October 8, 2004
NIHILISM FOR FUN AND PROFIT
Controversial feminist writer wins Nobel Prize (Nigel Reynolds, The Telegraph, October 8th, 2004)
The book world responded with amazement yesterday - after an Austrian feminist writer was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.Elfriede Jelenik, a 57-year-old recluse, is barely-known outside the German-speaking world and her few novels published in English sell only a few hundred copies a year in this country.
She strongly divides her own countrymen and has become a hate figure to Austria's Right and the middle classes whom she satirises in her writing.
A novelist, poet and playwright, she frequently deploys sex in her writing - notably sadomasochism and voyeurism - to demonstrate how women are dominated by men and capitalism.
In her best known and autobiographical book, The Piano Teacher, turned into a film starring the French actress Isabelle Huppert, the middle-aged heroine indulges in violent sex and mutilates her own genitalia with a razor. [...]
"I have absolutely no idea who Jelenik is," said one prominent British publisher at Frankfurt, who asked to remain anonymous. "I thought it would go to an Albanian this year, so I am only slightly wrong. But I bet it'll be an Indian next year."
"This is so typical of the Swedes," said a leading British literary agent. "I have just come from a lunch with four top British publishers and not one of us had heard of her. The Swedes are so perverse that the prize doesn't count for much any longer."
What could the word “perverse” possibly mean to anyone prominent in the modern literary community?
Posted by Peter Burnet at October 8, 2004 10:32 AMI bet Huckleberry Finn would be considered "perverse"
Posted by: Bartman at October 8, 2004 12:54 PMYou mean you've never seen the obvious the homoerotic undertones of the relationship between Jim and Huck?
"When correctly viewed, everything is lewd."
But you've gotta love the idea that the Nobel committee gave the award to someone who kept her Communist Party membership until 1991.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at October 8, 2004 1:20 PMThe Peace Prize wins as the Most Often Badly-Awarded Nobel Prize, but the Literature Prize is a close second. You can make an amusing little table by listing some of the nearly-forgotten writers who got it next to some of the classic writers who didn't.
Posted by: PapayaSF at October 8, 2004 1:51 PMIt's true. I've been clear for a long time that the Nobel Peace Prize is akin to the UN in terms of its absurdity and off-the-mark decisions, but as PapayaSF points ou, the literature prize also nullifies itself by choices such as this. Ya gotta wonder what wave length the decision makers are functioning on. Some crazy perspective going on there! Consider some of the fine choices that could have been made.
Posted by: D. L. Meadows at October 8, 2004 2:07 PMThe last couple of years, the literature prize had some surpsing winners. VS Naipaul in 2001 was a real slap in the face to Islamists. and Irez Kerets last year was a poke at European anti-Semites.
This prize is a return to the bad old days of Darrio Fo and Gunter Grass.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at October 8, 2004 3:09 PMSo what? They bestow their prize, they hold their cocktail party, and they snigger at how gauche the peasnats are.
I don't give whoop-de-do. And based on their sales, very few do also.
Posted by: Mikey at October 8, 2004 3:57 PMNot much to choose between Right and Left Austrians, is there?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at October 8, 2004 5:17 PM>What could the word perverse possibly mean to
>anyone prominent in the modern literary
>community?
Heterosexual Monogamy and Virginity.
Posted by: Ken at October 8, 2004 9:44 PMWell, the Nobel Prize for Literature went to a man-hating feminist, although not one as dumb as a box of rocks -- that would have been the Trifecta -- so, eat your heart out Margaret Atwood. (And what this means is that Maggie will never get it now, so that is some comfort.)
Jelinek is actually very funny when she wants to be, but not only is her humor untranslatable, even most Germans and Austrians don't get it. You have to have spent some time around the Viennese and their coal-black humor. For starters, listen to Georg Kreisler ("gehma Taubn vagiftn im Park"), and graduate to Thomas Bernhard when ready.
The hothouse that is Vienna continues to breed noxious but fascinating flowers.
Posted by: Eugene S. at October 9, 2004 2:04 PM