The Interrogation (Le procès-verbal), had been checked out, but I did see several large volumes from the early 1970s, War and Giants, which appear to be quite formally experimental in a Nouveau Roman-influenced vein, and, I assume, less likely to draw in casual readers who want to catch up. The latter ones, like 1991's Onitsha, a fictional retelling of his own experiences in Nigeria, seem to fall in the vein of more conventional, contemporary French prose or some destabilizing midway point between fiction and autobiography. (The French in fact have pioneered an entire genre, autofiction, that does this.) This particular volume looked interesting, not least in its blurring of genre, so I've put it on my list of books to read when I have time to do so.

Blogger and critic Guillaume Thoroude sums up Le Clézio's honor and his work this way:

So Le Clézio - why not? He has everything going for him: he's the perfect son-in-law, he still carries the aura of a child genius who conquered both experimental and classical writing, and he's one of the most studied French writers outside France. So the Nobel prize will make a lot of people happy, and frankly, what's the problem with that?

A German critic wasn't so charmed. British critic Mark Lawson suggests, as others have, that the Swedish Academy's political and and aesthetic biases have created a hurdle for contemporary mainstream American fiction. Le Clézio's own thoughts about his work, pre-Nobel, can be found here. One of his own comments, ironic in light of some of the post-Nobel write ups, interests me considerably:

First, I shall say that it doesn’t upset me at all to be unclassifiable. I think that the main characteristic of the novel is that is unclassifiable, in other words that it is a polymorphous genre which is part of an interbreeding, a brew of ideas which is, ultimately, the reflection of our multipolar world.

That said, I think, like you, that the French literary establishment, heir to the so-called universal ideas of the Encyclopédistes, has always had a deplorable tendency to marginalise any ideas from elsewhere by describing them as "exotic". Rimbaud and Segalen paid the price in their time. Even today, writers from Southern countries are only published here if they agree to be categorised in the "exotic" category. The example that comes to mind is the Mauritian writer, Ananda Devi, whose work I championed when I was on Gallimard’s panel of readers. Their response was that her manuscript was not exotic enough!

One other point that Reggie makes it the fate of poets in the last few rounds of Nobel honorees: there have been none, or rather, no writers working primarily in the genre of poetry. Many of the responses to Horace Engdahl's statements focused narrowly on contemporary US fiction, as if the contemporary American poetry landscape didn't exist. Some of the greatest and most original non-US poets of last 100 years have been honored, but David Orr notes that, oddly enough, no American-born poet, other than T.S. Eliot, who moved to the UK quite early, has received the Nobel Prize, despite the widespread consensus that American poetry, especially since Whitman and Dickinson, which is to say, since the late 19th century, has been among the most influential in the world. Gertrude Stein, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Lowell, and on you might do down the list--not a single one of them received the Nobel Prize. (Pound's overtly fascistic leanings completely disqualified him, I imagine.) Orr suggests that Adrienne Rich and John Ashbery, whose influence extends not only throughout the English-speaking world, but also in other literary traditions these days, would be leading candidates, and I would agree, adding that there are about two dozen other American poets quite worthy of the honor.

But as Reggie notes, it's not just American poetry that's been shut out of late, it's poets from across the world. Perhaps with a White House change for the better, one of the US's major poets, and the rich and expansive tradition, especially since Modernism, will be honored.

Ted Gioia serves up an alternative Nobel universe. I think he ignores poetry, drama and most writers from beyond the Euro-American axis, and some of the choices are just silly (Dr. Seuss?* John Le Carré? J.K. Rowling?). What do you think of it?

Anyways, get to your reading!

*I learned to read from Dr. Seuss's books, so I'm not dissing him, just arguing that he might not be the most appropriate candidate for a Nobel Prize in literature.

Oktober + Baseball + Nobel Nonsense + Janelle Monáe

Tonight I was talking to C and he reminded me that it's October. (Bizarre association, but both the Eisenstein film and the art-cult-crit journal* often hover at my consciousness's margins when I vocalize this month.) Not that I'd forgotten it, because like everyone, I have more than enough bills to pay that are due right around now, but I realized I'm still in a September frame of mind. These days I blink and two months have passed. Except perhaps now with classes, where I feel like we've been meeting for months, even though we're only into the second week of the quarter. But it's a good feeling of duration so far.

*It fascinates me to recall how enthusiastically and devotedly I read this journal years ago, especially during the late 1980s. Article by article it provided another parallel education, though I realized that it took me about five good years to assimilate it all. It was where I first learned about Hollis Frampton, the controversies surrounding Richard Serra's public art, anything having to do with the "psychoscopic," Lacan's infamous little critique of Kant ("Kant with Sade," Alexander Kluge, etc. Those were the days!

***

Last night as I was teaching my grad workshop, the class and I heard booms going off and then loked outside to see fireworks flaring over Lake Michigan near the giant ferris wheel at Navy Pier. (The class is on the university's downtown campus, though the fireworks probably were visible from Evanston. Cf. photo below.) We quickly realized they meant that the Chicago White Sox were in the playoffs, as they'd defeated the Minnesota Twins. That makes two Chicago teams in the post-season; the Chicago Cubs had the best record in the National League and won their division (in which the Cardinals finished fourth by winning their final 6 games) decisively.

There are also two southern California teams in the playoffs: the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL, vying for postseason glory last achieved in 1988, and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the AL. If the Cubs and White Sox made it to the Series against each other, reprising the 1906 contest, it would be the CTA Red Line/El Series, Addison vs. Sox-35th. If the Dodgers and the Angels faced off against each other, it would be...the Interstate 5/Freeway Series?

