October 9, 2008

French Writer Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

The 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded this morning to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, a French writer whose more than 40 books deal with topics as varied as environmentalism, the impact of globalization, and the clash between European and non-Western cultures.

In announcing the award, the Swedish Academy described him as an “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.”

Mr. Le Clézio, who is the first Frenchman to win the prize in 23 years, will receive the award, worth about $1.4-million this year, at a ceremony in December.

His early work, influenced by existentialism and other popular postwar literary currents, was often experimental. In recent years, Mr. Le Clézio has turned to more personal themes in his writing, including his childhood, his father, and his family history. His work has also drawn from his lifelong wanderlust. He was born in Nice, but lived as a child in Nigeria and studied at Britain’s University of Bristol before earning a series of degrees at French universities.

The Nobel citation says that he has taught at universities in Albuquerque, Austin, Bangkok, Boston, and Mexico City, although it does not specify which institutions.

Mr. Le Clézio is probably best known for two prize-winning books: his first novel, Le Procès-Verbal (The Deposition), published in 1963, and Désert, published in 1980. Many of his books are available in English translation, including several published by university presses: The Mexican Dream, or, the Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations (University of Chicago Press, 1993), Onitsha (University of Nebraska Press, 1997), and The Round & Other Cold Hard Facts (Nebraska, 1997). —Andrew Mytelka

Comments

1. Another no-name wins big. Give me a break. The Nobel prize committee needs help. Don’t they read?

   — mary    Oct 9, 04:04 PM    #

2. Are you kidding me? I really can’t take this committee seriously as long as it continues to ignore John Updike.

   — Bruce    Oct 9, 04:32 PM    #

3. Le Clézio is a splendid writer, known to vast numbers of readers on the planet except, of course, for the US of A.

   The English translations are very good.

   — Johanna    Oct 9, 05:54 PM    #

4. I am glad that the Committee uses different criteria than Oprah. Hurrah for Le Clézio.

   — Shar    Oct 9, 11:34 PM    #

5. We can always identify a writer that we prefer to the one selected by the Nobel committee. This does not mean that the committee has selected unworthy recipients. There are many more deserving writers than can ever be offered an award. When you have read the works of the individual in question, particularly if you read them in the original language, then you are more justified in complaining. Read more. Attack less.

   — Margot    Oct 10, 08:31 AM    #

6. Margot, I agree whole-heartedly that there are far more great authors than the Committee can get around to recognizing. One of the things I enjoy about the yearly announcement is mulling over their tastes (generally poststructuralist and postcolonial, with that existentialist legacy occasionally resurfacing) and whatever non-literary considerations might have made them choose one excellent writer over another. For example, there were indisputable political implications for their choices of Solzhenitsyn and Gao, and really, arguments could probably be made for political and human rights considerations influencing the choices for most of the laureates going back 50 years, if not longer.

   And working the laureates into my literature classes is good for the education of my geographically-challenged students. Where the hell is France? You mean this book wasn’t even written in English? What language do people speak in France anyway? When I mention that the prize is worth about a million dollars, the students are usually pretty impressed.

   — Shar    Oct 13, 12:47 AM    #

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