The Beards Anthology is finally done despite the death
of the original publishing company. Details at http://www.beardspoetry.com/Release Dates:November 20th: New York City/The Bowery Poetry Club 6:00November 21st: Philadelphia/Robins Bookstore 6:00A second show is in the works for Philly on Saturday. Let you know the details
Here is a list of performers for this traveling circus act!
John Dorsey currently resides in Toledo, OH. He is the author of "harvey keitel, harvey keitel, harvey keitel" with S.A. Griffin and Scott Wannberg, Butcher Shop Press/Rose of Sharon Press/Temple of Man, 2005. In Hartford, CT he is well-known as the Ambassador of The Beards and can usually be found book whoring at archerevans@yahoo.com.
Michael D. Grover is a Florida born poet. As a drifter has lived all over the country.Michael's poetry has been published all over the literary underground. Michael is now living in Toledo, Ohio where he is a resident artist at The Collingwood Art Center. He co-hosts a reading there every Tuesday night. He also hosts the website www. covertpoetics. com, co-edits CP Journal, and runs Covert Press. He was elected President of The Beards in a disputed election in Connecticut. His newest chapbook is titled ". . .And Death Is All Around Us".
Dan Provost's sixth chapbook Fallen Empathy has been published by Covert Press. He lives in Worcester, Massachusetts.....
Kathryn Erlinger (aka Katie Kaboom) writes and reads and makes stuff. She has been published in Off Beat Pulp, Zygote In My Coffee, and has a chapbook entitled "Explosive Devices for Girls". In addition, she is a member of the poet's group the Beards and will be featured in an upcoming collaborative effort. She is also an activist and a literature student at University of Missouri Kansas City. She avidly self-publishes via myspace: Katie Kaboom.
Jacob Johanson has been published by all the usual suspects. he is the literary editor of the online zine Off Beat Pulp and was recently included in The Feedbag, a chapbook with john dorsey, s.a. griffin, jason neese and david smith, which he is ridiculously proud of. with any luck his forthcoming chapbook will be coming out soon enough (echoed mythology and other poems). in the meantime he will continue to write, draw and paint in an effort to make all the voices go silent for just a little while longer.
Lester Allen: Although he has been writing most of his life Lester Allen is a new comer to the underground poetry scene. In that time he has built an impressive resume being published in places like Red Fez. net, Gloom Cupboard, CPJournal, Offbeat Pulp, Kill Poet, and more. Lester lives in Harrisburg, Pa where he lives with his wife and their cats. He is a member of the loved and hated performance group The Beards.
blue lives as cb crane in San Francisco. She teaches art to 3rd graders. She rides a bike and a skateboard and often ponders the moon. She has been published in Offbeat Pulp and the CP Journal and soon the Toronto Quarterly. A chap book will soon appear via Covert Press. She's tall.
Michael Grover to me show details Jun 28 Reply
Here's the rest Frankie. Saturday night really was amazing. Saturday 6/21/08: We Beards were seen at a overpriced Kansas City barbeque this morning eating breakfast with Jensine (Lester Allen's wife),and Cleveland poets C. Allen Rearick and Steve Goldberg. After that we went to the Salvation Army Thrift Store where Dorsey scored a reallynice hat. After that they went to see Indiana Jones. Juice and I refused to go in so we called back to the house and Bucho came out and picked us up.(Much thanks to Bucho.) The show that night promised to be one of the greatest poetry shows ever, and it lived up to it. It was at the
Metropolitan Ensemble Theaterin Kansas City. The night kicked off by Elly, a poet from New Mexico. She was good. Next was Calamity Jane (Justine Middleton), from Los Angeles.After her I was due up. During my first poem I tried to grab the mic and walk around. If you know me I do not stand still and read. The soundmantold me the feedback was from moving around. So I put the mic back on the stand. Looked at the theater, it was a big room, but the acoustics wereperfect and I can read pretty loud. For my second poem I stepped out from behind the podium and went micless. I finished the reading without themic and I think it went pretty well. Following me was Lester Allen. He was calm, cool, and collected as his style is. He still attacks poetry with a wide eyed enthusiasm. AfterLes was David Smith aka Handsome Duke Deal. He was all dressed up in his bartenders clothes, and gave a memorable performance. After David was John Dorsey in his new hat from the Salvation Army. John is a great writer and a great performer, and does it with a great energy. 
