“So nobody could listen, we always went to the forest and proofread there,” she told the crowd. She would subsequently smuggle her books out of the country to publish them, uncensored, in Germany.” Nobel Prize winner, Herta Mueller, describing the secretive process of writing in communist-era Romania. (Via Moby Lives)
Bites: Woody Allen Drawn, A New Case for American Lit, NYRB on Herta Müller, SXSW, and more
An abstract from Dread and Superficiality: Woody Allen as Comic Strip, a new book to be published next month, is available at the Guardian. Arcade Fire’s a lucky band. Spike Jonze was “thinking of them almost every step of the way” in making his famous film. Rather than insular, is American Literature “borderless”? From the NYRB, a podcast on Herta Müller, the 2009 Nobel laureate in literature. Vol. 1 touched on Müller and her recent win last week. “Is there […]
Does the Nobel Committee Put Politics Before Literature? Should We Care?
Whether or not it’s true that her political background is more illuminating than her literary one (I don’t think it is), after last year’s debacle we should all come to expect from the Nobel committee a fickle attitude toward art for art’s sake as well as a literary anti-Americanism. Hey, it’s their prize, not ours.
Bites: Literary award kvetching, Bradbury paints, Obama is the big winner, Woods do Daytrotter, and more
Remember yesterday when I said more Jewish people will kvetch about Amos Oz or Philip Roth not getting the Nobel Prize for Literature? Tablet mentions the Tribe losing out, talks about Herta Mueller, and ties it all up with “Also intriguing: the Times notes that her father served in the SS during World War II.” Lit. Ray Bradbury was a regular Bob Ross. The Forward talks about Elie Wiesel’s “meandering, sometimes, narcissistic ruminations” on medieval French commentator of the Talmud […]
Nobel morning: A chronological breakdown of the days first few minutes
7:00 AMish Lev Grossman (via his Twitter) starts it off like this: 7:31 AM The news comes that Herta Mueller wins! Yippee! 7:35 AM I think back to this HTMLGiant post about a group of oddsmakers, and their picks for the prize. I scan for Mueller’s name, and find nothing. I think to myself “somewhere, somebody just hit the jackpot if they bet on her.” 7:37 AM My friend comes on Gchat to complain how the Nobel people are “antisemitic” […]