As you’ve heard by now, the Nobel Prize in Literature this year went to one Herta Müller, and even if you’re an avid reader and fancy yourself some kind of intellectual, you probably haven’t heard of her until this morning. (Disclosure: I fit that description exactly.) This makes two relatively obscure picks in a row, which is annoying and amusing some people.
As you probably recall, there was some controversy last October, when then-Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, Horace Engdahl, in the course of responding to criticisms that the Nobel Prize goes to too many Europeans, claimed that the main reason no American has won the prize in many years was because our literary culture is parochial and insular.
These statements angered people, but at least they had the virtue of being pretty much accurate: we simply don’t translate nearly as much world literature into English as we should, and Americans do prefer to read about themselves whenever possible. I know of a bookstore in Mexico City, for example, where you can find more of Eastern Europe in Spanish than is available in English anywhere I know of in the States.
But really, are we all that clueless?
What’s ironic is that those annoyed by this apparent trend to obscurity like to flog the names that Americans don’t really know from the past decade of laurates — Gao Xingjian, Imre Kertész, J.M.G. Le Clezio, Elfriede Jelinek — of course ignoring the other six were Günter Grass, V.S. Naipaul, J.M. Coetzee, Harold Pinter, Orhan Pamuk, and Doris Lessing.
Given that their four “obscure” choices turned out to be worth looking into after all, perhaps — just maybe! — this Herta Müller character might be worth looking into as well. The Complete Review has put up a basic-facts page where you can at least see a rundown of her known bibliography, including those books that have been translated into English, and the Guardian has an interesting, informative article with everything you need to know to get started.
