This is a postmortem look at French/Mauritian author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio's win of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
First off, the main and most disappointing thing about it was the American reaction to the award. The New York Observer titled their piece: "Take That, America ! Nobel Prize for Literature Goes to French Novelist J.M.G. Le Clézio". All this was in reaction to Nobel Secretary Horace Engdahl's statement that America's literary was "too insular" and that that "ignorance is restraining". Conservative pundits were even harsher, on one site, "The Daily Beast", in an article titled "If He Had to be French ...", the author wrote:
The actual choice -- of the 68-year old French novelist, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio -- is merely a pinch of salt in the American wound.
Le Clézio -- known to his admirers as JMG -- is not a fully paid member of the Washington-hating Paris intelligentsia.
Let me rebuke that attack right now, to get it done with. J.M.G. Le Clezio is many things, but a member of the French Literary establishment he is not. He is the son of a Englishman and his French wife, and grew up in Mauritus, Colonial Africa, and Nice, France. Since then he has spent much of his time traveling the world deserts, including many years he spent in Central America, and for the past few decades he has divided his time between New Mexico, Mauritus, and Nice. He has taught in America, and published several books on Native American Myths. And, as a writer Engdalh described him best, calling him a "nomadic writer". He is estranged if anything from France's Literary Establishment.
Before I continue, allow me to show you more of the American reaction to the award. The Los Angeles Times wrote "Le Clezio -- who's he?", where David Ulin wrote:
If the selection of French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio as the 2008 Nobel literature laureate has anything to tell us, it's that Horace Engdahl means what he says.
Last week, Engdahl, the Swedish Academy's permanent secretary, called American literary culture "too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature" -- comments widely seen in the United States as evidence of the insularity of the Nobel itself and proof that American writers would be shut out again.
The last American to win the prize was Toni Morrison in 1993; since then, recipients have included Poland's Wislawa Szymborska, Italy's Dario Fo, Chinese-born Gao Xingjian and Austria's Elfriede Jelinek. That such authors are not household names has led to charges that the Nobel committee is willfully obscure, or worse, motivated by political considerations.
Certainly, the last three winners -- Britain's Harold Pinter, whose acceptance speech excoriated the Bush administration's Iraq policy; Orhan Pamuk, who faced criminal prosecution (later dropped) in his native Turkey for speaking out about the Armenian genocide; and British citizen Doris Lessing, an early and committed feminist who campaigned against apartheid and for nuclear disarmament -- are political as well as literary figures, although there's no question about the quality and engagement of their work.
It's hard to say where Le Clezio fits into all this; I've never read his books. In fact, until Thursday morning, I'd never heard of him -- and I'm not alone. Harold Augenbraum, executive director of the National Book Foundation, which administers the National Book Awards, said the same thing, as did David Kipen, literature director of the National Endowment for the Arts.
The National Post wrote: "Jean-Marie who ?: Nomadic novelist wins Nobel Prize for literature." (Though to be honest this is a Canadian Newspaper). That's just to give you a taste. Now, their was a lot of the standard stuff, news articles repeating the Nobel Committee's information and regurgitating some basic researched information to fill in for their ignorance on the subject.
I wondered, especially after reading Ulin's article, which somehow exemplifies what Engdahl said, and at the same time realizes it does this, and tries some how, to defend it.
Now I know the outrage that American Literary community felt after Engdahl's comments last week, heck I felt them too, heck I posted an angry ranting diary here on the subject but I've been forced to take a calm and deep reasessment and have come to new conclusions. For one, I realize I was wrong to act sensitively on the subject as I did, as he was not criticizing the overall quality of American Literature itself, but a trait, a trait that now looks to be very much true unfortunately, (I'll get to that in justa second). No, Engdahl was not criticizing the soundness of our literature, he was criticizing the fact that like in most other things we do not participate in an international dialogue, his words exactly. We seem to have this expectation that everyone elsecome to us and a self-assured belief that we are somehow the best, regardless. We have a pretty close-minded culture in many places today, the outcry against Spanish, and Mexican Culture, and immigrants in many places where I live shows a level of xenophobia. America is at the very bottom of civilized countries in language; not many Americans can speak another language fluently and our recently installed educational requirements are much lower than many other countries, as two years is barely enough for very basic communication if even that.
Engdahl was complaining that in Sweden the book shelves are lined with books by DeLillo, Roth, Oates, Pynchon, McCarthy, Michael Chabon and other of big literary figures, and even more of our popular fiction. But, in America we hardly translate at all, and those that are are mainly only small publishings by University Presses. We publish 180,000 books a year of those only around 800+ are translations. I read this disenheartening quote online:
"I just talked to an editor at a big house who doesn't think any of the commercial houses will go after him. Even with the Nobel, there are too many books, many of which still wouldn't sell well enough to justify this."
His criticism was sharp, it kind of resonated on some level with me. The part of me that's always been somwhat unsatisfied by Roth, DeLillo, Oates, (McCarthy for other reasons), in that they all seemed unimaginative to me; most of their works focus on modern American culture, Roth it seems focuses on and obsesses on himself. There's nothing wrong with any of that, its just that I have been disatisfied by the lack of diversity in their writing, and I wish that they would lend their considerable talents to writing on other subjects.
