Background

The most recent honoree for the Nobel Committee has been lauded as one of the best writers in the world for many years now. More than a few scholars have declared it being a matter of when, not if, he was honored (though, given how many “deserving” winners ended up medal-less, I’m more inclined to say that it was some very strident projecting).

But before the universal acclamation, Kraszhnahorkai was born in a small Hungarian village to a family of both Jewish and Transylvanian extraction. He grew up studying Latin and then Law under a repressive Soviet-aligned government. Though his dad was a lawyer, he pursued the law because he sought to emulate his favorite writer: Czech master, Franz Kafka. He witnessed tragedies during military service but still found power in art, both writing and playing in Jazz and Rock groups (apparently, he wanted to write like Franz Kafka, play like Thelonious Monk, and sing like Aretha Franklin…which is as wild a sentence to consider as it is to write).

After leaving the Law, he became a freelance writer, and then literary marvel in Hungary. As the Soviet Union broke apart, he was able to explore the world more widely, including long stays in Germany and New York City. In all of it he witnessed a great deal of suffering (like his Soviet-era youth) but remained optimistic and hopeful which clearly has gone on to influence his writing, so widely appreciated. Eventually, the critics were right and he did take home the laureate for “his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art”

Works

Kraszhnahorkai has a wide range of work, most of which fits in the category of “door stops” aka books big enough to keep doors open. As an added bonus, most of those massive tomes are also one sentence that ebbs and flows through any number of phrases and ideas. So reading a whole work in a month was a little beyond my abilities, but I did get through a number of essays/stories/prose poems in the collection The World Goes On, here now, a few select quotes (all translated by John Bakti)

“We are in the midst of a cynical self-reckoning as the not-too-illustirous children of a not-too-illustrious epoch that will consider itself truly fulfilled when every individual writhing in it…will finally attain the sad and temperorarily self evident goal: oblivion.”

–He Wants to Forget

“The most lasting and most profound melancholy springs from love.”

–Universal Theseus (Pt. 1)

“Good can never catch up with evil, because, with the gap between good and evil, there is no hope whatsoever”

–Universal Theseus (Pt. 2)

BONUS QUOTE! (Luckily found this within three random tries to flip pages in one doorstop)

[When a conniving schemer asks to be called “Dante” another character challenges him as that is too synonymous with the famous Italian poet, but the schemer defends himself…thusly]

“getting over his surprise in one brief moment interrupted him, saying that the Baron shouldn’t think that he was speaking about a nobody here, Bayern Munchen was one of the world’s greatest teams, if not the greatest, certainly he must of heard of them–well never mind, that’s not important, the self-designated secretary interrupted, the main thing was that he proudly bore the name of Dante, because the Dante who played for Bayern Munchen, you could say, had reached his peak, and for him–he pointed at himself–such a comparison could only be advantageous, nameely it expressed that within his own realm of endeavor (the colorful world of slot machines) he himself was regarded as an expert…[the poet] didn’t matter at all, the secretary quickly replied because according to many, his Dante was the greatest rearguard ever.”

–p. 137 Baron von Weckenheim’s Homecoming (trans. Ottilie Mulzet)

Message

As the committee mentioned in their citation, Kraszhnahorkai is a master of the apocalypse, but it’s not so much about the desolate wasteland of that future, it’s the existential dread that accompanies our quickly evolving, increasingly threatening modern world. He does a fine job of capturing the fear that comes within our modern global society, but (despite the often dire quotes that I selected above) balances it beautifully with artistic sincerity. Even in a time of unprecedented disaster and terror, there is–and always will be–beauty.

Position: #6

I went back and forth on this position for a while. John Fosse and Han Kang fit what I imagine to be literary equivalents of Box-to-Box midfielders, and Kraszhnahorkai has some clear similarities to those recent honorees, running the gamut of emotions through writing that ebbs and flows as well. But the apocalyptic parts of his work led me to position him more defensively (though not as far back as the “Dante” who is now immortalized in the quote I lucked upon).

I’m putting Kraszhnahorkai in as a Defensive Midfielder. He is absolutely able to dwell on defensive destruction, but there’s a silver lining there that suggests that he knows that such destruction has its own value and (here’s that word again) beauty.

