Mina’s Matchbox

Hello Gentle Reader,

By the end of October, the north wind has rampaged through. The leaves routed from their trees. They've ruptured and burst forth into the roaring wind, scattering on the street. Winter looms over the horizon. A starved dog whose howls close in every night as the sun pulls away. Never content to remain ominous or threatening in the distance, a smattering of snow anointed the ground, and while it has since melted, snow marks the conclusion of autumn. Once dandy trees peacocking with their burning foliage are reduced to gnarled shadows. Etherized, they contort and frame the early dusks. Their scaffolding branches claw at the sky, creep along the streets, and lurk outside windows. Autumn recedes further away as October closes. Soon November will sail in on slate grey clouds imbued with cemetery light. Frost will thread and sew its way through the grass; while the filigree of hoarfrost engraves the windows. As October concludes on a brittle note, one can’t help but suspiciously eye the romantic attitudes and airs projected on the month. Of course, October reaps the splendors of its harvest regalia, it is also a month of closures and hollowing out. A time of preparation and harvest; taking stock and giving thanks. In turn, October is a month of transitions and shifting borders. Here at the end of October everyone slips into the forlorn mists, swept up and away, retreating just a little further into themselves. Night falls suddenly, leaving all to cozy up with their memories. Under the circumstances its best to quote the venerated October Poet, Louise Glück:

            “We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.”

Childhood is a nebulous subject, shifting and shaping. Ranging from the coyly saccharine sugared imaginings of bewildering entertainment, to more serious literary explorations of individual development and the lodestone of the human condition. All individuals look back on this development period with their own imbued perspectives. Some recount homes that were more hovel than house, where ignorance and violence were the preeminent languages. A world acquainted with the predatorial philosophy and Darwin law of “survival of the fittest.” Others described autocratic and tyrannical fathers or claustrophobic communities, where power was unimpeachable, taking the form of violence and brutality, enforcing conformity and complacency. The vocabulary of these homes and of these families were each the same: overcrowded, meager, unwanted, unsustainable. Thumps in the night always foreshadowed further impoverishment. The term ‘unwanted pregnancy,’ was synonymous with further suffering. For a wife and already overwhelmed mother, another link in the chain to the iron ball dragging her to unknowable depths. For an unwed daughter or sister, it was the beginning of the fall. An expedited journey to ruin and the end. They were described as being filthy and dirty; branded as whores who bitched and catted around. The shame was palpable, coloured in contusions. All of them were excited to caste out anything that could be described as of an ill-reputed nature or cheapened or spoiled. One of the rarest of moments in which they can elevate themselves beyond their squalor and piss on another. Despite this, they were all in the same pit, vying and clawing for the edges. While others describe their childhood in pastoral shades. The closet version of Arcadia that earth could facilitate. Then there are others whose lives were full of the same, the otherwise grey mundane; not without but no splendor to spare. Childhood is where one is forged and oriented to the workings of life.

Memory is a perennial preoccupation in the works of Ogawa Yōko. In the dystopian parable “The Memory Police,” Ogawa observed an island in a continual state of loss and redaction. Throughout the novel the inhabitants of the island lose their memories and their gradual connection to the world, all the while their entire reality reduces in size and scope. When calendars are deemed obsolete, the island nation finds itself transfixed in permanent winter. The entire world is lost in a whiteout, redacted further into the reductionist of nothing. In the still untranslated novel, “The Ring Finger,” a woman works at a laboratory, where clients bring in specimens (a bird bone, a melody, a scar, mushrooms) to be preserved by the memorial taxidermist, who preserves not only the specimens but also the associated and corresponding memory. Another untranslated novel “The Museum of Silence,” a woman collects and curates a macabre collection of mundane miscellaneous objects pilfered from people’s homes just after they have died. While in “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” the 88-minute-long memory of the professor, becomes more an eccentric plot point of the novel, rather than abstract theme, but allocates the novel the ability to float temporally in weightlessness while engaging in the abstract beauty of mathematics. In “Mina’s Matchbox,” Ogawa Yōko returns to the theme of memory, as the narrator looks back on a year of her childhood where she begins to transition from the dreaming and imaginative world of childhood and enter the more actualized reality of young adulthood.

As a novel “Mina’s Matchbox,” is more akin to “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” then “The Memory Police,” or “Revenge.” Where “The Memory Police,” a parabolic in its dystopian vision, contemplating the responsibility of remembrance and the corrosion of obsoletion and forced amnesia having the reductionist power to redact the world, but also discombobulate and alienate individuals’ relation to reality, and slowly releasing them into nothing. Whereas “Revenge,” showcased Ogawa as a master of the macabre. A consummate curator, Ogawa assembled, organized, and crafted scenes and landscapes transfixed and static in their clinical ordinariness, and then began to autopsy these otherwise starched and ironed scenes, revealing the absurd, deranged, and visceral undercurrent coursing beneath the otherwise unexceptionally ordinary. What is best described as the macabre or the madness of the mundane. Instead “Mina’s Matchbox,” bubbles and floats on the gentle effervescence of Ogawa’s observational and unadorned prose, explicitly in alignment with that of “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” while providing Ogawa the space to indulge in detours, details, and the shadows shifting in the periphery. Of course, as in “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” the quotidian is relayed on the slant. Whereas the titular professor’s 88-minute memory injects a sense of eccentricity into the narrative; in “Mina’s Matchbox,” the unconventionality comes not only in the niche habits and quirks of its characters, but also in the form of a pygmy hippopotamus, the sole survivor of a private family zoo, now a pet and mode of transportation. Ogawa’s straight forward prose hits the necessary punches in order to evade sentimentality and kitsch. Regardless, from 1972 to 1973 prove to be a formative year for Tomoko, who looks back on her stay with her distant and affluent relatives in Ashiya, who provide her a new world of discovery and knowledge. Counterbalancing the whimsy and the unconventionality of the relatives, Ogawa Yōko laces time specific details within the text, not only grounding it but enlivening the narrative into a greater context, enriching the narrative with a necessary palpability. Specifically, the 1972 Summer Olympics are by and large a defining feature of the year, with both Tomoko and Mina transfixed by the Japanese Olympic Volleyball Team’s journey to Munich and the aspirations the team would win gold. The two girls’ devotion to the team became borderline fanatical; but their rationale regarding their admiration towards individual team members delineated how the girls viewed the team. Mina logically evaluated the statistics and abilities; while Tomoko frivolously admired the beauty and appearance of another.

Tomoko’s reminisces of her time in Ashiya prove to be crystalline, but also express a gap in memory or a child’s lacking maturity to fully realize the depth of the situation. Through all their eccentricities, their indulgences in intellectual pursuits, and their lavish surprises, the family is dogged by secrets and familiar tensions. Mina is asthmatic, but her conditions severity gyrates between crisis and projected exaggeration by those around her. Despite this, Mina’s medical remand has nurtured an imaginative and creative mind, as the novel is spiced with a few of her matchbox stories. Tomoko’s uncle is charming dazzling, but beyond his smooth and shiny veneer lurks an ungraspable tension. His absences fill the house and while his returns are celebratory, Tomoko perceives a tension between her uncle and her maternal aunt. While her aunt in turn spends her days drinking and smoking, reading texts and books scanning for typographical errors. When Mina’s beautiful brother Ryuchi returns from Switzerland, Tomoko once again reflects on a concealed strain between father and son. From Grandmother Rosa, Tomoko comes to learn about the Holocaust, and the survivor’s guilt that plaques her grandmother, all the while the horrible massacre and terrorist act of the Munich Olympics, becomes a shattering reminder of the human capability for terror, marking one of the unadulterated moments when the idyll of childhood is infiltrated with the violence of the external world. The novel in turn traces first loves and there fated disappointments. All the milestones in the march to growing up. Ogawa’s prose is casual and laconic as it languishes over the details, which is also the novels weakness. Details effervescently emerge and while their intentions are ominous or foreshadow conflict, they instead burst or drift off course, never quite actualizing. Just who is the uncle’s mistress? While Tomoko circles the issue and approaches it, the subject is never explored further. Ogawa’s tasteful desire to refuse to linger on overtly dramatic events, be it a home invasion or a fire, allow her to bob and weave the entrapments  and indulgences of melodramatic histrionics, but the lack of completion or conclusion or at the very least hard lined definition can be considered underwhelming. Yet, in Ogawa’s defense, children are minuscules in comparison to the machinations of the adults around them and as such as scaled to their environment. The hypersensitivity and overprotectiveness of Mina is in turn leveraged against Tomoko, and while she exercises some agency in her movements, she is otherwise tethered to the house. In addition, as a child Tomoko may be reluctant to explore or investigate an issue of an extra marital affair further. The revelation of the holocaust was enlightening to the human capacity for horror and cruelty.

“Mina’s Matchbox,” was originally written in a serialized format, which explains the short chapters and the episodic feel of the narrative skipping along, in addition to the abrupt endings. The novel is a marvelous exploration of the domestic, and while many readers have praised Ogawa’s foray into the realism and domestic novel, it still retains a slanted perspective betraying the signature flirtation with the macabre. The overgrown Fressy Zoological Garden remains a haunted landscape. Mina’s matchbox stories integrated themselves into the narrative naturally. I found this time the transition between novel and independent fable more symphonic; whereas with “The Memory Police,” chapters from the narrators’ novels did not blend within the narrative as organically. Ogawa Yōko’s continued exploration of the finer nuances of memory are on perfect display with her novel “Mina’s Matchbox.” While it eschews Ogawa’s usual underpinnings of the grotesque and ghoulish, it succeeds in being a charming domestic novel. Ogawa’s prose shone in the crisp gracefulness, a lightness of touch continually feathering out and insinuating each detail. While others are quick to categorize “Mina’s Matchbox,” as a coming-of-age story, Ogawa Yōko has skillfully skirted the mechanical form of such novels and stories. This ‘year in the life,’ novel layers events and details naturally form, never fixating or magnifying on any particular event as having a significant contribution to the development of either girl. All the while through the course of the novel they inevitably do change and grow. Time marches forward, yet as Tomoko reminisces, it was a transformative year. Ogawa succeeds at encapsulating those moments of youth. The awkwardness of self-awareness. The frustrations of infatuations. Those insignificant moments which haunt us throughout our lifetimes; much like the little girl catching falling stars in a bottle, on one matchbox cover. This is Ogawa’s strength, the ability to effortlessly examine the subtle shifts and changes in her characters psychology and relation to the world.

