Popular bookmakers Ladbrokes have announced their opening odds for the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. Smart money seems to favor Haruki Murakami, who would surely take the prize if it depended on recent book sales. Meanwhile the next two favorites are Joyce Carol Oates (6/1) and Hungarian author Péter Nádas (7/1). All signs point to this being another year of disappointment for Philip Roth’s fans – his odds of winning stand at 16/1.
Taking Bets on the Nobel Prize
Just Friends
For over twenty years, from the thirties through the fifties, a group of Oxford writers who called themselves The Inklings met weekly to drink, exchange ideas and read aloud their drafts. Though J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were easily their most famous members, the group had other notable figures, among them the language historian Arthur Owen Barfield. In The Chronicle of Higher Education, a history of the group.
●
●
Tangled Youths
Evan Hughes investigates the formulation of such writers as Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen, and David Foster Wallace. He claims they and their generation “had youths tangled enough for ten novels.”
●
●
4 comments:
Add Your Comment: Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Where Glowsticks Are Currency
In this month’s issue of GQ, exemplary road-tripper Gideon Lewis-Kraus (of A Sense of Direction fame) pays a visit to the Electric Daisy Carnival, where the raves of the ‘90s have yet to go out of fashion.
●
●
“For the sake of having something to celebrate”
As part of their collaboration with the fiction editors at Five Chapters, the folks at Salon posted a story from A Guide to Being Born, the new collection by Millions contributor Ramona Ausubel.
●
●
Once You See It
Presented Without Comment: the newly unveiled logo for the newly enacted College Football Playoff and the new poster for Lars von Trier’s latest film, Nymphomaniac.
None of these people will win. For years they’ve picked an obscure writer that no one actually likes to read.
That’s the thing about betting that everybody always forgets: the odds are less about who they expect to win than they are about who they expect people to bet on.
I think Transtromer emerged as a betting favorite shortly before he won the prize, but that’s pretty rare. Yeah, the betting line is more a reflection of the bettors than anything else.
If I were on the Nobel committee, I’d pick Vollmann to send the national security state a message in the wake of his Harper’s article. It’d be mischevous, but why not?
I’d like to see Aharon Appelfeld win.