“These elements of scandal, by now familiar in the #MeToo era, claimed an unusual casualty on Friday: The Nobel Prize in Literature, the world’s most prestigious accolade for writing.” In the wake of a sex abuse scandal, The Swedish Academy announced it will postpone this year’s award until next year when they will name two winners. In the meantime, maybe we should all mull over the problem with prestigious prizes.
The Nobel Will Return in 2019
Writers on Writing
Recommended listening: Writers on Writing, a playlist of TED talks from NPR that pair well with our own Nick Ripatrazone‘s essay on “vertical writing” and Michelle Huneven‘s breakdown of “The Trouble With Writing.”
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Scientology Revealed
Janet Reitman, a contributing editor to Rolling Stone, spent five years researching Inside Scientology, which is reviewed here by Brook Wilensky-Lanford for The San Francisco Chronicle. Earlier this year, ‘Million Dollar Baby‘-screenwriter Paul Haggis spoke with Lawrence Wright of The New Yorker about L. Ron Hubbard‘s religion.
The Humanities Ph.D.: Less Than Useless
Despair, debt, frustration, a decade in school rewarded with guaranteed joblessness. If this cocktail of woe sounds good to you, consider getting a Ph.D. in English, History, or any other humanities discipline. At the New York Times, yet another of the recent spate of articles explaining how utterly dismal the prospects of recent humanities Ph.D.s are.
Michael Lewis’ Man Cave
Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d type: A seersuckered Michael Lewis shows off his “man cave” for ValleyGirl.tv. You can skip ahead to 9:20 for the tour. (via)
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Problems with prestigious prizes. I am really concerned about the way some accusations are presented. Ms. Clemmon’s accusation against Diaz in Australia was presented almost like a stunt. This is not a game. If you have been sexually assaulted or harassed, it is a crime and one must go to police, or get a lawyer, rather than take part in this gleeful kind of anonymous confrontation in the guise of a question for a writer on a panel. Not mature, not credible.
Re women writers paid less than men, take “girl” or “wife” out of the title. These ubiquitious and unintellectual books are generally in trade paperback, so 10 or 20 dollars less in price. I do nothing but roll my eyes in book stores now.
Having said that women writers are great. Lily Tuck, Mary Gordon, Sarah Hall, Sigrid Nunez, for example, deserve every penny they make publishing in hardcover, and the prices in Canada (35-38 dollars) equals that of men writers: Laurence Osborne and Robert Coover for example. I am willing to cough up my hard earned money for quality, but not for “girl/wife” thrillers.
I see no difference in pricing, especially in non fiction, where prices range from 35 dollars and up to 50, for literary biography and history, written by either sex.