I’m definitely not done reading Kraszhnahorkai (just like I’m still working on this literal doorstop I’m having for lunch), and you can jump in the mix too! I have an additional outpost of nerdery over on Fable, and have a book club for people who love high-falutin literature discussed in decidedly non-high falutin’ language: Nobel, No Bull. Come join us and try to read some Kraszhnahorkai.

Next Time (I’m going to finally do it…[deep breath]…monthly posts)-In December, roll back the clocks and let’s talk about Theodor Mommsen (1902’s winner)

Background

Sartre is a byword for an entire philosophical school one of the leading voices in the Existentialist movement wondering what is the purpose of life and can our freedom ever be truly purely experienced. Born and raised in Paris, he used the city of lights as his home base as he dove head long into the serious questions of the day. His award was given “for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age,” a big phrase that in this case, might just be an understatement.

Works

“In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.”

Sartre’s best known quote about soccer

“Every movement of a [teammate]…is decoded in the very movement which it occasions in another fellow member….Mediation for a given goalkeeper or center-forward is the pitch itself in so far as their common praxis has made it a common practical reality…As soon as [a player] takes up [one position] the common situation of the whole team is also modified.”

–Critique of Pure Reason, page 473 (This is the real idea, the other one is just a footnote)

Message

I mean, there’s a tonnage of them. Existentialism concerned itself with the nature of life itself, so there was…plenty of ground to cover. In reading his plays again though, the thought that came back to me again and again is how control is power, power is control. Humans simultaneously want it and fear it. No Exit plays with the question of how much anyone can control the (after)lives of others. The Respectful Prostitute considers how the “immoral” individual is at once dependent on the powerful authorities, and yet also able to overwhelm the authorities with their own powers (be they sex or truth). Dirty Hands covers the power of idealism and the power of compromise–both how people wield them, and how they are slaves to them. With all this in mind I’m putting Sartre at the heart of the team.

Position: #10 Attacking Midfielder

Sartre was a football fan (how much of a fan seems to be up unclear), but when you consider the fantasy of him lacing up a pair of boots and heading on to the field himself, you have to reckon with the fact that he clearly had more creativity, ideas and invention than anyone else. He could do more with power and control than anyone else I’ve read for this project, so it makes sense to put him at the center of the offense (and in the role with the greatest history of being a diva) the #10 job.

Think about his soccer quotes (given above). In Sartre’s eyes a team is made up of where all the players are in a moment, but every moment a player moves (which is pretty much all the time) it is changing. There’s no absolute reality or permanence, it’s always something new and different. So you have to focus on existing in the moment rather than worrying about the past or the future.

I genuinely think this would make him a superb attacking midfielder: creative, inventive, able to dismiss past hurts or future worries and just make the play he thinks is right in the moment. But I suppose others might see it as a limitation–he might have a hard time anticipating challenges, or be impossible to coach…(after all, he is the only Literature laureate to refuse to turn up for his award) so while I rate him highly, I don’t know what others would say.

What do you think? Is Sartre the free-wheeling creative force that this team has been waiting for? Or are would he have been so indifferent and apathetic that any moments of brilliance would have been undone by him announcing that he’d rather ponder a dandelion on the field than receive a pass from TS Eliot?.

Next Time, 1984 Honoree: Jaroslav Siefert

Background

Fosse is only the fourth Norwegian to win the highest award in literature, and the first one in almost a century (but there’s totally not a Swedish Norwegian rivalry…goodness no). Born in Southwestern, Norway (in the town of Haugesund…a frequent opponent of our favorite Rosenborg sides), he committed himself to writing after an early accident left him confronting mortality. But while he was always a writer, he almost opted to focus instead on being a rock ‘n’ roll musician. He opted to continue studying and building his authorial voice being called (in different turns) a Modern Ibsen, or a Norwegian Beckett, culminating in the Nobel committee naming him its laureate “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable”

Works

God is so far away that no one can say anything about him and that’s why all ideas about God are wrong, and at the same time he is so close that we almost can’t notice him, because he is the foundation in a person, or the abyss, you can call it whatever you want

all good art has this spirit, good pictures, good poems, good music and what makes it good is not the material, not matter, and its not the content the idea, the thought, no, what makes it good is just this unity of matter and form and soul that becomes spirit…prayer and confession and penance all at once…

