Are U.S. Writers That Bad?

Horace Engdahl, the head of the Nobel Prize jury says that U.S. writers aren't keeping up with the rest of the world - especially with Europe.

Is there some prejudice here? Not many people like the U.S. these days.  Our educational system is a mess.  Who has the free time to write anyway?  With gas almost $4.00 a gallon (after years of it almost being free) people are having to adjust to working extra jobs, or spending much less on other things, just to make ends meet.  Having the time to write is really a luxury.

The other possibility is that maybe we are too insular, as Engdahl states.  Most of our population thinks it is wasteful to know a second language.  We are close to having a Vice-President that didn't have a passport until a few weeks ago.  In fact we elected a President in 2000, who had never been to Europe (I'm sure he had been to the whore houses in Mexico, however).

We are a country who wants to keep newcomers out... using the excuse that many of our new residents are "sneaky" because they came to this country without official permission.  We want new people to do our dirty work, but would really like them to stick to themselves, stay out of sight and not go into our neighborhoods unless they come to mow the lawn or clean our house (that is unless they are baby-sitting).*

We want to be insular.  We want to be Americans - pushing for a homogeneity in a country that is made up of people from all over the world.  We are a patch work country that wants to be one big piece of fabric that is the same white color.

Engdahl may have something against Americans, but he has a point.  We are decades behind in our understanding and acceptance of globalization.  

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Nobel Chief Disparages U.S. as 'Too Insular' for Great Writing

Associated Press/Washington Post
Wednesday, October 1, 2008; C08

STOCKHOLM -- Bad news for American writers hoping for a Nobel Prize this month: The top member of the award jury believes the United States is too insular and ignorant to compete with Europe when it comes to great writing.

Counters the head of the U.S. National Book Foundation: "Put him in touch with me, and I'll send him a reading list."

As the Swedish Academy enters final deliberations for this year's award, permanent secretary Horace Engdahl said it's no coincidence that most winners are European.

"Of course there is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world . . . not the United States," he said yesterday. "The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining."

His comments were met with fierce reactions from literary officials across the Atlantic. "You would think that the permanent secretary of an academy that pretends to wisdom but has historically overlooked Proust, Joyce and Nabokov, to name just a few non-Nobelists, would spare us the categorical lectures," said David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker.

"And if he looked harder at the American scene that he dwells on, he would see the vitality in the generation of Roth, Updike and DeLillo, as well as in many younger writers, some of them sons and daughters of immigrants writing in their adopted English. None of these poor souls, old or young, seem ravaged by the horrors of Coca-Cola."

Harold Augenbraum, executive director of the foundation that administers the National Book Awards, said he wanted to send Engdahl a reading list of U.S. literature. "Such a comment makes me think that Mr. Engdahl has read little of American literature outside the mainstream," he said. "One way the United States has embraced the concept of world culture is through immigration. Each generation, beginning in the late 19th century, has re-created the idea of American literature."

The most recent American to win the award was Toni Morrison in 1993. Other American winners include Saul Bellow, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway.

The academy often picks obscure writers and hardly ever selects best-selling authors. It regularly faces accusations of snobbery, political bias and even poor taste. Since Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe won the award in 1994, the selections have had a distinct European flavor. Nine of the subsequent laureates were Europeans, including last year's winner, Doris Lessing of Britain.

Of the other four, one was from Turkey and the others from South Africa, China and Trinidad.

*Most European countries are just as xenophobic as the U.S.  Maybe Engdahl thinks it is their writers that are more open-minded.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/30/AR2008093002634.html?hpid=moreheadlines
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People Don't Immigrate Wanting to Break Laws

What I see over and over again from people who are upset with the current immigration wave in the U.S. is that they are not against immigration, they are against illegal immigration.

For one, when people migrate its almost always because of desperate need. I thought of this today when I saw the headlines that Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Boston Globe had the following statement:


'The Norwegian Nobel Committee said global warming, "may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth's resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world's most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states."'


yes, GLOBAL WARMING MAY INDUCE LARGE-SCALE MIGRATION.

I capitalize the letters to emphasize that immigration is not caused by people who want to take advantage of their host country and come and break the law. Just as global warming could cause people to migrate, other things are happening already to cause these great changes. A global economy has caused incomes to drop even further down in Third
World countries. Financial instability provokes social violence and revolt which force people to move.

So called "illegal immigration" is caused by the host country not having appropriate and efficient laws that can process immigrants in a timely and reasonable way. As often happens, the people with the least money have a much less chance to immigrate "legally." Its not that they won't stand in line and wait their turn.

Many people with money cut in line in front of them. Recently, one of the newspapers had an article on how so many wealthy Mexicans are moving to the Houston area. They obviously do not come because of poverty. They are escaping the constant threat of kidnapping and other crimes. You don't hear about any of them coming "illegally." This is because the United States (and many other countries) gives preference to people with money. If you have enough money, you can pass everybody else in line - you will have a document to show ICE in the small likelihood that you might be asked for your residency papers.

This leads me to think that if people are stable financially and do not fear for their safety they most probably not immigrate.
Strong outside forces provoke these type of changes, especially what we are seeing now all over the First World.

Can you imagine how much more of a change will come when Gore's predictions about Global Warming come true?

Bottom line is that for you who are angry and resentful at how immigrants are "ruining our country" - stop to think of other reasons for their migration. Consider that it is "not their fault" -- and in fact we are the ones who have ruined their countries with our American need to voraciously swallow the world's resources.

for complete article in Boston Globe, click title to this post