xp
that doesn't seem true! or they might be boring but they aren't forgotten. Roger Martin du Gard is the only whose name's a total blank for me.
― woof, Thursday, 9 October 2014 11:34 (nine years ago) link
JOHN D WUZ ROBBED
― this horrible, rotten slog to rigor mortis (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 9 October 2014 11:37 (nine years ago) link
OK OK I exaggerated, their Nobel record probably isn't worse than most other countries. But JMG Le Clezio was the worst selection of the last several years.
― justfanoe (Greg Fanoe), Thursday, 9 October 2014 11:41 (nine years ago) link
My favourite French writers are Celine, Proust, Duras and Genet (and a few other poets too) and none of them have won it.
There is a piece on Modiano in the LRB (Michael Wood). A quote about 'time' again and I don't think I can finish it.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 9 October 2014 11:59 (nine years ago) link
Re: Proust - this was interesting on the wiki page for the prize:
Nobel's choice of emphasis on idealism in his criteria for the Nobel Prize in Literature has led to recurrent controversy. In the original Swedish, the word idealisk translates as either "idealistic" or "ideal".[2] In the early twentieth century, the Nobel Committee interpreted the intent of the will strictly. For this reason, they did not award certain world-renowned authors of the time such as James Joyce, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Marcel Proust, Henrik Ibsen, and Henry James.[4]
― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Thursday, 9 October 2014 12:05 (nine years ago) link
Joyce and Proust were never even nominated
― woof, Thursday, 9 October 2014 12:19 (nine years ago) link
found out by dicking around with this:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/literature/database.html
― woof, Thursday, 9 October 2014 12:28 (nine years ago) link
The Royal Swedish Academy’s appointed judges themselves say they don’t like the effects of the creative writing school battery farms on the New York publishing scene
― Do Not POLL At Any Price (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 9 October 2014 12:54 (nine years ago) link
redlined: no matter your talent, perspective, or volume/quality of creative work there's always some middle aged French guy to whom they'd rather award the prize
― i'd rather be arrested by you folks than by anybody i know (art), Thursday, 9 October 2014 13:01 (nine years ago) link
Remember this thread
― Do Not POLL At Any Price (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 9 October 2014 13:07 (nine years ago) link
The winners since, say, '68 have been from a few countries (not that many French winners since then) and perspectives.
I don't think there is a lot that has come out of NY that would trouble the Nobel. Even if they hadn't chosen Modiano there are easily a dozen living writers from around the world you'd turn to before UK or US.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 9 October 2014 13:31 (nine years ago) link
So is Modiano good? Has anyone read him? I'm seeing almost no mentions in the ILX archives.
― jmm, Thursday, 9 October 2014 14:02 (nine years ago) link
Dunno, but might now get around to finally watching my DVD of Lacombe, Lucien (Modiano co-wrote the screenplay)
― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Thursday, 9 October 2014 14:04 (nine years ago) link
Read an excerpt once, seemed like typical French navel-gazing to me, but I couldn't determine whether it was the good kind of navel-gazing or the bad kind.
― Do Not POLL At Any Price (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 9 October 2014 14:12 (nine years ago) link
So nobody's read this guy but we've decided he's a boring conservative choice anyway then?
― Matt DC, Thursday, 9 October 2014 14:23 (nine years ago) link
He has a few film credits, the most notable of which by far is co-writing Louis Malle's Lacombe, Lucien.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0595272/?ref_=fn_nm_nm_1
― this horrible, rotten slog to rigor mortis (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 9 October 2014 14:29 (nine years ago) link
Nah, I have no opinion on Modiano in particular, but the default assumption for a Nobel winner is that it was a boring, conservative choice.
FYI it's not exactly fair to criticize the Nobel on Proust. At the time he died, only half of In Search of Lost Time had been published.
― justfanoe (Greg Fanoe), Thursday, 9 October 2014 14:32 (nine years ago) link
Englund said: “Patrick Modiano is a well-known name in France but not anywhere else. He writes children’s books, movie scripts but mainly novels. His themes are memory, identity and time.“His best known work is called Missing Person. It’s the story about a detective who has lost his memory and his final case is finding out who he really is: he is tracing his own steps through history to find out who he is.”He added: “They are small books, 130, 150 pages, which are always variations of the same theme - memory, loss, identity, seeking. Those are his important themes: memory, identity and time.”
“His best known work is called Missing Person. It’s the story about a detective who has lost his memory and his final case is finding out who he really is: he is tracing his own steps through history to find out who he is.”
He added: “They are small books, 130, 150 pages, which are always variations of the same theme - memory, loss, identity, seeking. Those are his important themes: memory, identity and time.”
This could be in a "make up a Nobel Literature laureate" thread.
― the man with the black wigs (Eazy), Thursday, 9 October 2014 14:37 (nine years ago) link
― Matt DC, Thursday, 9 October 2014 15:23 (25 minutes ago)
never get between americans when theyre wounded about their worthless boomer culture being overlooked
― the final twilight of all evaluative standpoints (nakhchivan), Thursday, 9 October 2014 14:50 (nine years ago) link
Hey, I was the first one to call it a boring choice, and I sure as heck am not American! I do root for Pynchon, though.
But what do you want us to do? It's the nobel-prize, nobody's ever read the winner. What should we do, not have an opinion like a goddamn idiot?
And I'll still say it's a boring choice. They gave it to another from France just six years ago, and there are so many worthy potential recipients all over the world. Even if Madiano is worthy, and he could very well be, it's still a boring choice. Much better than Murakami, though. Whom I've also never read.
