The news has reported that the most recent Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to an author by the name of Herta Mueller who was persecuted for writing during the Romania Communist regime. The author of the article stepped up on their soapbox and demanded to understand what this prize has come to and why the Nobel Prize in Literature is continually given to non-American authors, saying that the “award seems to reinforce the notion that the Nobel is a sort of literary archeological dig, in which judges scour the world's libraries and academies for an obscure author, in the hopes of creating a broad, worldwide audience and righting wrongs. The judges liberally slather on their political values, as the winning authors often are known for social commentary that hits at authoritarianism and racism.” The part about it all that floored me the most was to learn that this author, being criticized for only being chosen because of a diverse ethnic background and writing under hardship, beat out such American authors such as Stephenie Meyer and Dan Brown. I think that if America wants a Nobel Prize in Literature so badly, that perhaps we should be producing and nominating much more talented authors than the massively popular Meyers and Brown. I must admit that I do enjoy reading Stephenie Meyers’ books, but to even entertain for a mere millisecond that she deserves a Nobel Prize nomination for such works? It’s absurd! And a complete abomination to the prestigious award, which heralds such great authors as V.S. Naipaul, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, J.M. Coetzee, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Hemingway, Faulkner, T.S. Eliot…to name a few.
So, here, to honor a Nobel-worthy author (though he never won one), a rather humorous excerpt (my favorite) from G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday which we read last month for our book club:
Syme sat down at a cafe table with his companions, his blue eyes sparkling like the bright sea below, and ordered a bottle of Saumur with a pleased impatience. He was for some reason in a condition of curious hilarity. His spirits were already unnaturally high; they rose as the Saumur sank, and in half an hour hi talk was a torrent of nonsense. He professed to be making out a plan of the convertaion which was going to ensue between himself and the deadly Marquis. He jotted it down wildly with a pencil. It was arranged like a printed catechism, with questions and answers, and was delivered with an extraordinary rapidity of utterance.
“I shall approach. Before taking off his hat, I shall take off my own. I shall say, ‘The Marquis de Saint Eustache, I believe.’ He will say, ‘The celbrated Mr. Syme, I presume.’ He will say in the most exquisite French, ‘How are you?’ I shall reply in the most ewquisite Cockney, ‘Oh, just the Syme.’”
“Oh, shut it,” said the man in spectacles. “Pull yourself together, and chuck away that bit of paper. What are you really going to do?”
“But it was a lovely catechism,” said Syme pathetically. “Do let me read it to you. It has only forty-three questions and answers, and some of the Marquis’s answers are wonderfully witty. I like to be just to my enemy.”
“But what’s the good of it all?” asked Dr. Bull in exasperation.
“It leads up to my challenge, don’t you see,” said Syme, beaming. “When the Marquis has given the thirty-ninth reply, which runs—“
“Has it by any chance occurred to you,” asked the Professor, with a ponderous simplicity, “that the Marquis may not say all the forty-three things you have put down for him? In that case, I understand, your own epigrams may appear somewhat more forced.”
Syme struck the table with a radiant face.
“Why, how true that is,” he said, “and I never though of it. Sir, you have an intellect beyond the common. You will make a name.”
“Oh, you’re as drunk as an owl!” said the Doctor.
“It only remains,” continued Syme quite unperturbed, “to adopt some other method of breaking the ice (f I may so express it) etween myself and the man I wish to kill. And since the course of a dialogue cannot be predicted by on of its parties alone (as you have pointed out with such recondite acumen), the only thing to be done, I suppose, is for the one party, as far as possible, to do all the dialogue by himself. And so I will, by George!” And he stood up suddenly, his yellow hair blowing in the slight sea breeze.
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