The Nobel Devalued

To put it in Creole language, the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama has been a huge act of adulation from those Stockholm [sic] skulls, boyars of the icy North, whose neurons frequently freeze. (Note: The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway, by a committee appointed by the Norwegian Parliament. All the others prizes are awarded in Sweden.)

The first black U.S. president did not deserve the award at the moment, having so far failed to extricate himself form the corset that chokes him – the armed conflicts left behind by Bush. Barack has bowed to pressure from the military establishment and is increasing troop presence in Afghanistan, where he cannot find the door through which to exit.

Nevertheless, let’s not be harsh; let’s give him some more time. He deserves it.

The observation is an anecdote among the blunders committed with the prize – specifically the one for literature – from the time the inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel, instituted it in order to appease his conscience.

It is too early to tell if this year’s award to Herta Muller, author of Lowlands, will have widespread acceptance. In particular, one would have preferred the American Philip Roth or the Israeli Amos Oz.

The large group of “unknown celebrities” with the Nobel Prize in literature is long and keeps increasing. A long-time friend from our distant childhood, back in the fold of the Cantabrian Sea, Jose Ignacio Garcia Noriega, an exquisite writer of profound wisdom, sketched a picture of the situation and bequeathed us with an unquestionable truth, but a lot of rubbish is rewarded instead.

Until 1989, when the black period in the history of the literary Nobel starts, the Danish Gjellarup and Pontoppidan and the Italian Grazia Deledda were mentioned, among others, for having received recognition without being noticed or glorified; they continue to be remembered only because of this. But since 1989, when Camilo José Cela was awarded the prize, the number of laureate writers grows alarmingly.

Let’s mention the American Toni Morrison (1993), the Japanese Kenzaburo Oé (1994), the Polish Wislawa Szymborska (1996), the Italian Dario Fo (1997), the Chinese Gao Xingjian (2000) and the Hungarian Imre Kestész (2002).

To these, add, perhaps, the two most boring writers in recent decades: the South African Nadine Gordimer (1991) and the Portuguese (even though he writes some amazing pages) José Saramago (1998). The “Portu” continues to enjoy prestige, at least in Spain, thanks to strong editorial and political support.

Valid prizes awarded in recent years are limited to the Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1982), Octavio Paz (1990), the West Indians Derek Walcott (1992) and V.S. Naipaul (2001), the Irishman Seamus Heaney (1995), the German Günter Grass (1999), Orhan Pamuk of Turkey (2006) and the British writer Doris Lessing in 2007.