Being Swedish, I’ll just say I wasn’t a bit surprised when this started. Engdahl *is *a pretentious douchebag and always comes across as condescending in interviews. He also seems totally devoid of any sense of humor.
Since he was named secretary (for life, he’s 60 and these guys live long lives), the choices of the Academy has been getting poorer by the year.
Philip Roth will probably win someday, but when he does I’ll be done with the Nobel for a while. He’s the most overrated (mostly by himself) writer we’ve produced.
Meanwhile, Murakami is on my short list.
I’ll always be miffed that Mark Twain was passed over. They had almost a decade in which they could have awarded it to him.
Like my fellow Scanian **Charlie Tan **says, everything that comes out of Horace Engdahl’s mouth is hyper-pretentious and elitist. He hates everything that doesn’t fit into his narrow definition of good literature, and loves to express the same hatred loudly and frequently. The Swedes are used to it and he’s a bit of a laughing stock here; he’s much like the offensive and socially inept cousin at the family gathering - you learn not to take anything he says seriously. I feel embarrassed for my own country when he inflicts himself on the rest of the world.
(I also have it on good authority that he buys cheesy science fiction novels from time to time. But they’re “not for himself”.)
The two non-inclusions I regret most are Borges and Calvino.
They missed Dos Passos entirely - though they probably were snubbing him for his later work. Still, his prewar work probably deserved the prize because of its influence at the time and its lasting importance.
IMHO
He forgot the Commonwealth of Poopsylvania.