Saturday, October 11, 2008

Who?

French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I've never heard of him.

Ted Giola has compiled "The Nobel Prize in Literature from an Alternative Universe".
Imagine a world in which such honors are exempt from pettiness, politics and tokenism. Imagine a Nobel Prize in which the contributions of Proust, Kafka, Nabokov and Joyce are not forgotten. Imagine a Nobel Prize in Literature in which genre writers have a chance. Imagine a Nobel Prize in Literature that doesn't bend over backward to exclude native born U.S. writers (only three honored during the last 52 years!).
Let's start arguing:

Year Actual Winner Alternative
2008 Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio Don DeLillo
2007 Doris Lessing J.K. Rowling
2006 Orhan Pamuk Philip Roth
2005 Harold Pinter Milan Kundera
2004 Elfriede Jelinek John Updike
2003 J. M. Coetzee Mario Vargas Llosa
2002 Imre Kertész John le Carré
2001 V. S. Naipaul V. S. Naipaul
2000 Gao Xingjian Haruki Murakami
1999 Günter Grass Tom Stoppard
1998 José Saramago Roberto Bolaño
1997 Dario Fo Hunter Thompson
1996 Wislawa Szymborska Stanisław Lem
1995 Seamus Heaney Isaiah Berlin
1994 Kenzaburo Oe Stephen Sondheim
1993 Toni Morrison Ralph Ellison
1992 Derek Walcott Bob Dylan
1991 Nadine Gordimer Muriel Spark
1990 Octavio Paz Octavio Paz
1989 Camilo José Cela Theodor Seuss Geisel
1988 Naguib Mahfouz Salman Rushdie
1987 Joseph Brodsky Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein
1986 Wole Soyinka Eugene Ionesco
1985 Claude Simon Philip Larkin
1984 Jaroslav Seifert Italo Calvino
1983 William Golding Graham Greene
1982 Gabriel García Márquez Gabriel García Márquez
1981 Elias Canetti Elias Canetti
1980 Czeslaw Milosz Czeslaw Milosz
1979 Odysseus Elytis Philip K. Dick
1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer Isaac Bashevis Singer
1977 Vicente Aleixandre Tennessee Williams
1976 Saul Bellow Saul Bellow
1975 Eugenio Montale Eugenio Montale
1974 Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson John Lennon, Paul McCartney
1973 Patrick White Lionel Trilling
1972 Heinrich Böll J.R.R. Tolkein
1971 Pablo Neruda Pablo Neruda
1970 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
1969 Samuel Beckett Samuel Beckett
1968 Yasunari Kawabata Yukio Mishima
1967 Miguel Angel Asturias Vladimir Nabokov
1966 Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Nelly Sachs Agatha Christie, Jorge Luis Borges
1965 Mikhail Sholokhov Jack Kerouac
1964 Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Sartre
1963 Giorgios Seferis Giorgios Seferis
1962 John Steinbeck John Steinbeck
1961 Ivo Andric William Carlos Willaims
1960 Saint-John Perse Ian Fleming
1959 Salvatore Quasimodo Cole Porter
1958 Boris Pasternak E. M. Forster
1957 Albert Camus Albert Camus
1956 Juan Ramón Jiménez Raymond Chandler
1955 Halldòr Laxness Bertolt Brecht
1954 Ernest Hemingway Ernest Hemingway
1953 Winston Churchill Wallace Stevens
1952 François Mauriac Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
1951 Pär Lagerkvist Dorothy Parker
1950 Bertrand Russell Ludwig Wittgenstein
1949 William Faulkner William Faulkner
1948 T.S. Eliot T.S. Eliot
1947 André Gide André Gide
1946 Hermann Hesse Hermann Broch
1945 Gabriela Mistral George Orwell
1944 Johannes V. Jensen W. H. Auden
1939 Frans Eemil Sillanpää Robert Musil
1938 Pearl Buck Virginia Woolf
1937 Roger Martin du Gard James Joyce
1936 Eugene O'Neill Eugene O'Neill
1934 Luigi Pirandello Luigi Pirandello
1933 Ivan Bunin Stefan Zweig
1932 John Galsworthy Zane Grey
1931 Erik Axel Karlfeldt G. K. Chesterton
1930 Sinclair Lewis F. Scott Fitzgerald
1929 Thomas Mann Thomas Mann
1928 Sigrid Undset Edith Wharton
1927 Henri Bergson Constantine P. Cavafy
1926 Grazia Deledda Arthur Conan Doyle
1925 George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw
1924 Wladyslaw Reymont Miguel de Unamuno
1923 William Butler Yeats William Butler Yeats
1922 Jacinto Benavente Franz Kafka
1921 Anatole France Marcel Proust
1920 Knut Hamsun Rainer Maria Rilke
1919 Carl Spitteler Thomas Hardy
1917 Karl Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan Joseph Conrad
1916 Verner von Heidenstam Sigmund Freud
1915 Romain Rolland Guillaume Apollinaire
1913 Rabindranath Tagore George Trakl
1912 Gerhart Hauptmann William Dean Howells
1911 Maurice Maeterlinck Henry James
1910 Paul Heyse W.S. Gilbert
1909 Selma Lagerlöf August Strindberg
1908 Rudolf Eucken John Millington Synge
1907 Rudyard Kipling Rudyard Kipling
1906 Giosuè Carducci Mark Twain
1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz Henrik Ibsen
1904 Frédéric Mistral, José Echegaray Jules Verne
1903 Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson Anton Chekhov
1902 Theodor Mommsen George Meredith
1901 Sully Prudhomme Leo Tolstoy

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