Horace says that Americans don’t have the write stuff

Scott Hollifield
Published: October 3, 2008

Normally, I pay little attention to who wins the Nobel Prize in Literature. With my English major days far behind me, I rarely seek out any book that “uncovers the precipice of everyday prattle in the quest
for the melancholic soul of the female experience,” a description constructed entirely from the one-sentence blurbs about the last three winners at nobelprize.org.

But I admire those who do wade into the intellectual deep end of the creek, and often ask them for help with crossword puzzles.

What I don’t like is some snooty European goober named Horace insisting American authors couldn’t write their way out of a bucket if it was two-thirds full of multi-syllable words.

That’s pretty much what Horace Engdahl, secretary of the Swedish Academy, said in an exclusive interview with the Associated Press, the source I turn to for exclusive interviews with snooty European
goobers named Horace.

The Swedish Academy is in the final deliberations to see who will be the 105th person to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. (Full disclosure: I actually thought “The Swedish Academy” was a late-night
Cinemax movie rather than the body that awards the Nobel Prize in Literature each year, but I’m not as smart as some snooty European goobers.)

As secretary, Horace is the top member of the 16-person award jury, which, the story said, “regularly faces accusations of snobbery, political bias and even poor taste.” And, these days, the academy
rarely believes an American writer deserves the prize over, say, a European author who “uncovers the precipice of everyday prattle in the quest for the melancholic soul of the female experience.”

That’s because they’re ignorant, Horace concludes.

“The U.S. is too isolated, too insular,” he told AP. “They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is     restraining.”

Apparently, past U.S. winners like Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O’Neill, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and Toni Morrison were either a bunch of no-talent hacks who accidentally got the words in the
right order or the pen names of talented Europeans who beautifully related the American experience as no real American could.

Harold Augenbraum, head of the U.S. National Book Foundation, had this to say about Horace’s criticism: “Put him in touch with me, and I will send him a reading list.”

To which I added: “Hold him down and I’ll stuff that reading list down this throat and beat the dog snot out of him with a hardback copy of ‘Lonesome Dove.’”

In 1957, French writer Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our
times,” the academy said. Existentially, it’s tough to argue with the selection.

But, in that same year, Dr. Seuss published “The Cat in the Hat,” which has since taught a billion freakin’ kids how to read (and to think twice about letting a talking feline in odd head gear into their
homes while their moms are away.)

The good doctor followed with the poultry-and-pork poetics of “Green Eggs and Ham” and the colorful nautical tale “One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.”

Before freshman English majors pondered the significance of “Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why” from Camus’ “The Stranger,” they first had to ask this philosophical question: “Do you like green
eggs and ham? Do you like them, Sam I Am?”

Dr. Seuss, an American original, never won a Nobel Prize in Literature. Apparently he didn’t participate in the big dialogue of literature, whatever that is.

Good luck with the selection this year, Horace. And if you ever meet me in a dark Stockholm alley with a hardback copy of “Lonesome Dove” in my hand, you best run.

Scott Hollifield is editor/general manager of The McDowell News in Marion, N.C. Contact him at P.O. Box 610, Marion, N.C. 28752 or e-mail .