{"id":170323,"date":"2020-10-12T12:00:57","date_gmt":"2020-10-12T11:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=170323"},"modified":"2020-10-11T06:38:28","modified_gmt":"2020-10-11T05:38:28","slug":"louise-gluck-should-refuse-the-nobel-prize-for-literature-heres-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/10\/louise-gluck-should-refuse-the-nobel-prize-for-literature-heres-why\/","title":{"rendered":"Louise Gl\u00fcck Should Refuse the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here\u2019s Why."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Swedish Academy, which selects the Nobel winner, is a corrupt institution that has tolerated genocide denial and sexual assault.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Louise Gluck attends National Book Awards on 19 Nov 2014 in New York City.
Photo by Robin Marchant\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

7 Oct 2020 – <\/em>I don\u2019t know what the American poet Louise Gl\u00fcck said when the Swedish Academy informed her that she won this year\u2019s Nobel Prize for Literature, but I know what she should have said: \u201cThanks, but no thanks.\u201d<\/p>\n

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October is the season of the Nobel Prizes, when a\u00a0handful of people are catapulted into fame and fortune due\u00a0to the philanthropic legacy of the inventor of dynamite. Four of the six prizes\u00a0named after\u00a0Alfred Nobel are generally uncontroversial \u2014 physics, chemistry, medicine, and economics \u2014 but the peace and literature prizes arouse passions. There is good reason to be dubious of the peace prize, which has gone to some great people and organizations but also went to Henry Kissinger<\/a> and Aung San Suu Kyi<\/a>. Yet it\u2019s the literature prize that, in its current form, has definitely outlived its usefulness and caused great damage.<\/p>\n

Last year, the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Peter Handke, an Austrian writer who created a set of impressive<\/a> literary works<\/a> in the first part of his career but since the 1990s fell into a morass of genocide denial. In recent decades, Handke wrote at least a half-dozen books and plays that downplayed and denied<\/a> the genocide committed by Serbs against Muslims during Bosnia\u2019s war. Handke even attended the funeral, and delivered an eulogy<\/a>, for the former leader of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, who died while on trial for war crimes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Literary awards have consequences in the real world. The Serb ultra-nationalists whom Handke defends are heroes to violent white extremists<\/a> throughout Europe and in the United States. By giving\u00a0a Nobel prize to Handke, the Swedish Academy, which selects the literature winner, essentially ratified a conspiracy theory embedded in his work: that Muslims represent a threat to Christians they live with. Handke\u2019s genocide-denying books, rather than being relegated to the rubbish, were vested with the authority of the Nobel Prize.<\/p>\n

The Swedish Academy is\u00a0a strange organization. It has just 18 members who are appointed for life and\u00a0who select new members by secret ballot \u2014 and the country\u2019s king must approve them. The decision to give\u00a0the 2019 prize to Handke is not the only evidence of\u00a0the organization\u2019s\u00a0unfitness to manage the literature prize. The Academy had to postpone the 2018 award because of revelations that for decades it had abetted sexual harassment and rape by the husband of one of its members. Once that scandal broke open, thanks to the investigative work of journalist Matilda Gustavsson of Dagens Nyheter,<\/a> the dismal response of the male-dominated Academy included forcing out a female member, Sara Danius<\/a>, who was pushing for sweeping reforms in its ranks.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In a way, we can be thankful for these scandals because they are reminders of the need to implement a root-and-branch reform of the Nobel literature prize. For much of its existence, the prize generally served as a referendum on the best in Western literature<\/a>. For that task,\u00a0the 18 members of the Swedish Academy were\u00a0a serviceable jury. But more than ever, the reach and aspiration of the Nobel literature prize is truly global. It is laughable and tragic that an award of such influence should be controlled by a tiny and secretive group of Swedes, let alone ones who have shown themselves to be abettors of sexual assault and genocide denial.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Nobel Foundation, which oversees all the Nobel Prizes, would do the world a huge favor by firing the Swedish Academy. I don\u2019t have a precise proposal for a replacement, but it would\u00a0seem wise for a world literature prize to be decided by a diverse jury for whom non-European languages \u2014 such as Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, and Urdu \u2014 are first or second languages. And it would be wise to not have these jurors appointed for life, because unassailable privilege is an inherent force of rot.<\/p>\n

It was expected that the Swedish Academy would\u00a0announce a \u201csafe<\/a>\u201d choice today who would not invite criticism \u2014 that is to say, an individual who unlike Handke does not support genocide and is not European and is not male. Gl\u00fcck, a celebrated and uncontroversial poet who lives in Massachusetts, checks every box. The Academy, in this scenario, hopes it will have ridden out its scandals and shown that it can do the job. But let\u2019s not be fooled. The Swedish Academy is fatally flawed. It will do wrong again because it cannot surmount its inherent limitations<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It\u2019s\u00a0the moment to challenge corrupt institutions rather than thank them.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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The Nobel Foundation has not shown a willingness to do what it should. That\u2019s why Gl\u00fcck\u00a0should refuse the award \u2014 to force a desperately needed change that would benefit the world\u2019s readers and writers. Gl\u00fcck would become materially poorer by passing up the $1 million prize money, but she would probably become more famous and, who knows, that could lead to more book sales. Writers are supposed to be forces of conscience, so standing up to the Swedish Academy would be fitting. It has happened before: In 1964, Jean-Paul Sartre\u00a0refused to accept<\/a>\u00a0his literature Nobel.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a lot to ask for, of course. There is a halfway point \u2014 accept the award but ceaselessly call out the Swedish Academy, which has little backbone. Bob Dylan, the literature laureate in 2016, didn\u2019t even issue a statement of thanks<\/a>\u00a0and sent Patti Smith to the\u00a0award ceremony, and he still got the check. The year is 2020,\u00a0a\u00a0time of emergency.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0the moment to challenge corrupt institutions rather than thank them.<\/p>\n

Update: Oct. 8, 2020<\/strong>
\nThis story has been updated to note that Louise Gl\u00fcck was announced as the winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature.<\/em><\/p>\n

Correction: Oct. 7, 2020<\/strong>
\nAn inaccurate reference to the Nobel Foundation being based in Oslo has been removed.<\/em><\/p>\n

_____________________________________<\/p>\n

Peter Maass<\/em><\/a> – peter.maass@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

7 Oct 2020 – I don\u2019t know what poet Louise Gl\u00fcck said when the Swedish Academy informed her that she won this year\u2019s Nobel Prize for Literature, but I know what she should have said: \u201cThanks, but no thanks.\u201d The Swedish Academy is a corrupt institution that has tolerated genocide denial and sexual assault.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":66601,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[642,1077,868],"class_list":["post-170323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nobel-laureates","tag-literature","tag-nobel-literature-prize","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}