Someone asked me about Gluck, in a gathering of mostly non-literary people. I said something non-committal, that she was ok for people who liked that kind of thing. It's a little hard to get worked up over the Nobel prize. If they happened to choose Gamoneda, of course, I would applaud, but other than that...
The prize belongs to a bygone era, when literature itself had a certain gravitas. Even when the prize went to a mediocrity, as happened many times, we felt that something had gone amiss. But really, now, we feel it just an arbitrary and inexplicable decision of an obscure committee.
7 comments:
An Arbitrary and Inexplicable Decision of an Obscure Committee
(a title looking for a book)
As I said on Twitter, seeing a poet win the Nobel always puts me in a good mood. Poet Wins A Million Bucks, I think to myself. It's got a light and joyful feeling to it. Like that Koch quote you used to have as an epigraph ("What is it all about? What is it for?"). It's different when a novelist wins. It feels "earned," like they must have worked really hard to get it. A poet just laughs all the way to the bank. Makes me smile.
You do seem pretty "committal"- "ok for people who liked that kind of thing." That is exactly what I imagined you saying, actually. :)
All the comparisons of her work to Elizabeth Bishop's put me into a bad mood pretty quickly.
I think Kafka could write that book.
I think great poets are more different from one another than novelists are. Each poet teach you how to read that particular kind of poetry. For me, the novel is a form that many just learn how to use. The novel is more work, in the sense that you have to show up every day to work on it, but poetry is something more essential, the invention of a a new language.
I read Woody Allen's Apropos of Nothing recently. There's a great part where he almost passes on the Asturias award because, on principle, he doesn't accept prizes that require him to show up and hold a lecture. Someone has to explain to him that he basically just won the Nobel. One doesn't say no to the Prince of Asturias.
It would be interesting to write a novel about a poet who wins the Nobel but feels as weird about it as Bob Dylan. Maybe using that title.
You're right that the greatness of a poet is (or at least feels to me) unlike the greatness of a novelist. Like I say, I almost want to say that novelists deserve it, while poets, I don't know, pull it off.
Or even get away with it.
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