In response to Louise Glück receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature this year, someone wrote:
"Giving the Nobel to a poet is like giving an Oscar to a street mime."
Is
the spirit of this statement in any way justified? In other words, is
it fair to give the award to a poet when writers like Isabel Allende,
Milan Kundera and Martin Amis have enriched and inspired if not millions
then certainly many thousands of readers across the globe with their
novels?
The statement got me thinking. I spent a career with a
large NYC based publishing company. For one national meeting, as a way
to introduce employees to one another, the company put together a
booklet with each employee's photo and a few bits of information,
including "favorite author." I recall reading everybody's choice and
doing a quick calculation: of the 200 women and men, 197 said their
favorite author was a novelist (from Jane Austen, James Baldwin, Ernest
Hemingway, J.R.R. Tolkien, Yukio Mishima to Philip K. Dick, Gillian
Flynn, Alice Monroe, Margaret Atwood and J. K. Rowling). And 3 said
their favorite author was an essayist (Dave Barry received 2 votes). NOT
ONE PERSON INDICATED A POET!
I'm the first person to recognize
quality literature, worthy literature is not a popularity contest.
However, there is a dynamic here that can't be overlooked: poetry has a
dedicated readership but compared to readers of novels it is minuscule.
Belgian
author Jean-Philippe Toussaint told an interviewer: "Nowadays, the
novel is the only literary genre that is visible, available to the
public. If I’d lived a century earlier, I probably would have written
poetry."
I still ponder these questions.
Comments
Post a Comment