Nobel Literature Rankings

The first work by a Nobel Laureate I read was in 3rd grade: Rudyard Kipling’s Just-So Stories. The next were, from grade school, in 7th grade, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, and in 8th grade Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha. Afterwards, in Freshman year Lit, I read short stories by Hemingway, Marquez, and Faulkner. Sophomore year brought me Par Lagerkvist, George Bernard Shaw, and Albert Camus, and a new interest in classic literature. By the end of high school the list included Sartre and Solzhenitsyn. But In college I was so busy with the "Western Canon" I only encountered (for school) one new Nobel voice: Bertrand Russell. In my own time, though, I read a couple more, never assigned to me: Steinbeck, O’Neill, and Eliot. I also listened to Bob Dylan.

Upon leaving grad school, however, my familiarity with the Laureates was relatively minor, if still better than most: I’d read 16 authors (including Dylan).

That number is now 95. When the 2019 winners are announced, I will post my updated list of read works.

It is an important year for the Nobel Prize for Literature. After going off the rails in 2018 they are returning with two new laureates, for both the past and current years. Since I began a dedicated course of reading the winners, around 2011 or 2012, I’ve been able to categorize them into the following, remarkably subjective, groups:

No Memory,
Vague Memory,
Average,
Good, and
Amazing

So let’s see how they fare:

No Memory

Aleixandre
Benavente
Bergson
Bjornson
Brodsky
Carducci
Echegaray
Eucken
Jensen
E. Johnson
Karlfeldt
Milosz
Perse
Prudhomme
Quasimodo
Reymont
Seferis
Seifert
Syzmborska
Von Heidenstam
Von Heyse

You are easily forgiven if you don’t know these obscure European authors (many poets, many Scandinavian). This group is heavy on the early winners of the prize, when the award was given for ‘idealism’ rather than innovation or influence. As such - not being influential or innovative - these authors are largely forgotten. I am fortunate, in this regard, to speak English – as that's one of the few languages that's bothered to translate them, and they are otherwise virtually unknown outside their native language. They represent a barrier, and an unpleasant one, to those who would follow me on my journey to read them all: both as a time-sink, and as a linguistic wall. The well-educated woman whose native language is Urdu, say, would likely find it impossible to complete the Nobel list – due to these largely forgotten, and totally forgettable, voices.

Vague Memory

Bunin
Cela
Deledda
Elytis
Gide
Gjellerup
Hauptmann
Heaney
Martinson
F. Mistral
G. Mistral
Mommsen
Montale
Naipaul
Sachs
Sienkewicz
Simon
Spitteler
Tagore

If pressed, I could tell you a bit about these authors. Carl Spitteler, for example, wrote pastoral poems about belfries. Hauptmann wrote German plays about the oppressed proletariat. Mommsen wrote Roman history, and Sachs about the Holocaust. Some of these authors were even enjoyable reads: Cela’s novel and Montale’s poetry, for example, I found to be worthwhile when I read them. But all the same, they weren’t strong enough to provide clear memories – all that’s left are fragments, images, themes, and scenes. You could pick over these, if you want, but what you'll find is a very mixed bag.

Average

Andric
Bellow
Canetti
Coetzee
France
Fo
Gordimer
Hesse
Jelinek
Jimenez
Kenzaburo
Kipling
Lagerlof
Lewis
Maeterlinck
Martin Du Gard
Mo
O’Neill
Pirandello
Rolland
Steinbeck
Yasunari
Yeats

Two types of work fall in this middle set. The first: Totally fine. Probably not a bad use of your reading time. The second: Maybe not so good, but still, for whatever reason, more memorable than the preceding works. Average novels, poems, and plays: Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street, Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist, William Butler Yeats’ The Tower. Some enjoyable (Jimenez’ Platero Y Yo), some not (Rolland’s Jean Christophe) – but not a bad set to start with, if, for some inscrutable reason, you are interested in taking on this burden for yourself, or if you’re just looking for some pretty good books to read to perhaps diversify your literary palette.

