>The New York Times reports that Jean-Marie Gustave Le Crezio has been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.
I’m not surprised that I’ve never heard of him, despite the fact that I do read a lot of world literature. But the last several winners are authors I had read: Lessing, Pamuk, Pinter. And the committee likes to mess with us occasionally by naming someone with whom Americans are not familiar.
To learn more [something] about Le Clezio, see these biobibliographical notes.
>Is it me, or has the Nobel Prize lost some sparkle the last few years? When Gore won the Peace Prize that said it all for me. I mean, a Peace Prize for his environmental work? Sounds like just another good ol’ boy network. So I probably won’t check out this year’s winner of the Lit Prize. The Nobel Prize, money, medal and all, feels weightless.
>Hey, Cliff, I don’t know how my comments were posted as coming from my lovely daughter Leslie (I even signed out of her fashion blog and into my Press 53 account). Anyway, isn’t she cute?
Kevin Watson
Press 53
>The question is, what were doing signed into her fashion blog in the first place? (And, yes, she’s cute.)
We might disagree about Gore’s Peace Prize, but in any case all these prizes in literature are hard to value. Le Clezio may be deserving of the honor but we in America are so unaware of much European literature that it’s hard to know.
I’m hoping to stumble upon one of his books at a used bookstore or library somewhere . . .