Peter Handke

I'm angry, and today it's not just because I didn't win the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature, but also because of who did win it: Peter Handke.

In case you don't know who Handke is, let me get you caught up real quick:

He was born in Austria in 1942. In the early 1960's he began to make a name for himself with his long hair and with a play he he wrote which consisted of actors insulting the audience, entitled "Insulting the Audience." That play was followed in very quick succession by other plays, by stories, novels and screenplays. They didn't all directly insult the audience; in fact Handke wrote and continues to write in a wide variety of styles. Most of his works have one thing in common: they're sort of mysterious, you can't really tell what he's getting at. Or maybe those few readers who always intensely disliked him were simply sharper then the rest of us, and could see what he was getting at, right from the start.

Be that as it may: all of a sudden, in 1995, by which time Handke had become extremely popular, he published a book in which what he was getting at was suddenly, horribly clear. This man who until then had strictly avoided politics in his writing, even entitling one of his books I am an Inhabitant of the Ivory Tower, suddenly jumped right into the middle of world politics and worldwide political journalism when he published a book entitled Gerechtigkeit fuer Serbien. That translates to Justice for Serbia. That's right: in 1995, right in the middle of genocidal atrocities of the Milosevic regime, Handke wrote a book complaining that Serbia was being treated unfairly. Serbia, and not the men, women and children Serbia was deporting and massacring.

Naturally, this was such a shock that for a little while, many of Handke readers, myself included, wondered whether we had really understood him. However, since 1995 he has repeatedly made himself ever more clear on the matter: the victims in the 1990's in the former Yugoslavia, Handke assures us, were the Serbians. Milosevic even gave him a medal.

But apparently it's still all just too much for many readers to take in, and so, a very great reading public continues to behave as if Handke had never said such things, or even as if the Serbian atrocities had never occurred, as if they had been made up, as Barry Levinson said in his stupidest film, Wag the Dog.

I understand: it's just awkward to face the fact that your favorite author, who had always seemed like such a far-out Leftist hippie, is actually a racist, fascist and genocide denier. So awkward that many readers, and the Swedish Academy, have simply not faced it. This is a shameful day for the Academy, and a bad day for everyone except mass murderers.

Great Big Fat Guy, Day 606

I've been sick lately. The last few days. I think I'm better now, but I'm still early enough in the recovery that I don't want to say for sure that the flu, or whatever it was, is past. I feel good, but I'm still a little wobbly.

Four days ago, on Thursday -- here come four words I hadn't pictured myself saying -- I quit drinking coffee. I expected that to be a lot harder than it was. On the other hand, maybe the withdrawl was severe, but it just blended in with the overall sickness so that I didn't notice it as a separate thing. My coffe-drinking tastes had been getting fancier and fancier. I have an elaborate coffee-maker made by Cuisinart. I was drinking a blend imported from Itay -- and then, boom, gone, that's history. I feel a little sad about that. Is this permanent? We'll see.

9 days ago, I turned 56. Jesus, I sure got old fast. 56?! When did THAT happen? Anyway, I haven't felt like exercising as much, and I don't know how much is laziness, how much is health issues which can be addressed -- by, for instance, no longer ingesting something which was delicious and comforting and every morning like a big brown steamy hug -- and how much may be things like depression, and how much is just natural, because it's just me getting old. I know, I know, there are inspiring stories of people who are running Iron Man triathlons and being fashion runway models at age 95, and they always say: if THEY can do it, YOU can do it! But lately I've been wondering whether it's just bullshit to think that anybody can do anything that anybody else ever did. I mean, hey, good for those 95-year-old supermodels, bless their hearts, really. But maybe the chances most of us have of doing what they do are about the same as their chances of winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.

I would like to win the Nobel and also be super-buff at age 95. But realistically, I may only be capable of doing one.

Something to think about.

Hit it, Katy!

Dylan: "The News About The Nobel Prize Left Me Speechless. I Appreciate The Honor So Much."

Hey, look at this, on the website of the Nobel organization:

Bob Dylan: “If I accept the prize? Of course.”

On 13 October, 2016, the Swedish Academy announced that this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to Bob Dylan "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".

This week Bob Dylan called the Swedish Academy. “The news about the Nobel Prize left me speechless”, he told Sara Danius, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy. “I appreciate the honor so much.”

So, are all of those people who've been trashing Dylan for being too arrogant to accept a Nobel Prize rushing to apologize? No! That's very strange: everyone can see now that they were wrong.

No, instead, they're now trashing Dylan because he's said that he will come to Stockholm to accept the prize "if at all possible," instead of definitely.

I think they're bearing out my theory that they -- "they" being millions of idiots all over the world -- were going to trash him, and will continue to trash him, no matter what he said or says or did or does or didn't or doesn't say or didn't or doesn't do.

That leaves the question of whether Dylan knew that if he was quiet for a while, these great herds of idiots would trash him,, making themselves look idiotic in retrospect, and whether he intentionally was silent for so long in order to give them plenty of rope in which they could entertainingly entangle themselves. If so, I must say: Mr Dylan, well-played! If millions of idiots are going to behave so idiotically whenever your name is mentioned, you might as well have some fun with them, if you can. They've been doing it to you for over half a century now. I don't blame you a bit.

If I'm reading you completely wrong, then of course I'm just one more idiot, and I apologize.

Wadenbeisser

The last 12 twelve days of tempest in the teapot of culture have given me an idea for what might be a fascinating documentary film. It could be entitled Wadenbeisser, and examine people who have complained about other people receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Wow -- it has really only been 12 days since Dylan's Nobel Prize was announced. It feels like much longer than 12 days. There has been so much criticism of the award in those 12 days, which I have been able only to partly ignore. It seems incredible that such an immense volume of hostile nonsense and ignoble resentment could have been produced in just 12 days.

"Wadenbeisser," always with a capital W, is a German noun, one of those German nouns which is spelled the same in the singular and the plural, which literally translates to a "calf-biter" or "calf-biters," and figuratively refers to someone whose behavior is reminiscent of that of a small dog which charges a person, barking furiously, and bites the person in the calf. A Wadenbeisser is someone who is figuratively small, in the sense of shallow or petty, attacking someone of greater (figurative) stature.

Wadenbeisser might be a good name for this documentary, because, of all the impassioned denunciations of various Nobel Prizes in Literature which I have read, none has been a tiny fraction as interesting as the written work of the denounced Laureates.

Bob Dylan's award may have kicked off the greatest of these storms of boring and petty discontent, because he is so famous. But I'm also thinking of the outrage expressed when William Golding, VS Naipaul and Mario Vargas Llosa won The Big One. I'm sure there have been many earlier cases in which the Wadenbeisser have been deservedly forgotten. I would dig such cases up primarily to mock them, of course, and to underscore the greater stature of the winners.

In the case of William Golding, at least one Wadenbeisser usually wrote much better stuff than his complaints about the prize: Gore Vidal, who usually was not a Wadenbeisser at all. Indeed, typically he was arrayed against the petty-minded and the resentful. He will deservedly be long-remembered. Just hopefully not for bitching because Golding got the prize in 1983, and not his pals Burgess and Calvino.

(In case the name Golding rings a bell but you can't quite place him: he wrote novels, drama, verse and non-fiction. He wrote Lord of the Flies and published at least 12 other much less famous volumes before his prize in 1983, and 4 volumes afterward, not counting a posthumously-published novel.)

There would have to be a special place in the film for those criticizing awards going to writers not one line of whose work they had read, and of course, I am among that special class of Bozos: I've complained about the number of Literature Nobels going to Scandinavian writers, but I shouldn't have, because I haven't read them. And I'm always bitching about other people talking about texts they haven't written, which makes me a double Bozo for bitching about these Nordic bards unknown to me, and I'll take my licks for it. I'm not one of those people, like Donald Trump, who think that no one can see fault to which the faulty party does not admit.

Dylan's Nobel: None Of Your Business. His Response? See Previous Answer

A thought experiment: imagine that you -- yes, YOU -- were in your home, and someone you weren't expecting suddenly broke down your front door, barged into your home followed by a crowd of journalists with cameras and microphones, tossed $1000 in cash into your lap and demanded that you stand up and dance, and you didn't stand up. Who would be the impolite and arrogant party in such a case?

Bob Dylan's failure to acknowledge his Nobel Prize in literature is "impolite and arrogant", according to a member of the body that awards it.

Well, I'm sorry Per Wastberg feels that way.

The way I feel about all of this is: the people who are expressing outrage at Dylan being awarded the Nobel Prize are, at the very best, worse than impolite and arrogant. It's none of your business whom they give their prizes to. They're not your prizes to give.

And I think that Per Wastberg is being worse than impolite and arrogant in expecting a certain response from Dylan.

I'm not upset with Dylan at all about the prize or about his lack of response to it. Because I think that it's none of my business, and also none of Per Wastberg's business, what Dylan does or says about the prize. I wonder why he hasn't responded. But I don't think he owes me or anyone else an explanation of his silence.

Here is exactly what I think Dylan owes me, and you, and Wastberg: absolutely nothing. And that's exactly what, in my opinion, celebrities in general owe their fans: absolutely nothing. And it's also what Wastberg and the other Nobel people owe to the public, or to the people you think they snubbed, and it's also what any of the Nobel laureates owe any of the people at the Nobel organization: absolutely nothing. None of the above ever pledged that they owed anything to anyone, with the possible exception of the people who award the Nobel Prizes, and if they ever made any such solemn pledge, to the public or to the prize winners or to whomever, well, they shouldn't have.

When I'm (FINALLY!) awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, if and when I publicly react to the news of the award, and how I react, will be none of your business. Whether or not I take the money will be none of your business, and if I take it, what I do with it will be strictly between me and the Internal Revenue Service, and whether or not I show up at the award ceremony will be none of your business, and whether or not I give a Nobel Lecture will be none of your business, and if I give a lecture, what I say in that lecture will be none of your business. If the lecture consists of the 5 words "thnk yu verr mutch pleez" and you are outraged that that was my Nobel Lecture, you have my hearty permission to blow that outrage out of your ass.

And here's why: that agreement we came to about all of these and all related matters? That never happened. You hallucinated that.

Those of you who are outraged at Dylan for not making a statement about the prize: has it occurred to you that he may have been silent so far because he honestly doesn't know how he should react, and he's taking his time and thinking it over very carefully before he says anything? (Maybe in part because he knows that whatever he says will be blown out of all proportion by millions of idiots, and that there will be no way of coming close to pleasing them all?)

I have no idea why he hasn't responded, I'm just speculating. I'm not too worried about it one way or the other. It's none of my business. I just feel for someone who has so many complete strangers expecting so many different things from him for absolutely no sane or otherwise justifiable reason. For his sake and for the sake of many other famous people, I wish all of you judgmental, moronic creeps would just get your own damn lives. But it doesn't seem that anything remotely resembling that will happen soon.

For A Change: Reacting To Positive Reactions To Bob Dylan's Nobel

Leonard Cohen on Dylan's Nobel:

“To me, it's like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain.”

It's been well over 24 hours since I first read that and I'm still trying to figure out just exactly what Leonard means. And I mean that as a compliment to Leonard.

Billy Bragg:

"'Yes to dance beneath a diamond sky with one hand waving free...' for this alone Bob Dylan deserves the Nobel Prize."

I've also always especially liked that line -- although to be perfectly honest, I'm still trying to figure out exactly what it means. It's from "Mr Tambourine Man." Probably more people are familiar with the Byrds' cover version of that song than with the original recording by Dylan, on the album Bringing It All Back Home. The original has many verses which didn't make it into the Byrds' version, including the one with the line about dancing with one hand waving.

Joyce Carol Oates:

"Asked about Nobel for Dylan: inspired & original choice. his haunting music & lyrics have always seemed, in the deepest sense, 'literary.'"

Take that, "literatti"!

Salman Rushdie:

"From Orpheus to Faiz, song & poetry have been closely linked. Dylan is the brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition. Great choice."

Take THAT, "literatti"! Oof! That's gotta hurt! I've never read anything Rushdie has written which wasn't brilliant, including this. I was about to add that everything I've heard him say was brilliant too, but actually, I've seen him on some talk shows where some of his utterances were banal. Still, if I had been able to pick the winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, I would have picked myself, and my 2nd choice would have been Rushdie. And of course Rushdie is right. If we were to exclude singers from the category of poets, we could start with Homer -- you all up for that, "literatti"?

Both Rushdie and Oates are considered to be on the Nobel short list. And previous years' winners weigh in on each new prize, so it can to some extent be taken for granted that a fair portion of them approve. So take that even more!

Another short-lister, Philip Roth, has for some reason been mentioned quite often by people objecting to the prize going to Dylan. It would be quite ironic if Dylan and Roth happened to be friends and were at this moment on the phone laughing and joking about these objections. I don't know, though: utterances of Roth's such as this, from a 2005 interview with the Guardian, make me wonder how well he and Dylan would get along: "I'm exactly the opposite of religious, I'm anti-religious. I find religious people hideous. I hate the religious lies. It's all a big lie." Dylan's religious. Which means either that he would find Dylan hideous, or that he meant to say that he found some religious people hideous, not all.

I know this post is supposed to be all positive reactions, but for some reason Reza Aslan's response made me laugh:

"I'm sorry but this is total bullshit."

Good for you, Reza! Don't hold back!

As you may know, there is one writer in particular whose reaction to the prize has been very eagerly awaited, but who has not said one word about it, despite appearing in public since the award was announced: Bob Dylan.

"Jokerman" By Bob Dylan

I guess this is my favorite Bob Dylan recording. If I'm going to actually argue about it, and try to make the case that this year's Nobel Prize in Literature is no joke whatsoever, then this will be Exhibit A. (Don't worry, he's written lots of other great song lyrics too. I would have no problem getting to Exhibit Z before we even get to the album covers and oh yes the books too.) The video is pretty striking. If you don't like listening to Dylan -- some people don't -- you can turn the sound off, and you might still get a kick out of the video.

If the visuals don't do anything for you either, most of the song's lyrics appear on the screen in the video. All of those words were written by Bob Dylan, and Dylan's words seem to be what everybody's currently arguing about.

Honestly -- how is this anything but poetry of a very high order?

Standing on the waters casting your bread
While the eyes of the idol with the iron head are glowing
Distant ships sailing into the mist
You were born with a snake in both of your fists while a hurricane was blowing
Freedom just around the corner for you
But with the truth so far off, what good will it do?

Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune
Bird fly high by the light of the moon
Oh, oh, oh, Jokerman

So swiftly the sun sets in the sky
You rise up and say goodbye to no one
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread
Both of their futures, so full of dread, you don’t show one
Shedding off one more layer of skin
Keeping one step ahead of the persecutor within

Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune
Bird fly high by the light of the moon
Oh, oh, oh, Jokerman

You’re a man of the mountains, you can walk on the clouds
Manipulator of crowds, you’re a dream twister
You’re going to Sodom and Gomorrah
But what do you care? Ain’t nobody there would want to marry your sister
Friend to the martyr, a friend to the woman of shame
You look into the fiery furnace, see the rich man without any name

Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune
Bird fly high by the light of the moon
Oh, oh, oh, Jokerman

Well, the Book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy
The law of the jungle and the sea are your only teachers
In the smoke of the twilight on a milk-white steed
Michelangelo indeed could’ve carved out your features
Resting in the fields, far from the turbulent space
Half asleep near the stars with a small dog licking your face

Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune
Bird fly high by the light of the moon
Oh, oh, oh, Jokerman

Well, the rifleman’s stalking the sick and the lame
Preacherman seeks the same, who’ll get there first is uncertain
Nightsticks and water cannons, tear gas, padlocks
Molotov cocktails and rocks behind every curtain
False-hearted judges dying in the webs that they spin
Only a matter of time ’til night comes steppin’ in

Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune
Bird fly high by the light of the moon
Oh, oh, oh, Jokerman

It’s a shadowy world, skies are slippery grey
A woman just gave birth to a prince today and dressed him in scarlet
He’ll put the priest in his pocket, put the blade to the heat
Take the motherless children off the street
And place them at the feet of a harlot
Oh, Jokerman, you know what he wants
Oh, Jokerman, you don’t show any response

Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune
Bird fly high by the light of the moon
Oh, oh, oh, Jokerman

Well, if none of that does anything for you -- well. Sorry for wasting your time. To me, this is as good as it gets.

I've sort of surprised at how vehemently I've been defending the choice of Dylan for this year's Nobel Prize in Literature. Because I'd heard his name mentioned as a possible winner for years, and I thought -- meh. But yesterday, when he won, I started listening to things like this again, and -- yeah. Ai r uhgree. Dylan r grate pohett. Ai r uhgree with Noebell!

I Need A Better Class Of Friends!

If you're horrified that Bob Dylan won the Nobel, I'm horrified at you. Truly.

All these Bozos who have managed somehow to surround me, shocked and horrified over Bob's Nobel. In less than an hour on Facebook this morning I blocked at least half a dozen people for dissing Bob. I have nothing to say to them, no more than I have anything to say to people who support Trump or who maintain that we have "two terrible candidates." Then there are other cases, people with whom I've had good exchanges in the past, who seemed reasonable and intelligent, who are spewing all of this stupid anti-Dylan bile. I have nothing to say to them for the moment. At first I thought: I'll let this blow over, then I'll interact with them again like before... But do I really want to do that? This is the only life I have, do I want to spend it with people who can't appreciate Bob Freaking Dylan?

I don't know whether I want that. I'll have to think this over. Perhaps I've been much too lazy in seeking out my sort of people.

It's London in 1966 all over again: a buncha privileged twits who think they know a lot, and they don't know their asses from holes in the ground, and they're dissing Bob to a truly insane extent.

Okay, for one thing, if you're not only horrified, but also astounded that Bob won, well, that just goes to show that you don't know shit about the Nobel in Literature, because Bob has been a leading contender for a long time now. (The nominating process, the process of deciding who is in the running for the Nobel in Literature, is supposed to be a little bit more secretive than it actually is.)

I'm not going to try to make Bob's case here. I don't want to discuss it with the mental midgets who need convincing. And conversely, if you want to make the case why Bob doesn't deserve the Nobel, I don't want to hear it, and I'll cut off contact with you to keep from hearing it if I have to, and I'll curse myself for not having seen you for what you are days or months or years or decades ago.

I suppose it's good: certain great events occur, and they cause certain curtains to drop, and you see what sort of people you've been hanging with.

So. Perhaps you've noticed that I feel rather strongly about this. My annoyance this morning at once again not having won was very, very quickly outweighed by my horror at the reactions of people I had thought were my friends, people I had thought I was in tune with.

Not all of them, to be sure. Not each and every acquaintance of mine who's expressed an opinion on this award has expressed a negative one. Still, except for the satisfaction seeing the Nobel go to someone who so thoroughly deserves it, it's been a pretty shitty morning for me so far.

You got Me --

-- in a corner
You got me against the wall
I got nowhere to go
I got nowhere to fall

Take back your insurance
Baby nothin' is guaranteed
Take back your acid rain and
Let your TV bleed

[Chorus:]
You're jammin' me, you're jammin' me,
Quit jammin' me
Baby you can keep me painted in a corner
You can walk away, but it's not over

Take back your angry slander
Take back your pension plan
Take back your ups and downs of your life
In raisin-land

Take back Vanessa Redgrave
Take back Joe Piscopo
Take back Eddie Murphy
Give 'em all some place to go

[Chorus]

Take back your Iranian torture
And the apple in young Steve's eye
Yeah take back your losing streak
Check your front wheel drive

Take back Pasadena
Take back El Salvador
Take back that country club
They're tryin' to build outside my door

And The List Of The World's Greatest Books Is --

-- not something I really believe in.

The Telegraph's 100 Books to Read Before You Die

People have been writing books for thousands of years. In hundreds if not thousands of languages. If I'm not mistaken, a third to a half or more of the books on the Telegraph's list were originally written in *ahem* one language. I'm not saying it's a bad list, I think it's an an interesting list (ie, I've read many of those books.) But are there any books on the list in Spanish written before Don Quixote or between Don Quixote and late-20th-century Latin America? Are there any books at all in Portugese? I believe Arabic is represented only by Naquib Maufouz' Cairo Trilogy and the Tales from 1001 Nightsi and Turkish only by Orhan Pahmuk's My Name is Red. What about Chinese? What about anything written in India in a language other than English? Okay, there's one of those, a book by Rabandrath Tagore.

What about this?

It's a novel in 2 volumes by a Lithuanian author who lived from 1940 to 1980. On the dusk jacket of my copies he's compared to Faulkner, Wolfe, Camus, Rilke, and, strangely enough, Cezanne. Will I ever have any idea how much sense those comparisons make?

Also, most the Telegraph's 100 books are novels. I'm just saying, history, philosophy, science -- poetry! Hello!

I've mentioned how Spanish (Galdos, for example, and Lope de Vega and El Cid. Just for example), Portugese (Sergio) and Lithuanian might be under-represented in this list of 100 mostly novels, but that's just because, beyond the French, Italian and Russian literature which has happened to have become famous among English readers, and that in other languages, such as the work of Tagore and Maufouz and Pahmuk, which has come to the Anglophone public's attention via the Nobel prizes, I happen to have poked around a little in the literature of those languages. I mentioned Chinese and Arabic and Indian languages only because huge numbers of people have read them, not because I know anything about their literatures. I'm also devoid of knowledge of literature in -- just for random example -- Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Romanian, Japanese, Albanian, Serbo-Croation, and hundreds if not thousands of other languages equally deserving to be considered in the compiling of such lists.... One interesting Polish writer has been urged upon me, Witkiewicz -- unfortunately in a very bad translation of his novel Insatiability. Other than Witkiewicz and Milosz I'm pretty blank about Polish.

What about ancient Greek and Latin?

Again, I'm not saying the Telegraph's list is a bad list. What I'm saying (other than mentioning that there's a reason the ancient Greeks and Romans are referred to as the "Classics") is that to compile a list of literature which would be representative of the best which ever been written in the world, would be very difficult.

Perhaps impossible.

But that's actually a good thing, because it means that the world is so big and so overflowing with worthwhile things to read.

How I Can Tell Whether I'll Like A Book

CAUTION! Just because I like a book doesn't mean you'll like it too. Although if you like my writing, there may be a greater chance that you'll share some of my reading tastes than if you find my blog ill-written -- in which case I sincerely hope you find reading material which pleases you better, and recommend Stephen King and John Grisham, reckoning strictly from statistics.

The only way to know for sure, of course, is to read some of it. But there are so many books. How do I decide which ones to try? Here are some of the ways.

-- If a book is written in Latin and I haven't heard of it, I will be intrigued. (If I have heard of, there's a chance I already either have a copy or have decided I'm not interested. Life is to short for Cicero and Seneca.) Being intrigued at first glance is not always the same, of course, as eventually liking a book. But I've got this thing about Latin, seeing as how it's been in use in our civilization for thousands of years and was used by Caesar and Columbus and Milton and Spinoza, besides all of those kings and queens and Popes.

-- If a book is written by a Nobel laureate in literature, the chances are over 85% that I will like it very much. Other prizes aren't nearly so strong an indicator for me, but the Nobel folks and I seem to be on a similar wavelength. Except that they've given it to too many Scandinavian writers. Astonishingly, they managed to avoid giving it either to Ibsen or Strindberg, and still gave it to way way too many Scandinavians. Aside from 85% or so of the Nobel Literature laureates, authors whom I like generally are good guides to other authors I will like.

One notable exception is Thomas Pynchon's rave for Tom Robbins, nota bene, that's Tom Robbins, the novelist, not Tim Robbins, the tall, thin actor who supports the Democratic Party and used to be married to Susan Sarandon. I'm not saying Robbins is a bad writer, he's just -- well, for me personally, he's not nearly in the same class as Pynchon. Your mileage may vary, as Germans say. (They say that in English, about books or movies or whatever. It's weird.)

-- Lots of books have many blurbs on their covers. Sometimes these blurbs are attributed to a publication. For example, "Brilliant and deft." -- The New York Times Book Review. or "A pulse-pounding page-turner." -- Publishers Weekly. By and large, these anonymous blurbs mean less to me than ones attributed to specific people. Especially if they're attributed to Nobel Literature laureates or other writers I like. If King or Grisham recommends it, it's probably not for me. There are some exceptions to this: I cannot recall seeing a single blurb attributed to an individual rather than to a publication on the cover or first pages of any volume by Gore Vidal, although plenty of writers of whom I thought highly, thought highly of Gore. Strange. Perhaps when a writer produces big blockbusting bestsellers, and Vidal certainly did, publishers prefer anonymous blurbs. I don't know.

Nietzsche's reactions to authors are amazingly predictive of mine. The 1st half of p 65 of the insel taschenbuch-edition of Goetzen-Daemmerung (ISBN 3-458-34380-6) could almost have been written by me. Nietzsche compares Carlyle to puke -- nailed it. I hadn't read read any Carlyle before I read Goetzen-Daemmerung -- why didn't I listen about Carlyle? Well, anyway, I found for myself that I too find him absolutely disgusting, and now here I am warning you. Sorry to bring up something so unpleasant as puke, but, assuming my advice is as accurate for you as Nietzsche's is for me, I'm warning you.

-- If I've really liked one book by an author, I'm very rarely disappointed in others of his or her books. I'm not counting unfinished books which have been published posthumously, because, duh, they're unfinished. The biggest exception to my rule about non-posthumous books is the novel Ravelstein by Saul Bellow. That one had me shaking my head all the way through and muttering curses at Allan Bloom, neocon monster, Bellow's close friend, the author of The Closing of the American Mind and clearly the real-life inspiration for the title figure Ravelstein.

-- Different publishers go about their business in different ways. A book published by Oxford or Farrar, Straus and Giroux is more likely to be my kind of book than one published by Simon & Schuster, although here again, there may be exceptions published by Simon & Schuster or other lowest-common-denominator, their-books-are-in-grocery-stores-and-Wal-Mart's publisher. Those exceptions, those glorious exceptions are those few authors like Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer and John Cheever who are both popular and good.

No Nobel For These Guys

In this post I already mentioned Joyce and Wittgenstein and Doeblin and Musil and Ginsberg and Pound and Strindberg and Ibsen. Let us not forget:

Brecht.

Tolstoy. Hello.

Borges. (Yes: this is making me feel better.)

Nabokov.

Proust. (PROUST!!!!)

Mark For Crying Out Loud Twain Ladies And Gentlemen.

I apologize that it took me this long to mention: Gertrude Stein. Has the Nobel Committee ever apologized about her? I don't think so.

Zola. (ZOLA!!!!!)

Chekhov!

If I didn't mention your favorite writer who didn't win -- James, Woolf, Burgess, whomever -- that probably means that I'm okay with their not having won, and not that I forgot to mention them. Especially Burgess. I'm actually GLAD Burgess didn't win. Abridge Finnegan's Wake, pfffff... And that's not the only reason. Burgess also said and wrote other things which made one think he was the kind of simp who'd abridge Finnegan's Wake.

As Far As I Can Tell, The 2015 MacArthur Fellowships Have Not Been Announced Yet

The suspense is killing me. If I win one, it will greatly increase my chances of winning this year's Nobel Prize in Literature. It would practically guarantee my getting at least a half-decent book deal. see Tom Petty "Ab-So-Lute-Ly Backwards" Law of Microeconomics.

A need a break. A huge one. Several huge breaks all at once. I need and deserve them. I'm brilliant and exhausted and seething with frustration and greed.

Outstanding Articles Which Have Been Published So Far Talking Me Up For The Nobel Prize -IN- Literature

It's always possible that some have been published but haven't yet come to my attention, but the only such articles I know of are ones written by myself. And I won't lie to you, that's a little bit discouraging. But faint heart never won fair lady, it's always darkest before the dawn, if I don't believe in myself why should I expect others to believe in me, once more into the breach, yada yada.

Let's start with a piece which appeared in March in the prestigious blog The Wrong Monkey entitled Let's Get Serious And Get Me the 2015 Nobel Prize For Literature. Well, first off, it's got a nice straightforward title, right to the point. It underscores how winning the Nobel Prize -IN- Literature is basically a 2-step process: 1) A writer writes wicked cool outstanding poetry and/or prose -- so, yeah, I got that covered already, and 2) others recognize the outstanding nature of what the writer has written. They spread the word. The piece begins with a discussion of the Tom Petty Ab-So-Lute-Ly Bass-Ackwards Law of Microeconomics, which at first glance might seem to undercut my case: I actually need that Nobel, and Petty's Law states that someone's need for something is in inverse proportion to their chances of getting it. But if you stop your consideration of the matter at that point, you may be completely missing the entire point of Petty's Law: Petty formulated it in order to encourage others to break it, to work against the Ab-So-Lute-Ly Bass-Ackwardness. Laws of economics are completely different from those of physics in their great degree of mutability. You can break these laws and very often you should if you can. Petty's Law states what is and should not be. Awarding me the 2015 Nobel Prize -IN- Literature would not merely break Petty's Law, it would resoundingly smash it. The economic consequences would be breathtaking.

In the same article I also vow that when I win the Nobel, my Nobel Lecture, in its entirelty, will be thank yu verr much pleez, and mock Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway, who of course deserves it.

Moving on: in April, in the same prominent blog, The Wrong Monkey, there appeared the essay You Are Feeling Very Sleepy... In retrospect, it occurs to me that this article, in addition to serving the purpose of hypnotizing readers of The Wrong Monkey and filling them with joyous determination to ensure that I win the Nobel, can also be read aloud by those readers in order to hypnotize still others.

Thirdly, we come to a marvelously-crafted piece of prose entitled Apparently Some Of You Still Need Some Convincing That I Deserve The Nobel Prize In Literature, published in May in a brilliant blog known as The Wrong Monkey. Written by me. This article underscores both the urgency of people's action on behalf my winning the Nobel -- even more urgent now than when the piece was first published -- and some of the reasons why it's important that I win. Such as how badly I want certain things I can't afford at present, things like solid-platinum watches. Res ipsa loquitur; however, I suppose I could add that although I mostly refer to platinum wrist watches, because wrist watches are mostly what are made today, especially for the high end of the market, I would have no objection whtsoever to owning platinum pocket watches. Nor to gold watches. I think rose gold is pretty cool.

And of course, all of the over 700 posts which have appeared on the blog so far solidly make the case that I am brilliant and deserve the Nobel, and the world deserves to know such quality writing better, and winning the Nobel will aid in that noble cause by making me much more famous.

Excelsior!

Apparently Some Of You Still Need Some Convincing That I Deserve The Nobel Prize In Literature

(It seems it's "in Liturature," not "for Literature." "In Literature" sounds strange to me -- but that's okay, it's their prize and they can call it whatever they want. Just seems kinda strange.)

Why do you still need convincing? *turning toward those of you who are convinced* I know! Good question! *turning back toward the general readership* Whatever the bizarre reasons may be, I've examined the stats for this blog, and some of you aren't yet convinced -- because if you were, you'd be excitedly talking non-stop about how awesome I am and how deserving of the Nobel Prize, and linking my blog and tweeting and emailing about it and putting the blog's address in print ads and billboards and so forth, and if all of you were doing that, it would show in the stats. If Oprah and Chris Matthews and Larry King and David Letterman and Harold Bloom and Conan O'Brien and Rachel Maddow and GA Wells and Bruce Springsteen and William H Gass and Barack Obama had all given my blog rave reviews on the same day, it would have shown in the stats. That's all I'm going to say about the stats right now because the stats are the confidential bidniss of me and Blogspot, and our bidniss ain't yo bidniss. No offense. It's gist bidniss.

Anyway -- the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature will be awarded 5 months from now, maybe even a little bit less than 5 months, and I've examined the statistics for this blog concerning the volume of my readership, and if current trends continue, I will have to be considered a dark horse for this year's literature prize. It's not that more popular = more likely to win the Nobel. Don't worry, Dan Brown will never win it. Neither will Stephen King or John Grisham or any of those other Bozos who can't write worth a tiny speck of poop and are always clogging up the bestseller lists, making the interaction between good writers and discerning readers much, much more difficult than it should be. Only a handful of people need to be aware that my writing exists in order for me to be awarded the Nobel -- the handful of people who actually award the prize. But getting those people to read this blog and/or the manuscripts of my 2 complete and still-unpublished novels is easier said than done. I've researched the award process a little in the past 2 months, since I published the post Let's Get Serious And Get Me The 2015 Nobel Prize For Literature, and it appears that literary editors of leading publications, and maybe also some people such as prominent critics, give some input to the Nobel folks as to who they think is worthy, among the writers of their particular country. Makes sense: it's a big world, hundreds of countries in it, the Nobel people need some help organizing the competition. And of course Nobel laureates of previous years also have a big say in each new prize. And as I mentioned back in March in that previous post, most winners have already been at least somewhat famous before they win. A few of them have been among those rare birds, bestselling authors who also don't stink as writers.

I don't know any Nobel laureates personally. Nor am I personally acquainted with the editors of The New Yorker or the Kenyon Review. Obviously: if those folks were aware of my existence, they would be clamoring to publish my work, and as yet they are not. I need to get some people's attention. I need to get onto their radar.

The way I've imagined this happening is that my blog would go viral, and become one of the most widely-visited blogs of all time, and far and away the most popular one in the history-philosophy-belles-lettres category. I'd go to bed one night, sleep the sleep of the just for having written well and done other good and noble deeds all day, and rise the next morning to find that I'd become famous overnight, that my blog had broken the Internet and that so much media would be camped out on my street, hoping for a snapshot of me or a word with me, that the police would have to be called just to unblock the street enough that it would be possible for my neighbors to drive on it and get to their jobs or wherever they needed to be.

For the sake of sanity on my block, I would have to move out. Luxury hotels would be jostling each other for the opportunity to comp me, Rolex and Omega would each try to outdo the other in giving me a greater number of gold and platinum watches, in the hope of it being more likely that one of their watches would be seen on my wrist than one of the competition's watches. Same with free clothes and many other items. And of course the quantity of free books, every publisher going all-out hoping for a blurb -- the quantity of books would be simply cuckoo.

But not nearly as crazy as the bidding war between publishers for the right to publish my works. Even before I had an agent, headlines would claim that the bidding had reached 8 figures -- and those headlines would be accurate.

And so forth. I'd be so famous that I'd be famous just for how famous I was, like Dan Brown or Justin Bieber, and just as in their cases, that would make me even more famous.

That's how I picture this going, but of course that's not the only way it could go. The editors at the Kenyon Review or The New Yorker or whatever, the people at some other rag could find out about me before I'm completely famous, and they could be a part of the process of making me famous, rather than my blog just going viral before any of them have a chance to act.

There are various ways this could go. I could actually get published by means of a publisher or periodical or agent getting back to me about one of my submissions or queries. Anything's possible.

But again: we've got 5 months to make this happen, people! 5 months or maybe even a little bit less. Talk, tweet, email, link, go, go, go!!!

Let's Get Serious And Get Me the 2015 Nobel Prize For Literature

For one thing, it would be a resounding slap in the face of the Tom Petty Law of Microeconomics, which is: It's Ab-So-Lute-Ly Backwards. This law occurred to Tom in the 1980's after he and the Heartbreakers had become superstars, and Nike, having noticed that several of the bandmembers seemed to favor their shoes, invited them to some Nike warehouse in order to give them all the free shoes and other Nike items they wanted. The band chose so much stuff that it wasn't clear at first exactly how they were going to be physically able to haul it all away, until some bright Nike employee went and fetched some huge beautiful supple leather Nike bags which were also given to them free, and it was about then when it occurred to Tom that It Was All Backwards, because it had not been too long before that when the band had been so poor that one free pair of shoes for just one of them would have made a significant positive impact on their economic outlook, but back then nobody was giving them free stuff, cause the world doesn't just go around handing free stuff to poor people cause if it did how would they stay poor?! and now they could easily have afforded to buy all of the shoes and book and shirts and jackets and other Nike clothes they were being given, and even those magnificent huge leather bags (the bags seem to have really impressed Tom), but it was all just a fraction of the free stuff they were getting because they were rich and famous, and the rich and famous get tons of SWAG ("Stuff We All Get") because It's. All. Backwards.

Because It's All Backwards, The Nobel Prize with its seven-figure cash component is generally given to writers who are massively successful, who already have massive book deals, some even huger film deals as well, and therefore don't actually need the cash component of the Nobel.

Well, I actually do. (Of course, Microeconomic Backwardness being what it is, as soon as I win the 2015 Nobel for Literature, the publicity will lead directly to book deals and other sources of income and Stuff so that very very soon, I won't need those seven figures Because. It's All. Bass. Ackwards. I am not immune to the Bassackwardness.)

One other thing may be bothering some of you: wondering whether I actually write well enough to deserve the 2015 Nobel. It's okay, you don't have to be afraid to admit this to me if that's what you're thinking. It doesn't upset or surprise me. You probably aren't familiar with all of the schmucks who've won this thing. Go read some Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson, Heinrich Boell, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Frans Eemil Sillanpää, Pearl Buck, Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Sigrid Undset, Karl Adolph Gjellerup, Henrik Pontoppidan, Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam, Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf and Bjørnstjerne Martinus Bjørnson, and then come back here and try to look me in the eye and tell me they all wrote better than I do. (Heads up: you won't be able to do it, because it's a dirty, dirty lie.)

Don't get me wrong: most of the Nobel laureates for literature are great writers. But clearly, greatness is not the only qualification for the prize. And even it were: c'mon. I'm pretty good.

And so to business: I don't know exactly who all of the regular readers of this blog are. It's possible that among you are enough Nobel laureates for literature and others responsible for awarding the prize that this is already a done deal, in which case: I sincerely thank you in advance.

But there is the possibility that few of those people read this blog regularly, in which case, you, my other readers, must bring it to their attention. Mention whenever and wherever you can that I'm a wonderful writer and that I should get the Nobel this year.

I realize that, even after all of the excellent points I've made in this post, some of you probably still think I'm silly, and are laughing. So -- tell people that. That's a perfectly acceptable recommendation, in my opinion: "Oh, this idiot, what he writes is just so absurd that it makes me laugh and laugh, and shake with laughter with tears pouring down both cheeks, laughter which consumes and relaxes me until I feel as if I'd had a wonderful long full-body massage." That's a positive statement, it will encourage others to read me, and among those others will be some with enough taste that they'll want to mention to still others that I deserve the Nobel, and so on and so forth. It's all good, Homestyle! Don't think that your contribution to this worthy campaign is too small! It's not! We must all pull together on this rope.

I can offer one more incentive: imagine being part of a campaign which results in a Nobel laureate whose Nobel Lecture, in its entirety, will be the following:

thnk yu verr much pleez

It will be the best-known, best-loved, most-often-cited Nobel Lecture of all time.

(Hemingway -- ha! Please. He's a joke! "He kissed her hard. She pulled away, whispered 'You b-st-rd' and held him tight again. Over her shoulder he looked at the Seine." Okay, I'm out. I can't write that badly on purpose for longer than 3 short sentences without collapsing in a heap of laughter.)

Yet Again, The Nobel Prize In Literature Has Been Awarded To Someone Other Than Me

Some French dude. I'd never heard of him. He seems okay. I've read something by almost all of the Literature Nobel Laureates, and I like most of them very much -- one of the long, long list of reasons why I should get one: my good taste in literature.

Patrick Modiano is his name:



But anyway, we're talking about me here. This is getting ridiculous, I'm aging over here, I need that million bucks or two. The amount of the prize in Swedish kroner fluctuates, and of course the kroner-dollar exchange rate fluctuates too. This year's prizes are 8 million kroner, and right now 8 million kroner will get you about 1,105,600 bucks. AND I'M TIRED OF BEING POOR. And of course, in addition to the cash, a Nobel is great publicity and will increase the sales of all of your books.

All of my books? Are you kidding me? I'm autistic, I'm business-impaired. At the moment I don't even have an agent. Yet another example of the Tom Petty Principle of Ab-So-Lute-Ly Backwards Economics: If I had a really good agent, he could get lots of my books onto the shelves in the bookstores and in Amazon's warehouse and into the Kindle thingies and so forth, and the more books I had in all of those places, the more likely I would be to catch the attention of people such as the one who hand out Nobel prizes. But of course -- the backwards part -- the more books I had in all those places, and the more National Book Awards and MacArthur and Guggenheim grants and Bookers I had won, which also seems to catch the attention of the Nobel people, the more money I would have, and the less badly I would need the Nobel! Don't kid yrslvs, kids, Sartre wasn't taking a vow of poverty when he turned down the Nobel, he really was rich enough that he didn't miss it.

And that's fine, he was a great writer and a great man and he deserved his great successes.

And Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai, who are sharing this years' Nobel Peace Prize? I couldn't be happier for them (especially as we weren't in competition for the Lit prize). They're wonderful people doing great, important work. What could be more glorious than freeing children from oppression?

I deserve great successes too, that's all I'm sayin. I'm great at the creative part, the actual writing -- obviously -- but I'm no good at business. I need to team up with a great businessman or -woman, a great agent, who can hook me up with publishers so that all us can ride the Wrong Monkey Gravy Train together and split an immense amount of cash between us.

But I'm so inept at the business part that I need someone to help me get that great agent.

You don't know. You don't know. You haven't seen the times when I've attempted to take the reins of this or that business enterprise, instead of staying on the creative side where I belong. Oh, the horror. You don't know!

So, in conclusion, hurrah for Patrick Modiano, yada yada yada, he probably is a very good writer, most of the Nobel lit winners are very, very good, bla bla bla, and on to business: I need help. Just like Gene Wilder when we first see him in Blazing Saddles,



I need all the fucking help I can get. I mean it. (Gene Wilder's part had been offered to John Wayne. Can you imagine, John Wayne hanging upside down in the jail call, John Wayne saying, "Yeah, but I shoot with THIS hand!" and so forth? Would that have been awesome or what? I know, I've probably mentioned that on this blog before, maybe more than once, but would that have been just about perfect? Hm?) So -- help me! When you're talking about your short list of predictions for the 2015 Nobel, casually toss my name in there alongside Murakami and Pynchon and Marias and whomever. If you happen to be having lunch or a torrid love affair with Andrew Wylie, tell him, "Do you realize that Steven Bollinger doesn't have an agent right now?!" If you rub shoulders with the people who give the Nobels or the MacArthur genius grants or the Bookers, mention my name and how effin brilliant I am. If you are one of the people who award the Nobels or MacArthurs or something, or the CEO of Simon & Schuster -- what exactly are you waiting for? Don't you want to be a part of turning the literary landscape all topsy-turvy and bringing joy and solace to millions?! Do yr effin job, I'm doin mine!