There are not a lot of poets out there that could top John Dorsey. If anyone could do it, it would be S.A. Griffin who was next. He came complete with theatrics, reading flaming poems, having women come on stage and kiss him. This was great stuff. At the end of his set he was joinedby his friend Michael Bruner. They sung a couple of songs together and Bruner performed. He actually made me part of his performance interactingwith me in the front row. Next up was Luc Simonic. The highlight of his reading was The Jesus Rap, as he performed my style and was all over the stage without the mic.He did it with a lot of energy and it was a great performance. Could anyone actually follow this show so far? Frank Reardon would have to try.He did very well and turned in a solid performance. Fellow Beard Juice was next and he is definitely an up and coming poet to watch. His poems and performance are solid and he does it all withgreat passion. Seth Elkins read after him and he was good. After that was an open mic which featured Katie Kaboom, Iris Applequist, and C. Allen Rearick. It does not get much better than this poetryshow. Watching it you got the sense you were watching poetry history, and it was an honor to be a part of it. We closed off the night in an after hours jazz joint. This was totally authentic and the perfect close to a perfect night. Sunday 6/22/08: The barbeque in the park was hard to find, but our host Mike was happy to show us the way there. We were deep back in the park.There was a huge lake there that we walked to where Katie and Ginsine took a swim. There was much drinking and socializing. We all ate too much,then it was time for the closing of the festival. The open mic at the barbeque. This was kicked off by our other host and fellow Beard JacobJohansen. He kicked the open mic off right. Next was Kill Poet editor J(Syn) Neece. Katie Kaboom gave a memorable performance. After that LApoet Amelie Florence performed. After her one of the most memorable performances of the festival Angel aka The Brown Recluse performed his Japanese death poem. It was brilliantbut I noticed it did not get everyone's attention. It should have. After Angel I read. I did something I had just written at the barbeque a couple of hours before. It's a good poem. I was followed by John Dorsey who gave another flawless performance. Next was Frank Reardon who didhis Madman poem, one of his best. Next we had a special treat as Jensine read for the first time. Her stuff was very good. She was followed by S.A. Griffin who rocked as healways does. After that Stacey Mangiaracina read two very emotional poems, and honestly I feel she was more relaxed and gave a much better performancethan she did Friday night. After that our host Mike read and he was good. I enjoyed his stuff. Up next was Lester Allen, and he was solid and consistant as he always is. Boxy was pretty good. I liked his reading Friday night better. After him was another of the best and most emotional readings of the whole festival as David Smith aka Handsome Duke Deal read his broadsideThe Genocide Sutra. This was amazing. The sun was going down and we were all tired. Juice finished off the whole festival kicking ass in trueJuice style. I liked the informality of the open mic
and it was the perfect way to close the festival. Back at the house we said our goodbyes to Lester, hiswife Jensine, and John Dorsey. It was sad, we knew we would not see each other again for a while. Juice slept outside with the fireflies in a sleeping bag, I slept on the floor on a mattress. The next morning I was packing my suitcase. I was the only one in the house that was up. Frank Reardon barged in for breakfast telling us GeorgeCarlin was dead. This was sad news indeed. Juice and I went to the airport together driven by Jacob and had one last political discussion on theway. From there we sadly left Kansas City.