Good

Asturias
Churchill
Dylan
Faulkner
Gao
Golding
Hemingway
Ishiguro
Kertesz
Lagerkvist
Laxness
Modiano
Neruda
Pinter
Russell
Shaw
Sillanpaa
Transtromer
Walcott

A really fun category, there are lots of gems here. I think the most enjoyable part of this selection is the mix of well-known and unknown. Few English readers, I suspect, have encountered the Finnish Frans Sillanpaa, but his People in the Summer Night is a tremendous read. So too the French author Patrick Modiano’s novel Missing Person, or Gao Xingjian’s short story collection Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather. And if there are well-known names on here you’ve not tackled yet, this is my endorsement to finally take a crack at the poems of Pablo Neruda, or the novels of William Faulkner. These authors made great strides not likely to be soon forgotten.

Amazing

Alexievich
Beckett
Camus
Eliot
Mahfouz
Marquez
Morrison
Pasternak
Paz
Sartre
Solzhenitsyn
Soyinka

These writers have produced at least one work that is, to my mind, essential – canon. Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl. Camus’ The Plague. Mahfouz’ Children of Gebelawi. Morrison’s Beloved. And so on. These are the works likely to stand the test of time, the high-water marks of our global literary output in the past century. If you want to know which were the specific works I read that gave me this feeling, you can see them in my next post, where I will detail my Nobel reading so far, in this upcoming, inordinately suspenseful, Nobel Literature Prize years.

"Yet Now There Are Only Ten"

So there was a Democratic debate the other night. And, before I go any further, just note that I am a Democrat, and will be happy if any of these candidates beats Donald Trump.

However. Now that we're down to ten front-runners, something in my mind said, "Hey. You just watched the Dark Crystal series on Netflix and are clearly a disturbed person. Why not match the candidates to the Skeksis?"

So I did. You're welcome.

The choices are based on the ten Skeksis of the movie, and assigned based on last night's debate. Here's a handy visual guide for remembering them:

And of course, the nightmare-fuel:

Let's start there:

The Emperor. Bernie Sanders.

With his death-rattle voice it was ever more clear that Sanders is the mighty fallen. Actually, I am hoping that his decrepitude put the fear in his supporters the same way the death of the Emperor scared me as a child. Since he announced I've been worried about giving him any power.

The Chamberlain. Joe Biden.

"Pleeeeeeease: make peace?" Talking about Ohio and trying to get everyone to get along, if Biden gets into the White House he may be as ineffectual as Obama was in squandering a super majority. Half-measures, like his healthcare or his defense of working with segregationists, remind one of the wheedling, unpleasant, Chamberlain.

The General. Kamala Harris.

Harris hasn't found her voice yet, which is bothering folks, it seems. In the first debate she was personal, the second on the offensive, and the third, this past week, trying to lighten up and tell jokes. These shifts are reminiscent of the General, who can go from ecstatic to wrathful in moments. But serious business.

The Scientist. Elizabeth Warren

The most clever of the Skeksis, the one who actually gets things done, the one who can summon strength from the Crystal but who the others, unaccountably, consider weak. She has the same aspect of frustration with her plans that the Scientist shares, in having to get results for a bunch of undeserving...

The Ritual Master. Julian Castro.

Someone said that Castro was built in a lab to be a Vice President. The Ritual Master has a certain gravitas and presence, and he stands out among the Skeksis, as Castro stands out on stage, but the power, like the Vice Presidency, is more shadow and illusion than real.

The Gourmand. Cory Booker.

Since Booker was the only candidate who got a question about food (his vegan lifestyle) during the debate, it seems appropriate that he be the Gourmand - even if he is the physical antithesis of the corpulent Skeksis.

The Scroll Keeper. Beto O'Rourke.

O'Rourke got some needed coverage for his campaign, due to the deference of his rivals after the response to the El Paso shooting. The Scroll Keeper fits, then, because he doesn't do a lot, or really have much of a purpose, but he stands out in the field of Skeksis all the same. Last night Beto stood out, although I doubt his campaign has much of a future.

The Ornamentalist. Pete Buttigieg.

The most youthful-looking of the Skeksis, and not otherwise particularly memorable. I don't think the Ornamentalist has hardly any lines in the movie, nor did Buttigieg.

The Treasurer. Andrew Yang.

From some old source material: "the Treasurer counted gifts, not time." He is also described as having difficulty communicating, which certainly fits Yang. I doubt he has much time left.

The Slave Master. Amy Klobuchar.

I do not like Klobuchar, and so she fits, for me, the description of the least well-known of the Skeksis, the Slave Master, who "remains evilly silent most of the time, except for occasional sneers and hisses." Klobuchar, of course, is not actual *evil* - none of the candidates are. She would be a far superior President to Trump. But she's my least favorite.