Wednesday, October 01, 2008

I think we have a strong contender...

So the head honcho of the Swedish Academy in charge of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Horace Engdahl, has come down with a case of McDonald's Derangement Syndrome, pronouncing Americans too insular and Wal-Mart-y to participate in the great dialogue of world literature, unlike Europeans, who eat pickled herring and squished goose entrails and are therefore more sensitive and cultured, or something.

As witness to our ignorance, note that the CNN story is in the "showbiz" section, and not the "synthetic pathos in a sidewalk cafe while smoking Gitanes" section.

Personally, I'm affronted by this, and I have to wonder if Engdahl has considered the most obvious American entrant. I speak of a man who has written a great work of fiction that has moved millions around the world to spasms of emotional angst and hair-shirted asshattery; a man who, further, is so beloved by the Swedish Academy that, were he to stop walking suddenly, would need their fine academic noses surgically removed from his distal sphincter. I speak of that amazing work of literary fiction, Earth In The Balance, and its author, Albert Arnold Gore II.

29 comments:

CGHill said...

I bet Engdahl's BVDs are quite horribly knotted over the fact that, like every other Eurodork, he won't get to cast a vote for Barack The Divine.

In which case, I hope he comes down with a major case of the squirms.

Anonymous said...

Just another example of the provincial and backwards thinking of the European mind. They still cannot accept the fact that the US industrial complex is what brought them into the modern world during the 18 and 1900's. They also dont understand that our culture is more global than any. How many Mexican, Vietnamese, and Africans live in Sweden.

Rob K said...

If you want global culture and diversity, come to a mid-western university town. I probably encounter a more diverse mix of ethnicities, religions, and cultures in a week than most Swedes do all year. And I like pickled herring and squashed goose entrails!

Anonymous said...

This is just more of the kind of snobbery I've come to expect from euro elites.

Anonymous said...

St. Obama wrote books, too. And, surely, his meditatively modernistic meaningless soliloquy of being lost in a continuous self-discovery of inherent otherness of his being puts him one above St. Gore in the Nobel lit queue.

NotClauswitz said...

And snails and eat raw ground beef - only the Chinese have fewer food prohibitions - and we protect their precious oil supply.
And talk about fiction, there's that fraud Rigoberto Menchu whom they lauded.

Anonymous said...

You're righteously affronted for yourself and for those of us who do read and who recognize and appreciate literature, including literature by American authors, but the general impression of Americans by those in other "First World" countries, at least since the '60s, is that they're uninformed, poorly educated and boorish. Unfortunately, this is all too often true in my experience, at least of the current generation of public-schooled, MTV-fed kids.
European snobbery aside, American education is generally at a very low ebb in quality, and reading aptitude has clearly dimished over the past several decades, not that this necessarily reflects on the quality of what's written by American authors.

tim in vermont said...

I read this comment elsewhere, and stole it unashamedly.

"Very many authors who have their roots in other countries work in Europe, because it is only here where you can be left alone and write, without being beaten to death," he said. "It is dangerous to be an author in big parts of Asia and Africa." -- Horace Engdahl

Film maker Theo van Gogh was unavailable for comment.

Tam said...

"but the general impression of Americans by those in other "First World" countries, at least since the '60s, is that they're uninformed, poorly educated and boorish. Unfortunately, this is all too often true in my experience, at least of the current generation of public-schooled, MTV-fed kids."

As opposed to the sophisticates to be found in the seats at a match between Chelsea and Arsenal. ;)

tim in vermont said...

"but the general impression of Americans by those in other "First World" countries, at least since the '60s, is that they're uninformed, poorly educated and boorish."

I can introduce you to a few "uninformed, boorish, and poorly educated" Europeans. There are 300 million of us. What you wrote could almost be interpreted as bigotry, if you hadn't said it about Americans, about whom, as the new Jews, anything can be said.

Anonymous said...

Boorish and uninformed Americans? Perhaps so, at times.

Yet those self-righteous, hoity toity euros were all too happy to accept the help of uninformed boors in ejecting facist troops from the continent.

Anonymous said...