Here's the rest Frankie. Saturday night really was amazing. Saturday 6/21/08: We Beards were seen at a overpriced Kansas City barbeque this morning eating breakfast with Jensine (Lester Allen's wife),and Cleveland poets C. Allen Rearick and Steve Goldberg. After that we went to the Salvation Army Thrift Store where Dorsey scored a reallynice hat. After that they went to see Indiana Jones. Juice and I refused to go in so we called back to the house and Bucho came out and picked us up.(Much thanks to Bucho.) The show that night promised to be one of the greatest poetry shows ever, and it lived up to it. It was at the
Metropolitan Ensemble Theaterin Kansas City. The night kicked off by Elly, a poet from New Mexico. She was good. Next was Calamity Jane (Justine Middleton), from Los Angeles.After her I was due up. During my first poem I tried to grab the mic and walk around. If you know me I do not stand still and read. The soundmantold me the feedback was from moving around. So I put the mic back on the stand. Looked at the theater, it was a big room, but the acoustics wereperfect and I can read pretty loud. For my second poem I stepped out from behind the podium and went micless. I finished the reading without themic and I think it went pretty well. Following me was Lester Allen. He was calm, cool, and collected as his style is. He still attacks poetry with a wide eyed enthusiasm. AfterLes was David Smith aka Handsome Duke Deal. He was all dressed up in his bartenders clothes, and gave a memorable performance. After David was John Dorsey in his new hat from the Salvation Army. John is a great writer and a great performer, and does it with a great energy. There are not a lot of poets out there that could top John Dorsey. If anyone could do it, it would be S.A. Griffin who was next. He came complete with theatrics, reading flaming poems, having women come on stage and kiss him. This was great stuff. At the end of his set he was joinedby his friend Michael Bruner. They sung a couple of songs together and Bruner performed. He actually made me part of his performance interactingwith me in the front row. Next up was Luc Simonic. The highlight of his reading was The Jesus Rap, as he performed my style and was all over the stage without the mic.He did it with a lot of energy and it was a great performance. Could anyone actually follow this show so far? Frank Reardon would have to try.He did very well and turned in a solid performance. Fellow Beard Juice was next and he is definitely an up and coming poet to watch. His poems and performance are solid and he does it all withgreat passion. Seth Elkins read after him and he was good. After that was an open mic which featured Katie Kaboom, Iris Applequist, and C. Allen Rearick. It does not get much better than this poetryshow. Watching it you got the sense you were watching poetry history, and it was an honor to be a part of it. We closed off the night in an after hours jazz joint. This was totally authentic and the perfect close to a perfect night. Sunday 6/22/08: The barbeque in the park was hard to find, but our host Mike was happy to show us the way there. We were deep back in the park.There was a huge lake there that we walked to where Katie and Ginsine took a swim. There was much drinking and socializing. We all ate too much,then it was time for the closing of the festival. The open mic at the barbeque. This was kicked off by our other host and fellow Beard JacobJohansen. He kicked the open mic off right. Next was Kill Poet editor J(Syn) Neece. Katie Kaboom gave a memorable performance. After that LApoet Amelie Florence performed. After her one of the most memorable performances of the festival Angel aka The Brown Recluse performed his Japanese death poem. It was brilliantbut I noticed it did not get everyone's attention. It should have. After Angel I read. I did something I had just written at the barbeque a couple of hours before. It's a good poem. I was followed by John Dorsey who gave another flawless performance. Next was Frank Reardon who didhis Madman poem, one of his best. Next we had a special treat as Jensine read for the first time. Her stuff was very good. She was followed by S.A. Griffin who rocked as healways does. After that Stacey Mangiaracina read two very emotional poems, and honestly I feel she was more relaxed and gave a much better performancethan she did Friday night. After that our host Mike read and he was good. I enjoyed his stuff. Up next was Lester Allen, and he was solid and consistant as he always is. Boxy was pretty good. I liked his reading Friday night better. After him was another of the best and most emotional readings of the whole festival as David Smith aka Handsome Duke Deal read his broadsideThe Genocide Sutra. This was amazing. The sun was going down and we were all tired. Juice finished off the whole festival kicking ass in trueJuice style. I liked the informality of the open mic and it was the perfect way to close the festival. Back at the house we said our goodbyes to Lester, hiswife Jensine, and John Dorsey. It was sad, we knew we would not see each other again for a while. Juice slept outside with the fireflies in a sleeping bag, I slept on the floor on a mattress. The next morning I was packing my suitcase. I was the only one in the house that was up. Frank Reardon barged in for breakfast telling us GeorgeCarlin was dead. This was sad news indeed. Juice and I went to the airport together driven by Jacob and had one last political discussion on theway. From there we sadly left Kansas City.Michael Grover to me show details Jun 21 Reply
The show last night at the writers house started off strong. The house was packed for poetry which is always a good thing. Jacob Johanson kicked the whole damned festival off the way it should be started. With a bang and words of passion. By the end of the night this would be the best performance.Iris Applequist started off slow but really got into her rhythm after a couple of poems and kicked ass. Some great and good poets followed like Katie Kaboom, and Boxy. At this point the host ruined the reading by putting on a few local poets who were not planned and were not that good. The reading went downhill and the crowd began to thin. By the time poets like C. Allen Rearick made it up to the mic which was a shame. Oh well. It was a good show.
