The Nobel Prize For Literature And The U.S.

Cafe Society
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only* Mysterious Stranger since then . . .

Personally, I think Beloved is a “Nobel worthy” work, along with some of Morrison’s early works like The Bluest Eye. I don’t count her as high on the list as Beckett and Laxness and Undset, but I don’t rank her anywhere near the Buck basement.

And I’ll agree that Cather’s work stands up to my idea of Nobel standards, but I haven’t yet done the Edith Wharton thing.

42

I agree; I saw Heaney read last month and he was fantastic. I can’t say I’ve read much poetry from the second half of the 20th century outside of what appears in The New Yorker, but I can attest that he deserved the prize.

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An update:

I think I’ve figured out why Buck won the Prize. It appears that it was a early political award (in 1938, the Japanese were invading China, and Buck was of note for her novels set in China.)

Any counter-arguements?