“Mina’s Matchbox,” is a welcome – like all future Ogawa Yoko publications – and overdue entry into the English language. “Mina’s Matchbox,” showcases Ogawa’s range as writer, her ability to move beyond the visceral or mundane violence of her other works, and instead explore a quieter and intimate family narrative. Ogawa’s prose remains natural and unadorned, never burned by ostentatious formatting and achieving at their crests a wistful lyricism, much like the radium-fortified drink Fressy which appears throughout the novel. “Mina’s March,” provides a holistic portrait of one’s memory and one’s relationship to it, but also the complicated relationships and how they’ve adapted and changed through the ages, and how they too are remembered. In a manner similar to Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Klara and the Sun,” Ogawa Yoko moves through time deftly and with ease covering a period of thirty years through highlights and applying a short epistolary format. As in “Klara and the Sun,” which fixated on only a short pinnacle period of a character’s life, Ogawa ended "Mina's Matchbox," without cheapening the prose, but coming to a rounded conclusion. 

 

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary                                                                                                         

– XXXIII –

People who are health conscious are quite monkish. I admire their discipline and pray for their failure.

Fleur Adcock, Dies Aged 90

Hello Gentle Reader,

The poetry of Fleur Adcock was a late in life discovery. Poetry is a literary form which is always fighting its corner. Its meager allowances routinely reduced. Yet still it pushes on. Poets like Fleur Adcock, proved that poetry can be pulled from the lofty heights of academia and the ivory tower. While the poems of Blake, Shelley, Keats and Byron are pulled from the shelves, their names inspiring dread and groans from students who must look through their lines and scry out so meaning. It is poets much like Fleur Adcock, who work against these traditions, ensuring poetry retains a somewhat grounded presence, celebrating the observational and the everyday, rather than soaring for the celestial heavens, to reside in starlight immortality, only to descend as some form of torture on high school students, who will never return to ‘that tiresome subject.’ Where does one place Fleur Adcock? Born in New Zealand in 1934, but lived in England from the age of 5 before returning to New Zealand at 13. She then returned to England in 1963, working as a librarian in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Her first collection of poetry was published in New Zealand “The Eye of the Hurricane,” in 1964, while her sophomore poetry collection “Tigers,” was published in the United Kingdom in 1967. In short, Fleur Adcock straddled both worlds. Her poem “Immigrant,” recounts the sense of being an outsider upon returning to England, whereby Adcock commented on being too colonial with her New Zealand accent, which she was desperate to lose, and while walking through St. James Park, Adcock spies the pelicans amongst the swans, which she likens to herself in her colonial manner, despite to shift, change, and blend. Through poems that move through the everyday, ruminating on objects, thoughts on a place and one’s relationship to it, and human relationships. Adcock’s poetry is written in the beautiful and approachable language, a language of shared ground but with an eye trained for brilliance and mystery lurking in the everyday, which is the anecdote poetry provides to the world. As testament to Fleur Adcock’s poetry, she received the (then) Queens Gold Medal for Poetry in 2006 for her collected poems “Poems 1960 – 2000,” and went on to write another five poetry collections, and two more collected poetry collections, the most recent published in 2024. Literary talent runs in the family of course as well, Adcock’s sister Marilyn Duckworth is a novelist, and her mother Irene also published.

Rest in Peace Fleur Adcock.
 
Thank you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary 

Post-Nobel Prize in Literature 2024 Thoughts

Hello Gentle Reader,

This years Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to the (South) Korean writer Han Kang, who the Swedish Academy praised:

“For her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

As has been the case since the announcement of the 2018 and 2019 laureates for the Nobel Prize in Literature, this year’s announcement continued in the same particular Swedish adoration for procedure as a virtue. At 1:00pm (CEST) the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy Mas Malm, comes through the beautiful white doors of the Swedish Academy, and takes his position behind the little white pen, and greets those assembled welcoming them to the Swedish Academy and then anxiously announce this year’s laureate. Following is the usual dry sermon by Anders Olsson, Chair of the Swedish Academy’s Nobel Committee. Finally, a very unenlightening interview with Swedish Academy member Anna-Karin Palm. This all takes place within a span of twenty minutes. The entire procession could easily be handled by one person, but is now a relay race between three people passing a baton.

To be blunt once again, the current itineration of the Nobel Prize announcement being divided up amongst different members of the Swedish Academy doesn’t work. The entire affair is stilted and stagnant. The entire proceedings are starched and stiff. The lack of engagement and liveliness of the entire assembly is rather mortuary. Kind of makes you quote from Kazuo Ishiguro’s screenplay for the film “Living,”:

[Rusbridger]: “Don't worry, old chap. This time of morning it's a kind of rule: Not too much fun and laughter. Rather like church.”

Though I will say, glasses really do suit Mats Malm – and no, I’m not taking the piss – I think he looked rather charming, and even gave a bit of a smile which was nice to see. In all honesty and fairness, I think if the announcement obligations and responsibilities were consolidated back to the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy as they should be, and no longer divvied up to other members of the academy or its Nobel Committee, I suspect Mats Malm would have the opportunity to relax and settle into the role, and provide viewers with an appreciation of his character and personality, rather than coming across as somewhat awkward.

Its not lively or engaging, when compared to the pre-2018/2019 announcement. Oh, Sara Danius and Peter Englund, you are sorely missed. Even those who are assembled for the announcement are muted in their response. There’s no cheering and no applause, just absolute silence, which is really reminiscent of church: sit down, stand up, sit down, stand up, take your cracker and kneel, peace be with you and then hasty exit. Perhaps its just me, but I am really disappointed that over the past five years this is how the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Literature has been conducted. Its bleached and soulless. There’s no palpable anticipation. Its droning on and boring. Its reminiscent of a corporate meeting. Everyone attends first thing in the morning coffee in hand. No participation or interest, but attendance is mandatory. The Nobel Prize in Literature deserves better and can do better. We know this because it has. As I’ve said before: while Anders Olsson is an accomplished academic, literary historian and critic, these qualifications do not endow him with the charm offensive necessary to be a front facing and engaging public relations representative for the Swedish Academy. Since the 2018 & 2019 prize announcements, Olsson’s approach to the announcement is one of somber sermon rather than enlightening engagement. The event has become more about endurance then enjoying. Its previous incarnation may have been more unscripted and sporadic, but at least it was concise and entertaining, leaving you in a state of somewhat exaltation, giddy and excited – unless of course its 2016, at which point you stomp around like an agitated goose.

Turning towards this years Nobel Laureate, Han Kang, it’s a mixed bag of reactions. Han Kang is by no means a perennial candidate, and can be considered a surprise choice; despite being an outlier on the radar. At 53 years old, consensus was held that she was considered overall on the younger side. Of course, there have been many writers who have received the Nobel Prize in Literature and can be considered rather young. Rudyard Kipling retains the honour of being youngest writer to receive the award 41 years old. Albert Camus was 44 years old when he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 – and it is considered a serendipitous award as well, as Camus died tragically three years later in an automobile accident. Joseph Brodsky was 47 years old when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987; once again Brodsky died less then ten years later of a heart attack, so the Nobel reached him in due time. Orhan Pamuk was 53 when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. While Herta Müller was 55 years old and Olga Tokarczuk was 56. Personally, I thought Han Kang would become a more serious candidate for the award in another six to eight years, which would give her more time to publish a couple more works, and she would be entering that typical age group when writers begin to be assessed by the Swedish Academy. As for Han Kang’s literary oeuvre, it is by no means robust. Steady and consistent, yes; but certainly not groundbreaking or monumental. In all, awarding Han Kang the Nobel Prize in Literature, there’s a sense its perhaps: premature. In a fashion similar to Kazuo Ishiguro in 2017, this years Nobel Prize in Literature is polite and acceptable, but not explosively interesting. For the past 8 years, Han Kang has been gaining an increasingly international literary presence. In 2016, she won the Man Booker International Prize for her novel “The Vegetarian.” Her short autobiographical piece of work “The White Book,” was once again shortlisted for the same award in 2018. Again in 2018, Han Kang was selected as a contributor to the Future Library Project, where she submitted her manuscript: “Dear Son, My Beloved,” in the spring of 2019. Now after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, there really is no further Han Kang can go on the international literary scene, except perhaps to quote Doris Lessing: “getting a pat on the head from the pope.” Then again though, the Swedish Academy may have decided to acknowledge Han Kang with the Nobel as recognition of not only just what she’s written published but also as encouragement of what she will publish. While the Nobel Prize in Literature is often criticized as being the kiss of death or a curse, some writers have continued to produce high quality work without being tainted by the Nobel’s lofty reputation. Now, whether or not Han Kang can accomplish that feat, only time will tell.

The closest Nobel Laureate that Han Kang can be somewhat compared to is perhaps, Kazuo Ishiguro; specifically, when the Swedish Academy highlighted the “metaphorical style,” of “Greek lessons.” As, Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels have been described as metaphorical pastiches, be it the P.G. Woodhouse comedy of manners, in the dissection of the trademark English figure: the Butler, and the quintessential emotionally repressed rectitude of the character in “The Remains of the Day,”; the dystopian worlds of “Never Let Me Go,” and “Klara and the Sun,” where the notion of ‘human,’ is explored in the notion of manufactured cloning and the rise of Artificial Intelligence; or the Arthurian fantasy of “The Buried Giant,” exploring the notion of remembrance and the bitter reality of societal amnesia. Ishiguro’s prose is founded on an adherence to cinematic principles, whereby the author builds tension by revealing the bomb beneath the table, and ensuring the characters remain completely helpless in changing their predestined fates, at which point, the readers are left helplessly to watch events run their course. In “Never Let Me Go,” it’s the passive acceptance of Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth beginning the process of their donations, and accepting the cruelty and clinical end of their lifecycle. In turn, Ishiguro is a master of crafting compelling first-person narrators. “Klara and the Sun,” shines on the fact that Klara is a compelling narrative voice, observational and inquisitive, whose deductions carry the weight of the novel successfully, and imbue it with a sense of hope. Kazuo Ishiguro has been a writer who has sought to wrestle with concepts of the human condition pertaining to history, the act of remembrance, and the revisions of history by both individuals and society create and accept. Yet, Ishiguro requires the pastiche or genre façade of his novels in order to evade the inevitably political question, which is where Han Kang deviates from.  

In the Nobel citation, the Swedish academy highlights:

            “[. . .] that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

This has been the nature of Han Kang’s work so far, the exploration of trauma and its generational impact and inheritance. “Human Acts,” is a polyphonic novel that wrestles with the brutality and horrors of the Gwangju Uprising (Massacre), where the military coup and dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan, violently quelled a student protest which opposed the coup. The novel blooms from this incident, narrating how from this event how its traumatic repercussions reverberate years and decades later. One of the most heartbreaking scenes of the novel is the soul of a victim of the massacre attempting to return home and only to be swept away at the dawn of a new day. While “Human Acts,” explicitly tackles a historical and political event, Han Kang succeeds in avoiding the pitfalls of polemics, by in turn focusing on the individuals experience, their grief, their pain, in her signature lyrical and succinct style. “The White Book,” in turn explored a far more personal and intimate form of grief, as Han Kang’s book reflects on the birth and death of her older sister, and how her death becomes a white spectre haunting Kang her family. As Han Kang writes:

“This life needed only one of us to live it. If you had lived beyond those first few hours, I would not be living now. My life means yours is impossible.”

Anders Olsson describes “The White Book,” as less of a novel and more of a “secular prayer book,” whereby Kang ruminates on the notion of life, death, and the nature of grief, through prose that is associative with colour of white and white objects. Personally, I found “The White Book,” a beautiful work; even as the poeticism was heightened within it, but never detracted from Kang’s meditation on grief and loss, and living within that knowledge that her life was made possible by the tragedy of her elder sisters’ death. Both Kang and her sibling were cherished by their parents because of their elder sister’s death, and they understood life was not trite matter. “Greek Lessons,” explored the personal sphere of trauma through the contrasting brittle and budding relationship between two damaged individuals. The woman has experienced loss through the death of her mother and then loosing custody of her child, and in turn shrinks away from the world losing her relationship with language in the process. While the instructor is gradually losing his eyesight and is recovering from the heartbreak of an unrequited love. They orbit each other in a class dedicated to Ancient Greek language lessons. The hallmark of “Greek lessons,” however is Han Kang’s beautifully rendered style, which is a breath of fresh air from Annie Ernaux clinically bleached language and Jon Fosse’s rhythmic tidal sentences. Han Kang’s style is smooth and unobtrusive, with her imagery and metaphors often flowing with natural ease and only a hint of flourish; with somewhat violent imagery injected for startling effect such as:

“Now and then, language would thrust its way into her sleep like a skewer through meat, startling her awake several times a night.”

Due to Han Kang’s international reputation, this years Nobel Prize in Literature announcement was not met with the indignant hooting of “Who?” by the press. Over the years, however, the only (relatively) obscure Nobel Laureate in Literature has been Abdulrazak Gurnah in 2021. Olga Tokarczuk, Peter Handke, Louise Glück, Annie Ernaux, and Jon Fosse, had established reputations or were highly recognizable by the English language press. In a fashion similar to Olga Tokarczuk, Han Kang shares wining the Man Booker International Prize, while Annie Ernaux was previously shortlisted and considered the frontrunner with her collective social biographical history “The Years.”

There is some annoyance with this Nobel Prize in Literature continuing to abide by this routine conventional cycle of woman, man, woman, man award. As previously mentioned, it is well documented that there is a severe imbalance between how many men have received the Nobel Prize in Literature and how many women have received the Nobel Prize in Literature. with Han Kang, only 18 women have won the award, compared to 120 men. Now the Swedish Academy cannot be considered solely responsible for this. It is important to remember that the Swedish Academy can only evaluate writers who have been nominated for the award, and as the nominating archives open up and more information becomes available, we do know that many women were not nominated in many years. For example, in 1971, only one woman, the Estonian poet, Marie Under, was nominated. However, since the 1990’s the Swedish Academy has made a very conscious effort to evaluate and award more women writers, starting in 1991 with Nadine Gordimer. Since then, every woman Nobel Laureate has been excellent. Not one of them is mediocre or considered just good enough. As previously mentioned, each of the previous woman Nobel Laurates have been consummate and talented writers, tackling the weighted subjects of the human condition; no different then their male counterparts, even handling the subjects with more subtlety and weight, completely abandoning the panache polemics of their male colleagues. Others have become masters of their forms, completely expanding the forms potential beyond their preconceived limitations. Many in turn were also great innovators both in language but also in creating new forms and literary modes of expression in which to mull over the weighted complexities of the human experience, specifically of the 20th century. While I appreciate the Swedish Academy is taking a concentrated effort to remediate the Nobel Prize’s glaring imbalance of laureateship between the two sexes, I think to single a writer out simply because she’s a woman, really devalues her work and authorship. If anyone were to allege, for example that Wisława Szymborska only won the Nobel Prize in Literature because she’s a woman, I’d be disgusted and repulsed. As this (hypothetical) individual completely disavows and dismisses the beauty and approachability of Szymborska’s work, where some of the heftiest subjects and complexities of the human condition are turned into the most playful and approachable topics. A poem by Szymborska celebrates all the wonders and needs to be curious. The perennial response of: I don’t know, all the while indulging in humour, compassion, wisdom, and hope. I worry by continuing this convention and cycle, the Swedish Academy inadvertently and inevitably will open up the award and any future woman writer and laureate to be dismissed and disregarded on the nature of their sex, completely discrediting their work unjustly. Already this year alone, it appears there is criticism of Han Kang being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature because of her ethnicity and because of her sex. The current environment of hypersensitive identity politics only curates this problem further. There’s no disagreeing with the fact that the Nobel Prize in Literature has a huge imbalance between the number of men awarded in comparison to women, but I think the Swedish Academy should (and will) remediate this imbalance in time and organically. It is only a matter of time until two female writers receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in succession. Perhaps maybe next year it will finally happen, then we can collectively agree: there its done, they did it we can move on, at which point we can debate the merits of literature, not the metrics of sex. Furthermore, this continued alternating between the two makes the prize so predictable, and that’s boring.

It comes as no surprise that for years now, the (South) Korean government has taken considerable steps and investment in exporting their culture across the globe. As The Guardian (hopefully) cheekily wondered: “Could K-lit be the new K-pop?!” Regardless, for over a decade now, the (South) Korean government has worked significantly hard to promote and get their writers translated into foreign languages, and much like China has coveted the Nobel Prize in Literature, viewing the award as recognition of their culture and linguistic history, in addition to affirming their position as a rising global power, who in spite of lacking an abundance in natural resources, understands the power of human capital and investment and have become a major player on the world stage. Han Kang’s Nobel maybe an award granted to her for her current body of work, but in the context of geopolitics, for the (South) Korean government it becomes an acknowledgement of their literary contributions, cementing their reputation as a cultural powerhouse on the world stage rivaling the United States and Japan for example. The New Yorker ran an interesting piece on this back in 2016 called: “Can a Big Government push bring the Nobel Prize in Literature to (South) Korea?”, which provides some understanding regarding the push for (South) Korea to have a Nobel Prize in Literature and the cultural and financial investment the state has taken to really advocate for a Nobel Prize in Literature.

For years the only speculated Korean language writer who was expected to receive the award was Ko Un, as the poet had the monopoly on the public’s imagination of Korean language literature, yet in due course, this position was usurped, as more and more Korean language writers began to be translated and start contending for international literary awards. Kim Hyesoon for example, is one of the most staunched feminist poets of (South) Korea, her poetry is visceral as it is violent, all the while retaining a sense of playfulness. Hyesoon often reminded me of Elfriede Jelinek for her poetry having a linguistic zeal and intensity to it, but also for its unapologetic feminist preoccupation. Hyesoon won the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2019, the Cikada Prize in 2021, and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2023. As Ko Un’s chances certainly became less probable over the past few years as allegations of sexual misconduct were leveraged against him; Kim Hyesoon appeared to be a more then worthy candidate and in essence the antithesis to Ko Un, in addition to shaking the cage against (South) Korean society’s very limited view of women. On a sidenote, she has an amazing sense of style. When Han Kang won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 for her novel “The Vegetarian,” as testament to my character as a reader, I eyed it up suspiciously and as more and more people recommended it with glowing appraisal, I staunchly refused to read it. The novel at the time didn’t seem interesting to me, and the few passages that I did read did not compel me to read it any further. Instead, I turned my attention towards Bae Suah, who appeared more daring and more compelling, often described as the Korean Kafka, and criticized in her native country for “Committing violence to the Korean language,” and I immediately thought to myself: now this is someone worth reading; and Bae Suah is. If Han Kang is the empathic explorer of emotional intensity and responses, Bae Suah was the cerebral counterweight, exacting and experimental in form, continually testing and twisting literary conventions and forms to suit her whims. To describe Bae Suah as the dark horse of Korean literature would be an understatement. What I appreciate the most about Bae Suah, is she’s an autodidactic writer. She’s famously said her first story came from practising her typing. Bae Suah is not a writer who has been manufactured or indoctrinated into what literature she’s expected to produce. She retains a very deconstructionist perspective to literary forms, and while her experiments are perhaps not always successful, they are engaging and invigorating. Still, there are so many more Korean writers in translation in large part, thanks to the governments explicit effort to see their writers translated into other languages.

Regardless though, Han Kang has won this years Nobel Prize in Literature, and I don’t think the Swedish Academy made a poor decision. If anything, it was a premature decision, but I do think Han Kang will be a very decent Nobel Laureate. I’m looking forward to seeing more of her work translated too, especially getting her short stories: “Convalescence,” and “Europa,” wrangled into more definitive publications alongside still untranslated works. I think the marvellously infectiously joyous Peter Englund has described Han Kang best:

“This year's Nobel Prize in Literature goes, as is now widely known, to Han Kang. There is an impressive fear in her, in approach, in style, in object. She can often be bewildering. Her central theme is loss and pain. But there is not, as is often the case with Western writers, a search for reconciliation or healing. Rather, for her, loss and pain are a basic condition of existence, to be dealt with.”

I particularly enjoyed Englund’s analysis of Han Kang’s work being concerned with loss and pain, but rather than turning its attention to reconciliation and healing, Kang presents pain not as a transformative experience as if often the case in the western perspective, but is part of the foundation of existence, which are managed and endured, but true ‘healing,’ or absence of that pain is never truly remediated or remedied.

Congratulations to Han Kang, I do look forward to reading more of your work as its translated and see what your future output will be.

Thank you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary 

— Edit —

Due to a powerful geomagnetic storm, the Aurora Borealis was in dazzling for this morning/last night, and I was fortunate enough to capture a few beautiful shots of it (after taking a trip into the country). The following are three of the photos that I captured. While not specifically described as in Sjon's novel “The Blue Fox,”:

 

“The rim of daylight was fading.

In the halls of heaven it was now dark enough for the Aurora Borealis sisters to begin their lively dance of the veils. With an enchanting play of colours they flitted light and quick about the great stage of the heavens, in fluttering golden dresses, their tumbling pearl necklaces scattering here and there in their wild capering. This spectacle is at its brightest shortly after sunset.”

Here's to the Nobel Prize in Literature: 

 

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2024

 Hello Gentle Reader, 

The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to the South Korean writer Han Kang

“For her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

Congratulations are in order for Han Kang.

