La Vonda R. Staples
And Oluwatoyin there's something else that comes with the 21st century mode of publishing. There are now very great works of literary art which have been published privately. We know that the Nobel books are always works which are published by traditional publishing houses. We also know that the greatest advances (i.e. four million dollars to Monica Lewinsky) are not being paid to those who write.What's the dilemma of the writer? To produce his own electronic work and gain 70 cents per copy for a 99 cents consumer purchase? Or to stay broke and hungry while pursuing first a literary agent, then a traditional publisher, and languishing for years when there are no funds to bring oneself to the attention of those who award the Nobel and the Pulitzer? Make no doubt about it even the consideration and nomination are very political. Creative writers, myself included, are generally abysmal at politics. Writing, by nature, is a solitary endeavour. I for one, live a very hermet like existence when I'm finalizing my pages.If you're truly about your craft then you're not out sipping wine and swapping niceties so how do you garner attention from the "right" people to gain any one of these very public titles/honors? The answer is, again in general, you don't. Too often, discovery is a posthumous exercise.So I don't really think it's a reflection on Mr. Achebe's work that the prize was not awarded. It is a reflection on these committees' lack of work that they did not award this prize to one of the greatest 20th century texts. From rappers to kings, how has Achebe not touched lives? You cannot take any course involving Africa without at least a cursory conversation regarding "Things Fall Apart." It was through this work that I first realized that I approached everything with a eurocentric frame of mind. I'm forever in his debt for what he has done for me. I used the book to examine myself and my way of thinking and how I had been taught.Thank you again Mr. Achebe,La Vonda R. StaplesOn Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 4:34 AM, OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tvade3@gmail.com> wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <abiolairele@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 8:05 PM
Subject: Re: [WoleSoyinkaSociety] Fwd: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Chinua Achebe and the Nobel Prize in Literature
To: WoleSoyinkaSociety@yahoogroups.com
Let us note too that Aime Cesaire, Leopold Sedar Senghor and Edouard Glissant were not awarded the Nobel Prize despite the resonance of their work. What does this say of the prize? Irele
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTNFrom: OLUWATOYIN ADEPOJU <tvade3@gmail.com>Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:32:48 +0000To: wolesoyinkasociety<wolesoyinkasociety@yahoogroups.com>ReplyTo: WoleSoyinkaSociety@yahoogroups.comSubject: [WoleSoyinkaSociety] Fwd: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Chinua Achebe and the Nobel Prize in Literature
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Olu Abejide <mystock@ymail.com>
Date: Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 10:02 AM
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Chinua Achebe and the Nobel Prize in Literature
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Now that he is gone, he cannot win it anymore. The Nobel Prize in Literature is not awarded posthumously. Achebe won almost everything except the mother of all literary prizes. Many people think he should have won it. But he did not. Why?The Nobel Prize in Literature has had a chequered 110 years history. Between 1901 and 2012, it has been awarded 105 times to 109 Laureates (no prizes were awarded during the War years). Many of the world's best writers were honoured with the prize. But there have also been a few remarkable omissions. Many people, especially Africans, think the late Chinua Achebe is one such serious omission. But Achebe is in good company. Great writers who did not win it include Leo Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen, Marcel Proust, Anton Chekov, Ezra Pound, Mark Twain, James Joyce, Graham Greene, Thomas Hardy, W. H. Auden, Vladimir Nabokov, and Jorge Luiz Borges. Like Achebe, all these writers are dead and can no longer win the prize. There are some writers alive now whom many people believe are being constantly bypassed. These include Philip Roth and Milan Kundera. But there is still hope for them.
Some people think some writers who received the prize of late are not really deserving of it. These are Dario Fo (Italian, 1997), Elfriede Jelenik, (Austrian, 2004) who, herself, thought she didn't deserve it (a member of the academy resigned in protest of her award), and Herta Muller (Romania, 2009). If these people won it, how could Chinua Achebe not win it?
It is difficult to say who deserves the prize and who does not. It is both a "judgement" and a "quota" prize. It is judgement because a group of people (even if experts in the field), based on their subjective judgements, decide who to give it to. It is not like giving it to a person who first crosses the finishing line in a marathon. It is a quota prize because every year, someone must win it. There can be no year in which nobody is found worthy to win it. But this disadvantage, perhaps, does not matter so much since the prize is awarded for a body of work unlike the yearly ones like the Booker or the Pulitzer which are given to books published in specific years with the danger of a book winning in a year in which none of the entries was particularly good. For the Nobel Prize there is enough time to weigh an author's life time production rather than what he achieved in a particular year. The net is wide enough to capture the best in the world. An author who does not win this year can still win next year without producing anything new – if he does not die before then.
Sometimes, the prize can come late in a writer's life. Tomas Transtromer won it when he was 80. A brilliant poet, rumours had it that he had been long on the committee's shortlist but the committee denied him the prize because he was one of their own (a Swede) and they didn't want to be seen to be favouring their own countryman. By the time they gave him the prize in 2011 he was old and crippled and could hardly walk to receive the award from his sovereign's hands. Doris Lessing remains the oldest winner of the Prize when it was awarded to her when she was 88. Perhaps if Achebe, too, had lived longer, he may have made it. But given the fact that his last major work, ANTHILLS OF THE SAVANNAH, was published more than 25 years ago, and he had not won the prize around that time, it was unlikely that he would have won it if he had lived longer without producing anything new. Read More
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
--
CompcrosComparative Cognitive Processes and Systems"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
__._,_.___
Reply via web post Reply to sender Reply to group Start a New Topic Messages in this topic (2) ![Yahoo! Groups]()
.![]()
__,_._,___
--
CompcrosComparative Cognitive Processes and Systems"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
--La Vonda R. Staples, WriterBA Psychology 2005 and MA European History 2009"If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough."Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, This Child Will Be Great; Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President.--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
--
Compcros
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
No comments:
Post a Comment