Rick Simonson

The Nobel Scramble

Perhaps calls came in the night: one can imagine the bustle publishing friends in Willimantic, Boston, Chicago, and Lincoln are going through this morning as word gets out that the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature has gone to French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio.

Quick perusing turns up at least five titles that have been translated into English - from a body of work considerably larger. The three that have been out in paper, probably most widely in circulation to date, have been Wandering Star (Curbstone/Consortium), Onitsha, and The Round & Other Cold Hard Facts (both from Bison/University of Nebraska). Those, one would guess, will be the first we'll be able to get into stock - whenever that day may be.

Two others have been around, in cloth: The Prospector (Verba Mundi/David R. Godine) and The Mexican Dream, or The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations (University of Chicago).

No sign yet on the respective publishers' websites of the news. Congratulations to them are in order. The scramble is no doubt on, the print-on-demand wheels a-spinning. As the day goes along, more articles will appear lending perspective and depth - on a writer not widely known in the U.S., and the merits of this choice.

Somewhere in the domestic musing, there will no doubt be comments on the prospects, or lack of, for a U.S. writer to receive a distinction which Toni Morrison, in 1993, was the last to receive. Most such pondering lays out the names of Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, sometimes Don DeLillo or Thomas Pynchon. Fine enough, but from out here we'd also suggest some poets such as Adrienne Rich or W.S. Merwin as being worthy of mention (and serious consideration). We'd also second Michael Chabon's suggestion of Ursula K. Le Guin.

Meanwhile, the work (and pleasure) of finding out more of Monsieur Le Clezio, for ourselves as readers, and for our readers ...

Posted by Rick Simonson on October 9, 2008 | Comments (0)