It is October, and it’s been that time of year again when the bookies urge people to discuss who will win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Except that, after the corruption and sexual assault scandals, I’m not sure anyone even cares any more.
It’s odd that it should have taken so long for it all to implode. It was already so improbable. The Swedish Academy was an elite and closed group ever since it was set up in 1786 to advance the cause of the Swedish language and literature. Its membership consisted of 18 Swedish intellectuals, appointed for life in an arcane centuries-old tradition. The task before them, per Alfred Nobel’s wishes: was to identify “the most outstanding work in an ideal direction” – that is, to sit in judgment over the literature of the entire world, and mysteriously produce a winner out of a hat.
