Roth the Nobelless

2 comments on “Roth the Nobelless”

1. LD says:
   May 29th, 2007 at 10:23 am

   I pretty much get the impression that for good or bad, the Nobel Prize has decided its goal isn’t to decorate the greatest and most important writers of the time anymore per se. Instead, it seems its goal seems to be to bring to light important authors from as many different countires and ethnicites as they can. Add to this a clear left wing/political writing and cultural writing bias and it seems clear to me why Roth hasn’t gotten one yet.

   Take Pamuk last year. Most commentators seemed to agree Pamuk probably deserved a Nobel prize one day, but last year? He is far younger than other possibilities (Roth included) and the awarding of the prize to pamuk at that time struck as a calculated political move (over Turkey’s treatment and censorship of writers)

   I don’t mean to sound like I think this tact by the Nobel Prize is all bad. There is certainly value in celebrating underrated (to the western world) writers from various countries. But I’m not sure if that should really be its goal. If you go back and look at the Nobel Prize a different country is awarded the prize every eyar. In the last 20 years, the only country who got the prize twice was South Africa (one black female writer and one left leaning white writer).

   A white north american writer has not won the prize since Saul Bellow in 1976 and he is very much a “jewish writer”

   I feel like the chances of a “non-ethnic” north american writer winning the nobel prize is absurdly low in this day an age, despite how many worthy candidates there are.

2. Ks says:
   May 29th, 2007 at 1:01 pm

   When I first read that I thought it said “The worst cultural snob in living memory,” which seemed slightly more appropriate… Yeah, not really crying any rivers about Philip Roth’s lack of a Nobel.

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