Nobel to everyone

Everyone is waiting for the Nobel Prize in literature.

For some reason, it’s important for readers to know who will receive it; for writers, it is important to know that it was they who received it. The Nobel Prize is such a holy grail of a writer. Although who remembers the winners of five years, for example, prescription?

They remember that the Belarusian writer Svetlana Aleksievich received the prize. But they remember it mainly because after receiving the prize, Aleksievich made several statements in an interview that, due to her absurdity, became iconic memes. For example, she said that in a terrible Moscow a taxi driver refused to take her because she did not confirm her belonging to the Orthodox faith. And how then to read her books? A number of which, it is worth recalling, are quite worthy. “Zinc Boys” and “Chernobyl Prayer” were quite powerful works for their time. But Svetlana Alexandrovna was remembered for her stories about how in Moscow Cossacks drive people with whips (this was also in her interview).

The Nobel Prize does not have a long and short list. Trying to talk about applicants, people are guided by the forecasts of bookmakers. This year Lyudmila Ulitskaya occupied the fourth line in those forecasts. But it did not work out - and, by the way, it's a pity. With an arbitrarily skeptical attitude towards Ulitskaya, one must admit that this is a writer of the Russian school and there is nothing wrong with this school being once again awarded the highest award in the field of literature.

This year two writers received the award at once. Two, because the prize was not given last year.

In 2017, it turned out that the husband of the poetess and member of the Nobel Committee, Jean-Claude Arnault, was accused of 18 women of sexual harassment, in addition, being close to the committee, he revealed to some people the unnamed names of the winners. It seems that someone was able to make good money by betting Bob Dylan at the bookmakers in 2016. In general, the scandal came out quite in the spirit of the times - both sexual and monetary - so they did not give the prize to anyone.

But this year, last year she was awarded the Polish writer Olga Tokarchuk, and this year - to the Austrian writer and playwright Peter Handka.

Olga Tokarchuk comes from a Ukrainian family who emigrated to Poland, and is best known for her novel “Runners”, for which she received the Booker Prize last year. This novel is written as the Instagram public loves: fragments of travel impressions, short, non-binding novels. There is an expression “music for supermarkets”, here is the novel “Runners” - this is literature for Instagram. Only tags need to be affixed: #traveller, #dreamer, #mylife.

In addition to literature, Olga Tokarchuk is engaged in ecoactivism, is a member of the green party and edits the left-liberal journal Political Criticism.

Here, of course, a certain ideological integrity of the work of the Nobel Committee is striking. He (this committee) is not a millimeter behind the current agenda.

Last year was a year of sex scandals, everyone was accused of harassment - from Weinstein to Spacey. There was no book worthy of a prize, so the committee made a performance - it was temporarily closed due to a sex scandal.

This year, the main theme is demoniac teenagers who are fighting for the environment. Again, a book about this has not yet been written, but there is a left-liberal writer from the Green Party. Who, if not her, give a prize?

But the fact that Peter Handke received the prize for this year is certainly pleasing. This is such a real literary heavyweight - a gloomy talent of a sullen German scale. The writer himself is an Austrian, but it is clear that this is German literature.

Handke is known to the general public primarily as the screenwriter of Wim Wenders' outstanding film, “Sky above Berlin,” while the public is less widespread as the author of the novel The Hornets, which is important as a thorough analysis of the process of creating the text.

But we remember that the Nobel Committee does not work just like that - not only to award the prize, but also to create some interesting situation. And this year, the Polish left-liberal writer from the Green Party was opposed or, rather, balanced her quite right-wing writer.

A separate line in the biography of Peter Handke marks his political position. In 1996, Handke published travel notes entitled “Winter trip on the Danube, Sava, Morava and Drina, or Justice for Serbia”. And it turned out that the Western intellectual does not support the position of NATO regarding the Balkans, and especially Serbia, is friends with Slobodan Milosevic and generally has a rather unpopular opinion in the liberal milieu.

At the funeral of Milosevic, Handke said the following: “The world - the so-called world - knows everything about Yugoslavia, Serbia. The world - the so-called world - knows everything about Slobodan Milosevic. The so-called world knows the truth. That is why the so-called world is absent today - and not only today, and not only here. I do not know the truth. But I look. I'm listening to. I feel. I remember. That is why today I am here, next to Yugoslavia, next to Serbia, next to Slobodan Milosevic. ”

Now Handka was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature with the wording "for significant work, which with linguistic ingenuity explored the periphery and the specifics of human experience." These formulations, as a rule, are opaque to understanding, but it was exactly this year that it turned out very accurately: Handke really, with his life and his literature, studied the periphery of human experience.

This is the most pleasant and fair recognition of merit in recent years. And it’s not even so insulting that the Polish writer was also given a prize for some reason.

The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.