 

Thank-you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care 
And As Always 
Stay Well Read

M. Mary  

Lore Segal, Dies Aged 96

Hello Gentle Reader,

If there is one word to describe Lore Segal it would be: interesting. The term itself sparkles with a gleam to entice curiosity, if not explicitly hook one in. Interesting, however, has been the driving force in which Lore Segal’s miraculous and adventurous life unfolded. Framed by both historical weightiness and tragedy, Segal continued to look to reflect on her experiences and life within the word: interesting. As a child in Austria as the wave of fascism flooded through Europe, and Nazism gripped German and Austria with its ironclad fist, Segal was one of the first group of children to be dispatched from Austria to England on a kindertransport, to escape the escalating antisemitism and violence pulsating through Europe. This is the first time Lore Segal reviewed her surrounding’s with a sense of the understated term ‘interesting,’ as around her on the station, children and parents in tears were set to say their goodbyes, while Segal thought of this as a new adventure, an interesting prospect. It can be theorized that this sense of the absurd or perhaps adventure or interest, is what has perhaps what has saved Segal throughout her life and allowed her to live such a life full of fascinating anecdote and thought, but also adventure. Lore Segal wrote five novels, a host of stories, children’s books, a handful of translations, and countless essays. Her fourth novel “Shakespear’s Kitchen,” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Each of her works is filled with her characteristic wit and wry sense of humorous in addition to a steadfast thought to moral engagement, but not didactic pandering. Segal’s themes ranged from memory to genocide, migration and the plight of the refugee, assimilation, aging, and death. All of which were handled with her characteristically sharp and witted pen, but also compassionately and tenderly tended too. Grief is never a preoccupation and term. The end only brings something more interesting for Lore Segal, and that has always been the driving force of her life, and most likely met death with the same sense of curiosity and humour.

 
Rest in Peace Lore Segal.
 
Thank you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary 

Robert Coover, Dies Aged 92

Hello Gentle Reader,

A sign of the times and the mark of times continued march forward, another one of the great American modernists, Robert Coover has died aged 92. In the company of Donald Barthelme, John Barth, and the older William H. Gass and Kurt Vonnegut, set the stage for a brand of American postmodernism that defined a generation, and continued with the likes of Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Paul Auster, William T. Vollman, and David Foster Wallace. Robert Coover, had the honour of being described by the New York Times as being “probably the funniest and most malicious,” of these postmodern giants, with books called: “Spanking the Maid,” “The Public Burning,” “Pricksongs & Descants,” its not difficult to imagine why. Coover’s first novel “The Origins of the Brunists,” is often described as his most conventional novel, but already contained his signature playfulness and hyperbolic frontier, as it recounted the story of a miner who survived a disaster and goes on to find a cult. Critics praised the novel, but encouraged Robert Coover to abandon his exaggeration in favour of the more parred social realism employed by the then canonical writers: Sinclair Lewis and Theodore Dreiser. In complete rebellion or a sign of his disinterest, Coover would publish his short story collection: “Pricksongs & Descants,” which included the highly anthologized story “The Babysitter,” presenting an innocuous event of a babysitter coming to watch a couple of children, what followed is an explosion of varying possibilities from the mundane to the violent, in addition to fantasies from the babysitter’s boyfriend and the children’s father. Other stories showcased Coover’s interest in remixing and retelling fairytales, folktales, and myths. “The Public Burning,” took the historical and paired it with the fantastical, which both satirized and scandalized the American literary and political landscape at the burgeoning threat of nuclear annihilation and onset of the Cold War. It is for these reasons and subsequent books, with their infection and manipulation of language into states of prolapsed humour that Coover became famous for. Ever interested in literatures continued metamorphosis and evolution, Robert Coover was an adamant supporter of what has been described as “Electronic Literature,” and delighted in being an iconoclast seeking to bring down the novel in its cherished form, which he described as bourgeoise. His teachings and academic pursuits reflected this.

Rest in Peace Robert Coover.
 
Thank you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary 

– XXXII –

Autumn has become my favourite season, it's austere and assured, free from summer's insecurities and youthful fallacies; and while winter is honest, its philosophy of cruel to be kind, overpromises the benefits. As for spring? That green sprite is but a waif's whisper.

Thoughts Regarding the Nobel Prize in Literature 2024

 

—    I —

 

Last year, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Norwegian playwright and prose writer Jon Fosse with the prize motivation:
 
            “For his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.”
                                                                                              
Jon Fosse had long been considered a potential and perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, for over a decade. By the 2010’s, Jon Fosse held the honour of being the most performed contemporary playwright in the world. European theatres were happy to stage his intense slow burn theatrical texts; while American and English theatregoers tepidly responded to stagings of Fosse’s plays.
 
The Nobel Prize in Literature has a reputation of honouring some of the greatest playwrights over the past century. From George Bernard Shaw, whose acerbic wit retains its caustic bite; to the ever innovative and daring Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello, who could be considered the progenitor of the monumental Theatre of the Absurd, which became the defining theatrical form of the postwar years, popularized by Samuel Beckett and his nihilistic comedies of existential dread, shutting the doors on the grim everyday dramas of the American playwright Eugene O’Neill, who in turn usurped the prevailing vaudevillian form; then comes the inheritors of Beckett, the comedy of menace and the pregnant pause of Harold Pinter, who uncovered the truth in everyday prattle. Of course, where does one place the ever-uncategorizable Elfriede Jelinek, whose plays push the limitations and boundaries of an extremely physically confined form, and exist within the purely linguistic, embodying the pyrotechnics of language, its inherent power both politically and economically, and its susceptibility for corruption; all the while performing textual gymnastics, equally provoking and enraging.   
 
Jon Fosse, follows in the same vein as Beckett and Pinter, by continually rejecting the previous realistic and naturalist forms of theatre in favour of something more ephemeral. Where Samuel Beckett, populated his bleak landscapes with tramps and vagabond clowns, lost within an apocalyptic landscape of absurdity and comically fumble like marionettes without agency. Fosse’s theatre in turn is equally bleak, but comedy is replaced by an otherwise elemental force, with the drapery of some vague sense of Catholicism, while abandoning its characteristic pomposity. Where Beckett employed comedy, Fosse employes mysticism. Fosse’s dramatic works in turn are renowned for their simple scaffolding narratives and modest language, filled with long pauses and dead space, which intensify an atmosphere that is tense with anxiety and dread. The play “Somone Is Going to Come,” the tenseness of the plot is built on the understanding that someone will arrive, which harkens back to both Beckett’s absurdities and Pinter’s comedies of menace; and when they do arrive a crescendo of turmoil is unleashed. In a more mature play, “A Summers Day,” an atmosphere of danger is replaced with a somber lyrical austerity. “A Summers Day,” presents the story of an old widow, who one fateful summer day looks out her window into the foreboding fjord, whereby she reminisces the rueful day her husband rowed out into a storm and disappeared. Fosse’s layering of time is masterfully used within this play, as past and present waltz around each other, commenting on the power of love and the yearning ache of loss. Here again, however, Fosse’s language is the real masterclass in form, a rhythmic repetitive language of back and forth and long pauses, starving off the entrapments of sentimental gushing narrative. The shadow of subtext is the greatest power of Fosse’s plays, which elevate these otherwise bleak and intimate (almost purgatory) settings into nucleuses of the human condition, commenting on the nature of memory, love, loneliness, existential alienation, faith and hope.
 
Jon Fosse’s prose continues to embody his dramatic texts austere and simple language. Crafted with long lugubrious sentences, they are renowned for their repetition and rhythm. Novels such as “Aliss at the Fire,” “Morning & Evening,” and “A Shining,” are short novels, but rapture with Fosse’s signature language, the tidal movement of slow-moving sentences swaying back and forth, which create a hypnotic and enveloping sensation. “Aliss at the Fire,” and “Morning & Evening,” are perfect examples of Fosse’s playfulness of time being a layered phenomena rather than linear arrow or record. A few reviewers have described Fosse’s prose as being psychological realism utilizing an indirect stream of consciousness prose; while this perspective has merit, Jon Fosse’s work is more ethereal in vision then cerebral. Memories emerge and infuse the narrative just as the ambiguous geography (which is usually a fjord), and there is an inclination of the divine, but it too defies theological allegiance. Once again, it’s the language, the repetitive cursive language swelling, sweeping, teeming, rolling and crashing ashore which is the defining feature and style of Fosse’s work. Readers, should slow down and slip into the tidal rhythm of Fosse’s language in order to appreciate his prose.
 
In 2015, Jon Fosse won the Nordic Council Literature Prize for his trilogy of novel(las): “Wakefulness,” “Olav’s Dream,” and “Weariness.” Translated as an omnibus edition and titled “Trilogy,” the set of novels recount the luminous love and tragedy of Asle and Alida, who forsaken and weary, search and attempt to fashion themselves a good enough life for themselves and their child. The trilogy shows the depth and range of Fosse’s skill, crafting a narrative full of historical, cultural, and theological allusions, crafting a parable of injustice, resistance, crime, redemption, and of course the transcendent endearing power of love. Despite their flaws and their mistakes, Asle and Alida are beautiful characters bound by circumstance and tragedy, and yet Fosse writes about them tenderly and provides bittersweet redemption. After the publication of the Trilogy, I thought it was only a matter of time before Jon Fosse would receive the award. Fosse, however, did not rest on his laurels after publishing trilogy. He would follow up with an even bigger narrative portrait, which is now considered his magnum opus: “Septology,” or “The Other Name: I-II,” “I is Another: III-V,” and “A New Name: VI-VII.” A seven novel sequence which explores the eternal questions of the human condition regarding one’s decision to lead their life a certain way and not the other, posed between the doppelgangers of the aged Asle and Asle. One a painter and devote catholic, whose preparing for his annual Christmas exhibition reminiscing about his life, in his solitary home out in the western Norwegian countryside; the other lives in Bjørgvin (Bergen) and while also a painter, finds himself consumed by loneliness and alcoholism. These two versions of the same man who diverge on two different paths and lives, wrestle with the eternal questions about life and death, faith and hopelessness, shadow and light. Jon Fosse’s “Septology,” is a transcendental meditation on the philosophical conundrums of existence, and rather than seeking to provide answers, hypnotically sways within the ambiguities, delighting in the lack of certainty of the human condition. “Septology,” is considered one of the most important novels of the 21^st century.
 
In awarding Jon Fosse the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy decided on a laureate who has no political dimensions in either their work or personally expressed views or opinions. Fosse is a purely literary choice, whose work can only be assessed through a literary lens. Even critics, who find his plays boring and droning or prose and sentences long and winding, will reluctantly cede that there is merit to Jon Fosse’s work. For over a decade Fosse has been considered a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature; by 2015 it became a matter of when Jon Fosse would receive the award, not a matter of if. Despite being a safe choice by the Swedish Academy, Jon Fosse is a welcomed laureate, lacking in controversy, with a strong solid bibliography to support the award, and the award recognizes not only his brilliant and singular prose, but also his accomplishments as a dramatist, who has carved out a niche corner of the stage for his ethereal plays. 
 
