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For me (and many, many others) the premise has always been questionable, and there are several good arguments why the award should be changed in some way. To begin with, an international award shouldn't really be stewarded by a national Academy of Arts. Things like science are also questionable, but less so, since the scientific community has firmer standards to fall back to. The real question for me is why have we allowed an essentially national book award with international ambitions to gain international acclaim? Is it just the appeal of a cash award to great authors?
The "committee approach" the Academy has adopted enables bickering and delaying awards to certain authors, which resulted in the flippant dismissal of some of the universally recognised greatest writers of their generation (Tolstoy, Gorky, Borges, Roth, to name a few), in favour of "compromise candidates", as if the fact one was nominated (the records of which being sealed for more than half a century) is somehow the same as receiving the award itself. All the while many insignificant authors have in fact received it (Prudhomme, anyone?) - far too many Nordic writers of minute global significance among them, which have been given this international award because of local lobbying and national sentiments. Far from being an expression of "critical consensus" the laureates are an amalgam of political and local bartering. "Lofty idealism" indeed.
The Academy, knowing the public is aware of this, periodically engages in attempts of emblematic PR ventures, such as the recent Bob Dylan escapade. I'm a greater fan of Dylan than Roth, but there is no doubt that the award - and literature - would have been better served by honouring one of the last giants of a dying breed of authors. This latest double award is also a balancing act. Handke is no Grass, but is representative of a kind of intellectual highbrow literature many appreciate and feel is under siege. Regardless of the merits of that argument, I've never been able to get into his writing, though he is revered in some circles in Serbia, for reasons better left unmentioned.
The fact that the circumstance of a double award was exploited, I think is self-evident. I secretly believe that Handke was smuggled in, so to speak, by the conservative committee hardliners, in exchange for allowing another token "activist literature" candidate. (This is by no means a reflection on, or dismissal of, Ms Tokarczuk's body work, which I'm unfamiliar with. If anything, it is a dismissal of the committee's body of work.) Had the awards been given in proper sequence and usual form, I think neither Ms Tokarczuk nor Handke would have won. After all, had they not given it to Dylan and Ishiguro beforehand? Quite enough for at least a couple years of choice local candidates.
As far as more representative awards go - how about the Man Booker, or one of the many Pen centre awards?
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