Let's Predict Who Wins the 2016 Literature Nobel!!!!

[ValenciaQBowl]

Hey, Quizbowl!

October has come around again, my favorite month: the cauldron that is Orlando summer heat begins to burn off, college football is getting cooking, the NBA gets started, and we get to see what great worthy wins the Nobel Prize in Literature. Who will join such literary titans (not to mention quizbowl staple answer lines) as Johannes Jensen, Grazia Deledda, and Carl Gustaf Verner von Heiderstam (ah, what lit specialist DOESN'T have a story about a buzzer race on von Heidenstam after "The Tree of the Folkungs" got mentioned too early in a toss-up!).

Anyway, as always, it's good to start with the betting odds provided by our friends across the pond at Ladbrokes:
https://sports.ladbrokes.com/en-gb/bett ... 222574321/

As he has been for a while, Murakami is the betting leader, down to 4-1 this year, followed closely by the always-overlooked Adonis at 6-1 and Dan Passner's idol Philip Roth at 7-1. Ngugi is close at 10-1, but it starts dropping after that.

The last two years I went with Joyce Carol Oates (14-1 this year), in my mind still a great pick (and probably a more likely pick than Roth if they go with an American), and at 78 maybe not a possible choice for too much longer. But I'm going to be boring this year and predict that it's going to be either Murakami or Ngugi. Not very bold, but you have to go back to '88 for Mahfouz and '86 for Soyinka since an African has been picked. So if Murakami has to wait another year, it'll be Ngugi Time!

My own pick would be lovable Tommy Pynchon or, less realistically but more fun to imagine, George Saunders.

What say ye?

[AKKOLADE]

What are Bob "Bet on Him So We Can Take Your Money, You Hippie" Dylan's odds?

[Rufous-capped Thornbill]

I would be beyond delighted if either Javier Marias or Laszlo Krasznahorkai ended up winning. Krasznahorkai might be my pick, actually.

[Rufous-capped Thornbill]

What are Bob "Bet on Him So We Can Take Your Money, You Hippie" Dylan's odds?

50/1!

[Unicolored Jay]

What are Bob "Bet on Him So We Can Take Your Money, You Hippie" Dylan's odds?

50/1!

It seems like he's been at 50/1 for the past several years now.

[ValenciaQBowl]

Krasznahorkai might be my pick, actually.

Yours and presumably fan-of-Bela-Tarr Will Nediger's, too.

[The Stately Rhododendron]

Krasznahorkai might be my pick, actually.

Yours and presumably fan-of-Bela-Tarr Will Nediger's, too.

And mine!

[women, fire and dangerous things]

Krasznahorkai might be my pick, actually.

Yours and presumably fan-of-Bela-Tarr Will Nediger's, too.

It's true! But I also love Javier Marias.

[Auks Ran Ova]

[UlyssesInvictus]

[ValenciaQBowl]

Stop being coy, Rob Carson. If you have a favorite, say so.

[theMoMA]

So, two trends: the Nobel committee has recently been picking older winners, and has picked relatively obscure European writers in five of the past eight years, including the last two. I think the first trend continues and the second one doesn't; the voters will continue to look to reward someone with a long career who might not be around to win in future years, but who has a high profile and isn't from Europe. I'm guessing Ngugi. He's a very high-profile author who's nearly eighty, and it'd end a long streak of black and black African authors not winning. Murakami would also be a high-profile non-European author, but he's significantly younger. Both Roth and Oates are older and non-European, and would end long non-American streaks, but I really can't imagine the committee picking an American (at least until William Vollmann ages ten or fifteen years).

[Tees-Exe Line]

Um, what happened to the damn prize announcement? Wasn't it supposed to happen yesterday? The website says the date "will be set at a later time."

Why hasn't there been more coverage of the absence of a Literature prize?

[Sam]

Um, what happened to the damn prize announcement? Wasn't it supposed to happen yesterday? The website says the date "will be set at a later time."

Why hasn't there been more coverage of the absence of a Literature prize?