On 6/21/08, Michael Grover <covert.poetics@gmail.com> wrote:
The show last night at the writers house started off strong. The house was packed for poetry which is always a good thing. Jacob Johanson kicked the whole damned festival off the way it should be started. With a bang and words of passion. By the end of the night this would be the best performance.
Iris Applequist started off slow but really got into her rhythm after a couple of poems and kicked ass. Some great and good poets followed like Katie Kaboom, and Boxy. At this point the host ruined the reading by putting on a few local poets who were not planned and were not that good. The reading went downhill and the crowd began to thin. By the time poets like C. Allen Rearick made it up to the mic which was a shame. Oh well. It was a good show.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
magico-social- suprarealism ?STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - Bad news for American writers hoping for a Nobel Prize next week: 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 told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview Tuesday.
He said the 16-member award jury has not selected this year's winner, and dropped no hints about who was on the short list. Americans Philip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates usually figure in speculation, but Engdahl wouldn't comment on any names.
Speaking generally about American literature, however, he said U.S. writers are "too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture," dragging down the quality of their work.
"The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature," Engdahl said. "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 which 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 and has a very narrow view of what constitutes literature in this age," he said.
"In the first place, one way the United States has embraced the concept of world culture is through immigration. Each generation, beginning in the late 19th century, has recreated the idea of American literature."
He added that this is something the English and French are discovering as immigrant groups begin to take their place in those traditions.
The most recent American to win the award was Toni Morrison in 1993. Other American winners include Saul Bellow, John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway.
"phlipant rot"
As permanent secretary, Engdahl is a voting member of and spokesman for the secretive panel that selects the winners of what many consider the most prestigious award in literature.
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. All had strong ties to Europe.
Engdahl said Europe draws literary exiles because it "respects the independence of literature" and can serve as a safe haven.
"Very many authors who have their roots in other countries work in Europe, because it is only here where you can be left alone and write, without being beaten to death," he said. "It is dangerous to be an author in big parts of Asia and Africa."
The Nobel Prize announcements start next week with the medicine award on Monday, followed by physics, chemistry, peace and economics. Next Thursday is a possible date for the literature prize, but the Swedish Academy by tradition only gives the date two days before.
Engdahl suggested the announcement date could be a few weeks away, saying "it could take some time" before the academy settles on a name.
Each Nobel Prize includes a $1.3 million purse, a gold medal and a diploma. The awards are handed out Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896.
__
Alison Flood
guardian.co.uk,
Wednesday October 01 2008 13.08 BST
Article history
'Assiduous labour' ... Fredrik Persson/AP
The Nobel prospects of Philip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates may have been dashed after the prize's top jury member described American writing as insular and ignorant.
Permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy Horace Engdahl told the Associated Press that US writers were "too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture", which he said dragged down the quality of their work. "The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature," Engdahl said. "That ignorance is restraining."
"Of course there is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world ... not the United States," he said, later adding that "what I said expresses a conviction resulting from more than 10 years of assiduous labour". Toni Morrison was the last American to win the prize, in 1993.
Contacted by guardian.co.uk this morning, Engdahl claimed a misunderstanding had occurred and that the Swedish Academy strictly adhered to Alfred Nobel's wish "that in awarding the prize no consideration whatsoever be given to the nationality of the candidates". He added: "It is of no importance, when we judge American candidates, how any of us views American literature as a whole in comparison with other literatures. The Nobel prize is not a contest between nations but an award to individual authors. It is essential to remember that when national feelings run high." He maintained that there was "no reason for any particular author to get upset by my observations.
This year's winner is expected to be announced in the next few weeks and has not yet been selected, according to Engdahl, who told AP that "it could take some time" before the academy settles on a name.
Engdahl, a professor of Scandinavian literature and a literary critic, has been permanent secretary since 1997 of the secretive committee of 18 Academy members who select the winner. Over the course of a year, the Academy will whittle down nominated authors from 200 to a shortlist of five, which is not made public. An author must receive more than half of votes cast to take the prize.
Ladbrokes' frontrunner is currently the Italian scholar Claudio Magris, who is 3/1 favourite to take the SEK10m prize, trailed by the Syrian poet Adonis at 4/1. Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth are the highest placed Americans, at 7/1, while Don DeLillo is at 10/1 and Thomas Pynchon at 20/1; Ladbrokes is also offering 40/1 odds on the generally reclusive Pynchon both winning and attending the prize-giving on December 10.
