Update: Vargas Llosa wins! Learn more.
Now that The Nobel Prize Committee has already selected their winner for the Literature prize, there’s only a little time left before the announcement to bet on the winner at Ladbrokes. Of the 237 nominees selected, Ladbrokes bookies chose a few dozen authors they felt are particularly likely to win. Among them are some six Hispanophone writers, with the favorite of the bunch running at 25/1 odds. Still, everyone loves an upset, and with that in mind, we’ve handicapped the group ahead of the big day.
Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa has been given 25/1 odds by the bookies. Vargas Llosa, 74, is an all around man of letters, in the long Latin American tradition of such figures. He’s a journalist, playwright, columnist, critic, politician (he ran for president of Peru in 1990), but most of all he’s a novelist, and among his greatest hits is The War at the End of the World, novel that made Harold Bloom’s best of all time list. A good starting point however might be The Time of the Hero, a coming-of-age story that takes place in a military academy. Of his non-fiction I am fond of Letters to a Young Novelist, a lyrical meditation on Flaubert, Cervantes, Borges, and other authors Vargas Llosa admires. It’s an admirable book of essays in its own right.
Things in favor: old age, politically active
Things against: politically conservative, name recognition
Mexican Carlos Fuentes (30/1, then 33/1), in addition to being the screenwriter (of awful films), the former ambassador to France and an essayist, has penned some dozen novels. His fame for erudition in Mexico has reached near Harold Bloom levels. Fuentes, 82, spent much of his life in the United States as a boy and wrote The Death of Artemio Cruz when he was 34. Among other things novels often allude to U.S-Mexico relations. Of his books, I greatly enjoy The Old Gringo, a historical novel based on satirist Ambrose Bierce’s sojourn in Mexico. Fuentes remarkably takes the old stereotype of fatalistic Mexicans – seen in works by Graham Greene and D.H. Lawrence – and turns it on its head.
Things in favor: old age
Things against: name recognition, politically centrist
This year, 79-year old Spanish novelist and poet Juan Goytisolo (30/1 then knocked to 66/1) – listed with the wrong first name on Ladbrokes (Luis Goytisolo is his brother in fact and I highly doubt he’s up for a Nobel; he hasn’t even been translated in English) – made the list. Obtuse, postmodern, and confessional are a few words that describe Goytisolo’s work. The Dalkey Archive recently reprinted Juan the Landless. A narrative tirade told with a brutal sense of humor, the book is the final part of a trilogy that announces Goytisolo’s own self-imposed exile in Morocco.
Things in favor: obscure, expatriate, homosexual, old age
Things against: none
Ernesto Cardenal – not Cardinal, as Ladbrokes spells it – a Nicaraguan poet and former Sandanista was given 30/1 chance of winning the prize until Ladbrokes knocked him down to 45/1. After a correspondence with religious poet Thomas Merton, Cardenal decided to study at Merton’s convent in Kentucky in the 1950s. Then a visit to Cuba in 1970 lead him to embrace liberation theology – a mix of Marxism and Catholicism extremely popular all over Latin America at the time – which in effect converted him into a Sandanista. After the Sandista victory in 1979 he was the Minister of Culture until he resigned in 1987, and this year he publicly denounced Daniel Ortega, former Sandinista, and now president of Nicaragua. Cardenal is also a longtime friend of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and New Directions released an anthology of his poems last year, Pluriverse. My favorite poem from the collection, “At the Grave of a Guerilla” imagines an astronaut looking down on a guerrilla’s tomb from space.
Things in favor: leftist, politically active, old age, literary merit, neglected country, poet
Things against:
Javier Marias, the youngest of the group at 59, is, after Vargas Llosa, is probably the most well known in the Anglophone world, not to mention a best-seller in his native Spain (I once bought one of his novels from a vending machine). Son of the expat philosopher Julian Marias, a prodigious English translator, he was recently accepted into the Real Academia Española. Of his novels, I like Tomorrow in the Battle Think On Me, the story of a love affair and an untimely death, delivered in what almost sounds like a soliloquy, laced with Shakespearean references.
Things in favor: politically outspoken
Things against: name recognition, young
Rounding out the group, we have writer Eduardo Galeano (66/1). Author of Open Veins of Latin America, his first work that he wrote when he was a journalist in the 1960s. This is also the book that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez handed to President Obama upon meeting him. All of his works since then are collections of short, aphoristic non-fiction fables. Galeano has cranked out quite a few beautiful quotes, some of which can be found in Voices of Time: A Life in Stories, an excellent place to start with the Uruguayan writer.
Things in favor: leftist, politically outspoken
Things against: none
Who would I like to see win:
Ernesto Cardenal – He’s been reprimanded by Pope John Paul II and had has his bank account frozen by Daniel Ortega; someone has got to cut this guy some slack, and who better than the Swedes?
Who might win:
Juan Goytisolo – His standing almost reminds me of recent winners, with an obvious political element in his work, recognized for his work, but in the bigger picture not well-known. Of course, that is if Ladbrokes doesn’t really mean Luis Goytisolo – who doesn’t stand a chance.
Wild card pick:
Although he didn’t appear on the Ladbrokes card Nicanor Parra, 94, has been projected to win so many times he’s written a poem about it, or anti-poem, as he calls it.
With all of Ladbrokes’ typos, errors, and last minute changes, I wonder who is really betting on this. I’ve got my copy of Petals of Blood handy just in case the favorite Ngugu Wa Thiong’o (7/2) wins.
