2017 Nobel Prize in Literature

[Tony]

Won by Kazuo Ishiguro. Now there is a deserving winner. Phenomenal mind-shifting stories. The Unconsoled is a masterpiece -- not to be read first though.

[john.s....@gmail.com]

I agree it is well deserved. Never Let Me Go may be a good book to start with for the unfamiliar reader. However, I can’t help but be a bit disappointed as well because the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare has been overdue for this award for at least 10 years, in my view.

[Frank Lekens]

Tony schreef op 5-10-2017 13:12:

> Won by Kazuo Ishiguro. Now there is a deserving winner. Phenomenal mind-shifting stories. The Unconsoled is a masterpiece -- not to be read first though.
>

And about time this prize went to an English-speaking male author.
They're woefully underrepresented in the list of laureates.


(I only ever liked Ishiguro's first three novels. I don't get what he's
trying to do in the rest.)

--
Frank Lekens

http://fmlekens.home.xs4all.nl/
https://franklekens.blogspot.nl/

[Tony]

On Thursday, 5 October 2017 18:41:35 UTC+3, Frank Lekens wrote:
>
> And about time this prize went to an English-speaking male author.
> They're woefully underrepresented in the list of laureates.

Agreed. I'm glad the Nobel committee has finally paid attention to the contemporary international movements for restoring white male supremacy.

> (I only ever liked Ishiguro's first three novels. I don't get what he's
> trying to do in the rest.)

Well mate, in The Unconsoled he takes the same faulty-memory theme he used in the earlier novels but pushes it, logically, into a dream state. Thematically in a way it's really no different from Remains of the Day, just kind of thrust forward to an extreme where everything melts into the next thing and time is all muddled. It's a masterpiece if you ask me.

Having said that I haven't been so fond of his later novels. I felt the next one, WWWOrphans, was a kind of Remains-Unconsoled mashup that didn't work; and the later works kind of dipped a bit into sentimentality IMO, though it seems they were big hits internationally (Never Let Me Go).

Still, first 4 are awesome.

[Tony]

>white male supremacy.

pardon me. Male supremacy is enough.

[Raymond Hall]

Which are his first four? Thx.

Ray Hall, Taree

[laraine]

On Thursday, October 5, 2017 at 11:24:21 AM UTC-5, Tony wrote:
> >white male supremacy.
>
> pardon me. Male supremacy is enough.

Why supremacy? Why not just recognition or equal representation?

C.

[laraine]

I'm meaning that as a rhetorical question to any supremacist of gender
or race... And I'll suggest 'fair' representation rather than 'equal'.

C.

[O]

In article <487d4d19-cd43-426f...@googlegroups.com>,

Tony <ezo...@gmail.com> wrote:

> >white male supremacy.
>
> pardon me. Male supremacy is enough.

You misspelled "diversity."

-Owen

[Tony]

On Thursday, 5 October 2017 20:57:19 UTC+3, Raymond Hall wrote:
> Which are his first four? Thx.
>
> Ray Hall, Taree

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazuo_Ishiguro#Works

They're al worth exploring. I started with Remains back in 2001, after reading an interview with Ishiguro in some magazine like Vanity which was in the hotel I was staying in. These days if I want to explore a film director or whoever, I just go chronologically, from the first mature work to the end.

[Tony]

Since 1901, Nobel's granted the award in literature to 14 women. From 1967 - 1990, all men. 8 women since 1991. It's still a man's world.

I'm sure that after Dylan, the committee thought they were being cute in awarding the prize to Ishiguro who is a serious guitar player.

[Bozo]

>On Friday, October 6, 2017 at 4:40:08 AM UTC-5, Tony wrote:
> I'm sure that after Dylan, the committee thought they were being cute in awarding the prize to Ishiguro who >is a serious guitar player.

Garrison Keillor in WAPO today :

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/welcome-to-the-abyss/2017/10/10/cf734f06-adf3-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html?utm_term=.487984c6b115

“...The Swedes said he’s like Jane Austen combined with Kafka with some of Proust, three other writers you’d never invite to a party. Well, at least they didn’t give it to Joni Mitchell.That Swedes give out the Nobel is like the Swiss deciding the Cy Young Award. We’re talking tone-deaf, people. The words “Swedish” and “comedy” seldom appear in the same sentence except as a joke. All the Swedes with a sense of humor came to America and so what the Nobel judges recognize is bleak, cramped, emotionally stunted, enigmatic, pretentious. Millions of people around the world understand the concept of reading books for pleasure, but the Swedes think of it as a form of colonoscopy. If they gave a Nobel Prize for food, they’d give it to quinoa. Of course all the book critics applauded the choice of Kazuo Ishiguro: Praising the dull and deadly is a time-tested way to demonstrate intellectual superiority. It’s like taking a ski vacation in North Dakota: It sets you apart from the crowd….Poor Ishiguro. A week ago he was a writer struggling to put himself on paper and now he’s become a granite statue in the park, pigeons sitting on his shoulders… “

[graham]

On 2017-10-10 6:55 PM, Bozo wrote:
>> On Friday, October 6, 2017 at 4:40:08 AM UTC-5, Tony wrote:
>> I'm sure that after Dylan, the committee thought they were being cute in awarding the prize to Ishiguro who >is a serious guitar player.
>
> Garrison Keillor in WAPO today :
>

What an arsehole!

[Herman]

On Wednesday, October 11, 2017 at 2:55:56 AM UTC+2, Bozo wrote:
> >On Friday, October 6, 2017 at 4:40:08 AM UTC-5, Tony wrote:
> > I'm sure that after Dylan, the committee thought they were being cute in awarding the prize to Ishiguro who >is a serious guitar player.
>
> Garrison Keillor in WAPO today :
>

I was not aware before that Keillor had such depths of nastiness in him.

[O]

In article <8c001dde-e670-40ba...@googlegroups.com>,

He's campaigning for his own statue.

-Owen

[laraine]

On Wednesday, October 11, 2017 at 7:55:34 AM UTC-5, O wrote:
> In article
> Hermanwrote:

>
> > On Wednesday, October 11, 2017 at 2:55:56 AM UTC+2, Bozo wrote:
> > > >On Friday, October 6, 2017 at 4:40:08 AM UTC-5, Tony wrote:
> > > > I'm sure that after Dylan, the committee thought they were being cute in
> > > > awarding the prize to Ishiguro who >is a serious guitar player.
> > >
> > > Garrison Keillor in WAPO today :
> > >
> > I was not aware before that Keillor had such depths of nastiness in him.
>
> He's campaigning for his own statue.
>
> -Owen

Right.... One school against another,
not to be taken 'seriously'..
And Isiguro has won a lost list of prizes already.

C.

[laraine]

My gosh, I spelled 'long' incorrectly :(
...Isiguro has won a long list of prizes already.

I agree that Keillor could have written more nicely and impartially,
but the suggestion that different cultures might have different
ways of judging is worth considering.

I have that 'Remains' book somewhere--should find it and read it.

C.