Myshkin

What a stud! Also the Dodgers are pretty good.

Damn. Liotta was the fucking best. Gonna watch Cop Land tonight in his honor.

What is the context of this quote? I’m struggling to envision a reason why anyone would ever write something like that about themself.

Did you miss the part where I said pointless? Moist in the Moonlight has a very important point: the deep exploration of having sex with Scottish werewolves.

I’ll have you know that every single pointless sex romp I’ve ever written has clocked in at under 15,000 words! Anything more than that is just gratuitous. I will however admit that my karate learning montages tend to fall into the 70-80 thousand word range.

I know the whole books 2 and 3 are already done thing is what everyone remembers from this interview, but rereading it I also came across this gem: - What do you feel is your strength as a writer/storyteller? Brevity. - Brevity? In a 600+ page novel? Heh. Yeah. It sounds ridiculous, but it's true. There's a reason everyone comments on the book being such a quick read. It's long, but it's tight. There isn't a lot of wasted space. This from the same guy who included a 70+ page pointless sex romp directly followed by like 200 pages of our hero learning karate (and having some more sex) in book 2.

I mean seriously, we know he had at least parts of this book written before he published NotW, so what makes anyone think any of this is new material?

Five or six years ago I sold a NotW first edition (Fabio cover) on eBay for $220. Don’t know what it’s worth now.

He’s definitely on the obscure side. The only reason I’ve heard of him is because past Booker shortlists are my go to when I’m looking for things to read. Even then, when they announced him yesterday, I didn’t recognize the name until I started looking up his books and found that one of them was on my Amazon wish list.

I feel like that has to be wrong, as one of his novels was Booker shortlisted.

Some thoughts: I’m incredibly happy to see a Black African writer win the Nobel. It’s only the second time in the prize’s history, and the first time since Wole Soyinka won in ‘86. I’m pretty disappointed that the Swedish Academy didn’t select Ngugi. They missed out on Achebe, and now they’ll also miss out on Ngugi, and that’s not okay.

Zanzibari novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah wins the Nobel. This is a completely out of left field choice; this guy was on no one’s radar. It also means Ngugi will never win.

Wizard of the Crow is a good one

Well the prize will be awarded tomorrow, and I have somehow once again been suckered into feeling like this is Ngugi’s year. I don’t know why I always set myself up for disappointment.

Both Modiano and Le Clezio were the eighth best novelist in France, but were then upgraded upon winning the Nobel

Wrong. Houellebecq is the fifth best novelist in France. Odds on French favorite is Annie Ernaux. I’ll give Murakami odds at 1 in 500, and Rushdie odds at 1 in 1001.

I would love to see either of them win it. At this point though I’m done getting my hopes up for Ngugi. Duong Thu Huong though seems like someone the Academy might actually go for.

So we’re getting pretty close, which I guess means we should maybe speculate. Problem is, I have no idea who might win this year. We got an American poet last year, so it’ll probably be a non-American novelist this year. Here are my guesses, in order of least to most likely: Hwang Sok-yong Mia Couto The eighth best novelist in France

I’m not unhappy with the choice, just kind of underwhelmed by it. This probably is mostly a product of my preference for prose. I’ve read several of Glück’s poems today, and they are indeed beautiful, but I’m just a novel kind of guy. That being said, this is the Academy’s corrective for the Dylan selection, and that bums me out. It means, as I said above, that DeLillo will never win (nor Pynchon, but that was a long shot anyway).

Well one good thing about it being a poet rather than a novelist is that some of her work can be posted here: Aboriginal Landscapes By Louise Glück You’re stepping on your father, my mother said, and indeed I was standing exactly in the center of a bed of grass, mown so neatly it could have been my father’s grave, although there was no stone saying so. You’re stepping on your father, she repeated, louder this time, which began to be strange to me, since she was dead herself; even the doctor had admitted it. I moved slightly to the side, to where my father ended and my mother began. The cemetery was silent. Wind blew through the trees; I could hear, very faintly, sounds of  weeping several rows away, and beyond that, a dog wailing. At length these sounds abated. It crossed my mind I had no memory of   being driven here, to what now seemed a cemetery, though it could have been a cemetery in my mind only; perhaps it was a park, or if not a park, a garden or bower, perfumed, I now realized, with the scent of roses — douceur de vivre filling the air, the sweetness of  living, as the saying goes. At some point, it occurred to me I was alone. Where had the others gone, my cousins and sister, Caitlin and Abigail? By now the light was fading. Where was the car waiting to take us home? I then began seeking for some alternative. I felt an impatience growing in me, approaching, I would say, anxiety. Finally, in the distance, I made out a small train, stopped, it seemed, behind some foliage, the conductor lingering against a doorframe, smoking a cigarette. Do not forget me, I cried, running now over many plots, many mothers and fathers — Do not forget me, I cried, when at last I reached him. Madam, he said, pointing to the tracks, surely you realize this is the end, the tracks do not go further. His words were harsh, and yet his eyes were kind; this encouraged me to press my case harder. But they go back, I said, and I remarked their sturdiness, as though they had many such returns ahead of them. You know, he said, our work is difficult: we confront much sorrow and disappointment. He gazed at me with increasing frankness. I was like you once, he added, in love with turbulence. Now I spoke as to an old friend: What of  you, I said, since he was free to leave, have you no wish to go home, to see the city again? This is my home, he said. The city — the city is where I disappear

Louise Glück. How boring. Sorry, she’s probably a wonderful poet, but still a boring choice. I was kinda hoping that moving away from Europe would take the Academy a little farther afield, culturally speaking, than North America. There was a lot of speculation that after all the scandals over the last few years the Academy would go with a “safe” pick this year. But safe doesn’t have to mean bland. Ngugi would be a safe pick. Same with Condé or Can Xue. Also, now we know that Don DeLillo will never win.