The Committee has decided it would be more worthwhile to reduce the number of Literature prizes in favor of more social science and "historically importantly" pop culture.

[UlyssesInvictus]

Um, what happened to the damn prize announcement? Wasn't it supposed to happen yesterday? The website says the date "will be set at a later time."

Why hasn't there been more coverage of the absence of a Literature prize?

They announced about a week ago that it would be postponed to next Thursday. Here's a thread of redditors discussing why.

[UlyssesInvictus]

Also one of y'all posted this great link about who will win, but I forget whose feed it popped up from, so claim your glory ye anon.

[Red Panda Cub]

Lol

[AKKOLADE]

Lol

[Kouign Amann]

The best part of this is that David Madden has been vindicated!!! viewtopic.php?f=20&t=15211&p=272065#p272065

Personally, I'd be fine with musical theatre coming up more frequently, though George is right as to the main reason it doesn't come up more often than it does. This begs the larger question, though, of whether it really makes sense to define subjects as fine arts or pop culture/trash based on form alone. Musical theatre straddles this line uneasily - I think there are people who would object if Sondheim were lumped in as trash, but then, what do you do about The Book of Mormon or, to stick with Webber, Starlight Express? Film and Television also presents the same problem. I know this has been debated before, and I know that not everyone will agree with me, but I think that the more seminal topics of 20th century pop culture (as opposed to contemporary stuff which is often fleeting in significance) should come up far more frequently in general. There's no reason an expanded canon of suitable and significant topics couldn't be established here. Like it or not, much of that stuff has a lot more significance on people's lives in the 21st century than lots of other topics, and it's increasingly being studied from an academic standpoint. Anyway, one of these years, Bob Dylan is going to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and that, if nothing else, may prompt a rethink of how quizbowl currently looks at this stuff.

Personally, I'd be fine with musical theatre coming up more frequently, though George is right as to the main reason it doesn't come up more often than it does. This begs the larger question, though, of whether it really makes sense to define subjects as fine arts or pop culture/trash based on form alone. Musical theatre straddles this line uneasily - I think there are people who would object if Sondheim were lumped in as trash, but then, what do you do about The Book of Mormon or, to stick with Webber, Starlight Express? Film and Television also presents the same problem. I know this has been debated before, and I know that not everyone will agree with me, but I think that the more seminal topics of 20th century pop culture (as opposed to contemporary stuff which is often fleeting in significance) should come up far more frequently in general. There's no reason an expanded canon of suitable and significant topics couldn't be established here. Like it or not, much of that stuff has a lot more significance on people's lives in the 21st century than lots of other topics, and it's increasingly being studied from an academic standpoint. Anyway, one of these years, Bob Dylan is going to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and that, if nothing else, may prompt a rethink of how quizbowl currently looks at this stuff.

I agree. Let's revisit the discussion of the place of musical theatre in quizbowl when Bob Dylan wins the Nobel.

[Auks Ran Ova]

I assume this is entirely based on the merits of Tarantula.

[Lake Winnipesaukee Mystery Stone]

Lol

Wiggle Wiggle and Must Be Santa are lyrical masterworks.

[ValenciaQBowl]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What are Bob "Bet on Him So We Can Take Your Money, You Hippie" Dylan's odds?

Them hippies is rolling in pound notes (if they bet more than a thousand, anyway)!

I'm going to take off my shirt and run some laps around my neighborhood shouting the lyrics from "Highway 61 Revisited," and then I'm driving to Boston to get drunk with Christopher Ricks.

[Wynaut]

What are Bob "Bet on Him So We Can Take Your Money, You Hippie" Dylan's odds?

Apparently high enough.

[Everything in the Whole Wide World]

Not to put on my populist hat, but this is a really great call on the Academy's part, by picking someone pretty much everyone has actually heard of. It will raise the profile of the whole operation.

[Rococo A Go Go]

I look forward to Dylan's Nobel Prize speech, in which he performs for the committee with things he wants to play instead of the hits they came to hear, and they get upset about his condition to move the proceedings to a minor league baseball stadium.

