Admittedly, a lot of the Lord of the Rings is very dry. While descriptions are vibrant and world building is incredible, characters are mostly flat and hardly relatable, outside of the great epical moments the rest of the books are mundane I would say.
In 1974, no Pulitzer was awarded. Though the fiction jury unanimously selected the novel Gravity’s Rainbow for the Prize, the Pulitzer Advisory Board overruled them—calling the book “unreadable,” “turgid,” and “obscene”—and opted to award no fiction prize that year.
TBH, I’m kind of with the advisory board on that one.
That price usually goes to the most obscure authors who are only relevant in ivory towers. Then their books actually sell, but most end up unread on the shelves or in goodwill donation boxes.
Most people don’t have the epitome of books at home, like people prefer Ban Brown over Umberto Eco, not because the former is better, but because the latter is a hard read.
I have both, and I like both (in a library of 10k books in different languages). Umberto Eco still makes sense, I crass contrast to a lot of literature price recipients.
Hard reading is not the issue. I actually liked how “The Name of the Rose” dropped my reading speed down to a hundred page per hour.
What I regularly notice in books rated high in literature circles is lack of internal integrity. