The Huffington Post hadn’t even waited for the announcement to express outrage over the injustice done to Philip Roth; they even evoked a period of “American drought” to be warded off in regards to the Nobel Prize for literature.
In fact, Toni Morrison (author of “Beloved” and the recent “Home”) was the last American author to receive the prize, in 1993.
In October 2008, while doing nothing to hide the apparent pro-European favoritism of the Nobel jury, the former permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Horace Engdahl, theorized:
“There is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can’t get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world … not the United States,”
American authors are too sensitive to changes in their own mass culture, Engdahl suggested. “The US is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature … That ignorance is restraining.”
In reaction, Toni Morrison returned the compliment to Horace Engdahl and poked at a sensitive feeling of supremacy in the Swedes’ attachment to their prize:
“The Swedes themselves are a little insular…”*
Americans, poor translators
At the heart of the problem is the question of literary translation. Americans translate little. Publishers bemoan the poor sales of translated works and give in to the market. The granting of a Nobel Prize to a non-English language writer forces them to translate and participate in the global “dialogue of literature” praised by the Swedish Academy.
This was the case in 2000 when Gao Xingjian received the prestigious award. His novel, Soul Mountain was published in English by HarperCollins a few weeks later.
Meanwhile, as noted by the New York Times, a Nobel Prize leads to a modest rise in sales compared to a Pulitzer or a National Book Award in the United States.
While denying that American readers are disinterested in foreign authors, the paper pointed out that they read American authors in the running for a Nobel Prize just as little as the others. This will undoubtedly reassure Philip Roth, Don DeLillo or Joyce Carol Oates.
In his latest news, Philip Roth wasn’t envisioning the Nobel Prize at all: “I’ve won enough prizes like that.” Indeed, the list is long with more than twenty prizes including:
• a National Book Award in 1960 for “Goodbye, Columbus”
• A Pulitzer in 1998 for “American Pastoral”
• A Médici Etranger in 2002 for “The Human Stain.”
Roth, journalists’ preferred subject of outrage
Roth not receiving the Nobel Prize is still the favorite subject of outrage for literary journalists. The article covering the injustice done to Philip Roth has been a “perennial” for the last 20 years.
This year again, Bernard Pivot reacted in favor of the “Portnoy’s Complaint” author on Twitter. Looking for reasons as to why Roth hasn’t won the Nobel Prize has led some to obsession.
Like many fans, Harold Bloom judges him as “not terribly politically correct …”* while the jury itself is.
In France, Le Nouvel Observateur (which, like Rue89, belongs to the group, Claude Perdriel) has made awarding the Nobel Prize to Roth a crusade. In 2008, an interview with Toni Morrison was entitled, “Roth Should Have Won the Nobel Prize a Long Time Ago.”
Three years later, here we go again: “Will King Roth get the Nobel this year?”*
“He’s written 53 books and received countless prizes; except for the Nobel (Will ridicule finally kill the Swedish jury?)”*
Meanwhile, every October, Nobel clockwork rouses bursts of praise for Roth and American literature in general. The New York Times, definitively vexed, ironizes:
“Meanwhile, we (the United States) flood the rest of the world with our cheap junk and they don’t complain. If you go to any airport in Europe or Asia, you’ll quickly discover that translations of Danielle Steel sell almost as well there as they do here.”
*While accurately translated, this quote could not be independently verified.
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