[Rothlover]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What are Bob "Bet on Him So We Can Take Your Money, You Hippie" Dylan's odds?

Them hippies is rolling in pound notes (if they bet more than a thousand, anyway)!

I'm going to take off my shirt and run some laps around my neighborhood shouting the lyrics from "Highway 61 Revisited," and then I'm driving to Boston to get drunk with Christopher Ricks.

It should still be Roth. I did post my appreciation for "Neighborhood Bully" though.

[ValenciaQBowl]

I just listened to that! Decided to go with Infidels first this morning to celebrate. That "Sweetheart Like You" is a stone killer.

But to talk about this seriously, I have two observations (besides bliss):

Andrew and others who have pointed out the Academy's distaste for selecting an American probably helped this happen. They were able to select an unusual but legitimate artist, and in doing so simultaneously seem hip and open-minded but also shut out more traditionally obvious American greats. And now they can wait another decade or more before selecting another American, so big-timers like Roth, Oates, Pynchon, and McCarthy will have likely become ineligible by shedding their mortal coils. So they get to both pick an American while snubbing the American literary community.

Second, there will be a lot of complaining (probably even here!) about this selection, but rather than asking whether Dylan is more deserving that Murakami or Ngugi or Oates, maybe we can ask whether he's AS deserving as Tomas Transtromer, Elfriede Jelinek, Herta Muller, Martin Anderson, or any number of other lesser-known, lesser-read writers. If you're certain in your feeling that Dylan is undeserving, read at least some of Christopher Ricks's Visions of Sin or Greil Marcus's The Old Weird America (which focuses on the composition and recording of The Basement Tapes).

Anyway, I'm teaching a Ngugi short story to freshmen in about 45 minutes, and on Tuesday I told them there was a good chance they'd be discussing a work by the latest Nobel Prize winner. So now instead maybe I'll make them listen to Bringing It All Back Home.

[Rothlover]

Heh, good choice CBorg. I'm a Jokerman man myself. His religious era material gets no respect.

The Nobel Lit people just hate americans. I mean, there is still this famous article from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/ ... lprize.usa . I doubt the sentiments expressed here have changed much in the past 8 years. The fact with the nobel is that there are probably 100 authors you can make legitimate cases for, and another 100 you can make tenuous ones for. When you factor in that the they clearly try for some sort of national diversity, you won't likely see more than one additional american in the next decade I'd guess.

I'd say the Nobel HAS to belittle american writing, otherwise they'd simply be snubbing the largest most vital literary market. That needs to happen to justify some of their more niched selections. I think the Nobel should really admit that their selections are really more of an alchemical attempt to balance lots of sort of political goals and ideals, but that can just be my "American" idea of "merit" talking.

I'd say Dylan is a "better" selection than many of the lesser-read winners by definition, but that then also buts up against the clear idea that the Nobel is selecting some of these people to either elevate their statute to something closer to where they think it "should" be, or some sense that that author deserves the money part of the prize (or some other unseen calculation.) My guess is many would rebel against a Nobel that was just going to "highly read" writers. (Those people would be pretty misguded but hey. And, hey, ultimately Singer was one of those underheralded guys elevated by the Nobel, but then, that's a whole other debate in the Jew lit community, especially back when it happened.)

[Sam]

Dario Fo did not take this news well.

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

I'm pretty on board with using the Nobel to reward underheralded, pioneering work from exotic literary traditions. Or at least not one of the most famous popular figures of all time...I just don't see what the point is. We don't have to go all Herta Mueller every time but come on, has ANYBODY who pays attention to the Nobel Prize not listened to several Dylan songs?

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

Anyway, whatever, time to wait another 10 years until the Nobel goes to another American in David Simon.

[Cheynem]

The Dylan analogy suggests Norman Lear would actually win then.

