Saturday, October 11, 2008

More Nobel

Couldn't resist responses from the Telegraph , the Guardian and Slate. All well said and most likely true but don't quite address the point that Engdahl is more or less right even if wrong more narrowly. U.S. publishers don't publish much translated literature, U.S. readers don't read much of it and U.S. publications don't cover much of it. Even the supportive articles don't really try to argue the point. (There's a great event Reading the World that promotes translations.) And who would ever seriously claim that Americans don't have an insular view of the world? But as these articles unintentionally point out that's not exactly a restriction to writers, a large number of whom are not insular and not oblivious to other literature.

I do think it's interesting that the articles focus almost exclusively on novelists. Wouldn't Ashbery or Mamet be as plausible as Oates or Roth?