The Observer / The Guardian, UK
Oct 16 2005
Nobel adversaries
Robert McCrum
Some years ago in transit through Bangkok, I found myself in the
airport bookshop browsing a paperback novel by a local writer with an
almost unpronounceable name. I forget the title, but the publisher’s
blend of chutzpah and wishful thinking was memorable. In large red
letters above the author’s name was the legend: ‘Shortlisted for the
Nobel Prize’.
Unlike Booker, the Nobel does not go in for a shortlist, at least in
public. The academy’s business is conducted behind closed doors and
what we are allowed to see is all very Swedish. Where Booker triggers
an avalanche of press releases, parties and book-trade promotions,
Nobel amounts to one man (the secretary of the academy) standing in a
baroque salon and uttering one name to the world’s press on a
Thursday in early October. This statement is often followed by a
chorus of: ‘Who? Who?’, but since the academy never gives interviews,
no one is really any the wiser.
This bizarre ritual is now just over 100 years old. It’s an odd,
publicity-averse moment for a prize distinguished by sometimes
wayward eccentricity. The first Nobel (1901) should have gone to Leo
Tolstoy, but in the end it was awarded to an obscure French poet,
Rene Francois Armand Sully Prudhomme. That decision established a
preference for the maverick that persisted throughout the subsequent
century.
Since then, Nobel has made some good choices – Eliot, Beckett,
Bellow, Marquez, Heaney – and some gobsmackers: Galsworthy, Pearl S
Buck, Winston Churchill and Nelly Sachs. En passant, it has
overlooked Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges and Graham Greene. Jean-Paul
Sartre turned it down in 1964, saying he did not want to be read by
‘celebrity collectors’.
The prize has also shied away from controversy. So there were no
awards from 1940 to 1943. In 1958, at the height of the Cold War, the
academy gave it to Boris Pasternak. There was a huge row with the
Soviet Union and since then the Nobel committee has opted for a quiet
life.
Quiet and, some might say, occasionally incomprehensible. For
instance, in the last decade, the Nobel has gone to Dario Fo (near
universal dismay), Gao Xingjian (bafflement) and, in 2004, the
reclusive Elfriede Jelinek.
So much for the global picture. From an insular, British point of
view, apart from Churchill, Golding (1983), and Bertrand Russell
(1950), Nobel has generally ignored English literature.
This makes the choice of Harold Pinter all the more welcome. Here,
beyond question, is a world-class playwright whose selection almost
on the day of his 75th birthday, will be the cause of widespread
rejoicing.
While The Observer congratulates the Swedish Academy for choosing a
great writer of international stature whose work has resonance around
the world, we cannot overlook the missed opportunity inherent in this
decision.
As Pinter himself will be only too well aware, Turkey’s most
distinguished living writer is Orhan Pamuk, author of The White
Castle, My Name Is Red and Snow. Pamuk currently faces trial for
making public reference to the genocidal Armenian massacres. His case
goes to court on 16 December; and, if convicted, he faces a
three-year prison sentence.
It’s wonderful news that Pinter is our latest Nobel laureate, but the
Swedes have missed a golden opportunity to take a stand against a
shameful and trumped-up assault on a writer’s freedom. Pinter would
be the first to recognise this.