Who will be the next American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature?

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

Huh, a split Nobel literature prize happened as late as 1974. Two members of the Swedish academy got it after being recommended by themselves among others, instead of the price going to Nabokov or Borges.

The sensitive Martinson found it hard to cope with the criticism following his award, and committed suicide.[2]

damn

I'm thinking of a case analogous to Physics 1983. The "theme" there was astrophysics, but Chandrasekhar and Fowler never collaborated and worked in separate sub-fields. I wondered why the prize couldn't go for, say, Indian literature one year, shared by two or three writers. Of course writers are jealous gods and might not like the idea.

It's that time of year...

https://sports.ladbrokes.com/en-gb/betting/awards/nobel-prize-in-literature/2015-nobel-prize-for-literature/220019571/

Svetlana Aleksijevitj
5/1
Haruki Murakami
6/1
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
6/1
Philip Roth
10/1
Joyce Carol Oates
12/1
John Banville
14/1
Jon Fosse
14/1
Adunis
16/1
Ismail Kadare
16/1
Ko Un
20/1
Peter Handke
20/1
Amos Oz
25/1
Cees Nooteboom
25/1
Cesar Aira
25/1
Laszlo Krasznahorka
25/1
Marilynne Robinson
25/1
Peter Nadas
25/1

Lydia Davis
33/1

Can you imagine how gobsmacked Paul Auster would be if she got there and he didn't?

Would love if Lydia won it, just for her efforts to learn Norwegian.

Go Pynchon!

I say this each year, and he'll never get it. Still, though.

I know loads of mediocrities have won this but lol @ the idea of Auster ever getting near this.

Bookies once again dutifully offering short odds on Murakami because he's the only contemporary non-English language writer they've ever heard of.

Disgusting sellouts if they choose Roth btw.

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, October 11, 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There is a volume on Seagull btw, looks really good.

Laszlo Krasznahorka
25/1

he's been my vote for a while, but i suspect his list of published works is too short for the committee to recognize (maybe five or six novels over his career, handful of short stories and essays)

Would love if Lydia won it, just for her efforts to learn Norwegian.

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, October 6, 2015 9:47 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Me too but what about Dag Solstadt, the guy who wrote the novel she read to learn Norwegian, is he in the running?

I don't think so...have read one of his books earlier this year and certainly would like to see more in translation.

Excellent piece on what those odds are, there is no long list or anything to go with apart from what ppl bet on: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/123058/who-will-win-nobel-prize-literature

So Dag Solstad could win. I am always selfish here -- want to see someone who hasn't been that translated into Eng -- so its Dag or Sergio Pitol (who is actually being translated now).

Lydia Davis is an all-round great personality, writer and translator. Perfect fit for the prize. Then again all notions of what they go for are up in the air. The article recognizes but can't help to play the game, casting writers as this or that, uncomfortably so: Vargas Llosa and Munro are quite popular (these things are so relative when it comes to literature) (and post-Marquez few thought Llosa would get the nod, so not too late for Kundera). Pynchon as weird, its more that he is v comfortable with talking and engaging with pop (conversely enough that's a reason that could discount Murakami too)

Dag would be a perfect reason not to give it to Knausgaard. That's one thing I have noticed, they will often recognise some kind of literature years after, and they'll never give it to the writer who was there 'first' or anything (Beckett for Irish modernism, Kawabata for a certain kind of Japanses lit and not Mishima, Gide instead of Proust, Jelinek instead of Bernhard). Possibly Marquez was the only time where it seemed to be at right person, right moment.

Other US writer would be Harry Mathews. Don't think an Oulipo member has won this so it would reward that tradition. Seems like a gap on Nobel's CV.

Now that last would be an interesting choice.

Every time I see this thread title I think of that one Kinks song.

Svetlana Alexievich (bookies fave) wins!

Philip Roth grumbles!

eh roth is sitting around watching alf reruns w/ mia farrow

Svetlana Alexievich, you're a winner

her books sound interesting. especially the oral history ones. dalkey archive put one of them out. i do like that they pick a lot of people i've never heard of or people i know little about. they are always keeping their eye out for the next halldor laxness.

that petered out. can anyone here tell us more about svetlana? what to read in english? i know there's a couple of soviet lit devotees around.

Has to be "Voices from Chernobyl": http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=15872&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ThreePercent-Article+%28Three+Percent%29

'has to be' as in 'only book currently in print in english'?

More or less. Complete Review has the state of play:
http://www.complete-review.com/saloon/archive/201510a.htm#sz3

This Work?

Ok the above is from Voice of Chernobyl. There is something else called Zinky Boys as well.

Should get a wider re-issue now

yeah reading about her work really made want to read it so very happy she won the nobel as it will hopefully mean some english translations coming into print

it could be the worst disappointment since that unreadable frenchman from a few years back though

le clezio? he was definitely a dud.

him, yes. yes.

Anyone for Vasil Bykaŭ? http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1618606.ece

Excellent piece at the nyrb: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/oct/12/svetlana-alexievich-truth-many-voices/

Her speech is p/good.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2015/alexievich-lecture_en.html

Here we go again, mostly the same front-runners as ever.

http://www.nicerodds.co.uk/nobel-prize-in-literature

Bonnefoy passed away a couple of months ago.

Feel like I read something recently about some country or someone thinking their nominee was the favorite because they saw a list of candidates and didn't realize it was in alphabetical order.

E.L. James, lol

Would die if it were Le Guin, but no chance really.

Lol Murakami every single year. Do they ever learn?

They're like the Bob Dylan people. Every year I get really angry when people start going on about how Murakami should win.

Which Bob Dylan people?

all of them.

:) No, every year people put money on Bob Dylan to win the Literature Nobel, because they are morons

Somehow I doubt they are wagering more money on Mr. Zimmerman's chances than they can afford to lose. Which would make their wagers a bit less moronic and more a matter of enthusiastic advocacy, however misguided.

But it's advocacy which makes no difference since I doubt that the Nobel committee takes their instructions from unibet. And he won't ever win since he's a rubbish "writer". Hence: morons.

Sorry. Just that the cultural adulation of both Bob Dylan and Murakami makes me very cross.

Dylan deserves the Nobel Prize just for his painting

Well, fuck me, i'm going to go live in a box

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

Young Thug was robbed.