But, I don't believe that problem lies in that "America is too insular". I think it lies in the fact that something like 50% of America reads nothing more than the newspaper and occasional magazine. And, more importantly, of the 50%, 90% of that reads only occasionally, and too use more percentages here, of the percent of Americans that read, perhaps as much as 75% of them only read non-fiction, self-help and devotional books. In fact those groups combined outsell fiction in America by as much as 3:1. Now when we've boiled it down to this extremely small group of fiction readers, (you could boil it down more by getting rid of the people who don't read that often), but we hit another problem. Now, I love popular fiction, I'm a big supporter of it and of genre fiction, but foreign literature has struck me as more literary being the mainstream, as being more "serious" work as whole than American fiction, which is simply part of the taste of America and its culture, something that is as deeply ingrained in us as cereal for breakfast. So, to my point, there's a much smaller base of people who are interested in "literary fiction". Perhaps not even equaling 1% of the population. But, these readers are the most devoted, working their way through by far the most books, (in most cases). They are also more likely to own a copy of books they enjoyed, more likely to have a small library in their home. So the market for most major translations would be very small to begin with.
That's where Engdahl's comments come in. That market would be big enough to participate in the international scene, but it doesn't. I mean we do read some other English authors, we read Coetzee, Rushdie, Lessing, Mark Haddon was a recent example of a major author. Some even read Peter Carey. But outside of that we read little. The double whammy is that there is a much smaller pool of people with enough knowledge and experience with a language to translate works in America than there are in other countries. But I think if the interest was there, it would still get done, regardless. The truth is, and we may try to excuse by saying there's such an abound of good books and authors already present, that most translations get no attention, and get no notice or review in any major publications.
This is where the reaction to the pick of Le Clezio confounds me. The attack of the author as obscure and of the Nobel Prize because of this is just ridiculous. Just because we have ignored as very internationally famous and talented writer does not make him obscure, it only makes us ignorant and really shows a great degree of us just not paying attention to the international literary scene beyond the English speaking world, particularly in our media which gives little notice and little appreciation to it.
I think the Literary Salon said it best, saying:
Sorry, but the American reactions suggest that the American literary scene is almost entirely inward looking. If so many, especially those who are constantly discussing and dealing with literature (as, for example, so many literary webloggers are), are unfamiliar with an author of Le Clézio's stature, what hope is there of any international dialogue ? We're not talking about some obscure poet from some obscure nation, we're talking about an author who has been publishing for over three decades (and began with a pretty big splash, i.e. was immediately noticed), has had a dozen books translated into English, and writes in the language from which the most fiction is translated into English, year in and year out. If an author like him turns out to be considered an unknown, what hope is there for the less prominent authors from less prominent cultures?
Indeed, Le Clezio's first book was a huge success, and was immensely experimental. Since then he has been steadily profolic, publishing many internationally successful books, including, (and I'll use English titles), The Flood, The Desert, and Wandering Star, (and there was a very good diary a few days ago referring to the troubles the English translation of that novel had selling). He has been named as France's greatest living author, and been voted its most widely known author. He's won numerous awards, traveled around the globe. He is perhaps the most cosmopolitan author awarded the prize yet, and certainly, though while still nominally European, he is the least European of the Prize's selections in the last decade or so. His roots and life lie far outside of Europe, as does his fiction. And, unlike Jelinke, Naipul, Pinter, Pamuk, some of the past prize winners this decade, I don't have any doubts on his talent and quality of a writer, unlike those aforementioned winners, all of whom I find are not particularly enjoyable or profound writers, and three of whom are primarily political, (especially Jelinke).
I enjoyed seeing Doris Lessing get the recognition she deserved last year, and even more than that I enjoyed seeing a tremendous renewed interest in her work among American readers, and even some reprinting of several of novels as books clubs and literary enthuasists across the country went to pick up a Lessing to get a taste of an author whose stature has declined over the last few decades. It does not look like I will get the same pleasure with Le Clezio, who looks bound to become another Claude Simon, (haven't heard of him? my point exactly), though I would say he is a much better writer than Simon.
I'm not really bitter to see the French win, though I would like to see Thomas Pynchon win some day. To consider it, the French have had a longer dryspell than America, twenty three years compared to fifteen to be precise. Let them have it, let Mauritus have it, where they are so exhilarated that they are preparing to put up statues and plaques to Le Clezio. Frankly it might be wasted in America, where the award might be temporarily acknowledged and then forgotten about as we move on with other things, becuase we have so much on our minds here, so much to be proud of and consider, that one award does not mean too terribly much to us, even the Nobel.
To return to an earlier point, and wrap up this post, I'm quite irked that the American Literary Establishment has no clue who Le Clezio is. You'd think we'd notice that one of the foremost French authors is living in New Mexico and occasionally teaching at a University, (not sure which one), in Albuquerque. Not that even that has gotten him any brownie points, especially with an establishment that's in a decidedly pissed off mood towards the Nobel Prizes. Still, I just find it hard to believe that we didn't notice or celebrate Le Clezio more in America. I had more to say on this earlier, but I kept putting it off to place it at the end, and in doing so I've kind of lost it. I'd just be rambling if I went on, on it, because I've forgotten my original, more sharply barbed words on this subject, that speak with a great deal more clarity.
I've been planning on writing this for a week, but I gave it time to cook at little more in the back of my mind as I've tried to find the time to actually get around to writing it. So, please, give me your thoughts on everything literary. The thread below is an open thread for discussions on what we're reading and literature in general, so hopefully we can get some interesting dicussions going. In addition, please remember to take a second and vote in the poll, I use it as a sort of counter to determine the number of readers of a certain post, and its especially useful since the site does not have one.