Euro-Snobbery: Alive and Well

Just further evidence of an all too well-established way of thinking among Europe's elites.

"Yesterday, the literary world on this side of the Atlantic reacted with bemusement and anger to an extraordinary tirade against American writing by Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Nobel prize jury.

"There is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world ... not the United States," he told the Associated Press. "The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature ...That ignorance is restraining."

The black-and-white views guaranteed Engdahl a wide audience for his confident dismissal of an industry that published more than 50,000 works of fiction last year. Unsurprisingly, his remarks elicited a variety of strong responses from members of America's writing community. Few of them could be described as abject or crushed."

Of course no one in Europe is isolated or insular - right?

It is difficult to believe that "educated" individuals such as Mr. Engdahl know so little of the diversity and sheer size of American society and culture. These champions of European culture demand nuance, complexity and shades of grey in everything they encounter - yet apparently have no qualm with spouting the most black-and-white stereotypes against the United States - a nation they clearly know very little about. In fact, it is this sort of intellectual laziness and prejudice that continues the sharp devaluation of the once prestigious Nobel prize for literature.

Comments

[GringoTex]

No big surprise here. Politics has long been involved in the Nobel Prize for Literature. Perhaps there IS a certain amount of provincialism here. Who in the US bothers these days to read post 1960 European authors- after Camus, for example? Perhaps Salmon Rushdie, but he is more Commonwealth than European. What European classical music post 1960 do we bother to listen to in the US? After the British invasion of the Beatles et al in the 1960s, who were playing a version of American style music, what European pop stars are listened to in the US? While there is respect in the US for pre 20th century European culture, and for 20th century European culture up to around 1960, current European cultural offerings are for the most part ignored in the US. At least I ignore them.

I am reminded of European committees deciding that there is more freedom of the press in Europe than there is in the US, in considering the awarding of the Literature prize.

[Texas_Blueblood]

FACT: Europe is far less culturally diverse than the US

FACT: the US is now a bilingual nation with tens of millions being fluent in Spanish and English [cough] [cough] that's a lot more bilinguals than France.

FACT: 17 of the top 20 rated universities in the world are in the US and UK, not Europe.

Perhaps when accusing people of being ignorant it's best to know what you're talking about.

Hey but this site is about Germans. The French have been beyond hope for a long time. I hope he enjoyed his 15 minutes.

[Texas_Blueblood]

Sorry, meant Swedish not French.. A little Freudian slip there.

[German In Name Only]

The Nobel prize jury being as corrupt as it is, this man has got a point.

The American system of rewarding writers not according to the success of their book but instead according to the success of their previous book provides a backdoor for a certain kind of rogue writers to slip in.

In some cases these rogue writers will annoy Europeans by pretending to be more European than the Europeans. Try to imagine what Leonidas or Da Vinci would think of the imaginary Europe being associated with their names in a certain kind of American literature to see examples why. As a result non-Westerners come to Europe with this crap on their minds.

[resume writing services]

Europe still is the centre of the literary world? No way! It used to be some centuries ago. Now the literary world of Europe is just on of all those Layers that in combination make up the phenomenon of "WORLD literature". If you look in the list of most popular writers you will find out that the majority is not Europeans.