Right about now, the Nobel Prize folks are getting down to their dozen or so alternatives for this spring's Nobel Prize in Literature. I have no idea who is actually on their list, but I know who should be. I've suggested her before but this year I sense that her time is coming. Margaret Atwood is my nominee for the next Nobel Prize in Literature given to a writer in the English language, and this year is not too early to give it.
Margaret Atwood qualifies for quality and influence, as a writer and as a writer-citizen of the world. She has published more than forty books: novels, stories, poetry (15 volumes), children's stories, and non-fiction in a number of areas. She's a distinguished literary editor of Canadian literature specifically and of literature more generally. I especially admire her book on writers and writing, Negotiations with the Dead, and I'm currently reading her latest collection of essays and reviews, Writing with Intent, as well as her latest novel, The Year of the Flood. But she's written on politics and economics as well (Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth is particularly relevant at the moment.) She's written for television and radio, done recordings and even accompanied her latest book tour with a dramatization of The Year of the Flood that used local actors wherever she was, and which has ended up as a movie. Her moral as well as literary concerns make her a particularly apt Nobel candidate.
She's an innovator and an activist, especially for environmental causes, with a special interest in birds. With an impressive website, she is engaged with her time. In March she attended a literary conference in Dubai and a Global Greenbelt conference in Toronto; she lectured at Cornell and in Chickasa, Oklahoma. In a few days she's off to Mockton, New Brunswick for the Frye Festival---a big time festival in honor of a great (and Canadian) literary critic, one whose work I deeply value, Northrup Frye. (I learned her itinerary from her website. I don't know her personally.)
It's time for Margaret Atwood, and it's time for Canada. Nobel judges, I hope you agree. But right now it cheers me up just thinking of it.
1 comment:
I concur Ms Atwood is a treasure. She embodies the qualities that Canadians like to think they posses;
a sly wit, clear thought, rigor, and principle.
Reality varies from the ideal. It's the thought that counts.
Cousin William you are owed one bottle of Niagara ice wine. We got more than maple syrup up here.We got Margaret.
Lemuel
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