It sucks when someone who has been loved and respected by so many for so long is revealed to be a complete piece of shit. But no matter how good you are at what you do, you don’t get a pass on shit like this. I too am glad he was exposed and now must live out the rest of his days as a pariah. He deserves it. From the Nobel standpoint, Ko Un’s exposure might just clear the way for Hwang Sok-yong. Ko was such a towering figure in Korean literature that it was hard for anyone else to get any breathing room. But for my money Hwang is the more deserving of the two, though that’s probably just because I prefer the novel to poetry.

Somewhat surprisingly Ladbrokes dropped their odds today: Maryse Conde: 4/1 Lyudmilla Ulitskaya: 5/1 Haruki Murakami: 6/1 Margaret Atwood: 6/1 Nugugi wa Thiong’o: 8/1 Anne Carson: 10/1 Javier Marias: 10/1 Ko Un: 10/1 Yan Lianke: 12/1 Amos Oz: 16/1 Don DeLillo: 16/1 So I think we can immediately discount Amos Oz, as he’s dead. Also Ko Un, as he’s been revealed to be a sexual predator. Murakami and Atwood are also highly unlikely. Bizarrely Ladbrokes managed to misspell both Atwood’s (Attwood) and DeLillo’s (DeLilo) names.

I’m not the best person to answer this question, since I’ve only read one of her books, but that book, Primeval and Other Times, didn’t require any special knowledge of Polish history.

Well it’s getting closer, so in the hopes of driving more conversation I thought I would write a little about why I think some of the people I named earlier might or might not win the prize this year. Duong Thu Huong: Vietnamese novelist - An NVA soldier during the Vietnam War, Duong Thu Huong brings western readers the other side of the story. Her fiction is informed by her experiences during an era of enormous upheaval in her homeland, and in particular her growing disillusionment with the ruling regime. She would be the first Vietnamese (indeed the first Southeast Asian) writer to win the prize, and, at least in my opinion, would be a great choice. Adunis: Syrian poet - I don’t actually think Adunis has a chance of winning this year; his time has come and gone. But I just have a feeling that the Academy might be considering poets this year, and Adunis is probably one of the three most well regarded living poets (the other two being Transtromer, who’s already won, and Ko Un, who has been revealed to be a serial sexual harasser) so I figured I’d list him. He’d be the first Syrian, and only the second Arabic language, laureate. His poetry is beautiful BTW, even in translation. Maryse Conde: Guadeloupean novelist and playwright - Conde is probably the most well regarded Caribbean writer working today. Her works deal often with colonialism and the resulting African diaspora, and like VS Naipaul she writes with the voice of the displaced, people who are not truly at home anywhere in the world. In her writing she explores and confronts racism, sexism, and European cultural supremacy. Personally I think she’d be a wonderful choice for the Academy, perhaps even the perfect choice this year. Can Xue: Chinese novelist and short story writer - Can Xue denies being a dissident writer, but many readers (and Party members) view her as such regardless. Her writing is highly experimental, and focuses on the experience of the individual and the subjective nature of identity. Normally I wouldn’t think another Chinese novelist would have much of a chance so soon after Mo Yan’s 2012 win, but she’s been picking up some steam over the last few years. I feel like there’s a desire to “correct” Mo Yan’s* award. For many people, myself included, it felt like the Academy went looking for a Chinese writer in 2012, and settled on Mo Yan not because he was the best, but because his selection wouldn’t piss off the Chinese government. This felt even truer once it became clear that the Academy (and most of the press) were going to play along with the fiction that Mo Yan was the first Chinese Literature Laureate, effectively erasing Gao Xingjian because he held a French passport. A strong case can also be made for Yan Lianke as a corrective to Mo Yan, but I went with Can Xue because she seems to have more momentum at the moment. Mircea Cărtărescu: Romanian novelist and poet - Cãrtãrescu would be the first Romanian language writer to win the prize (Müller is Romanian, but is of the ethnic Germany minority and writes in German). A product of the Ceausescu era, Cărtărescu juxtaposes a surrealist style against a brutalist reality in his works. Likely too European to win this year, but a good candidate for the future. *I’ve read one work by Mo Yan, The Republic of Wine, which I liked a lot. I’m not trying to say that Mo Yan was a bad choice, or is a bad writer, only that he was perhaps not the best choice, and that politics had a hand in his selection over Can Xue and Yan Lianke. And one more, just for fun: Lyudmila Ulitskaya: Russian novelist - It’s been a long time since the Russian literary tradition has been recognized by the Swedish Academy (Solzhenitsyn, 1970), and Ulitskaya is probably Russia’s best hope for the prize. She would also represent the first win for modern Russian writers, as opposed to the Soviet era writers (though much of her work is set in the Soviet era). But I think there are two big reasons why she probably won’t win this year: 1) a Russian language writer (Alexievich) won just a few years ago; and 2) while I would usually consider Russia to be sufficiently non-European, in literary terms, with last year’s winners coming from Poland and Austria respectively, I don’t think it’s far enough removed this year to escape allegations of Eurocentrism.