הבלוג של אבו אלמוג

Once again, for the benefit of English speaking foreigners, the best post of the month is translated.

All of the holiday I sat, waiting by the phone, and the call from the Swedish Academy did not come. I'm not really disappointed.  As a mystery writer I can't expect  to win the Nobel Prize.

The truth be said - I didn't even get to win the much humbler Ramat-Gan prize. I was once a candidate for the 2003 Geffen Award, and Vered Tuchterman stole it from me. Just kidding. She deserved it more than me. Anyway, I have no legitimate expectation to win a Nobel Prize. But I'm just me. What about all those truly great genre authors, from  Raymond Chandler through Isaac Asimov to Tolkien? These could wait forever for the phone to ring. Not to mention Lovecraft, King or let's go really wild - Alan Moore.

If, say, we could nominate Chandler in 1939, the year 'The Big Sleep', one of his finest works, was published, the actual winner that year was the Finnish Frans Eemil Sillanpää, on "the deep understanding and belief in his unique description of peasant life and nature in his country, and the description of the interplay between them. "I have never read a book by Sillanpää. It's not really surprising. The guy was forgotten, and his books have never  been translated into Hebrew. As to any measurable parameter of influence, from the number of copies to the number of translations into different languages ​​Chandler gains the advantage over Sillanpää several times over. Regarding the elusive parameter of literary quality, I haven't read Sillanpää, but Chandler has a timeless quality it's hard for me to believe Sillanpää equaled. Peasant life in Finland seem to me a very difficult subject to write about in an interesting way, although he did got the Nobel so he apparently knows how to do it.

What about Bob Dylan? The number of poets who won the Nobel Prize is quite limited, and include names such as T.S. Eliot and Szymborska, but I'm pretty sure that  in every parameter of quality Dylan's verse equals winners such as Soweinka Vella (1986) or Joseph Brodsky (1987) or even exceeds them. Awarding Dylan could be a bold statement on the relevance of the 'counterculture'. But the Swedes prefer to hole up in their ivory tower.

The truth is that even some of those 'canonical' writers who usually inhabit these Swiss ivory towers are missing. I'm not talking about the greatest writer of the 21st century, in my opinion, Roberto Bolaño, who died too young and still lacks the recognition of greatness. What about Borges? Why Miguel Angel Asturias - believe me, a very mediocre writer  - and not Borges? Graham Greene? Amos Oz? Although you know, DUM SPIRO SPERO and as long as he lives (I saw him at a seminar sometime in June. Looks great), there is still hope.

Overall it's a question of the taste of a bunch of conservative elderly Swedes. Sometimes they make it by accident, and give the prize to someone who really deserves it, represents the spirit of the times, or written something really special, like Alice Munro or Szymborska. Sometimes they award a kind of Elfriede Jelinek, and all one can do is raise an eyebrow.

And Modiano? Modiano is great. One of my favorites. In my teens I read 'Rue des boutiques obscures', and it entered my short list. Almost a detective story, about a man who loses his memory, and then starts working as a private detective, and searches for his true identity. A very sad story with an open ending that talks of memory and forgetting, and the little details that make up our lives. There are some great plot moving mechanisms, and some classic 'detective' moves. At the time I almost classified Modiano as a generic mystery writer, and I'm pleased that the Swedes thought otherwise. He really is cute. I don't know if 'deserves' the Nobel , but he got it, and it's okay by me.

And say, have they already awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics? Because I have a sure winner. He was a career journalist and author - Nobel Prize for sure if he was still in the trade – turned into a leading economist, inventor of the zero VAT, and I am so pleased that there is also a nobel prize in that! So happy for you Yair. It could not happen to a better man. And I'm sure that in the end you will lower the cost of living . I have an idea, zero VAT on Milky. And we'll see how they all come back from Berlin. In an airlift.

Why is it always that when I write a serious post I must end with foolishness? Well, it's not over yet. I have to deliver the candy. Again you get the star Shantel with the planet of paprika. He deserves the Nobel Prize for his concision of the human condition in the words - "There's too much death and too little sex." I'm willing to bet that even if Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer (2011) would sit from this day to Hanukkah he couldn't produce such a line.