[UlyssesInvictus]

I'm pretty on board with using the Nobel to reward underheralded, pioneering work from exotic literary traditions. Or at least not one of the most famous popular figures of all time...I just don't see what the point is. We don't have to go all Herta Mueller every time but come on, has ANYBODY who pays attention to the Nobel Prize not listened to several Dylan songs?

I see a lot of comparisons in the possible reasons for why the Academy gave it to both Dylan and Santos this year: they were trying to make a point. With Dylan, obviously they're not really raising awareness that he exists as a singer, but it seems like they just wanted to make a really loud declaration that "literature isn't just books." With Santos they knew full well that the referendum failed and they couldn't really award it on "merit" basis, but they were trying to make an active "declaration for peace" anyway (and maybe vainly encourage people to try and re-referendum the referendum).

Anyways, I'm going to enjoy spending the next 23 years waiting until they give it to the Simpsons writers.

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

I'm pretty on board with using the Nobel to reward underheralded, pioneering work from exotic literary traditions. Or at least not one of the most famous popular figures of all time...I just don't see what the point is. We don't have to go all Herta Mueller every time but come on, has ANYBODY who pays attention to the Nobel Prize not listened to several Dylan songs?

I see a lot of comparisons in the possible reasons for why the Academy gave it to both Dylan and Santos this year: they were trying to make a point. With Dylan, obviously they're not really raising awareness that he exists as a singer, but it seems like they just wanted to make a really loud declaration that "literature isn't just books."

It's very important to make a statement for starving bards like Bob Dylan in the face of competition from Big Postmodernism I guess.

I'm sure they were trying to make a statement. That statement is stupid. There is no prejudice against Bob Dylan to combat in any actually existing elite, which by and large loves everything about him. He is really good at what he does and is accepted as such. What's actually under attack is any kind of experimental, non-middlebrow cultural product, which is widely perceived as snobby and elitist by the actual elites. Because this decision reinforces that perception, it goes its own way towards undermining the status of less accessible humanities.

I mean, hell, I love Kanye (even "H.A.M."!) but I wouldn't want him to monopolize every form of acclaim. We need some enclosed arenas to shield developing cultural forms from the middlebrow leviathan.

[UlyssesInvictus]

Yeah, I want to make very clear I agree with you. Understand your enemy to defeat them, and all that.

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

Yeah, I want to make very clear I agree with you. Understand your enemy to defeat them, and all that.

The only solution is socialized and mandatory quizbowl.

[Everything in the Whole Wide World]

Yeah, I want to make very clear I agree with you. Understand your enemy to defeat them, and all that.

The only solution is socialized and mandatory quizbowl.

I guess classic rock counts as fine arts now. Smart Scandinavian people tell us so.

[Rothlover]

A big problem I have with the lit Nobel, and really it's one I have with the Nobel in general is that what it is seeking to honor isn't really articulated or spelled out in a meaningful way. I think it leads to wildly varying winners, and people who might otherwise be interested in the award as a kind of spectacle/achievement to follow really end up perenially let down by the selections.

I'd say I like the Dylan selection in that it is an American whose contributions to the written word are fairly unimpeachable, but it's hard to judge the selections when, again, there's little sense of what is trying to be rewarded. The idea of a winner from a new form, could be sort of novel, but it's not clear to me if the committee hadn't regularly been considering musical lyricists/performers and had simply found them wanting. The winner last year was certainly in a fairly novel medium (and I'm still hoping to plow through her major works.) I don't know what the current rule is, but I know there was some period where nominations remain private. I used to browse the old nominee lists, but last I saw they only went up to like the 1950 awards. Amusingly, there were some guys nominated multiple years who had never really come up ever in qb to my knowledge.

I still Knausgaard is a good bet to win it if his esteem level stays high. Crazy long indulgent auto-biographical X-ologies seems like a thing the Nobel choosers have always had a bit of a thing for.

[Habitat_Against_Humanity]

I assume this is entirely based on the merits of Tarantula.

You're very well read, it's well-known.