Now, on October 10 the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, Mats Malm, will emerge from the famous white and gold gilded doors and announce this year’s laureate. In years past, previous Permanent Secretaries would then mingle with the assembled journalists and engage in interviews, providing an overview of the laureate, any works they would recommend, and any interesting information as to how the academy came to their conclusion. In 2007, the literary statesmen Horace Engdahl, referenced Doris Lessing being seriously discussed for many years, and the publication of her autobiographies represented another uptake in her work, forcing the academy to re-examine her contributions to literature again. In 2014, the infectiously excited Peter Englund, delighted in shocking the world with the announcement of Patrick Modiano, and expanding on the decision to award the prize to a canonical French writer, who remained unknown to the world; Englund glossed over Modiano’s lack of readership in other languages, while defending the authors playful pastiche and exploitation of the detective novel, and his continued investigation into the nature of memory and identity; and the psychogeography of Paris. While in 2017 the ever-graceful Sara Danius, announced her final Nobel Laureate, the English novelist, Kazuo Ishiguro, and provided the recipe to his literary style: a mixture of Jane Austen and Franz Kafka, with a dash of Marcel Proust, which you stir (but not too much). These personal touches by the Permanent Secretaries always imbued a sense of character and charm into the Nobel Prize announcements.
 
In the post-scandal years, the announcement of the Nobel Laureates in Literature and the subsequent interviews have become an otherwise stagnant and stilted affair. The event is now managed and staged. All the gold (even if it was gilding) has been curated into nothing more then a dust covered shadow of its former glory. Mats Malm currently rattles of the Nobel Laureates name and the prize citation, in the subsequent languages he has command over, and then relinquishes the remaining press conference to the chair of the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy, Anders Olsson. While Anders Olsson is an accomplished academic, literary historian and critic, these qualifications do not endow him with charm offensive necessary to be a front facing and engaging public relations representative for the Swedish Academy. Since the 2018 & 2019 prize announcements, Olsson’s approach to the announcement is one of somber sermon than enlightening engagement. The remainder of the announcement press conference, consists of Olsson lecturing from lectern and droning on like an outdated clergyman. The event has become more about endurance then enjoyment. This current itineration of the prize’s announcement is dreadfully dull and boring. Its previous incarnation may have been more unscripted and sporadic, but at least it was concise and entertaining. In preparation for this year’s award, I intend to listen to the laureate’s announcement and then wait for the press release to be published on the Nobel website. Olsson’s dry lecturing is rather heavy for the early hours.
 
As for the Swedish Academy in turn, this is the first time in over thirty years the academy is at a full roster. In 1989 two members recused themselves (remember before the bylaws were changed, election to the Swedish Academy was a lifetime appointment) due to a lack of condemnation and response from the Swedish Academy regarding the death decree that was issued against Salman Rushdie. Both Kerstin Ekman and Lars Gyllensten symbolically resigned and refused to participate in the Academy’s work further, citing the academy’s lack of support and defense of a writer and freedom of speech as an appalling derelict of duty. In 2016 the Swedish Academy, finally made an announcement of their support of Salman Rushdie; though were silent once again after the attempted assassination and stabbing of Rushdie in 2022. Since 1996 due to conflicts with the then Permanent Secretary Sture Allen and his successor Horace Engdahl, Knut Ahnlund participated minimally within the academy’s workings; by 2005 he publicly announced his own recusal from the institution, blaming the decision to award Elfriede Jelinek the previous year as the ultimate decision to recuse himself. The subsequent decades saw members die, scandal, and a flurry of resignations. Now with the induction of David Håkansson to Chair No. 3 and Anna-Karin Palm to Chair No. 16, the Swedish Academy is finally at a full roster. How this changes the academy’s workings, and whether or not more members will introduce greater debate and perspectives is unknown; but for the Swedish Academy itself, it finds itself full bodied and complete.
 

—    II —

 

The Nobel Prize in Literature is never short of criticism. One of the few awards which can be easily weighted and commented on by the public, the Nobel Prize in Literature inevitably provokes debate and discussion. As one commentator put it: it’s a matter of taste. One pointed criticism leveraged against the Nobel Prize in Literature and by extension the Swedish Academy is the glaring imbalance between male laureates (103) and female laureates (17). Previously, entire decades have been awarded exclusively to men, such as the 1970’s and 1980’s. This is not to say that previous laureates are not some of the greatest writers of their time and still have resounding impact; but the notion that there never was a female writer of equal literary merit and match does not retain water. However, in the Swedish Academy’s defense, they can only evaluate on whose been nominated. If no female writer has been nominated (or too few), the Swedish Academy is cannot be held responsible, as they can only evaluate and assess potential candidates based off those nominated. It is not a stretch to believe that some academics or nominating institutions would overlook or willfully neglect to nominate female writers. After a 25-year drought between Nelly Sachs sharing the Nobel Prize in Literature with Shmuel Yosef Agnon in 1966 and Nadine Gordimer winning the prize in 1991; there has been a concentrated effort to award more women writers. Over the past 33 years, 11 of the 17 women laureates have been awarded.
 
Over the past six years, the Swedish Academy begun to operate on a conventional alternating cycle, between awarding a male writer and a woman writer. Starting retroactively in 2018 with the Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk, the Swedish Academy has awarded three female writers, with the last one being the French writer Annie Ernaux in 2022. Many speculators and commentators believe (and not wrongly) that by the rules of precedence the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature has a high probability of going to a woman writer. Caution should always be exercised when framing obligations and expectations towards the Swedish Academy. Notoriously fussy and fickle, the academy and members are convinced of their ordained position as an authority on what constitutes great literature, and as such do not appreciate the notion that others can dictate or influence their decisions. The Swedish Academy may choose to award a female writer this year; but to expect them to award a female writer on the singular understanding that its an alternating cycle of conventional precedence, does feel underwhelmingly boring. Almost predictable. While it can be appreciated that the Swedish Academy is making a conscientious effort to induct more women laureates into the Nobel Pantheon, doing so simply to round out or inflate the numbers cheapens every female Nobel Laureate, which is an optic the Swedish Academy weighs with equal importance, as all eleven previous female Nobel Laureates from Nadine Gordimer in 1991 to Annie Ernaux in 2022, have all been exceptional. Of course, not without controversy, as in the case of Elfriede Jelinek for example; but each one is a consummate and talented writer, tackling the weighted subjects of the human condition; no different then their male counterparts, even handling the subjects with more subtlety and weight, completely abandoning the panache polemics of their male colleagues. Others have become masters of their forms, completely expanding the forms potential beyond their preconceived limitations. Many in turn were also great innovators both in language but also in creating new forms and literary modes of expression in which to mull over the weighted complexities of the human experience, specifically of the 20^th century. To expect the Swedish Academy to award a female writer simply because its 2024 and Jon Fosse was awarded last year is a cheap perspective. If the Swedish Academy chooses to award a woman writer this year, the expectation that they will be able to match and deliver on the same caliber as previous laureates is pretty high, and an unenviable situation. In that regard, there’s a hope the Swedish Academy does away with the cycle, in order to mitigate the sense that they are fulfilling quotas, and regain a sense of agency thereby thwarting expectations, and sparing potential women writers from the disbarring criticism that they were only awarded based on the nature of their sex, and not their literary qualifications. Naturally, however, the Swedish Academy will inevitably remediate the gap between female and male laureates, and in the near future award two female writers in a row. It’s a matter of when, not if. Preferably though, when this hypersensitive environment of identity politics have faded once more, and the laureate can be assessed on the nature of their work and literary contributions, rather than the metrics of their sex.
 

—    III —

 

Nobel Speculation is never complete without the abundance of lists formulated, discussed, and debated around the internet. An interesting addition is a placeholder Wikipedia article is formed, vaguely providing its own speculation, rattling off quite a few different writers, but not issuing any allegiance or certainty to whether or not they have a chance. Gentle Readers, if you are able to see the article, before the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Literature, it’s a unique list full of writer’s worth looking into, regardless of their chances of receiving the prize. It also documents the current Swedish Academy members who are on the Nobel Prize Committee. This year’s members are:
 
            Anders Olsson, Committee Chair – Chair No. 4
            Mats Malm, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy – Chair No. 11
            Ellen Mattson – Chair No. 9
            Steve Sem-Sandberg – Chair No. 14
            Anne Swärd – Chair No. No. 13
            Anna-Karin Palm – Chair No. 16
 
Anna-Karin Palm, is one of the newest members inducted to the Swedish Academy along with the linguist, David Håkansson of Chair No. 3. She also replaces the previous Nobel Committee member Per Wästberg of Chair No. 12. The induction of Anna-Karin Palm also ensures that the Nobel Committee is split between three men and three women. This comes as no surprise after the 2018 scandal and subsequent fall out, as the Swedish Academy has been accused of overlooking women members, and as part of their reconciliatory efforts the Swedish Academy has made an increased effort in recruiting women. As for the placeholder article on Wikipedia and subsequent list, a fascinating compilation of writers is assembled, but it could not be considered absolute or complete. Its interesting to note quite a few Swedish writers were included on the list. Its an unwritten rule, but the Swedish Academy has shown great apprehension at awarding Swedish writers. When Tomas Tranströmer won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2011, then Permanent Secretary Peter Englund was quick to squash and dismiss any notion of Scandinavian bias, and by and large everyone accepted Tomas Tranströmer as an accomplished and remarkable poet, who had long been rumoured to be in contention for the prize since the 1990’s. A few stand out names on this year’s placeholder article include the following:
 

          Kerstin Ekman
          Tua Forsström
          Katarina Frostenson
          Lotta Lotass

Steve Sem-Sandberg

          Per Wästberg
 

What binds theses writers together is the fact that they are all or were a member of the Swedish Academy. After the 1974 boondoggle, my understanding is the Swedish Academy revised its bylaws once more prohibiting any member of the Swedish Academy from eligibility for the award. This nullifies the candidacy of Tua Forsström, Steve Sem-Sandberg and Per Wästberg, who are all members of the Swedish Academy. Kerstin Ekman, Katarina Frostenson, and Lotta Lotass, have all formally resigned from the Swedish Academy after the 2018 Scandal. Kerstin Ekman, as previously noted, was inactive since the 1980’s, while Lotta Lotass had become inactive within the academy since 2016 before formally resigning after the 2018 Scandal. As for Katarina Frostenson, while regarded as an esoteric, opaque, and impenetrable poet, her resignation from the Swedish Academy was contentious, due to allegations and accusations of conflict of interest, breaking the Swedish Academy statue of secrecy, among other allegations of ethical violations. I don’t know what the Swedish Academy statues prohibit or allow regarding the resignation of former members and their own candidacy for the prize, but I can’t imagine the Swedish Academy would accept their nominations lightly, considering the lasting stain of the 1974 prize. On a minor note of clarification, Tua Forsström is a Finnish national but Swedish language poet, she is to my knowledge the first Finnish writer to be elected to the Swedish Academy. Another note of clarification, is Rosa Liksom is a Finnish writer (both national and language), but is listed as Swedish in the placeholder article. Naja Marie Aidt as well is a Danish writer who has been mistakenly classified as a writer Dutch writer.
 