"hair-shirted asshattery"
Priceless, Tam. That made my week. I will probably spend the rest of this week thinking about hair-shirted asshattery.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on your Instalanche.

Rio Arriba said...

Afraid you'll have to come up with another candidate that Al. You can't be canonized twice.

Boorish? Oh, yes. I have seen that quality among Americans in Europe. I have also seen it here in Germans, French, Japanese, and others. I have had my reveries at Canyon de Chelly interrupted by boorish, loutish Germans and the same thing happen at Mesa Verde by a gaggle of French touristes.

Boorish is as boorish does and self-righteous arrogance is the epitome of boorishness IMO.

The Captain said...

If I tried hard enough, I could possibly give a shit about what some Swede academic thought of us.

It seems that I'm not trying hard enough. Oh well...

Brian J. said...

Be that as it may, the Nobel Prize is a couple of bucks and a trip to Scandinavia.

On the other hand, if English and the Western World survives into the 24th century, literature students will pore over Stephen King's collected works to learn about man's condition in a sometimes inscrutable, often hostile universe.

And Nadine Gordimer? Who?

Anonymous said...

I can understand their contempt for American popular culture, since they consume so much of it.

Oh, and who was it that made Jerry Lewis and David Hasselhof into cultural icons again?

One last thing: mimes.

caseym54 said...

What about "Dreams from my Father"

Anonymous said...

I think part of the problem is Most American authors actually manage to sell books in large quantities, vs. Some Yuropean Jackanape who's work is all but unreadable but touted as "high literature", who only manages to sell enough copies to snobs who never actual read the damn thing, just leave it on the cocktail table to give the impression of "culture"..

Anonymous said...

John and rob k, I must say that Sweden probably have more immigrants per capita than most western countries due to very liberal refugee and immigration regulations. But apart from that I must agree that the Swedish academy and the Norwegian Nobel committee are the two of my least admired institutions. The Norwegians have consistently managed to present complete idiots as Nobel Peace Price winners, and the Swedish Academy still have to present a winner anyone but a few snobbish lefty liberal literature elitists have ever heard of.

Anonymous said...

"American education is generally at a very low ebb in quality, and reading aptitude has clearly dimished over the past several decades, not that this necessarily reflects on the quality of what's written by American authors."

No, it reflects who's taken over the American educational system, from early childhood ed through the university system.

I've lived in Europe. I didn't know from "boorish" and "provincial" until that experience.

Anonymous said...

When politics and eurosnobbery entered into the Nobel equation I stopped paying attention to whom they were awarded to. That and the fact they were awarding Nobel Peace prizes to mass murderers.

Gmac

Anonymous said...

Well, I'm informed, but still poorly educated and boorish. So that's two out of three.

I'm sorry that I don't have time to recognize all that fine literature while I whip through technical papers, studies and blogs. I'm not being sarcastic, either. I wish I had the time. I have a book back-log on my night stand.

NotClauswitz said...

One day we'll all be watching the sophisticated Eurovision Song Contest, instead of that crass and grubby American Idol...

Anonymous said...

Let's see, a crowd of younger folks in Old Blighty taunted a young man into jumping to his death while the police were trying to talk him down. Then they ran up and took pictures with their cell phone cameras. Someday I hope to achieve that kind of moral and intellectual superiority. But I'll probably have to renounce my US citizenship, first.

Don M said...

Just a nit:

The Nobel Peace Prize is dispensed by Norway. All the other Nobel prizes are dispensed by Sweden. Nobel wrote his bequest when Norway and Sweden were a single kingdom. When the separated, the Nobel prizes were also split.

"Ten thousand Swedes,
Run through the weeds,
Chased by one Norwegen."

CGHill said...

Wow. I remember that little jingle from I Remember Mama, which I haven't so much as looked at in forty-odd years.

Anonymous said...

Two words.

Terry Pratchett.

If they can give the prize to Kipling, they can give it to Pterry. 30+ years and 30+ books in the Discworld series and many of them will make you laugh out loud.

Johnny said...

Stop whining Tam, at least you're not living here in Europe. I'm just barely keeping myself sane (for some definition of sane) by continually adding to my lamp-post list.