Background

Bertha Von Suttner was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. While she was broadly active in the peace movement (especially for a woman in the 19th century), the Nobel website specifically cites her book Lay Down Your Arms as a major factor in winning her the award. With that in mind I chose to add her to the Nobel FC roster. If you don’t like that…please write something…I’m afraid I’m a nutcase creating a truly bizarre alternate reality of soccer and books.

Anyway…back to Bertha. She grew up in Austria as the daughter of soldiers and nobility, which accounts for her liberty to read, write, and travel as a woman of leisure. However, she ultimately entered the workforce as a governess/tutor to another Austrian family with a long military pedigree. She later was briefly the secretary for Alfred Nobel, you know, they guy who founded all these prizes. She ultimately eloped with the son of her tutoring family (before you ask, no, this was not a Lifetime movie, he was never her tutee and was 23 when they met). And they lived apart from the family making ends meet through tutoring and freelance writing.

Eventually reunited with their Austrian family, Bertha found new work in advocating for peace. As the popularity of her other writing grew Bertha was invited to speak more frequently and when she published the novel that played a major part in winning the peace prize: Lay Down Your Arms which became a bit of a cultural craze in 1890s Europe. Bertha, who had already been active in the peace movement, became a leading figure (one called her The Generalissimo of Peace). She also travelled broadly in support of Women’s Rights (including speaking at a conference organized by a group that employed my favorite peace advocate…future Montana Congress Woman Jeanette Rankin)

Works

“Your ‘yes’ [vote for war] will rob that mother of her only child. Yours will put that poor fellow’s eyes out. Yours will set fire to a collection of books which cannot be replaced. Yours will dash out the brains of a poet who would have been the glory of his country. But you have all voted ‘yes’ to this, just in order not to appear cowards, as if the only thing one had to fear in giving assent was what regards onesself“
—Lay Down Your Arms

“The village is ours–no it is the enemy’s–now ours again–and yet once more the enemy’s; but it is no longer a village, but a smoking mass of the ruins of houses”
—Lay Down Your Arms

Message

Obviously, as a pacifist and an activist, Bertha had a clear moral she wanted to communicate to the masses. She also has a tendency to hammer on the same point and demolish the same straw men arguments with the fervor of a scarecrow demolition crew. Still, within her context it’s really worth considering Bertha’s specific position that expanded the peace debate, namely: war and violence spread destruction far beyond the battlefield. That seemingly simple fact is often ignored by those who valorize battle.

Position: #1 Goalkeeper

Bertha can easily be minimized as just a pacifist, but she does her very best to broaden her position and stands her ground against a much more aggressive opponent. To me, that’s a great synopsis of a goalkeeper’s duty. Her most acclaimed novel covers a lot of ground and refuses to let other opinions just slide by, so I’m going to put her between the posts and let her do her thing. (I’m also going to continue my Jeanette Rankin shoutouts by putting her in the Garnet and Silver of Montana…and I fully expect the Griz staff could make even a 180 year old Baroness an effective shot-stopper.)

So there’s a big shout out to Bertha, if you prefer her poetry or insist that she be moved to the attack, let me know in the comments below. Come on…for my sanity at least.

Next Time, 1925 Honoree George Bernard Shaw

Background

Henryk Sienkewicz grew up within a revolutionary family in Poland in the middle of the 19th Century, and learned how to match his father’s political beliefs with his mother’s passion for history. He spent a lot of time in the library, but this curiosity did not translate to a love of school. He left college early to write full time. After successful short stories, he started writing about his experience traveling the world (including into the United States, a rarity for the time).

After returning to Poland and starting a family, he started writing full length novels including a historical trilogy about life in Poland a hundred years before (creatively titled: The Trilogy), but his most popular and enduring work came ten years before his Nobel with the book Quo Vadis. His talents were so impressive, that he won the Nobel for, simply put “his outstanding merits as an epic writer”. As if that wasn’t enough, the people in Poland took up a collection to buy his family’s old castle for him.

Works

““It seemed that out of every tear of a martyr new confessors were born, and that every groan on the arena found an echo in thousands of breasts. Caesar was swimming in blood, Rome and the whole pagan world was mad.”
—Quo Vadis (all of these are from Quo Vadis)

“Why does crime, even when as powerful as Cæsar, and assured of being beyond punishment, strive always for the appearances of truth, justice, and virtue? Why does it take the trouble?”
—Insert trenchant current event observation here

“For when a man is in a book-shop, curiosity seizes him to look here and there.”
—This may also serve as my life’s motto

“A home without a book is darker than one without a lamp.”

Message

Having read that most popular novel, one that captures the conflict between a brutal Roman Empire and the fledging Christian church, I was shocked at how much a 130 year old Polish man captured my sense of faith. Above all, faith requires just that: faith. There has never been and never will be an easy answer for those confronting the conflict between ideals and life. Simply appreciating that struggle both around and inside you is worthwhile.

Position: #5 Center Back

Sienkewicz is probably my favorite century old writer that I’ve come across, and while his books really are epic sized, his style is wonderfully simple and direct, with just the expected touch of violence. As such, he seems to me like a no-nonsense, efficient defender, and one who could be mature and kind hearted enough to be team captain like Michael Boxall is.

Here’s my traditional request for you to engage with this blog beyond clicking the like button. Have you read the author? Do you love soccer? Any and all comments welcomed!

Next Time: Special Bonus Laureate!! 1905 Peace Honoree Bertha Von Suttner

(The only non literature laureate who was given their award specifically for writing a book)

In just a few days, the Nobel committee will announce the winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature. Just like last year, they will join an elite group of writers from around the world, and a small selection of those writers who we have read, reviewed, and classified as members of Nobel FC: The only Fantasy Football team where the Fantasy is that these people would ever play.

I’ll try to read the author in question as soon as I can, and write their post by the beginning of November, but I wanted to take a moment for the second year in a row to consider who will be joining this august group.

How does the “draft” work

First a recap for those who somehow found this website but are unfamiliar with both “drafts” and “The Nobel Prize” (just how deep an internet rabbit hole have you gone down, my dudes and dudettes?)

In American professional sports there are annual “drafts” where teams select from a collection of players not yet in the league. Teams study and examine player abilities, debate the best choice, and then “draft” someone to become a part of their organization.

The Nobel Prize is a little like that. The “Team” in question is the Swedish Academy (of Literature). They collection of players not yet in the league is literally everyone on earth, who has yet to be awarded the Nobel, is living, and who wrote something. (Literally, they have awarded a prime minister for stirring speech writing, and a folk singer for his lyrics.)

That’s a big field, so they take in nominations from other Academies of Literature around the world, professors of universities, living laureates, and presidents of Authors’ guilds. That is still a very big field so they narrow it down to five finalists: study and examine the writers abilities, debate the best choice and then “award” someone the Prize.

This process has been a little controversial over the years. After all, why do the Swedes get the final vote? (Alfred Nobel said so) Does the fact that the Swedish Academy is mostly old, white, male, Europeans explain the fact that most of the laureates in history have been old, white, male Europeans? (Yes) Will they try to be more inclusive in the future? (Yes, though they kind of had to after a pretty ugly scandal).

So Who Could be “Drafted” This Year?

We don’t know the top 5 candidates, or even the top 100 candidates who got nominated, and we won’t for another 50 years (long after the internet, including this post becomes a time capsule for aliens). But we have a list of likely candidates from gamblers and prognosticators. (I’ll toss out 11 here)

Last year’s 11 now off the list:

Jon Fosse won last year’s award, making him only the fourth Norwegian to win (tell me there’s no bad blood between the nordics…I bet the Swedish academy is just bitter about having soggy krumkake). While Fosse won a place in history books (or at least an extra line on Wikipedia), I won two nonsense points. My goal is to hit 11 points with 5 points if I correctly predict either on the *will win* or should win; 2 points if they’re on either “honorable mentions” list, and 1 if they’re in my 11 top candidates).

None of my other candidates lost their eligibility due to the unfortunate state of being dead…but I have decided to drop Frenchman Pierre Michon as he has slipped behind other French writer Helene Cisoux and the French have already had a major cultural moment this year with the Olympics as well as a recent laureate, I’m putting both Michon and Cisoux towards the middle of the queue, just outside this list.

Leading Candidates:

The leading favorites are Can Xue, a Chinese author who frequently challenges the increasingly authoritarian establishment in Beijing. Her style has some parallels with other challenging stream of conscious writers like Elfriede Jelinek and John Fosse, and while the committee likes to hit similar styles she would offer a distinct cultural and linguistic perspective, especially given the absence of awards to Asia in the last 10 years. There’s also been a surge of popular sentiment around Syrian poet Adonis who is often on these lists, and would represent a first winner from the arab world since 1988, while also drawing attention the ongoing issues in Israel with both Palestine and Lebanon. Lyudmila Ulitskaya is another political context pick who was briefly atop the rankings this year given her position as a strident opponent of Vladmir Poo-head (sorry, that’s Alex’s name for him). But she has slipped as well, particularly as the unrest in Israel grows.