The list of course includes the usual suspects and candidates, from Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Murakami Haruki, and António Lobo Antunes; to the more eccentric and obscure, such as the Icelandic writer Vigdís Grímsdóttir, Finnish writer Antti Tuuri, the Spanish poet Pere Gimferrer whose literary languages include Castilian and Catalan; and the Brazilian writer Luiz Ruffato. In all it’s a myriad of names worth exploring and looking into. Of course, each writer listed has as much chance of receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature as any other, though granted some have a greater likeliness then others. The list also presents a very limited perspective regarding the global perspective of world literature. For example, only two writers from India are listed: Anita Desia and Amitav Ghosh, and both of their literary languages are English. The only South Korean writer listed is Ko Un, and while the pre-eminent Korean poet has been internationally recognized and often considered a perennial candidate for the award for decades, in 2018 Ko Un was accused of using his literary status and privilege to take advantage of younger female poets. Since then, Ko Un’s reputation with South Korean society has been tarnished with the removal of his poetry from text books and declining sales figures. Beyond the controversy, South Korea has made a considerable investment in promoting their cultural exports abroad, including literature. South Korean novelists such as Han Kang, Bae Suah, Hwang Sok-yong and Yi Mun-yol are now recognized figures abroad, and are often speculated as being potential Nobel Laureates (in the event of Han Kang, she is on the younger side, but will most likely be considered a serious contender in the next seven or eight years); while the poet Kim Hyesoon is recongized as a defining feminist voice in South Korean poetry. The list also has extensive gaps or limited offerings from around the world, as no Greek language writer is listed, and a small offering from the African continent, South America, the Middle East, and Asia outside of the major nations. This of course highlights the problem the Swedish Academy faces within their mandate to recognize great literature from around the world. Its vastness and linguistic variety go beyond the Swedish Academy’s ability to properly evaluate. While Anders Olsson said in 2019 that the award has changed in perspective:
 

“[ . . .] Now we are looking much more for the global totality. I mean we have, really. It's necessary for us to widen our perspectives more and more. Previously we had a more, let's say, Eurocentric perspective of literature and now we are looking all over the world.”

 
The task is still herculean in scope and impossible to satisfy. Even the placeholder article has a pronounced tilt towards European and English language writers. This of course is not a criticism; the Swedish Academy shoulders a colossal albeit doomed task. As much as Anders Olsson would like the Nobel Prize to take on a more global perspective, a jury of 18 Swedes is not capable of adjudicating or fulfilling that mandate. Even with the assistance and support of external experts, the Swedish Academy is ultimately to small to take on the global approach that they aspire. What is important, however, is that they do aspire for it.
 
One of the interesting discoveries I found from last years Nobel Speculation, was the Swiss poet Klaus Merz, affectionally referred to as the watchmaker poet, for his economical poetry whose virtues are brevity and concision. Merz’s poetry is exquisite in its detailed instrumentation and understatement. While early poems were compared to haikus for their imagistic orientation and succinctness, Merz’s poetry was never reduced to an engineered schematic or soulless automation, spinning on preordained and designed gears and movements. Concision does not mean the amputation of palpability or soul; it merely means in Klaus Merz’s hands the ostentations and ornamentation are aptly abandoned in favour of the filigree of subtlety. Despite Klaus Merz not being listed on the placeholder article, his countrymen and prose writer, Peter Stamm is. In a fashion similar to Klaus Merz, Peter Stamm’s novels and stories are renowned for their clean, plain, and icy tone, acute psychological acuity, and meticulously crafted austerely precise prose. I always think of Peter Stamm as that quintessential mid-century modern writer, one of streamlined minimalism, and matter of fact detail. The terms forensic, scaled, and severe have equally been used with regular frequency. Peter Stamm’s prose is an act of literary accountancy, scrupulous, unadorned, and sparse. Stamm is not a writer whose sentences are weighted in lengthy lugubrious deliberations, they have a refined draughtsman’s touch, hard lined and exactingly measured. Every word and sentence are measured up; there is no room for frivolity. In equal turn, Stamm’s examination of his characters psychology is equally surgical, drilling and boring into his characters skulls with a confident hand. While not renowned as a great stylist or provocateur of language, Peter Stamm’s brutalist unadorned prose gives way to detailed character studies, where the spectrum of human fallacy, tragedy, and cruelty. In this regard, Peter Stamm is a writer exploring the psychology of the human condition, with a psychopathological fixation on cause and affect, specifically the Darwinian destiny for disappointment and hardship. Peter Stamm is a difficult writer to clearly define. Through prose that can be described as crystalline and unadorned, even brutalist in their concrete geometric assembly. Stamm has described his writing as being curious about describing the events as they’ve happened or the aftermath of events, not a writer interested in action or content, but the landscape of the events, their aftermath, one’s relationship to it, and in turn their understanding and recollection of the events. Peter Stamm’s literary style appears agreeable to the Swedish Academy’s current trending tastes—be it clinical acuity or unmistakable austerity—yet, often it seems Peter Stamm’s forensic psychological autopsies exist only in that procedural form. They examine and dissect the events, the character, the entire purview, but stop before probing further. Peter Stamm’s literary accountancy does not stray into the realm of speculative or theorization. Minute craftsmanship provide the necessary inclinations of hidden depths, for the readers to ultimately plunge into.  
 
Beyond the placeholder Wikipedia article, there’s no Nobel Prize in Literature speculation without peering into the misguided pseudo-oracular world of the betting sites. At this time the first-tier top contenders (10/1 or lower) for the award are two Asian writers, Can Xue followed by Murakami Haruki. The second-tier (16/1 – 11/1) is made the usual suspects with the addition of startling new name for the betting sites to consider at such low odds: Ersi Sotiropoulos; followed by Gerald Murnane, Cesar Aira, Margaret Atwood, and Thomas Pynchon. The third-tier (20/1 – 17/1) is once again made up the usual suspects, with some suspicious names. Anne Carson finds herself in the third tier alongside Pierre Michon, newcomers Carl Frode Tiller and Norbert Gstrein. The fourth-tier (25/1 – 21/1) is made up entirely of perennial speculated candidates, Adunis, Don DeLillo, László Krasznahorkai, Mircea Cărtărescu, Péter Nádas, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Salman Rushdie, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, and the new inductee Kanai Mieko. Other honourable and notable mentions included on the betting sites are: Emmanuel Carrere, Ananda Devi, David Grossman, Hamid Ismailov, Homero Aridjis, Karl Ove Knausgård, Andrey Kurkov, Michel Houellebecq, Ryszard Krynicki, and Ivan Vladislavic.
 
The betting sites are interesting barometers, taking the temperature and adjusting accordingly to the publics perceived interests in the award, and candidates they deem likely to win (or likely to win by the publics standards). For years now, Can Xue has been considered a top contending perennial candidate. There is no writer quite comparable to Can Xue. While critics have designated her as the Chinese Kafka, its only an attempt providing some delineating definition to her otherwise amorphous form, which defies categorization and classification. Can Xue is absolutely singular in form, described as the foremost practitioner of the avant-garde literature, as her work continually explores the limitations of narrative and literary modes of expressions and then moves beyond them. Xue’s novels are often structureless and formless; images are layered on top of each, but rather than have an implied systematic approach to construct some semblance of order, Xue continually defies this expectation. This often leads critics to refer to Can Xue’s work as both impenetrable and performative based, lacking the pre-conceived expectations of underlying foundation of narrative or structure. Instead, Can Xue continue to explore surreal fever dreamscapes. Last year, this surveyor of the surreal and strange was heavily theorized to be the running contender for the award, which ultimately went to the transcendental tidal oriented playwright and novelist Jon Fosse. Yet, Can Xue has returned to the forefront of the betting sites and obviously occupies even a greater curiosity of the reading public. It is difficult imagining the Swedish Academy whole heartedly endorsing Can Xue however. Despite being one of the most daring, controversial, and perhaps brilliant (depending on who you ask) writers currently at work, Xue is often ignored or dismissed as being to cerebral, outlandish, and incoherent. Before her international reputation expanded over the years, Can Xue remained unappreciated and ignored in China, with some critics arguing she was certifiably insane early on. Since the death of the Swedish Academy member and sinologist Göran Malmqvist, its difficult to see the Swedish Academy having the knowledge and willingness to understand contemporary Chinese literature and cultural writers. There again lies another scenario, before his death Göran Malmqvist may have soured on the idea of Can Xue, either by outrightly dismissing her work or having built a strong enough case against recognizing her with the Nobel Prize in Literature, members of the academy may be uncomfortable with contradicting these arguments. Of course, this is pure speculation. The last Chinese language writer to receive the award, Mo Yan was marked by considerable controversy and political criticism, for Mo Yan’s apparent comfort and friendliness with the Chinese government. There where then further criticism over the appearance of ethics violations between the relationship of Göran Malmqvist and Mo Yan, as Malmqvist was Mo Yan’s translator, and the two were known friends. If the Swedish Academy decided to award Can Xue, they would certainly have awarded a writer of daring, if albeit an incomprehensible vision. If anything, the betting sites are skiing on the coat tails of last years speculation.
 
There are some writers who are included as expected, if only because they have been speculated about for years, as in the case of Murakami Haruki, who (in my humble opinion) no longer has the quality or the seriousness of literary artistry to be considered a candidate for the prize. His recent output has been described as weak and superficial, and is more concerned with building a brand name then strong literary convicted works. To my understanding his most recent novel published in Japan is a remix of one of his earlier novels “Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World.” The inclusion of Murakami only recognizes his hordes of fans and devoted readers who militantly advocate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. While they have been disappointed in the past with Murakami not being announced as the years laureate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, hopefully they will be disappointed again this year. Despite, Murakami being the most popular Japanese writer currently working today, there are more and more Japanese writers’ language writers finding themselves in translation, proving that Murakami’s stranglehold on the world stage is diminishing. No surprise, however, as for years English language publishers have continually sought the next Murakami cash cow. While no writer has yet to fulfill that need, a diverse group of Japanese language writers have broken free from Murakami’s shadow, which includes Kawakami Mieko and Ono Masatsugu.
 