Last year's winner was the UK's Doris Lessing, a rare female choice. Over the last 10 years the Nobel laureates have had a distinct European flavour, with Turkey's Orhan Pamuk, the UK's Harold Pinter and VS Naipaul, Austria's Elfriede Jelinek, Portugal's José Saramago, Hungary's Imre Kertész, France's Gao Xingjian and Germany's Günter Grass all taking the prize. South Africa's JM Coetzee won in 2003.
In 2005, Knut Ahnlund, a member of the Nobel committee, resigned over the choice of Elfriede Jelinek as winner, describing her writing as "whining, unenjoyable public pornography". Engdahl gave no indication as to what he might do should an American author take the prize this year.
American writer Philip Roth. Nobel prize for literature judge Horace Engdahl has described American writing as 'too isolated, too insular'. Photograph: Orjan F Ellingvag/Dagbladet/Corbis
Sorry, John Updike. Don't get your hopes up, Joyce Carol Oates. And Philip Roth, what were you thinking? It's been 15 long years since an American author was honoured with a Nobel prize for literature. Judging by the low opinion the head of the award jury holds of American writing, it is not going to happen this year.
Yesterday, the literary world on this side of the Atlantic reacted with bemusement and anger to an extraordinary tirade against American writing by Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Nobel prize jury.
"There is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world ... not the United States," he told the Associated Press. "The US 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."
The black-and-white views guaranteed Engdahl a wide audience for his confident dismissal of an industry that published more than 50,000 works of fiction last year. Unsurprisingly, his remarks elicited a variety of strong responses from members of America's writing community. Few of them could be described as abject or crushed.
Harold Augenbraum, who oversees the National Book Awards, told AP he was thinking of sending Engdahl a reading list. "Such a comment makes me think that Engdahl has read little American literature outside the mainstream and has a narrow view of what constitutes literature in this age," he said.
Michael Dirda, the Pulitzer prize-winning critic at the Washington Post's Book World, conceded that Americans do overwhelmingly read works in English rather than translation. But he added: "My general reaction is that he is just betraying an insular attitude towards a very diverse country."
The New Yorker's David Remnick accused the Nobel committee of being eternally incapable of recognising good writing when it saw it. "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," he told AP.
Stunt
Roger Kimball, editor of The New Criterion, registered Engdahl's comments with a degree of detachment. He noted that other Nobel committees are due to announce their prizes next week, in medicine, peace and economics, and that Engdahl may have been trying to generate some publicity.
"It reminds me a little bit of the Apollo space programme that Uganda instituted under the rule of Idi Amin, where they had rockets and so on, except that they were made out of balsa wood," he said. "It strikes me as a kind of publicity stunt for a prize that in recent years has demonstrated its fatuousness and political complexion with one political laureate after the next punctuated now and then by a VS Naipaul just to lend a patina of credibility."
The US literary community has long had an ambivalent attitude towards the Nobel prize - not helped by the long drought. The last American to win a prize for literature was Toni Morrison in 1993. In the years since then, Europeans have been recognised nine times, including Britain's Doris Lessing.
The Nobel committee has also had a patchy reputation for recognising genius. Although the reputations of such US winners as TS Eliot and Ernest Hemingway have survived, other laureates such as Sinclair Lewis and Pearl Buck have fallen in popular regard.
Oates and Roth have been mentioned for years as worthy candidates, without getting the nod. Updike presumably decided he never had a shot anyway when he created his character Bech and made fun of the prize.
It could be also that American writers, or anyone writing in English, may not need the recognition to achieve lasting fame, although the $1.3m (£650,000) award and gold medal would be nice.
"The Nobel has the great glamour. It also has the burden of being a kind of kiss of death. Many writers think it crowns your life effort and nothing that you do afterwards is as good," said Dirda. "It is a mixed blessing. But your name is in the history books."
· This article was amended on Thursday October 2 2008. The editor of The New Criterion is Roger, not Robert Kimball. This has been corrected.
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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. All had strong ties to Europe.
Engdahl said Europe draws literary exiles because it "respects the independence of literature" and can serve as a safe haven.
"Very many authors who have their roots in other countries work in Europe, because it is only here where you can be left alone and write, without being beaten to death," he said. "It is dangerous to be an author in big parts of Asia and Africa."