Returning Candidates:

Then there are the popular picks, like Haruki Murakami, who has a wide following in seemingly every country on earth. However, given that the Nobel likes writers who court a little political controversy, Murakami seems less likely than Xue. The same could be said of other popular writers from often awarded regions and languages like: American Thomas Pynchon, Global Indian/Brit/American Salman Rushdie, Canadian Anne Carson and Australian Gerald Murnane. The Academy has seemed to be breaking apart from its old habit of just cycling through the West’s biggest culture factories, but that doesn’t change the fact that these broadly appealing writers are perennially near the top of the betting odds and in wide circulation at the Swedish library.

If they wanted to award a Western literary heavyweight but NOT someone who writes in a frequently awarded language, then they could consider Romanian novelist Mircea Cartarescu. Caratescu just won the Dublin Literary award (which represents the biggest financial prize for one book rather than a series). But as there’s no real link between awards and the Nobels seem to see themselves as separate entities, it may not work. Since they went to this well with Fosse last year, I’d put this as the least likely candidate.

Beyond Europe and Asia, the oddsmakers and the pundits don’t have many options. Perennial contender Ngui wa Thiong’o of Kenya looks to represent Subsaharan Africa and at 84 may be running out of time, while Mexican poet Homero Aridjis is a widely appreciated poet from Latin America (an area of the world not awarded since 2010), odds makers have him running behind Argentine poet (Cesar Aira), but with a limit of 11 picks, and several pundits pointing out Aridjis popularity among committee members for the last few years, I opted to keep Aridjis on the list. Like Cartarescu he also is coming off a prize win for the Griffin Poetry Prize from Canada (though that was more about his translator George McWhirter than an award for himself).

Analysis: Who will it be? Who should it be?

In articles analysing a team’s draft-day decisions, writers look at two things. What they think the team leaders will do, and what the author themselves would do if they had a chance.

Having already read books by Murakami and Rushdie as well as selections from the other returners, I read a few well-recommended lines from my two new names (Adonis and Ulitskaya) and came with the following suggestions.

The Academy Will Pick

The Swedish Academy tends not to prioritize the best selling or most widely acclaimed author available, they prefer those who have something artistic to offer in their work and especially if they have something beyond the purely personal to uncover. At times that leads them to revel in awarding obscure writers, and in the last four years, awarding more diverse picks, with a significant increase in female laureates.

So I think they will pick: Can Xue. I only read very brief excerpts from her work…but even that seemed weird and obtuse. Critics claim her work is often plotless, but that’s not a negative in the hands of the Nobel Committee, in fact it makes a nice counterpoint to Jon Fosse’s more linear stream of conscious win from last year and an echo of Elfreide Jelinek. She’s got art, she’s got style, she’s got a point of view. She’s the favorite for a reason.

Honorable mentions: Gerald Murnane, Mircera Cartarescu

I Would Pick

If left up to me, I would try to award a writer from outside the common-sphere of Nobel winners (ie Western Europe/America and white men). A more diverse writer with a point of view that connects to the wider world would be the ideal for me. Artistry is something I think lies in the eye of the beholder, so better to be clear than artful in my eyes.

While I liked what I read from this year’s new comers, I don’t see enough reason to step away from my same pick last year: Homero Aridjis. Admittedly, I only looked at four of his poems, but he evokes a universality similar to Paz and Neruda, while also considering the broader scope of history and nature–which might suit the climate change conscious Academy/myself to boot.

Honorable Mentions: Ludmilia Ulitskaya, Salman Rushdie (I still think of him as an Indian writer despite his increasingly American identity)–BONUS: I’m going to keep pushing Louise Erdrich out of stubborn loyalty.

Who would you pick?

Leave a comment below, please, even alien overlords, comment with your pick.

UPDATE!

Next Time…I rush to judgement on whomever our winner isSouth Korean writer, and youngest Nobelist in 37 years…Han Kang

Nonsense Point total: 2/11

I was nowhere near Han Kang in all these names, so zero points to me…next year should see a massive drop in chances for Xue and Murakami though, so it’s going to be different for sure