God is love and love is inconceivable without free will…

Jon Fosse from A New Name (parts VI and VII of the Septology, published 2022 in translation by Damion Searles

Message

Stream of conscious writing isn’t my favorite, and it can be almost impenetrable, but Fosse’s work was surprisingly smooth and comforting. Everything in the work I read A New Name played beautiful with random chance, doubled identities, parallel realities and the indescribable unity of everything. If I can put an overly simplistic button on it, I would say: there is an absurdity to everything we say and think and do, and that absurdity is part of the beauty of life.

Position: #8 Box to Box Midfielder

Fosse’s style is so fluid, so wide ranging, and so impossible to pin down (intentionally so given the stream of conscious style) that the only position that can do him justice is the #8 role, where he has the freedom to push forward or drop back as he pleases. And indeed, he, his work, and everything he offers can be both fulcrum of the attack and anchor of the defense all at the same moment.

Sound off in the comments below to share your thoughts on the newest member of the Nobel FC Family

Next Time (Rewind the Clocks, we’re going to catch up on one that we missed in our Mess of 03’s, and another Norwegian to boot) 1903 Honoree–Bjornsterne Bjornson

Author’s note: So, a couple things. First, I said Eliot won the Nobel in 1943…he didn’t, nor did anyone else–it was cancelled due to the second World War. He won in 1948, which (secondly) has absolutely no connection to anything in my 20 year time frame for this project. So (thirdly) consider this just a random writing about an author, and we’ll let that be a problem for future Me, assuming that we’re still doing this in 5 years. And finally, I’m sorry that I misnumbered WB Yeats as a #3 (Left Back) when he’s more accurately numbered as a #4 (Centerback), the prior entry has been corrected to reflect this.

Background

Thomas Stearns Eliot won the Nobel Prize in literature for his poetry and drama in 1943. In its citation, the committee simply asserted that they wished to honor “his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry”.

Eliot was part of that lost generation of writers, with big ideals and high hopes who found themselves resettled in Europe as adults, disenchanted with America’s failings. Like others, Eliot had come from a fairly well to do stock, enjoyed a rich education and built much of his work by alluding to and building on other well known works but in a rather startling method of slamming works together and building thematic meaning from the various images that emerge from it.

Works

From: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of toast and tea

–1915

From: “Murder in the Cathedral”

Yes! men must manoeuvre. Monarchs also,
Waging war abroad, need fast friends at home.
Private policy is public profit.
Dignity shall be dressed with decorum.

–1935

Your Opinion

I can’t always do it, but when it works out, I’ll share writings from our laureate. Eliot’s has an only moderately mature collection of poems titled Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. When we found a copy illustrated by Axel Schaeffer (the man behind drawings in beloved picture books The Gruffalo and Room on the Broom), it was clear that there was an opening to try it out with you.

The results: Alex: “It’s funny and good, and also I’m all done.” Owen. “No! Not that”

Message

There’s a lot lying within Eliot (including the ability to be both good and not at all enjoyable at once). There’s beautiful aching, and bitter realizing. There’s a subtle appreciation of the past and a slam-bang-crash of the uncertain future. There’s a willingness to see both sides of the coin, the arguments for and against and the awareness of complexity in all things. To put it in as direct a way as I can think of: all that is beautiful rises from and ends in destruction.

Position: #6

With a view that bleak, and a style that multi-faceted, Eliot seems to me well suited to a role in the middle of the field where he can both create art and cause chaos. There’s a position like that in modern soccer, one that is often mocked as dirty work or unpleasant, but also does something that no one else on the field does in the same way. It’s the defensive midfielder role, and while I certainly think that Eliot was much too cerebral to be an out and out beast, he certainly could keep up with a high level of play and obtain the respect that he clearly deserves. It calls to mind a player like Ozzie Alonso, who spent his time in Minnesota altering the level of play while never reaching a heroic ideal.

What do you think? Is Eliot more of an eight? Have I totally whiffed on my attempted analysis? Leave a comment below…please.

Next Time: 1963 Honoree–Giorgios Seferis