146 Power Ranking the Nobel Prize for Literature

The History of Literature

Jacke Wilson

History, Arts, Books

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 June 2018

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Nobel Prize for Literature has a special place in the literary landscape. We revere the prize and its winners - and yet we often find ourselves puzzled by the choices. The list of fantastic writers who never won a Nobel Prize is as long and distinguished as the list of those who did. In this episode, Jacke and Mike take a look at the Nobel Prizes by decade, attempting to determine which decade had the best (and worst) group of authors. Do we select your favorites? Overlook some hidden gems? Let us know! For a list of Nobel Prize Winners for Literature, visit https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes-in-literature/ Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate . The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the Podglamorate Network and LIT Hub Radio.
0:07.0	Ladies and gentlemen, I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work, the life's
0:17.8	work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory, but but to make out of the material of the human
0:26.0	spirit something which was not there before so that this award is only mine
0:30.8	and trust it will not be hard to be his own mind in short. That's American novelist William Faulkner, giving his speech
0:39.2	accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949.
0:44.0	We revere the Nobel Prize for some reason.
0:48.0	It's a curious part of the literary landscape.
0:51.0	We accept that it's kind of like a Hall of Fame for writers and yet it never goes to
0:57.6	tireless advocates for literature like critics or publishers or someone who's inspired many people to read like a Stephen King or a JK Rowling
1:10.7	It has become a lifetime achievement award, a Hall of Fame for Writers, and yet it's not awarded posthumously.
1:19.0	You could make a Hall of Fame out of Writers who did not win the Nobel Prize that would probably be more impressive
1:25.5	than the Hall of Fame for the ones who did. On the other hand, as an American, it fills me with
1:31.9	pride when Tony Morrison wins and I nod with approval when I see that Saul Bellow and William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck won. I'm glad that William Butler Yates got the honor and
1:47.3	Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Alice Monroe and so many others. There's something grand about it, something wonderful
1:54.8	about the way. It puts literature in a category along with the peace winners and
2:00.1	the chemists and the physicists and other scientists.
2:04.4	I'm glad it exists.
2:06.7	And yet, it's also often wrong-headed and foolish and in retrospect, very curious.
2:17.0	Mike Pallandrom's going to be here in a moment.
2:20.0	We're going to power rank the Nobel Prizes for literature by decade. We'll see how well the Nobel judges did as measured by history.
2:28.0	Are there any early decades filled with writers we still read today, or recent decades filled with writers we don't.
	...

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