Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
In general, I agree that literature awards would be better served staying national. So much of good literature depends on context and frame of reference.
It really kind of depends on what the award is suppose to represent and what it's suppose to achieve. In general, I tend to think of it as a "this is what a read read person should have read", but in reality, it does seem to be more of a popularity contest, a clique thing or even a "art" thing. [from the stand point of if the average person might actually like it, it can't be art]
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Precisely. The original reasoning for giving the decision-making process of the Nobel prize over to the Academy was due to lingering XIX-century optimism of the ability of great institutions to transcend vagaries of public opinion, and the limits of particular cultures, towards a pan-European ideal. I think it can be read from Nobel's own summaries of what each award was supposed to signify, which was later expanded to encompass the West, and only later on the European east, far east and today - the globe. However, in order to be able to adjudicate what a well-read person is supposed to know, you first have to have an underlying vision of culture that such a person helps define.
It's within that context that national awards should be able to provide more coherent criteria (but they do not always succeed in doing so). The Nobel was, in essence, a cosmopolitan effort, mistakenly given over to folks that simply weren't cosmopolitan enough, as the record has shown. Instead, they focused their energies on balancing national sentiments with great literature, and great literature (at least from this distance) has not always prevailed. It may be that many of their selections will live on as cornerstones of culture and civilisation, but as it stands now, I feel they were half-right at best, which is really no better than what "ordinary" conscientious book lovers would have come up with.