The nail-biting begins, as we enter the last hours before the winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature is announced, tomorrow at 13:00 local time (noon GMT).
- Last-day (which is far from last-minute -- expect some significant movement as the clock winds down) betting odds have Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o just ahead of Murakami Haruki at both Ladbrokes (7/2 and 9/2 respectively, unchanged from the day before) and Unibet (3.75/1 and 4.5/1, with Ngũgĩ leapfrogging Murakami here), while Murakami still leads at PaddyPower.
- Dwight Garner does the honors for The New York Times, in their obligatory Nobel-preview article, wondering The Nobel Prize Waiting Game: A Year for Long Shots ?
A couple of points about this, beginning with the why-didn't-they-get-it whining: Garner does mention the nominations-process, noting 210 eligible writer-submissions were considered, but doesn't emphasize the fact that you have to be in it to win it, i.e. there's a hurdle to even being considered for the prize. As I have frequently pointed out already, I remind readers that Proust, Kafka, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, hometown boy Strindberg (!) and many, many others were never even nominated for the prize, i.e. had no chance of ever winning it. (The Nominations database only lets us check through 1950, but already proves many greats didn't even get to the Swedish Academy-stage.)
I also think Garner overstates the Swedish Academy's aversion to (sales-)successful authors. As to a possible blind spot re. wit -- well, everyone regards their having given it to funny-man Dario Fo as a joke, so maybe they feel burned .....
Garner does suggest:
- Not many articles of interest elsewhere, though Smålandsposten gamely try to introduce readers to possible winners, in Och Nobelpriset 2014 går till... Péter Nádas? and a similar piece devoted to Fatima-Zohra Imalayen (i.e. Assia Djebar).
So what do I expect ? As noted, the betting sheets offer good if very rough guidance, I think: I wouldn't be surprised if three or four of the top six names on the Ladbrokes list at this hour and stage (Ngũgĩ, Murakami, Alexievich, Adonis, Kadare, Modiano) were among the five finalists they selected the winner from. I hold out hope for a name beyond, possibly, too -- the very deserving Juan Goytisolo, who fits the bill in all respects (except he's getting kind of old, too), or new territory for them, like Persian: in Mahmoud Dowlatabadi and Shahrnush Parsipur they have two top-notch candidates (and I figure these three authors are pretty much certain to have been nominated for the prize by someone).
Yes, Ngũgĩ has got to be the favorite, but non-fiction-writing Alexievich also would seem to hold good cards. We'll find out soon enough .....
- Last-day (which is far from last-minute -- expect some significant movement as the clock winds down) betting odds have Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o just ahead of Murakami Haruki at both Ladbrokes (7/2 and 9/2 respectively, unchanged from the day before) and Unibet (3.75/1 and 4.5/1, with Ngũgĩ leapfrogging Murakami here), while Murakami still leads at PaddyPower.
- Dwight Garner does the honors for The New York Times, in their obligatory Nobel-preview article, wondering The Nobel Prize Waiting Game: A Year for Long Shots ?
A couple of points about this, beginning with the why-didn't-they-get-it whining: Garner does mention the nominations-process, noting 210 eligible writer-submissions were considered, but doesn't emphasize the fact that you have to be in it to win it, i.e. there's a hurdle to even being considered for the prize. As I have frequently pointed out already, I remind readers that Proust, Kafka, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, hometown boy Strindberg (!) and many, many others were never even nominated for the prize, i.e. had no chance of ever winning it. (The Nominations database only lets us check through 1950, but already proves many greats didn't even get to the Swedish Academy-stage.)
I also think Garner overstates the Swedish Academy's aversion to (sales-)successful authors. As to a possible blind spot re. wit -- well, everyone regards their having given it to funny-man Dario Fo as a joke, so maybe they feel burned .....
Garner does suggest:
The Nobel committee might also, to wake everyone up, award the prize to a writer with only a book or two under his or her belt. This would be the rough equivalent of Barack Obama's winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. Give it to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie or Ben Lerner or Tahmima Anam or Z.Z.Packer, and let's see what happens.They have had young laureates -- Camus (okay, that didn't work out for other reasons), Kipling ... -- but I remind you again: you have to be in it to win it, and I feel pretty safe in saying no one even considered nominating Lerner or Packer (Anam: possibly; Adichie, quite likely). But Garner's suggestions are revealing in another way: all the authors he names write in English. Given the worthies writing in other languages (and, again: more likely to get nominated once they have a lot of books under their belt), how could one justify giving Ben Lerner -- or even Jonathan Franzen -- the prize ?
- Not many articles of interest elsewhere, though Smålandsposten gamely try to introduce readers to possible winners, in Och Nobelpriset 2014 går till... Péter Nádas? and a similar piece devoted to Fatima-Zohra Imalayen (i.e. Assia Djebar).
So what do I expect ? As noted, the betting sheets offer good if very rough guidance, I think: I wouldn't be surprised if three or four of the top six names on the Ladbrokes list at this hour and stage (Ngũgĩ, Murakami, Alexievich, Adonis, Kadare, Modiano) were among the five finalists they selected the winner from. I hold out hope for a name beyond, possibly, too -- the very deserving Juan Goytisolo, who fits the bill in all respects (except he's getting kind of old, too), or new territory for them, like Persian: in Mahmoud Dowlatabadi and Shahrnush Parsipur they have two top-notch candidates (and I figure these three authors are pretty much certain to have been nominated for the prize by someone).
Yes, Ngũgĩ has got to be the favorite, but non-fiction-writing Alexievich also would seem to hold good cards. We'll find out soon enough .....