My response to Horace
Here’s a dispatch from my other world, that of literature and publishing. The top member of the panel which selects the Nobel Prize for literature says America is too ignorant a country to produce great writers. According to an Associated Press article:
As the Swedish Academy enters final deliberations for this year’s award, permanent secretary Horace Engdahl said it’s no coincidence that most winners are European.
‘’Of course there is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can’t get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world … not the United States,'’ he told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview Tuesday.
He said the 16-member award jury has not selected this year’s winner, and dropped no hints about who was on the short list. Americans Philip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates usually figure in speculation, but Engdahl wouldn’t comment on any names.
Speaking generally about American literature, however, he said U.S. writers are ‘’too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture,'’ dragging down the quality of their work.
‘’The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature,'’ Engdahl said. ‘’That ignorance is restraining.'’
The article includes reactions from a trio of Americans, and they all defended our national literary honor quite capably. But the AP failed to solicit a comment from me, one of the very writers so carelessly besmirched by the snooty Swede, so I’ll offer a comment here (channeling my inner Jack Nicholson as I do so).
“Let me say to Horace that he may recall America spent the first half of the 20th century saving Europe from the Germans, and the second half saving Europe from the Russians. So we’ve been a little short on time in the past hundred years, and maybe our literature wasn’t a top priority. Whatever the case, I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain American writers to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom we provided and then questions why we can’t produce a writer as good as some obscure European hack who won’t even acknowledge the genius of the anapestic tetrameter in Horton Hears a Who! I would rather that Horace just say ‘Thank you for Dr. Suess,’ and go on his way. Otherwise, I suggest that he pick up a pen and write a freakin’ book himself. Either way, I don’t give a damn what he thinks about American writers.
“And by the way. How did he survive his childhood with a name like Horace?”
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:04 am
Great retort.
I read that report last evening before throwing out the paper and knew it would–(and should!)–draw the ire of lots of writers.
There’s a little hope for those haughty and deluded Europeans, however. LIS!
It seems that President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has found his way into the 21st century and is making quite the ally, unlike his predecessor.
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:17 am
“How did he survive his childhood with a name like Horace?”
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I used to have an uncle named Horace.
He’s dead now. Died of a heart attack in his ’50s.
The story goes–(this was way before my time)–that he was a schoolyard bully.
Other kids were afraid of him and he was always directing and bossing them around.
When his father administered punishment, physically—which he often had to do—it never fazed young Horace. He never showed a trace of remorse and never shed a tear as a result of this punishment.
His father remarked, “Well, I can’t kill him.”
LOL!!!
Seems that name “Horace” might have begun his young life of bullying.
Perhaps he had to use this preemptive strategy in order to survive taunts from the other kids.
Who knows?
Perhaps this European literary critic suffers similar demons.
LOL!!!
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:49 am
F**k them Swedes. If it’s any consolation, you won the Lippzee Prize for Literature.
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:55 am
Yup, give me Dr. Suess any old time. I’m sure you also noticed that their own great authors, the late George MacDonald Fraser, and René Goscinny (with illustrator Albert Uderzo), were ignored by the Nobel Committee as well. Although you could fight a war over whether Scotland is part of Europe. Come to think of it Europeans (and the English, Scots, and Irish) have fought wars over sillier things. Although I can see why the Germans feel the need to stomp the French every so often. Can’t really comment on the Horace issue, as my family has names such as Asa though not recently.