On reading this thread; a little forum-oriented musing on the Nobel Prize in Literature
It is well held contention that in some cases, not without reason, the Nobel Prize has sometimes been deemed to have been politicized. In the cold war era some authors were awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for highlighting certain aspects of life ( Sufferation) in the USSR or East Germany or Hungary, for example. At any moment I expected some severe Iran critic - at some particular time when Iran was under Ayatollah Khomeini , that the Iranian poet Shamlou for example would have been decorated with the Nobel Prize – not necessarily at the express behest of the United States and allies but possibly under some considerable subterranean pressure from Uncle Sam, when it would have been in the best interests of Uncle Sam to start gathering a storm of world opinion against the Islamic Republic, especially after that death fatwa against Salman Rush-die. Hoping for the world's intelligentsia - the reading public that is - against the US's enemies
I have always feared for Ngugi outstanding in his own rights, but for his Petals of Blood for example which back in 1977 was completed in Yalta where he was "a guest of the Soviet Writers' Union". That and the ideological components of the man - decolonisation of African literature and even better, the Africanisation of African literature through his advocacy of indigenous African languages as a self-conscious tool of self-identity and self-expression – assertions that can cut both ways with the Oyibo in charge of awarding ultimate literary prizes founded on such important outputs. Ngugi Wa Thiong'O has also paid his dues: DETAINED . An unpleasant detail , that perhaps because the then Kenyan authorities feared him because of his international standing as a writer - a cigarette was extinguished on his face and his wife raped in his presence - right in front of him. His being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature this year would have inevitably put him in the position of being granted interviews about the precarious situation of his country, Kenya at the moment with a re-election looming on the horizon - at a time when the African writer is often consulted as either oracle or prophet about what is what will be and what ought to be. I was friends with Ngugi in 1970 when he was then known as James Ngugi and writer in residence at the University of Ghana where my Better -Half and I were postgraduate students - she, already with masters in Modern Languages had a keen interest in African history and had for example shaken hands with Jomo Kenyatta, here in Stockholm ( I have a photo of the event) What I remember most about Brother Ngugi from those days is that he wore Khaki shorts ( "short trouser", let his hair grow wild and he was quite fond of beer - so I cannot forget once when we were travelling by jeep, about five people in the jeep, him shouting " Stop the car stop the car - I want to piss!" I thought fondly about the then usual state of James Ngugi's hair sometime in Port Harcourt in 1981, when an official at the ministry of education thought that he was reprimanding me in my bubba and sokoto, when he told me: "Your hair is unkempt" and I asked him, " Who taught you that word?" I should have asked him, " Who told you that you were naked ? Have you been eating the apple that you were not supposed to eat? "
Some of my own personal favourites dead or alive, Graham Greene among many others, have not been and will never be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In Greene's case perhaps because he was or is too much of what is or was considered too anti-American. Winston Churchill and Bertrand Russell were awarded the Nobel prize , but for a surety Donald Trump , who is also not one of my favourite authors, will never be awarded the Nobel Prize in anything thank God, no matter whatever his new ideal future directions may be, certainly not as the warmonger Messiah of greater America, the man who says that dialogue or talking to North Korea is " a waste of time" . For all we know Trump could have been listening to Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan sparking some home truth in Union Sundown and taking it as the core element of Making America Great Again foreign poli
"Democracy don't rule the world
You better get that in your head
This world is ruled by violence
But I guess that's better left unsaid"
Cornelius Edward Ignoramus should just like to point out that in his last will and testament Alfred Nobel laid out certain conditions/ guidelines that were to be adhered to in awarding the Nobel Prizes and in awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature in particular , a one-liner :
"den som inom litteraturen har producerat det mest framstående verket i en idealisk riktning" which translates into
"in the field of literature, the person who shall have produced the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"
In actual praxis it has turned out that the The Swedish Academy which each year has the responsibility of determining who has produced " the most outstanding work in an ideal direction" has sometimes awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature to more than one person at a time, as was the case in 1916, 1965, and 1974
As a consequence we may safely contend that The Nobel Prize in Literature is not a popularity contest determined by Ladbrokes & Co about who is the " best" or "greatest" writer/ poet/ dramatist in the world and V.C did make that point to Dr. O.B.I. in the most humorous way. He who feels it knows, that it is always not so funny….
I would also like to suggest that in the spirit of Alfred Nobel's intention, I daresay that some of the criteria of "in an ideal direction" sometimes occurs outside of their written or performed work .The paper that Wole Soyinka delivered at the Pen Conference in Stockholm in 1979 was certainly in the spirit of "an ideal direction" as indeed was his prior activism before and during the Biafra War. His "The Man Died" was eloquent and moving testimony of that direction. Doyen Soyinka has still not hanged up his boots or stilled his pen - nor has his pen run out of ink or his voice been silenced since then - as a result of which, in my humble opinion ( smile), he should be awarded the Noble Nobel Prize once again, once again Sam, this time for his vast production and his social activism in the ideal direction, since the last time, such as his world tour against the brutal military dictator of Nigeria, one Sani Abacha.
As observed before, Mr. Soyinka was in Jerusalem when the death of Abacha was announced - from where he flew to Paris ( where his brother was domiciled) and where he was interviewed by the BBC , and from there the celebration of a tyrant's departure continued…
In the peace department it's outrageous. The other good news is that there's a move-ment to ensure that the Prize to Aung San Suu Kyi should be recalled
As we all know, Jesus was a carpenter. Because of the intellectual conceits and barbed insults being exchanged in this thread and elsewhere in this forum - conceits based on some knowledge production, or some old or new academic qualifications or other , as if some people stop growing, they even stop reading or music , simply because some other people or somebody else is awarded some great or little degree or other. So I wonder what such people think about Jesus the carpenter, said to be looking down upon them from heaven, at this moment, even as you read this, as in this line from that song, "Fire and Rain" :
"Won't you look down upon me, Jesus,
You've got to help me make a stand..."
I should also like to point at the intellectual pedigree or otherwise of the people who occupy the eighteen stools at the Swedish Academy - we could take a look at their biographies and learn more about their backgrounds, that not all of them are professors of everything ...
Of course, respect begets respect and there are extreme cases such as what George Bernard Shaw is supposed to have said about William Shakespeare ( "I can think of no writer in English literature, not even Sir Walter Scott, who I more despise than Shakespeare, when I match my intellect against his own"
As to some of our own grandiose insulters and belittlers, understatement does not seem to be their forte. How can anyone who espouses the ideal direction of " All men are created equal" etc., men who ideally would like to canvass the vote of the intellectual paupers that they look down upon, not to mention ( from their ivory towers) the lowly, carpenter and the fisherman in Biafra, merely above water?
Well, Baruch Spinoza whose Ethics was published posthumously was a " lens grinder". About our latest Nobel laureate in Literature we read "Kazuo Ishiguro studied for a bachelor's degree in Arts, English and Philosophy in 1978 at the University of Kent" - was not a professor of Buckingham Palace or Nigerian English...So? So what? And and V.S. Naipaul - according to Paul Theroux upon hearing that Brother Soyinka had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, asking, "Has he written anything? The Nobel Committee is pissing on Literature from a great height!"
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