It is interesting to observe Kanai Meiko listed on the betting sites. Her recent novel “Mild Vertigo,” was recently published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, who has three pre-emptive Nobel Laureates in its catalogue: Olga Tokarczuk, Annie Ernaux, and Jon Fosse. The novel itself has been praised by critics for its disquieting narrative exploring the interior life of a Japanese housewife, with all entrapments, flights of fantasy, mundanity, drudgery and lifelessness. Yet Kanai layers the narrative with stimuli and thoughts, the entire world becomes a cacophony of white noise channeled through the narrator: an otherwise ordinary housewife, who is trapped within the societal expectations of motherhood, femineity, marriage, and domesticity, to the point she is erased. Through the continued stream of consciousness and external nodes and information, the narrator is gradually entombed and smothered. Any semblance of her own being is amputated or stilted or dissolved entirely. Her efforts must be towards housekeeping, child rearing, and being a dutiful wife. In “Mild Vertigo,” Kanai Mieko tunes to the channel of late-stage capitalism with torrential its torrent of never-ending stimuli, and explores the erasure of an individual lost within this world of continued monetization (and ironically enough, this was before the era of social media and influencer culture). Little of Kanai Mieko’s work has been translated into English, an early short story collection “The Word Book,” showcased the authors interest in extreme postmodernism and metafictional games. There’s very little else for readers to assess. In Japanese Kanai is renowned as a film critic, with some of her pieces apparently making their way into “Mild Vertigo.”
 
Fluid is the term that Tawada Yōko has used to describe her writing. A talented expatriate novelist, Tawada navigates not only differences in literary style and historical development in it contextual structures, but also shifts between two different literary languages depending on her mode of composition. For novels, Tawada writes in her native Japanese, while short stories and essays, she composes in her adopted German. Language for Tawada is clearly an artificial construct, which she delights in dissecting and deconstructing, proving that language as an artificial endeavour which also subjugates and captures reality within a defined and oppressive notion of meaning. In this regard, reality does not influence language, rather language provides the necessary infrastructure to define and delineate reality, which ultimately changes our perception and relationship to it. Tawada Yōko’s is a writer who traverses between boundaries and borders be it linguistically or geographically, while Tawada has described her work as being a state of continuous translation, sharing neither allegiance to Japanese or German, but playfully exploring the contrariness and strangeness of either language. In German, Tawada is more prone to engage in more experimental experiments with language, inventing neologisms then she is in her predominately Japanese language work. Tawada Yōko’s exploration of boundaries and borders, from national, to linguistic, geographic, and even existential, showcase her as one of the most innovative writers currently at work in both Japanese and German, the fluidity of her work and its global perspective, showcases Tawada as a groundbreaking and innovative writer, whose linguistic examination have not been awarded since Elfriede Jelinek and Herta Müller.
 
At long last it seems Ogawa Yōko is finally gaining traction within the English language publication sphere. Early on, publishers eyed her up as a potential female Murakami and often attempted to market her within that realm, as another eccentric and quirky Japanese language writer whose work veers into the complex implausible dreamscapes; little did they realize that, that is not Ogawa’s style. Her initial publications “The Diving Pool: Three Novellas,” “Hotel Iris,” and “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” showed the range of Ogawa’s work. “The Diving Pool,” for example is an earlier work, showcasing an early interest in the grotesque and the macabre of the mundane. “Hotel Iris,” was equally as dark in its dissection of desire and its subsequent psychosexual response played out in a relationship built on domination and submission. Then “the Housekeeper and the Professor,” in turn was marketed as a saccharine eccentric love story involving mathematics and memory loss. The short story collection “Revenge,” returned to menace and disturbed realities of “The Diving Pool,” whereby the subtlety of the grotesque in the mundane blooms and spoors like ravenous mould. Ogawa’s really breakout came with her early novel “The Memory Police,” which thankfully being shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020, and was considered a timely allegory for the pandemic, as it details the phantasmagoric dystopia world, whereby manufactured and directed amnesia erases memories and objects in a bureaucratic fashion, and enforced by the titular memory police. Four years later and another novel “Mina’s Matchbox,” is translated into English, and again veers into the peculiar world of “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” with its physical claustrophobic narrative and delight in domestic details, but also veers into the slanted off-kilter eccentricates (there’s a pygmy hippo as a mode of transportation). Ogawa’s thematic concerns are memory, the act of remembrance, in addition to loss and abscence, destruction and redaction of memory, and by extension our relationship with history and the external world. These are themes shared by many recent Nobel Laureates in all of their variations. Then of course there is Ogawa Yōko’s style, a blanched and bleached literary approach to writing, often described as a ‘natural,’ language by her translators, which again fits into many recent Nobel Laureates, whose literary sensibilities were known for their strict pruning, austerity, clinical acuity, and otherwise plain prose. The late Ōe Kenzaburō praised Ogawa for her subtle psychological insight into the human condition and her clear lyrical literary language. An established figure in the French language, Ogawa Yōko has been emancipated from the reputation and shadow of Murakami, and made a name for herself on her own merit. Ogawa’s work is diverse in theme, scope, and narrative; yet, her short story “Afternoon at The Bakery,” is perhaps the greatest litmus test of her style and capacity as a writer. Through matter-of-fact prose and the accumulation of detail, Ogawa describes a simple errand of a mother going to a bakery to buy her son a strawberry shortcake for his birthday. This otherwise wholesome moment is quickly subjected to the viscerally grotesque, when the mother reveals her son is dead, still in the same crystalline prose, deprived of emotional sensationalism. This is Ogawa’s strength capturing the stillness and inaction of her characters as their world teeters on the precipice of ruin, or when reality is confronted and defaced by the gruesome or macabre, be it the ghost and tragedy of loss or a severed tongue found in a pocket, and the quaint cellophane of normalcy is confronted with the reality of its own decaying ruin or violent vandalism and violation which completely alters one’s perspective and expectation of reality.
 
Seeing Ersi Sotiropoulos listed with such stellar odds is a surprise and delight. Only two Greek writers have won the Nobel Prize in Literature in the mid-century: Giorgos Seferis (1963) and Odysseus Elytis (1979). Both of them poets. Giorgos Seferis a disciple of the high modernism of the early 20^th century utilized a Hellenic flare to recognize history and literary tradition, employing the Homeric myths with contemporary speech; but his poetry also explored exile, wandering, and travels. As for Odysseus Elytis, he was the vassal of the sun, the great sun drinking poet, whose work had a touch of the surrealism, but infused it with the Mediterranean light and sea. As for Ersi Sotiropoulos, she’s more postmodernist to Giorgos Seferis high modernist Hellenic modernism and Odysseus Elytis surreal spiritual poetry. Sotiropoulos’s work is disinterested in the normal convents of narrative, often described as circuitous in nature, in a manner similar to a cul-de-sac. The 20^th century was a contentious century, its early decades marked with history defining wars and crippling postwar periods. Tragedy and horror were their defining attributes, and from there, the militia industry and technology expedited its advancement. While the world moved on from the ashes of the Second World War, faced with the inhumane horrors of the holocaust, the sheer depravity and indignation of all the war crimes, and the new nightmare of the nuclear bomb, a new war formed, one that was colder and fought with ideological posturing and diplomatic swipes. The humanism and democratic values created and championed by the ancient Greeks had all but been tramped and ground into the earth. Even Greece was not immune from this authoritarian disease, as a military junta took control in the 1970’s. This century has equally been punitively punishing on Greece. After the 2004 summer Olympics, five years later the country would dive into an economic crisis, which not only destroyed their financial institutions, but drained their charitable accounts, and eroded their political infrastructure. Greece was discussed as a poor sickly creature. While endowed with ancient and proud history, its contemporary circumstances not only reduced it, but diminished it to a state of poverty and bankruptcy. Ersi Sotiropoulos is a surveyor of this world; and while she celebrates good principles and the philosophies of ancient Greece, they are not absolute or absolved of scrutiny. In her yet untranslated novel “Eva,” Ersi Sotiropoulos surveys the destitution of the financial crisis and gives it a very human face, an all too familiar visage. Her masterful novel “Zigzag Through the Bitter-Orange Trees,” employees the upcoming Olympics as it floats through the lives of the four characters and their disenfranchised lost youth. “Landscape with Dog,” showcased Sotiropoulos as a natural talented practitioner of the short story, as each story is a dark glistening shard of glass, capturing through precise language the faults, failures, and silent ambiguities of human relationships, these otherwise simple scenes of daily life are punctuated with the power politics of relationships. With Ersi Sotiropoulos being listed so high on the betting sites list, I wondered to myself: what do they know that I don’t? Truth be told, they know nothing more then myself, but as a reader who enjoys her Ersi Sotiropoulos, it would be an absolute pleasure if Sotiropoulos won the prize.
 
The recent death of Ismail Kadare, proves the Swedish Academy can be misguided or petulant in their deliberations and decisions. Kadare inevitably joins a long list of writers, who in spite of their perceived and speculated candidacy, would never receive the award. Despite the Swedish Academy’s oversight Ismail Kadare will continue to be read and appreciated. Sadly, the Swedish Academy have painted themselves into another corner regarding awarding the poet Adunis, who is considered one of the defining and revolutionary forces of contemporary Arabic poetry. Despite this, the Swedish Academy be it their own insularity or eccentricities has routinely refused to award Adunis the Nobel Prize in Literature. Perhaps they are under the misguided notion that to award Adunis the Nobel would be considered a trite event, to obvious for their taste; akin to pining a medal on Mount Everest declaring it the tallest mountain in the world. Regardless, the Swedish Academy and its members continually propagate and pontificate the notion that they are merely connoisseurs of great literature, which they refuse to define, instead abstracting an ephemeral enigma that incites further indignation and questions, as in the case of a recent decision where the notion of what constitutes poetry was up for debate. In any matter if the Swedish Academy wants to adjudicate literature and doll out medals to writers of great literature, surely it comes to reason that they inevitably would have to concede the medal to an obvious choice, such as Ismail Kadare or Adunis.
 
