An underwhelming choice for a Nobel

The award of this year’s Nobel prize in literature to American poet Louise Gluck was underwhelming, not because she did not deserve it, but because there are other writers who may have deserved it more. This year’s prize was expected to be non-controversial following a succession of controversies in recent years, from the choice of Bob Dylan in 2016 to the non-award in 2018 as the Swedish Academy itself became mired in scandals of sexual misconduct and corruption, and the selection in 2019 of Austrian author Peter Handke, who held extreme political views. After all these, the Academy was expected to make a safe choice this year, but it went too far into the safe zone.

Gluck is a much-admired poet, though she is not very well-known. The Nobel committee said it awarded her “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” She has produced an impressive oeuvre of fine poetry over five decades and has won important literary awards. While she is a good writer, the dissenting point is that there are many other writers who would have made the Nobel grade better than her. The names of a number of better-known writers had been shortlisted. They included Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, Canadian author Margaret Atwood and Kenyan novelist and poet Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who has been a contender for many years. But the Academy acted true to its past by springing a surprise on the world with the choice of a writer who would be “Louise who’’ for many.

Judgements of literary merit are subjective and depend on personal tastes and values, cultural affinities, critical faculties and other factors. But the Nobel prize is considered the gold standard of literary merit and so the choice should appeal to an international readership and meet the demands of informed validation and acclaim. The academy has been seen to have a bias for western, especially European, male writers, and politics has sometimes played a part in the selection. Of the 117 prize winners to date, 75 were Europeans. Writers like Tolstoy and James Joyce did not get it, and no Indian writer got it after the 1913 prize for Tagore. There may be many issues involved, like the tastes, sensibilities and even the biases of the Nobel committee members, procedures, the translation and many other factors. These have to be rightly addressed if the prizes have to be credible or should at least remain above controversy.