Belle Lettres

10 October 2008



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French Writer Wins Nobel in Literature

The Nobel people have awarded this year’s prize for literature to France’s Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. The Swedish Academy said he is an “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.” The author said he felt "some kind of incredulity, and then some kind of awe, and then some kind of joy and mirth.” It is well-deserved.

Author of some 30 books and dozens of essays, Mr. Le Clézio is considered by many to be France’s greatest living writer. A favorite here is his 1980 novel Desert, which the committee said “contains magnificent images of a lost culture in the North African desert contrasted with a depiction of Europe seen through the eyes of unwanted immigrants.”

This year’s award did have some controversy surrounding it. Last week, Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Nobel committee for literature, said that American literature was "too isolated, too insular They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature," adding that American writers are "too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture."

In reply, New Yorker editor David Remnick said, “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.” One might add to that list Yukio Mishima, Bertholt Brecht and Chinua Achebe.

Mr. Le Clézio seems to side with Mr. Remnick. He said at an impromptu press conference in Paris yesterday, “American literature is atypical – unlike French literature it gives rise to all sorts of states, styles and authors who are distinct.” He cited Philip Roth as an example. At the same time, he denied that French culture is in decline, “Some people are speaking of the decline of French culture – I was not aware of it so I don't have any answer. I deny it. It's a very rich, very diversified culture so there is no risk of decline.” He divides his time among Nice, Mauritius and Albuquerque, New Mexico. A man of letters and of the world.

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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