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I was being tongue-in-cheek when I said Buddenbrooks wasn't Nobel-worthy. First there are the many laureates whose work seems pedestrian to unreadable today, so it's not a major hurdle. Galsworthy, whom I've mentioned in this thread, is just one example of a writer who is high middle-brow and certainly not tinged with greatness. A good read, a phrase that also has occured in this thread. It's just peculiar that a Nobelist would be singled out for a book that was published when he was a stripling of 26!
Then there's the political aspect, where indisputably great authors such as Nabokov are overlooked, while someone from a region the committee wishes to reward gets picked. My guess is that this is key to the Buddenbrooks issue. I suspect Mann's award was seen as part of the rehabilitation of Germany's reputation in the post Great War years. By focusing on Buddenbrooks, the committee could emphasize the essential greatness of Germany as a political entity and honor it for its achievement in unification which takes place as the backdrop (not knowing the extent to which that would be invoked, alas) at that same time it downplayed Mann's more decadent and perhaps controversial works. Having it both ways and actually I applaud them, because Mann really was Nobel-worthy, if not for his rather callow early novel.
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