One of the fun things at the start of every year is that the Swedish Academy opens up the archives to the Nobel Prize in Literature deliberations from fifty years ago.
This year the documents relating to the 1962 prize -- which went to John Steinbeck -- were due to be released, and Kaj Schueler of Svenska Dagbladet offers the first look, in Till slut återstod bara Steinbeck.
The big news is the name of the finalists he beat out: Jean Anouilh, Karen Blixen, Lawrence Durrell, and Robert Graves -- with Blixen putting herself out of the running by dying in early September, before deliberations got serious (but apparently unlikely to have taken the prize anyway).
Also interesting: Sartre entered into the discussions, too -- presumably undermining Anouilh's candidacy, and paving the way for his 1964 win.
It's interesting to compare this to the 1961 discussions (when the prize went to Ivo Andrić) -- see my discussion of the 1961 deliberations -- which had Graham Greene as runner-up and also included Blixen, J.R.R.Tolkien, C.S.Lewis, and Friedrich Dürrenmatt in the mix. Greene's absence from the 1962 shortlist sticks out -- perhaps he wasn't nominated that year ?
I'm looking forward to more revelations from the deliberations (like who else was nominated) in the coming days; meanwhile, it's amusing to note that Schueler reminds readers that the choice was widely derided in the Swedish press at the time -- to the extent that an Aftonbladet commentary suggested Pearl Buck should be pleased, since now she would no longer be held up as the best example of the Academy's poor judgement ..... (Yes, that Swedish attitude of not taking American writers seriously apparently has one hell of a long history, and isn't restricted to the Swedish Academy .....)
The official Nobel site has some nomination-information -- see, for example, Nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature each year (1901-1950) -- but it would be great if they updated this annually to keep up with the newest revelations. (That page is interesting with regards to some of the other much-derided choices, by the way: note how often some of the eventual winners had been nominated -- Grazia Deledda a dozen times, Frans Eemil Sillanpää nine times, Johannes V. Jensen a stunning eighteen times (including by seven different nominators in 1938 (the infamous Pearl Buck year ...), finally winning it in a year when there were only twenty other authors nominated). As with the Man Booker and most other literary prizes: you have to be in the running (i.e. nominated, in this case) to win -- and multiple nominations by multiple nominators surely suggest some of these authors weren't considered anywhere near as forgettable as they are nowadays.
(The Nomination Database also only covers 1901 to 1950, but a search shows that Steinbeck had already been nominated in four separate years before 1950 -- each time by a different nominator. The database is useful in considering some of the Academy's notable omissions over the years: Joyce, Proust, Rilke, Brecht, and Kafka were among authors never even nominated, for example, so it's hard to blame to Academy for never giving them the prize; Tolstoy, on the other hand, was nominated sixteen times -- by five different nominators in 1905 alone .... Zola was only nominated twice (dying in 1902, the second year of the prize, cut that short), Ibsen and Edith Wharton thrice, Henry James four times -- while Jules Verne was nominated eleven times. Strindberg (surprisingly -- Scandinavian nominations were always popular) and Musil are also among notable authors never to get nominated.)
The big news is the name of the finalists he beat out: Jean Anouilh, Karen Blixen, Lawrence Durrell, and Robert Graves -- with Blixen putting herself out of the running by dying in early September, before deliberations got serious (but apparently unlikely to have taken the prize anyway).
Also interesting: Sartre entered into the discussions, too -- presumably undermining Anouilh's candidacy, and paving the way for his 1964 win.
It's interesting to compare this to the 1961 discussions (when the prize went to Ivo Andrić) -- see my discussion of the 1961 deliberations -- which had Graham Greene as runner-up and also included Blixen, J.R.R.Tolkien, C.S.Lewis, and Friedrich Dürrenmatt in the mix. Greene's absence from the 1962 shortlist sticks out -- perhaps he wasn't nominated that year ?
I'm looking forward to more revelations from the deliberations (like who else was nominated) in the coming days; meanwhile, it's amusing to note that Schueler reminds readers that the choice was widely derided in the Swedish press at the time -- to the extent that an Aftonbladet commentary suggested Pearl Buck should be pleased, since now she would no longer be held up as the best example of the Academy's poor judgement ..... (Yes, that Swedish attitude of not taking American writers seriously apparently has one hell of a long history, and isn't restricted to the Swedish Academy .....)
The official Nobel site has some nomination-information -- see, for example, Nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature each year (1901-1950) -- but it would be great if they updated this annually to keep up with the newest revelations. (That page is interesting with regards to some of the other much-derided choices, by the way: note how often some of the eventual winners had been nominated -- Grazia Deledda a dozen times, Frans Eemil Sillanpää nine times, Johannes V. Jensen a stunning eighteen times (including by seven different nominators in 1938 (the infamous Pearl Buck year ...), finally winning it in a year when there were only twenty other authors nominated). As with the Man Booker and most other literary prizes: you have to be in the running (i.e. nominated, in this case) to win -- and multiple nominations by multiple nominators surely suggest some of these authors weren't considered anywhere near as forgettable as they are nowadays.
(The Nomination Database also only covers 1901 to 1950, but a search shows that Steinbeck had already been nominated in four separate years before 1950 -- each time by a different nominator. The database is useful in considering some of the Academy's notable omissions over the years: Joyce, Proust, Rilke, Brecht, and Kafka were among authors never even nominated, for example, so it's hard to blame to Academy for never giving them the prize; Tolstoy, on the other hand, was nominated sixteen times -- by five different nominators in 1905 alone .... Zola was only nominated twice (dying in 1902, the second year of the prize, cut that short), Ibsen and Edith Wharton thrice, Henry James four times -- while Jules Verne was nominated eleven times. Strindberg (surprisingly -- Scandinavian nominations were always popular) and Musil are also among notable authors never to get nominated.)