E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

I AM NOT THE ONE YOU NEED Yesterday Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature.  The award has been met with annual scorn and scepticism by many in the English press for decades, though the list of winners of the past 30 or so years includes Mahfouz, Fo, Brodsky, Lessing, Gordimer, Pamuk, Grass, Coetzee, Walcott, Heaney, Morrison, Munro, Pinter, Naipul, Modiano and Transtromer - all major figures in their genres. It is surely the case that Adonis, Roth, Murakami, Atwood, Ashbery, Muldoon , or Le Carre - to name just a few other world-famous writers now living - have an arguable case to be advanced, as well. Their time may yet come.   It cannot, however, be claimed that the Nobel ALWAYS misses the greats. In its odd career, it has managed to reward Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Faulkner, Hemingway, Milosz, Bellow, Neruda, Beckett, Steinbeck, Singer, Sartre, Camus, Pasternak, Gide, Hesse, Churchill, Mistral, Pirandello, Bergson, Shaw, O'Neill, Tagore, and Kipling . Any pr...

Finally, the country often considered too dull to notice, Canada, has won a Nobel Prize for Literature, not counting Bellow , and the winner is a deserving one - Alice Munro - a modest person who has lived most of her life in semi-rural Ontario (as the BBC put it), and in the process, become universal, without being provincial. Or overtly political. Canadians will know that we have had other late geniuses who might have been so laurelled - Mordecai Richler, Robertson Davies, Margaret Laurence, Gabrielle Roy, Morley Callaghan , AM Klein and PK Page come to mind, as do other expats like Wyndham Lewis or Malcolm Lowry .  Leonard Cohen might have been a lively and surprising choice, but if him, why not Dylan ? Of the living, younger generations, Atwood, Carson, Ondaatje , Martel , and George Elliott Clarke have been developing a considerable and viable international reputation .  Their dream is not to be this day.  Th is is a day for all Canadian writers and readers...

Steven Johannes Fowler reviews New Collected Poems translated by Robin Fulton Tomas Tranströmer There is little doubt that Tomas Tranströmer will be remembered as one of the last great figures of 20 th century European poetry, and by many, the last of a dying breed – that is a poet whose work and whose persona genuinely and thoroughly resonate in the consciousness of their nation. All the more remarkable perhaps, because he has come to stand for an image of the poet we might perceive as tailored and quaint – a deeply private and modest man, whose output of poetry over the last sixty years has been sparse though clearly momentous enough to command a world audience. This important volume from Bloodaxe, the second of its kind in under a decade, may not build any new structures for the reception of Tranströmer ’s poetry, but in its simple reconstitution of works past, embellished by the short, poignant works Tranströmer has undertaken in the 21 st century, the book becom...

Good news.  The major poet  Tomas Tranströmer has won this year's Nobel Prize for literature, at the age of 80.

Tomorrow, another Nobel for a writer.  The buzz is for Franzen .  If a poet (in English, to be parochial for a minute), the following have a shot: Les Murray, Bill Manhire, Paul Muldoon, Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and John Ashbery - each is a major figure, and is worthy.  I can only guess at the many other-languaged poets out there.  Again, prose writers in English who are deserving include Philip Roth , Margaret Atwood , and John Banville .  It probably should go to Murakami .  We shall see...

I have just completed Philip Roth 's 2010 novel, Nemesis , which seems to me to be a classic of simple diction and classical story-telling, like Hemingway 's Old Man and the Sea - and Roth too deserves the Nobel for this book, which is about as humane, moving, suspenseful, and powerful as literature can get - concerned as it is with mind, body, and soul - ultimately how these inter-act with history, love, and duty - over which hangs death and disease.  Biblical, yet homely and local (Newark), timeless and yet set in a time fraught for Jews and all Americans (1944), focused on a few young Jewish people of decency, and yet widening to embrace all those struck by "bad luck", and those blessed with good fortune, Nemesis amazed me with its efficacy. It is the first novel of this century, in English, that truly made me want to write my own novel.  However, what is doubly impressive is that Roth has pulled off a neat trick - while seemingly straightforward, this is a fic...

I am a Catholic, yet am concerned by the Vatican's statement tonight that the awarding of t he Nobel Prize for a "father" of "test tube" conception is "unacceptable" .  Theologically, it may well be - but surely, the jury in selecting its winners should be guided by scientific criteria alone.  Ironically, there is a sense that the "Literature" Nobel often goes to persons for extra-literary reasons, reasons of moral or socio-political nuance.  So perhaps the Church feels that the same moral conditions should be considered when deciding on the scientific and medical awards.  Yet, it seems the Church is making a cardinal error  - it should continue to feel able to express its own position on IVF treatment (which could change in time, and under renewed leadership later in the 21st century) - yet not propose to question the secular authority of a body like the Nobel committee.  In another paradox, Dr. Edwards has brought four more million souls i...

Sad news. Jose Saramago has died.