From the Editor

Indeed, it may be true that the United States is "too insular and ignorant" to clash literary swords with Europe or with anywhere on the globe, but why stop there?  There are other galaxies, other possible worlds in which American literature could be "weighed and measured and found wanting."  I am not opposed to such comparisons.  I am not opposed to other worlds.  Yet on this planet, however, the point is made again -- and for dramatic effect -- the foil bent almost to a parabola, the tip trying to dig in, the old red white and blue takes it on the chest.  It is a common thrust against American culture said again by someone from the parallel universe of Europe.

A week before the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced, Horace Engdahl [pictured here], the permanent secretary for the Nobel Academy, declared "The US is too isolated, too insular.  They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature.  That ignorance is restraining."  A remark that dims the hopes of this year's American hopeful -- Philip Roth -- but it is an attitude and opinion that has always been in the world, echoed time and again, from the days of Washington Irving to Steinbeck, from Salinger and to Oates and beyond -- repeated time and again, perhaps for other reasons than the purely literary or cultural.

After all, most of the American presence in the world is felt in non-literary ways, and most of the news media being exported abroad contains a miniscule concern for American arts and artists; that is, unless an artist wins some trophy of Olympic-size proportions like the Nobel Prize.  Conversely, most of the culture imported into the United States is too little, Engdahl's point well-taken.

Further Engdahl asserted: "Of course there is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world, not the United States."  That's attitude!  A line in the sand, a gauntlet on the ground, a yo' mama, a shot over the bow, and countless other cliches I can't think of right now.  And much of the American reaction to Engdahl's remarks has been defensive, outraged, retaliatory -- the ol' knee-jerk payback (which in other arenas has got us into a whole heap of trouble we'd rather not have right now, but why go there?)  To dumb this down even further to the level Engdahl would expect of me, I would have to say that this is pure literary trash talking. Moreover and evermore, this kind of drama is what can happen in a trophy culture, a phenomenon of the twentieth century -- the Olympic Gold Medals of writing have become the brass ring for every writer and have encouraged a competition that can bring on a cornucopia of ugliness that all the fruits of hubris and envy can bear.  Be it physical, intellectual, athletic, genetic, hermeneutic, synthetic, authentic, or just a matter of pure cell division -- competition can get ugly.

The Nobel Prize was founded in 1901, the Prix Goncourt in 1903, the Pulitzer Prize in 1917, the Grand Prix du roman de l'Academie francaise 1918, the Goethe Prize 1925, the Bagutta Prize 1927, the Strega Prize 1947, the National Book Award 1950, the Georg Buchner Prize 1951, the Man Booker Prize 1968, Premio Miguel de Cervantes 1976, the Commonwealth Writers Prize 1987, and so on to hundreds more in every country of every genre and in every genre of every country, so there's plenty of trophies to go around.  If you thought there was an end to this, there's a new prize devised almost every year.

The Nobel is "the grand-daddy of them all" as they like to say in Kentucky.  It gets top-billing because it was the first major literary prize of the century.  It carries a hefty cash prize of 1.5 million devalued (and still falling) dollars, which again makes it number one.  It's also a black tie affair which makes it number one, and it was founded on the most bitter irony between idealism and realism -- a guilt trip of twentieth century Nobel proportions -- which again, to a literary mind, makes it number one.

Rising above the fray, one can count the medals and see who's ahead -- lordy, it's France, then Germany, and Britain, with America coming up from behind, the dark horse, with Sweden not too far behind.

The Nobel announcement for this year's trophy on the wall, the trot around the winner's circle, will be made on October 9th, and the horse to bet on, the bookies say, is Claudio Magris of Italy, whose lifetime of work at the track and whose book Danube in translation comes highly recommended.

Editor: Tom Douglass