[The Stately Rhododendron]

The Dylan analogy suggests Norman Lear would actually win then.

Lear would be an excellent choice, imo.

I love this choice. All of you crowing about needing to pick "underheralded, pioneering work from exotic literary traditions" (because a group of Swedes should totally be in charge of that!) forget how influential Dylan is on some people's lives.

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

The Dylan analogy suggests Norman Lear would actually win then.

Lear would be an excellent choice, imo.

I love this choice. All of you crowing about needing to pick "underheralded, pioneering work from exotic literary traditions" (because a group of Swedes should totally be in charge of that!) forget how influential Dylan is on some people's lives.

Actually, my argument is that Dylan's influence is already incredibly widespread and well-recognized, and thus that awarding him a Nobel Prize is boring and hollow. And clearly, today's announcement proves that a group of Swedes should not be in charge of that!

"Exotic" and "pioneering" were intended to be tongue-in-cheek there, but: we have a million avenues in daily life to encounter and appreciate Dylan's achievements. That is emphatically not true for almost any of the other novelists/poets who were on the list.

[Auks Ran Ova]

I assume this is entirely based on the merits of Tarantula.

You're very well read, it's well-known.

I have read a lot of wiki articles, it's true.

[The Stately Rhododendron]

The Dylan analogy suggests Norman Lear would actually win then.

Lear would be an excellent choice, imo.

I love this choice. All of you crowing about needing to pick "underheralded, pioneering work from exotic literary traditions" (because a group of Swedes should totally be in charge of that!) forget how influential Dylan is on some people's lives.

Actually, my argument is that Dylan's influence is already incredibly widespread and well-recognized, and thus that awarding him a Nobel Prize is boring and hollow. And clearly, today's announcement proves that a group of Swedes should not be in charge of that!

"Exotic" and "pioneering" were intended to be tongue-in-cheek there, but: we have a million avenues in daily life to encounter and appreciate Dylan's achievements. That is emphatically not true for almost any of the other novelists who were on the list.

The Nobel Prize is always boring and hollow, it's a prize, they all are. Doesn't mean I can't be happy about this. He's had a big impact on my life. I mean if Krasznahorkai won, you could easily make an argument that it's another in a line of somewhat obscure European authors who write in recognizable forms. Likewise, him not winning doesn't really affect me one way or the other. If he had won, however, I'd be over the moon.

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

The Dylan analogy suggests Norman Lear would actually win then.

Lear would be an excellent choice, imo.

I love this choice. All of you crowing about needing to pick "underheralded, pioneering work from exotic literary traditions" (because a group of Swedes should totally be in charge of that!) forget how influential Dylan is on some people's lives.

Actually, my argument is that Dylan's influence is already incredibly widespread and well-recognized, and thus that awarding him a Nobel Prize is boring and hollow. And clearly, today's announcement proves that a group of Swedes should not be in charge of that!

"Exotic" and "pioneering" were intended to be tongue-in-cheek there, but: we have a million avenues in daily life to encounter and appreciate Dylan's achievements. That is emphatically not true for almost any of the other novelists who were on the list.

The Nobel Prize is always boring and hollow, it's a prize, they all are. Doesn't mean I can't be happy about this. He's had a big impact on my life. I mean if Krasznahorkai won, you could easily make an argument that it's another in a line of somewhat obscure European authors who write in recognizable forms. Likewise, him not winning doesn't really affect me one way or the other. If he had won, however, I'd be over the moon.

They're not all hollow....authors who win Nobels tend to see large spikes in popularity afterwards, in terms of book sales, course assignments, and the like.

I don't think you *need* to win a Nobel to be remembered or anything. But it does play a big and useful role in bringing authors to wider attention outside of their home countries, and preserving the idea of literature as a worthwhile subject of attention in a distracted world. This didn't do that. I respect that you care a lot about Bob Dylan - that's fine! I'm glad you like him! But I don't think this is his lane.