― Frederik B, Thursday, 9 October 2014 15:04 (nine years ago) link
lol
― lag∞n, Thursday, 9 October 2014 15:06 (nine years ago) link
it turns out hes the killer at the end
― lag∞n, Thursday, 9 October 2014 15:07 (nine years ago) link
heavy stuff
Are you saying there's a way to convey trauma and the mysteries of identity without resorting to amnesia? I'd like to see that.
― jmm, Thursday, 9 October 2014 15:26 (nine years ago) link
Modiano is different from Le Clezio who had a different trajectory: started off writing Noveau Roman then seemed to go off toward dispatches from different regions of the world, and I think its the later part of his writing that got him the Nobel.
I feel a lot of French fiction on the latter half of the century had much of its energies slowly sapped by what was going on in film so having a sometime screenwriter winning it suits.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, 9 October 2014 15:27 (nine years ago) link
xp theres a way but its so brutal and shocking that you wouldn't remember it
― local eire man (darraghmac), Thursday, 9 October 2014 15:28 (nine years ago) link
So, I'll chime in since Modiano's one of my favorite contemporary authors and I've read probably half of his output (the guy is prolific). In France, he is a household name, you can probably buy his latest book in any supermaket with a small book section. He is extremely consistent in his themes and style so you probably only need to read one of his books (usually short and breezy to read) to figure out whether he is for you or not. Memory and nostalgia for periods and places now gone are his bread and butter.
― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Thursday, 9 October 2014 15:40 (nine years ago) link
smh nobel handing out awards to euro supermarket authors while our most esteemed cranky misogynists remain unloved
― lag∞n, Thursday, 9 October 2014 15:44 (nine years ago) link
ha as it turns out patrick modiano is my wife's distant relative, modiano is her old family name.
― LIKE If you are against racism (omar little), Thursday, 9 October 2014 20:25 (nine years ago) link
probably fourth cousin twice removed or w/e, who the hell knows.
― LIKE If you are against racism (omar little), Thursday, 9 October 2014 20:26 (nine years ago) link
that make you about 1/50th of a nobel prize winner
― the final twilight of all evaluative standpoints (nakhchivan), Thursday, 9 October 2014 20:28 (nine years ago) link
which is still a useful amount of a money
http://gifrific.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/homer-rocking-chair-gun-twirl.gif
― LIKE If you are against racism (omar little), Thursday, 9 October 2014 20:42 (nine years ago) link
just heard the news, what a disaster for bob dylan
― lool at the herrlich (wins), Thursday, 9 October 2014 20:54 (nine years ago) link
I don't believe in Zimmerman.
― Bobby Ono Bland (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 9 October 2014 21:54 (nine years ago) link
Le Clezio seems a very weird choice in retrospect--I'd not read him before he got the Nobel, and have read several of his books since. Someone so into endless descriptions of animal torture doesn't seem as though he'd be the Nobel committee's bag.
― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Thursday, 9 October 2014 22:44 (nine years ago) link
Is Paul Auster im sopermarkets in France as well? I have a feeling he is. And he's also probably wondering why he isn't on the odds chart.
― the man with the black wigs (Eazy), Friday, 10 October 2014 01:27 (nine years ago) link
In supermarkets, that is. (tablet typing)
Carrefour was always a classier proposition, shopping-wise.
― xyzzzz__, Friday, 10 October 2014 08:00 (nine years ago) link
Le Clezio seems a very weird choice in retrospect--I'd not read him before he got the Nobel, and have read several of his books since. Someone so into endless descriptions of animal torture doesn't seem as though he'd be the Nobel committee's bag.― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Thursday, October 9, 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Thursday, October 9, 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
jelinek.jpg
Xxp oh yes definitely, he probably gets his own mini display too
― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Friday, 10 October 2014 08:27 (nine years ago) link
I think jelinek supposedly got it for her plays rather than her novels, and almost none of the plays have made it into English.
― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Saturday, 11 October 2014 21:05 (nine years ago) link
Best presentation I've seen, though haven't seen many. Quotations of previous winners' citations, which article's author complains about, don't seem terminally cryptic to me. Anyway, glad to know about the forthcoming Yale collection:http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/patrick-modianos-postwar
― dow, Saturday, 11 October 2014 21:40 (nine years ago) link
James the Nobel quote is:
"for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power"
I would expect the plays to tread on a roughly similar terrain to her prose.
I would love to see a staging of some of Gao Xingjian's plays too.
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 12 October 2014 12:14 (nine years ago) link
Also this on Modiano, delving deeper:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n23/michael-wood/j-xx-drancy-13-8-42
― dow, Sunday, 12 October 2014 14:21 (nine years ago) link
Got a proof of three Modiano novellas which is coming out soon; read the first one, Afterimage, which was lovely if slight. Looking forward to the other 2.http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/B00OBL1L84.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Wednesday, 15 October 2014 00:10 (nine years ago) link
By the way, why is this prize so seldom shared? The physics, chemistry and medicine prizes are typically shared.
― alimosina, Tuesday, 4 November 2014 18:28 (nine years ago) link
Science tends to be more collaborative than the arts.
― abanana, Tuesday, 4 November 2014 18:30 (nine years ago) link
A couple of the lit prizes have iirc been shared but idk what that would mean today - probably give away a few too many clues as to the criteria of what they are judging.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 4 November 2014 21:26 (nine years ago) link
I would guess that the main criteria for giving the prize is who published the defining work first, and in science there is typically more than one author per publication. And this isn't the case with literature
― badg, Tuesday, 4 November 2014 21:46 (nine years ago) link