The Nobel Prize for THE GREATEST LIVING PERSON IN WORLD LITERATURE

...goes to someone no-one outside of her closeted family and introverted friends have ever heard of... and E@L smiles an inscrutable smile and sits back, knowing his day will surely come.

From The Daily Mail last year, when some unknown French dude, LeClezio (a berm? A BERM?), won The Prize:

The last U.S. writer to win the prize was Toni Morrison in 1993.

"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."

His comments were met with fierce reactions from the literary world
across the Atlantic. The head of the U.S. National Book Foundation offered to send Engdahl a reading list.

In Sweden, Jonas Thente, a literature critic at daily Dagens Nyheter, said he hoped U.S. writers Thomas Pynchon [YAY!] and Don DeLillo [not so much vit de YAYing] would share the prize.

"This year's scandal is about American literature, which has more or less been disrespected by the secretary of the academy," Thente said in a video clip on the newspaper's Web site. "I would hope that the big American postmodern novel finally gets the prize."

The academy often picks obscure writers, making it nearly impossible to predict a winner, but Engdahl denied that academy tries to surprise observers.

"We get astonished by the fact that the general public finds the choice so unexpected," he said. "Those who finally get the award and become laureates are often old acquaintances, they are old goodies that the academy has chewed on for quite a while and therefore know very well."

Other names mentioned in speculation on the 2008 prize include Romanian novelist Herta Muller[sic], Japanese author Haruki Murakami, Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru and Danish poet Inger Christensen.

Herta Mueller [correct spelling]? Who the fuck? How far up your own arse do you have to be, I swear, as if there aren't dozens, hundreds, of people who haven't done more for world literature than this - I am sure personable and lovely - lady (unlike that psycho-bitch Elfriede Jelinek who didn't even turn up [whom I admire, and I loved The Piano Teacher]), who deserve a pat on the back and cup of tea and a million bucks worth of encouragement more than this niche market nobody. For her to be up there with Thomas Mann, Patrick White and Germaine Greer [whom she resembles, nicht var?], I don't think so!

~~~~~~~~~~~

But if being obscure and unknown means winning The Prize...

E@L? yeah I know him, I saw him it at the Wine Connection tonight on Robinson Walk, writer guy on the innergneck. He was pissed again. HE should win the Nobled prize, fer sher, if for nothing else then this interchange with the venerable Milos on the noble medium of the SMS:

Milos: Can't come and join you guys. My sister is depressed.

E@L: Your sister is depressed? Well, mine... has her moments too - trumps to me.

Milso: Nah, she just got cancer.

E@L: Mmm.... bad... sorry to hear.

Milos: I'll get over it, she'll die.

E@L: Cancer therapy these days, man she'll live forever. You, however, ARE doomed. Me, I won't live long enough to get cancer. How many fat old guys you see?

Milos: Come live with me, it's like Belsen over here, without the good uniforms of course.

E@L (runs out of inspiration, gets depressed, conversation peters out...)

Sigh. The world is fucked, the good people get cancer, the unknown win the lottery.


E@L