h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Nobel Prize for Literature: Taste and Aftertaste - A87917377
Author: Dmitri Gheorgheni - U1590784

Feel free to supply more links to this mess.

It all started this morning when I found out the Nobel Literature Committee was embroiled in scandal and wasn't giving out a prize this year, followed by the fact that some other people have created their own Nobel-wannabe club so they can give an award to whoever they like, probably Neil Gaiman.

So I figured it might be useful to look at Nobel literature choices of the past, and how they've stood up over time. It's kind of a chequered history.

I know it's long, and literature is a bore. So I tried to break it up as best I could, and I booby-trapped the thing with jokes....

very good Entry. It feels very 'complete', good beginning and end with just the right amount of information in the middle.

I've never been a fan of what is regarded to be 'literature', I'd support awarding Neil Gaiman a price any time. Also I liked how this Entry starts very much.

Thanks, Tav. I just wanted to give people a 'taste', not bury them in facts.

I also wanted to get even with a professor of mine for making us read 'Vor Sonnenaufgang'. We found it revolting.

I'm not sure how to react to this entry. Laugh? Campaign for the reorganisation of the Nobel Prize for Literature? Come up with some new nominations?

I have at least heard of some of the writers who did receive the prize, and some of the choices do open up all sorts of questions.
Was Rudyard Kipling as racist as this extract suggests?
Should you even quote Hamsun's views on Hitler? (I don't want to censor h2g2 but...)
Did the extract you quote from Yeats do him justice?

As for nominees, how about: Margaret Attwood, for her discussion of the position of women in society, or
Zadie Smith for writing sensitively about race and class?

All of those are interesting questions, MVP - and might make great fodder for an essay. Or another entry. I'm sure we could write about many other aspects of the literature prize, or even about each of 114 recipients individually. Some of them have guide entries, some don't.

What this one's trying to do is to show some trends in the choices. Because the only criterion we know about is the one mentioned at the beginning, to give an award 'to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.'

The entry isn't really about who we like and who we don't. I happen to like Yeats quite a lot, and even Kipling. But yes, I'd call his attitudes racist. Particularly when you realise the subtitle to that poem was 'the United States and the Philippine Islands'.

I'd stick by quoting Hamsun. I might be open to another quote from Yeats....that happens to be one of my favourite poems of his...

Oh, so now I know who Kipling was thinking of when he wrote 'Half-devil and half-child'

For the US, it might fit.

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