László Krasznahorkai, Mircea Cărtărescu, Péter Nádas are three titans of global literature. László Krasznahorkai has long been favoured and appreciated by literary hipsters, for his dense labyrinthine novels of oozing lava-oriented text. His early complex novels “War and War,” “The Melancholy of Resistance,” and “Satantango,” have rightfully earned Krasznahorkai the moniker “master of the apocalypse,” as these novels in their own manic and deranged way suffer beneath the deluge of the intolerable squander of the human condition and its most primordial fallacies; in “The Melancholy of Resistance,” it is entrapment of ideologies and push of resistance; in “Satantango,” it’s the misrepresentation and belief of false idols, who are only so keen to take advantage of desperation; while “War and War,” burrows into the mania of a suicidal obsessive clerk, whose obsession with some obscure text, not only tortures him but is his only tether to the world. Throughout it all László Krasznahorkai has risen as one of the most original and complex writers of contemporary Hungarian and world literature. Fellow countrymen, Péter Nádas is of equal renown, large doorstop novels of equal complexity, wrestling with the eternal themes of the human condition; yet, László Krasznahorkai turned his attention towards novels which became more concentrated and allegorical on manufacturing of creative processes and the act of creation, Nádas is more historian, investigator, and archivist. In “Shimmering Details, Volume I & II,” Péter Nádas traces his and his family’s history throughout the 19^th century and 20^th century, dredging up, polishing, and curating the shimmering details which season their lives, and connecting these details and other random facts amongst the backdrop of history to create constellations of lives. In turn Péter Nádas novel “The Book of Memory,” is a postmodern Proustian feat, a multilayered novel narrating three parallel stories of infatuation and heartache. It’s a complex read and immediately conferred that Nádas a writer of merit and weight, who inherits the modernist mantel and continues to the explore the complexities of memory, consciousness, and language. Few writers are writers of ideas anymore, Péter Nádas is a bastion defense to preserve literature as a medium in which to wrestle and explore ideas in their fullness. There’s no writer quite like Mircea Cărtărescu whose dense novels are not burdened with detail but are saturated with it. For Cărtărescu the void is not an inky black hole or gaping maw of nothingness, it is a psychedelic kaleidoscope. While few of Mircea Cărtărescu’s novels have been translated into English, what has become available proves that Cărtărescu is of a singular vision, his novels are flooded with bombastic barque language and vivid explosive imagery, which continually layer onto each other to create a bewildering, dazzling, and disorienting experience for readers. A recent translation of Mircea Cărtărescu’s novel “Solenoid,” is a freewheeling narrative which sprouts beyond the grounded seed work of a diarists account and voyages into the discussion of philosophy, psychology, mathematics, physics, all the while being intercepted and pelted with the absurdities of daily life, be it authoritarian bureaucracies which have obviously taken Kafka as instructional material; to the outlandish and strange. As a testament to the appreciation for such refreshing complexity, Mircea Cărtărescu received the International Dublin Literary Award this year for “Solenoid.” All three writers are titans, and yet each one is renowned for their dense prose, their complexity of their novels, and their uncompromising and unapologetic vision and force. Recent laureates have exercised greater restraint with their literary work, rendering their novels in prose that is bleached, blanched, and scalped clean. They do not revere the ostentatious, the burdensome baroque, or vividly chart the cosmos and interior as these three writers do. Hopefully their sense of flourish and celebration of the complexity plays to their favour, rather then being a detriment.
 
Three other writers have taken home some significant international literary awards this year as well, which may highlight their chances of receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature. Not appearing on any betting site or the placeholder Wikipedia article, is the Brazilian poet Adélia Prado who received the Camões Prize this year. Adélia Prado is a late blooming poet, having not started to have her work published until she was in her forties (now in her late eighties), Prado has garnered much attention for her sensual and ripened poetry, paradoxically combining the rigidity and sanctimonious prudishness of devote Catholicism with imagery that is carnal and corporeal. Adélia Prado merely dismisses this contrariness as eroticism of the soul, and not veering into the depravity of sexual discourse. In 2014, Adélia Prado won the Griffin Lifetime Recognition Award, which only affirms the renown of her poetry. What is enjoyable about Adélia Prado’s poetry is the quotidian and the divine crossing the stage in turn. Recently, Ananda Devi was announced as this year’s winner of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, cementing Devi’s as one of the most important literary voices of Mauritius. While J.M.G. Le Clézio hailed from Mauritius, the French writer’s work was more ethnological and ecological in its concerns, wandering and traversing a variety cultures and ways of life across the world, which were written about in poetically adventurous prose (this is of course, after Le Clézio abandoned the literary tricks of the Nouveau roman). Ananda Devi remains rooted in Mauritius, rather than flying from it, and uses the small island nation as a petri dish to examine with a social anthropologist’s acute eye the intertwining of identities and diverse cultures within a small multicultural nation in a postcolonial landscape. Devi was nominated for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature with her novel “Eve Out of Her Ruins,” which is considered her most important novel. Through brutal poetic honesty and urgency, Ananda Devi details the lives of four young Mauritians who seek to create a life for themselves and a sense of identity, freed from the customary precedence of violence and fear which runs rampant through the small island nation. “Eve Out of Her Ruins,” is a polyphonic novel, with each character and monologue provide their own rhythm and cadence. The Neustadt International Prize for Literature has only elevated Ananda Devi’s literary reputation abroad and on the international stage. Mia Couto in turn has added another feather to his cap, the FIL Literary Award in Romance Languages. Previous recipients include Ida Vitale, Emmanuel Carrère, Enrique Vila-Matas, and Claudio Magris. Mia Couto has long been considered one of the most important literary voices of Mozambique. Couto’s novels are known for blending and blurring the line between realism and mythical interference, which often leads critics to quickly establish and process Couto as a magical realist writer. Yet, the defining feature of Couto’s work is language. Mia Couto’s magpie eye for language and appropriating words, slogans, and sayings from other languages and reconfiguring them into Portuguese; this linguistic scavenging was highlighted by the Neustadt International Prize for Literature jury when awarding Mia Couto the prize in 2014. Recently, Couto has finished his “Sands of the Emperor Trilogy,” which has gradually been translated and published into English. Defining features for some recent Nobel Laureates to be awarded the prize is the recent publication of what is considered their crowning achievement. For Jon Fosse it was his Septology and Olga Tokarczuk it was “The Book of Jacob,” perhaps with the completion of the “Sands of the Emperor Trilogy,” Mia Couto is being assessed anew. Even without the trilogy, Couto is one of the most innovative and inventive writers coming from the African continent. When the young writer joined the revolutionary freedom movement, Frelimo in Mozambique’s fight for independence, Couto was not chosen because of his suffering or denied because of his privileged background, but was chosen because the revolution needed its poets, and Mia Couto has indeed been Mozambique’s greatest literary cultivator and celebrator.
 
Of course, the greatest disappointment with Nobel Speculation and reviewing other lists is all the writers missing. Where’s Doris Kareva or Magdalena Tulli? How can someone overlook Agi Mishol? How disappointing not to see Gyrðir Elíasson included in speculative conversations. Yet, it has come to my attention that Jon Fosse is a fan, which hopefully guarantees Elíasson’s nomination. It’s a sad reminder to see Eeva Tikka not mentioned, which is realistic all things considered, but it would be nice to have her work published in English, the few samples available are certainly intriguing enough to leave one wanting something more substantial. It comes as no surprise to see that Fleur Jaeggy is looked over, she is a dry ice precisionist, and her cool detached prose with its clinical examining tone may dazzle readers, while leaving them frost bitten. The greatest fun though of Nobel Prize in Literature speculation is of course learning about new writers and their work, its enough to fill the shelves for the coming years and certainly keep any reader entertained with new writers to explore. Why is Bae Suah dismissed as a potential laureate? While its true that Han Kang has received more recognition in translation with awards and appreciation for her polished and emotionally searing prose; Bae Suah is more cerebral, complex, and daring, with her novels described as antinovels, as they deconstruct and autopsy conventional narrative forms. If the Swedish Academy is looking for a dark horse, Bae Suah is more then qualifying. Esther Kinsky’s profile is rising in English translation as well. Again, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, Kinsky’s prose is beautiful and dense, occupying that Sebaldian space between history, essay, travelogue, and fiction. While Jenny Erpenbeck is seen as one of the leading frontrunning German language writers, Esther Kinsky should not be easily dismissed.
 

—    IV —

 
October is on the horizon as September winds down. In two weeks, we will finally learn who this years Nobel Laurate in Literature will be. At this point, there’s no writer which jumps out as being the frontrunner or expectant laureate. While Can Xue is considered the bookies favourite, there is a current of hesitation which undercuts any certainty. For awhile now Can Xue has been considered a top tier contender for the prize, but her work is singular and strange and to quote many readers and reviewers: an acquired taste. Starting in 2020 with Louise Glück, the Swedish Academy’s began to express a certain appreciation for a style that is austere as it was measured, with a proclivity for polished refinement. Abdulrazak Gurnah’s prose in turn is known for its casual and loose form, refuting ostentatious showmanship. Annie Ernaux turned the pen into the scalpel and scaled back and bleached her prose to the point of it was clinical unburdened with the poetics of niceties, and engaged in a personal examination in contrast with the social. While Jon Fosse’s language is imbued with a tidal rhythm the back and forth, akin to a boat adrift on a moonless night, rocking in the wave’s eternal currents, but the language eschews pyrotechnic poetics. Can Xue does not fit into this precedence. Of course, this precedence is only commented on via an external matter, it is not necessarily a metric that is being applied at all, but it does show a certain preference by members of the Swedish Academy. For the sake of argument though, the Swedish Academy has also shown an interest in writers who have expanded or revolted against the traditional literary forms. Svetlana Alexievich remains a complex laureate to classify. Are her works considered journalism or historical cartography? Alexievich has described her work as “documentary novels,” or “novels of voices,” whereby Alexievich collates the testimonies of the lived personal human history of some of the most defining and catastrophic events of the past century, which included the role of women soldiers in the Red Army during the Second World War; the scarring trauma of the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster; and the plight of the Soviet and post-Soviet individual in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable democratic landscape. Peter Handke’s literary career began as an iconoclast, revolting against the apologist, morally concerned, penance-oriented positions of writers of the previous generation, who sought to repent and atone for the moral failings of and depravity which spewed from the Second World War; this generation included fellow laureates Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass. Handke turned his attention away from social reparations and atonements, and sought to explore the limitations and periphery of language, battling with it and revitalizing it away from the stain and political stench of the Nazis corrosive touch. The later Handke moves language into state which both reflects and rediscovers reality, while Handke’s characters and narratives often veer into the cerebral, absurd, or nightmarishly incoherent. Either way Can Xue has as much chance as any other writer.
 
Of course, it is ill advised to speak with any sense of confidence regarding speculation of who will be the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. There’s no crystal ball or tea leaves or stick formation or any astrological charting, which will provide the necessary insight to predict and navigate the predilections and deliberations of the Swedish Academy. Some writers, we inherently believe have more chance and opportunity then others. In turn (and perhaps illogically) those who are deserving often find themselves casually dismissed; but even then, the Swedish Academy has a reputation of thwarting all expectations, by awarding laureates who are best described coming completely left field, with one laureateship still causing a stir and debate of whether or not their work can be described as literature. 
 
This is the first year in which I’ve been forced to step back from more engaged speculation, and while its apparent, I have nothing to offer in regards to insight, I do maintain that the Swedish Academy is in an unenviable position, burdened with a herculean task and shackled further by their self-imposed mandate to evaluate and adjudicate world literature; to honour and recognize literary greatness. Its impossible, certainly for an academy made up of 18 members, who despite their professional and academic backgrounds and linguistic talents, still could not possibly be called upon to evaluate the whole of world literature with any true holistic approach. Inevitably the work must be done in piecemeal, and with an ever changing—and at times incomplete—roster, the Swedish Academy’s evaluations are noted for tipping heavily in certain directions. Yet, they make the effort, and while they are not always successful, their efforts are insightful and interesting. Here’s hoping on October 10 we get a surprise Nobel Laureate, in the matter of an interesting writer to discover and delve into. One of those more obscure writers, whose work is begging for a greater audience.
 
Until then Gentle Reader.
 
Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary