Some Nobel Prize official thinks the U.S. is “too insular and ignorant to compete with Europe when it comes to great writing.” So I guess we’re not going to see any American Nobel Prize winners while this guy is involved in the prize.

Speaking generally about American literature, however, he said U.S. writers are “too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture,” dragging down the quality of their work.

“The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature,” Engdahl said. “That ignorance is restraining.”

It’s hard to take this seriously when this prize is so political it gives Al Gore a win because, I surmise, they want him to run for president. Also, the Nobel Prize has a long history of picking forgettable writers, not to mention overlooking important writers like Joyce and Nabakov.

That said, he has one good point: we are too sensitive to the trends of our own culture. I blame marketers. I really do. At some point, this trend of buying books based on what marketers think will sell is going to hurt the overall quality of American literature. It forces good writers to write to what marketers want rather than what is important. Marketers, unfortunately, rarely know what they want. So, as insulting as this is, maybe we Americans should take some notice here.

~ Joy