Canadians for Nobel Literature: Of course!
Chile and Greece claim two Nobel laureates in Literature each. Heaven has its ways. Things happen.
Nonetheless, I have a problem appreciating the Nobel Academy's oversight of Canadian authors-French and English. That they missed the vote on Robertson Davies, Margaret Laurence and Anne Hebert is polemical. All mastered the language and the novelty, body and mind of a literature and a nation.That they miss a vote on Canadian authors of the last two decades is becoming an optical bias not to say a reflection of mediocrity. Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro are outstanding in all jurisdictions. Margaret Laurence's work certainly quibbled with some of the best in Latin America; Atwood certainly quibbles with Doris Lessing. Michel Tremblay can certainly quibble with recent Nobel playwrights. Canadian authors can certainly quibble with Morrison, Gordimer, Kertesz, Jelinek, Muller. Or are Canadians considered too local.
We'll keep poets out.
Shall we live to see some demise of courage and intellectual honesty instead of mutual back rubs, and the projection of historical and colonial guilt from the Academy. Or are Canadian French Literature and Canadian English Literature considered subsets of French Literature and American Literature and English Literature. Or is the novel, not the short story, the paradigm for a Literature. Or is that the Nobel Academy considers Literatures of Witness, gender count and geographic allocation more critical as criteria for awards than excellence.
On the other hand, the Academy did disregard the lifetime achievements of 'some such' as Hardy, Lawrence, Joyce, Musil, Lorca, Borges, Calvino.
At least, let's give Kadare, if not a Canadian, recognition during this lifetime - like Next Year!