Karen Russell has been a name to watch in literature ever since her story “Haunting Olivia” appeared in the New Yorker’s Debut Fiction issue in 2005, just shy of her 25th birthday. That story would be collected in St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, which made her name as literary writer known for imbuing her stories with fantasy and supernatural elements. She would follow up with novel Swamplandia!, and this year’s collection Vampires in the Lemon Grove, which has done some time on our Top Ten list this year, most recently in July. We’ve interviewed Russell twice at The Millions. In 2011, she discussed her genre-straddling tendencies as a writer: “I had a lot of fun writing Swamplandia! because it felt like I could juggle different kinds of worlds. And I feel like in life we’re all sort of operating in different registers all the time.” This year, she elaborated further, “What’s attractive to me about those stories is in a way they feel so much more honest and so much closer to the real deep and uncanny experience of being alive. They now have this emotional vocabulary to talk about how really freaking weird it is to live any average Tuesday. In addition, it’s exciting to be the arbiter of a whole world.”
Donald Antrim is not a household name but he is revered among writers as an incisive memoirist and creator of experimental novels. He debuted with Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World and followed it up with The Hundred Brothers and The Verificationist. The three books were re-issued in 2011 and 2012 with new introductions by none other than Jeffrey Eugenides, George Saunders, and Jonathan Franzen. His memoir, The Afterlife, came in 2006. Last year, after diving into Antrim’s three re-issued novels, our own Lydia Kiesling wrote, “I suspect it’s not so much a function of age that has these books reappearing now. Rather, someone out there knew they hadn’t had their fair shake. They knew there were people who needed these novels — frustrated people and weird people and people who prefer a very correct, very unusual deployment of the English language: formal but personal, arch, hilarious, possessed of a slightly antiquarian flavor. Even very great writers don’t often write like this.”
Columbia MFA program, raking it in.
Fun Fact: Antrim, Russell, and Tarell McCraney are all originally from Miami.
KAREN RUSSELL DOESN’T DESERVE THE MONEY NOR THE APPELlATION OF ‘GENIUS.’ DONALD ANTRIM DOES.
You got to be f(*&ing kidding me….
$625K to Karen Russell? Really? When did we start equating “quirk” with genius? And I don’t even particularly dislike her or her work. It’s sort of OK, a bit precious, but never did I think she was anywhere near the level of a MacArthur. Antrim I don’t know well enough to comment but I did very much enjoy his story “Another Manhattan.” Guess I’ll have to try one of the novels now. Wow, though, they seem so young, particularly Russell. There’s potential there maybe, but I thought these were supposed to go to incendiary literary talents, just imposing, brilliant creatives or critics. Lethem, Saunders, Ryan, Hickey, Carson, Davis. That pedigree just isn’t where most people in the literary world would rank Karen Russell. Sorry.
William Gaddis won one of the first MacArthurs. Now Karen Russell has won one of the latest. Says a lot about the course of American letters over the last 30+ years.
Russell’s literary worth notwithstanding: How much good is done if you give an established writer 650,000 as compared to giving it to someone who is promising, upcoming and possibly still struggling?
The choice of Russell is a bit of a headscratcher. But hey, at least I learned that Antrim finally has some new fiction on the way.
Isn’t 625K what Russell gets for an advance on one of her books?
So for Russell it’s whack, but for Diaz last year, no problem?
Morgan – Diaz last year is a frighteningly similar situation. A youngish insanely-hyped writer with one novel and some short stories to his/her name who happens to be one of the few writers in the country who makes good money writing. I sense a pattern. Early guesses for 2014 “geniuses”: Tea Obreht or Chad Harbach.
Can’t really tell the MacArthur folks how to spend their money, but it’s tantamount to handing money to a CEO rather than donating to a charity.
Cormac McCarthy in 1981 really was the perfect selection. Totally worthy recipient and the money probably made a substantial difference in his quality of life.
Even better was Andre Dubus, who, after his paralysis, was under a mountain of medical bills. Another totally worthy recipient, if maybe not on the same level as McCarthy.
RR- Tea Obreht, haha, that’s a good one.
Sadly I’m guessing that Vegas will be going with you on that one.
I agree with many of the posters above; am not sure that Russell is a good choice for a “genius” grant. Seems odd to me. I did not find Swamplandia all that earthshatterering or groundbreaking. There must be tons of other more viable/sensible candidates. Anyone care to throw out a few suggestions?
It occurs to me that if 125,000 MFA graduates (there must be that many by now) each coughed up a mere 10 bucks a year they could collectively recognize exactly the writing geniuses that Macarthur overlooks, two of them every year.
If The Millions asked readers of The Millions to nominate two names each for Macarthur fellowships (which I think they ought to do), and 100 readers responded, how many names in total do you suppose we’d have on that longlist? 150? 175?
Person 1: “For me any list that doesn’t begin and end with Craig Clevenger and Jonathan Baumbach is just insane, end of story.”
Person 2: “For me any list that doesn’t begin and end with Maureen McHugh and Kate Zambreno is just insane, end of story.”
Person 3: “I think Tao Lin is doing the most interesting work right now, and he always seems to be wanting for drugs so he must need the money. Also Jess Walter, I only read one book last year (lot of stuff going on, long story) and that wasn’t it but it was kinda popular but he’s also like kinda literary.”
I might not have picked these two. You might not have picked these two. But put us together with everyone else, we might very well pick these two. In the end, if we want to recognize our own vision of a genius, we’ll need the resources to back it up.
The comments about KR receiving the Genius grant are deflating. The main difference between Russell and someone like William Gaddis is accessibility. I think the late David Foster-Wallace (also a Genius grant recipient) was concerned that the “trendy” pyrotechnics of the post-modernists, of which Gaddis could be argued as the ur-post-modernist, offered only a critique and no real hope or solution. I wouldn’t be surprised if Russell uses the money to help her research more familial/cultural history of the U.S., like McCarthy did with his Genius grant, writing Blood Meridian. Additionally, we would all benefit from hearing another quality female author’s opinion.