The Nobel Prize announcements start next week with the medicine award on Monday, followed by physics, chemistry, peace and economics. Next Thursday is a possible date for the literature prize, but the Swedish Academy by tradition only gives the date two days before.
Engdahl suggested the announcement date could be a few weeks away, saying "it could take some time" before the academy settles on a name.
Each Nobel Prize includes a $1.3 million purse, a gold medal and a diploma. The awards are handed out Dec. 10, the anniversary of prize founder Alfred Nobel's death in 1896.
__
Alison Flood
guardian.co.uk,
Wednesday October 01 2008 13.08 BST
Article history
'Assiduous labour' ... Fredrik Persson/AP
The Nobel prospects of Philip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates may have been dashed after the prize's top jury member described American writing as insular and ignorant.
Permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy Horace Engdahl told the Associated Press that US writers were "too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture", which he said dragged down the quality of their work. "The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature," Engdahl said. "That ignorance is restraining."
"Of course there is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world ... not the United States," he said, later adding that "what I said expresses a conviction resulting from more than 10 years of assiduous labour". Toni Morrison was the last American to win the prize, in 1993.
Contacted by guardian.co.uk this morning, Engdahl claimed a misunderstanding had occurred and that the Swedish Academy strictly adhered to Alfred Nobel's wish "that in awarding the prize no consideration whatsoever be given to the nationality of the candidates". He added: "It is of no importance, when we judge American candidates, how any of us views American literature as a whole in comparison with other literatures. The Nobel prize is not a contest between nations but an award to individual authors. It is essential to remember that when national feelings run high." He maintained that there was "no reason for any particular author to get upset by my observations.
This year's winner is expected to be announced in the next few weeks and has not yet been selected, according to Engdahl, who told AP that "it could take some time" before the academy settles on a name.
Engdahl, a professor of Scandinavian literature and a literary critic, has been permanent secretary since 1997 of the secretive committee of 18 Academy members who select the winner. Over the course of a year, the Academy will whittle down nominated authors from 200 to a shortlist of five, which is not made public. An author must receive more than half of votes cast to take the prize.
Ladbrokes' frontrunner is currently the Italian scholar Claudio Magris, who is 3/1 favourite to take the SEK10m prize, trailed by the Syrian poet Adonis at 4/1. Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth are the highest placed Americans, at 7/1, while Don DeLillo is at 10/1 and Thomas Pynchon at 20/1; Ladbrokes is also offering 40/1 odds on the generally reclusive Pynchon both winning and attending the prize-giving on December 10.
Last year's winner was the UK's Doris Lessing, a rare female choice. Over the last 10 years the Nobel laureates have had a distinct European flavour, with Turkey's Orhan Pamuk, the UK's Harold Pinter and VS Naipaul, Austria's Elfriede Jelinek, Portugal's José Saramago, Hungary's Imre Kertész, France's Gao Xingjian and Germany's Günter Grass all taking the prize. South Africa's JM Coetzee won in 2003.
In 2005, Knut Ahnlund, a member of the Nobel committee, resigned over the choice of Elfriede Jelinek as winner, describing her writing as "whining, unenjoyable public pornography". Engdahl gave no indication as to what he might do should an American author take the prize this year.
American writer Philip Roth. Nobel prize for literature judge Horace Engdahl has described American writing as 'too isolated, too insular'. Photograph: Orjan F Ellingvag/Dagbladet/Corbis
Sorry, John Updike. Don't get your hopes up, Joyce Carol Oates. And Philip Roth, what were you thinking? It's been 15 long years since an American author was honoured with a Nobel prize for literature. Judging by the low opinion the head of the award jury holds of American writing, it is not going to happen this year.
Yesterday, the literary world on this side of the Atlantic reacted with bemusement and anger to an extraordinary tirade against American writing by Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Nobel prize jury.
"There is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world ... not the United States," he told the Associated Press. "The US 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."
The black-and-white views guaranteed Engdahl a wide audience for his confident dismissal of an industry that published more than 50,000 works of fiction last year. Unsurprisingly, his remarks elicited a variety of strong responses from members of America's writing community. Few of them could be described as abject or crushed.
Harold Augenbraum, who oversees the National Book Awards, told AP he was thinking of sending Engdahl a reading list. "Such a comment makes me think that Engdahl has read little American literature outside the mainstream and has a narrow view of what constitutes literature in this age," he said.
Michael Dirda, the Pulitzer prize-winning critic at the Washington Post's Book World, conceded that Americans do overwhelmingly read works in English rather than translation. But he added: "My general reaction is that he is just betraying an insular attitude towards a very diverse country."
The New Yorker's David Remnick accused the Nobel committee of being eternally incapable of recognising good writing when it saw it. "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," he told AP.
Stunt
Roger Kimball, editor of The New Criterion, registered Engdahl's comments with a degree of detachment. He noted that other Nobel committees are due to announce their prizes next week, in medicine, peace and economics, and that Engdahl may have been trying to generate some publicity.
"It reminds me a little bit of the Apollo space programme that Uganda instituted under the rule of Idi Amin, where they had rockets and so on, except that they were made out of balsa wood," he said. "It strikes me as a kind of publicity stunt for a prize that in recent years has demonstrated its fatuousness and political complexion with one political laureate after the next punctuated now and then by a VS Naipaul just to lend a patina of credibility."
The US literary community has long had an ambivalent attitude towards the Nobel prize - not helped by the long drought. The last American to win a prize for literature was Toni Morrison in 1993. In the years since then, Europeans have been recognised nine times, including Britain's Doris Lessing.
The Nobel committee has also had a patchy reputation for recognising genius. Although the reputations of such US winners as TS Eliot and Ernest Hemingway have survived, other laureates such as Sinclair Lewis and Pearl Buck have fallen in popular regard.
Oates and Roth have been mentioned for years as worthy candidates, without getting the nod. Updike presumably decided he never had a shot anyway when he created his character Bech and made fun of the prize.
It could be also that American writers, or anyone writing in English, may not need the recognition to achieve lasting fame, although the $1.3m (£650,000) award and gold medal would be nice.
"The Nobel has the great glamour. It also has the burden of being a kind of kiss of death. Many writers think it crowns your life effort and nothing that you do afterwards is as good," said Dirda. "It is a mixed blessing. But your name is in the history books."
· This article was amended on Thursday October 2 2008. The editor of The New Criterion is Roger, not Robert Kimball. This has been corrected.
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Prodded by Nobel Prize, the New Yorker Introduces Readers to Laureate's Work
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» Links to this article Associated Press Monday, October 20, 2008; Page C05
NEW YORK, Oct. 19 -- Nobel laureate Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, little known to American audiences before being named the winner of the literature prize, is getting another introduction to U.S. readers: His work is appearing for the first time in the New Yorker.
"We thought lots of people would be very interested to see what his work was like," said New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman, whose translation of the short story "The Boy Who Had Never Seen the Sea" will appear on newsstands Monday. "We also wanted to move fast and publish it while people still remember his name."
Le Clézio, 68, was praised by the Swedish Academy for his "poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy" in such works as "Terra Amata," "The Book of Flights" and "Desert." Although he is ranked among the greatest living French writers, even leading American critics -- including Treisman and New Yorker editor David Remnick -- acknowledged they had not read his work.
A week before the award was announced, Academy Permanent Secretary Horace Engdahl told the Associated Press that the United States was too insular and ignorant to challenge Europe as the center of the literary world; Remnick was among those who objected.
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Originally published in "Mondo et Autres Histoires" ("Mondo and Other Stories"), a 1978 collection, "The Boy" tells of a young loner and boarding school student named Daniel whose passion for the sea leads to his mysterious disappearance and raises him to mythical heights among those who knew him -- and among the many who didn't.
"We talked about the usual school things," Le Clézio writes, "our math problems, our Latin translations, but always we were thinking of him, as if he really were a kind of Sinbad, still making his way around the world."
Treisman said that after the Nobel was announced on Oct. 9, she contacted Le Clézio's publisher, Gallimard, which gave permission for the New Yorker to publish work from "Mondo." Treisman said she chose "The Boy" for its language and narrative and imaginative power.
Asked why she had never read Le Clézio, even though she is fluent in French, Treisman laughed and responded: "I do have an awful lot to read. I try to keep up with what's happening, and I'm aware of quite a few writers in France right now, but I had no particular reason to read his work before" the Nobel was awarded.
"So this was a big prod from the Nobel Prize committee."
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