(One fascinating note is that if it were the latter, the two opposing teams would feature the largest number of Black players, English and Spanish-speaking, from an array of countries, in some time. We're often told about the dearth of African-American baseballers, but the Dodgers and Angels have managed to hire quite a few, in addition to their Latino stars. Cf. Manny Ramírez, above left. Almost as many dreadlocks and twists as in a Brooklyn subway station!)

Rounding out the competition, in the AL the Boston Red Sox again are in the playoffs (why?), along with the spunky Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays. Somehow or another, Florida, an unlikely baseball region, has managed not infrequently over the last decade to field a playoff bound team. In the NL, the two other teams are the Philadelphia Phillies, whose last great playoff run was in 1980, when they won the World Series and Hall of Famers Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton, now gray-haired grandfathers, were still playing. They have the league's leading slugger, fellow St. Louis Ryan Howard, and a solid lineup, and might be the team to beat. (Sorry Cubs.) The other NL team squeaked in: the Milwaukee Brewers, last seen losing, as an AL team, to the Cardinals in 1982, made the playoffs almost completely by dint of one C.C. Sabathia (above right) the 6-7, 290 lb. lefty who after being traded from Cleveland went 11-2 in 17 starts with a 1.65 ERA. He pitched 3 complete game shutouts during that stint, and won his final start, on three day's rest, to ensure his team would go forward.

I'm predicting Phillies defeat Brewers, and Cubs defeat Dodgers. On the AL side, I think the Angels will defeat the Red Sox (we can hope, can't we), and the White Sox will defeat the Rays (who are pretty good). The World Series? Phillies or Cubs vs. Angels.

Note that two teams I didn't mention are the Yankees and the Mets. Other than Yankees fans (I am nominally one), no one mourns their absence. But the Mets' failure to get to the playoffs was a bit sad. They had the talent, lost a very good manager mid-season, came back and were in first place for a while, only to falter at season's end. Next year, Metropolitans!

This may be Chicago's year, not just in the World Series, but in the larger scheme of things. You know, the man who organized dispossessed folks on Chicago's South Side, represented a Hyde Park neighborhood in the State Senate, taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, still has a home in Chicago, and represents the state of Illinois in the US Senate is definitely on his way to becoming president! (It won't be easy, though....)

UPDATE: The Cubs, however, will have to win their games, not just show up. And when did Vladimir Guerrero start hobbling around like he was on the verge of retirement?

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Reggie H. sent me an email link to an article about inflammatory comments Horace Engdahl, the top juror of the Swedish Academy. Herr Engdahl slammed American authors and American literature for parochialism, in effect provocatively suggesting that no American author will be winning this year's Nobel Prize for literature. (And thus making Joyce Carol Oates go on a rampage.) As the articles above note, the remarks set several respondents off live. I think Engdahl is wrong on many accounts. His statement about translation probably should be directed at US publishers and not authors. But really, there are some excellent authors outside the Europe-American axis who deserve the honor. Like, oh, Assia Djebar. Or Adélia Prado. Or Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Or Maryse Condé or Kamau Brathwaite. Or Adonis. Or Claribel Alegría. Or Saadi Yousef. Or Luisa Valenzuela. Or Bei Dao. Or Duong Thu Huong. Or Yoel Hoffmann. Or WILSON HARRIS (yes, he lives and writes in Britain, but...).

Seriously, why has no Arabic language author received the Nobel Prize since Naguib Mahfouz? Why have there been so few winners from Asia? Or sub-Saharan Africa? I strongly think Chilean author Roberto Bolaño would have received it had his liver held up, because 2666 (which I tried to read in Spanish this summer, like a fool) is a landmark text. But then, he was living in Spain at the end of his life, so that might have improved his chances anyway.

Looking at the previous list of American laureates, I hadn't realized is that outside of T. S. Eliot, who moved to Britain, no other American poet has received the Nobel. How is that possible? All of the other winners (from Sinclair Lewis to Toni Morrison) have primarily been fiction writers, with the sole except of playwright Eugene O'Neill. American poetry has, certainly since the 19th century, been as distinctive and important as American fiction, and is nowadays perhaps even more diverse, in terms of form, style, themes, and content. It's also influential across the entire English-speaking world, and if one includes its musical forms, globally. So perhaps a senior American poet will be Nobelized once Obama is inaugurated. There are many who are worthy and climbing the ladder of years....

Interesting too that he asserts in fine colonial fashion that "Europe" remains the "center" of the literary world. My literature honors student recently finished Pascale Casanova's The World Republic of Letters, and we were both noting with some bite her attribution of literary centrality, still, to Paris. J'aime beaucoup la littérature française et francophone mais, as if.

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The bill-that-must-be-passed-immediately-or-we-will-all-suffer-irrevocably has passed the Senate. Or a slightly better, gewgaw-festooned version of it has. See, our Congress isn't broken. Completely.

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Over the last few weeks I've been listening to Janelle Monáe, a very young protegée of Big Boi and Andre 3000 (of Outkast fame). Her CD Metropolis debuted in mid-August (on C-day, no less), and it's hot. I love her Afropunk/futurist stylings and music, which are infectious, fresh pop with a nice soulful twist. (And in addition to invoking thoughts of Grace Jones, she favors the brilliant and beautiful Duriel Harris, doesn't she?) Her musical cyberworms entered my brain after just one audition of "Sincerely Jane," but I also am grooving to "Many Moons" and "Violet Stars Happy Hunting!" which is probably my favorite. "I'm an alien girl from outerspace..." Indeed. I'm excited about the CD, and am going to see if I can catch her if she comes through Chicagoland. Check her out.

Here she is singing "Sincerely Jane" on TBS Storyline.