[Cheynem]

I see Matt's point, but I dunno...the Nobel doesn't particularly have a mandate to recognize underappreciated, under recognized, or off the radar authors (indeed, many of their choices were already super famous and didn't need the boost, including recent laureates Harold Pinter and Mario Vargas Llosa). I don't really mind or like the choice. Songwriting is an interesting idea, certainly something worthy of some recognition, but this feels like they missed the boat when folksinging was actually pretty cutting edge. I wonder if they considered Beyonce or Tupac?

If we think of the Nobel decisions like MVP voting, this feels like a year in which somehow the "Seahawks Defense" won.

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

I see Matt's point, but I dunno...the Nobel doesn't particularly have a mandate to recognize underappreciated, under recognized, or off the radar authors (indeed, many of their choices were already super famous and didn't need the boost, including recent laureates Harold Pinter and Mario Vargas Llosa). I don't really mind or like the choice. Songwriting is an interesting idea, certainly something worthy of some recognition, but this feels like they missed the boat when folksinging was actually pretty cutting edge. I wonder if they considered Beyonce or Tupac?

If we think of the Nobel decisions like MVP voting, this feels like a year in which somehow the "Seahawks Defense" won.

I'd argue that Vargas Llosa definitely did get a boost in the United States, where I'd bet most people could only name one Latin American author at the time...in any case Vargas Llosa was several orders of magnitude less widely known and read than Bob Dylan. There's an important difference between "moderately well-known in academia" and "overwhelmingly famous," I think.

[Stained Diviner]

I see Matt's point, but I dunno...the Nobel doesn't particularly have a mandate to recognize underappreciated, under recognized, or off the radar authors (indeed, many of their choices were already super famous and didn't need the boost, including recent laureates Harold Pinter and Mario Vargas Llosa). I don't really mind or like the choice. Songwriting is an interesting idea, certainly something worthy of some recognition, but this feels like they missed the boat when folksinging was actually pretty cutting edge. I wonder if they considered Beyonce or Tupac?

If we think of the Nobel decisions like MVP voting, this feels like a year in which somehow the "Seahawks Defense" won.

Since this actually happened, it's like giving Desmond Howard the Super Bowl MVP.

[theMoMA]

I think this is awesome. For what it's worth, I've been reading Dylan's autobiography, Chronicles: Volume 1, over the past few weeks, and it's really an amazing book; I'd take it over the excerpts of Knausgard I've read any day. He's obviously an off-beat pick for the Nobel, but to me, he's entirely deserving as one of the most talented and unique and meaningful lyricists who's ever lived. You can certainly argue that he's not the sort of winner who's best served by winning the prize, as an incredibly famous and popular musician, but the Nobel has always taken a meandering course, and has rewarded writers, many of whom are popular and famous, in various genres throughout the years, including Jean-Paul Sartre (who refused the prize), Bertrand Russell, and Winston Churchill. Dylan is a winner in that same idiosyncratic tradition--perhaps most similar to Churchill, who was uniquely recognized for his brilliant speechwriting and oration as much as his lengthy historical projects--and a deserving one, in my opinion.

[Cheynem]

I don't know, the fact that "Dylan is really famous" to me isn't much of a disqualifier for his winning. This is a eyebrow raising selection for an award that has a long, long, long history of eyebrow-raising selections.

[Sam]

The Nobel Prize is always boring and hollow, it's a prize, they all are. Doesn't mean I can't be happy about this.

Doesn't it, though, given what you say in the first sentence? As a fan of Krasznahorkai, one would think you'd be much more cautious in deciding you have reasons to be happy about anything.

Something that I don't really ever see brought up in the write-ups for the prize winners is why the Nobels have the status they do. The idea of giving an award for literature or scientific achievement was not especially novel when they first started (maybe Peace was more an innovation), and I guess Alfred Nobel was an accomplished person but I don't think his fame alone was enough to promote them. And, like Isaac pointed out, the deciding committees are pretty idiosyncratic: a sampling of accomplished scholars in a pleasant but small Scandinavian country. Does anyone know where this prestige came from?