Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum

Nominate Annie Proulx for the Nobel Prize?

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Shakesthecoffecan:
I am not well versed, but I am going to float this idea: I think there is a good case for Annie Proulx to be the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature based upon the phenominal effect the story Brokeback Mountain has had on people the world over.

Checking the Nobel website : http://nobelpeaceprize.org/ I find the following can make a nomination to the committee:

members of national assemblies and governments;

members of international courts of law;

university chancellors; university professors of social science, history, philosophy, law and theology;

leaders of peace research institutes and institutes of foreign affairs;

former Nobel Peace Prize laureates;

board members of organisations that have received the Nobel Peace Prize;

present and past members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee; (committee members must present their nomination at the latest at the first committee meeting after February 1);

former advisers at the Norwegian Nobel Institute.

So in the US, someone on the congressional level or higher, or more likely someone high in academia would have to be lobbied. Perhaps nothing would ever come of it, but to borrow the words Ossana and McMurtry put in Alma's mouth: "I think it would be nice."


 

nakymaton:
That's the peace prize rather than the literature prize, though. I imagine that the literature prize nominations come from people who study literature, for the most part?

The recent trend has been to award the Literature prize to people who write in languages other than English. I wonder what it would take to convince the Nobel committee that an American was worthy of the prize?

Lynne:
Mel,

This idea has been floating around for a few months.  I merged this topic w/one Truman & I had going in CT. I did quite a bit of research, including finding the nomination schedule.  My essential conclusion was that we would need to coordinate a lobby of professors at Universities with renown literature departments.

I think this would be a very worthy cause for us to pursue in the upcoming year.

-Lynne

nakymaton:
Davidson College and the University of Colorado might be good places to start contacting people in lit departments, because both places had Annie Proulx speak recently. Jeff Mann, the Virginia Tech professor who wrote that really moving piece about going to see BBM for the first time, might also know some good departments to start with. I think the key would be to find someone connected with, I don't know, Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Brown/Dartmouth/Columbia/University of Chicago/Stanford/Oxford/Cambridge/I-hope-I-didn't-leave-out-your-favorite-prestigious-university, and get him or her to contact other prestigious people in the field. I'm not a lit person, so I'm not connected to the right network.

Mikaela:
The Nobel Price in Literature is distributed by the Swedish Academy: link to their site in English
It consists of a group of by and large pompous old Swedish men, appointed by secret ballot.

Of course there's a fair amount of lobbying going on. Probably most of it behind the scenes. So contacting relevant "lobbyists" of high academic standing surely might have an effect.

Not to be a wet blanket, but I don't think AP stands much of a chance. I think they'll consider her output too limited, and she hasn't just published something new that caught their attention. And moreover, the Academy mainly awards men writers.  :(

I must admit that my respect for the Academy went down the drain when they year after year failed to award Swedish author of children's literature Astrid Lindgren. She died a few years back, after a long life well lived, an event that created immense national mourning in all of Scandinavia. If ever an author deserved the prize, it was her. One can only surmise that the pompous old guys were of the outdated opinion that children's literature, even of her exceptional quality (and quantity) is not "literature". My respect for the Swedish Academy and the AMPAS actually are on the same level. I think both are uninformed and pathetic enough to snub Annie Proulx.

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