Dartblog

Have I recommended to your attention this thorough piece by Boris Kachka, on the state and prognosis of the fiction industry? I cannot remember if I have; probably this is because I sit even now, dumb and force-fed on puerile prose, in a Borders, which is a Corporation, and Bad. (I took Kachka to heart, you see.) Also sharing his dim view of American fiction? Why, the Swedes at the Nobel offices. The Nobel academy’s “permanent secretary,” a man called Horace Engdahl, tells a reporter: “Of course there is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can’t get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world … not the United States.”

His intent was to telegraph that the recipient of the Nobel prize in literature, to be announced next week, will not be an American. (Not even Dave Eggers, my goodness. If he does not please the Swedish who can, I ask.) But in the face of Mr. Engdahl’s comment it is natural for one to wonder whether to accept as the judges of good art the cadre responsible for turning fiction into an exercise—a contest, to be precise about it—in earnestness. Merely read his comment afresh: he values, above all, “powerful” literature.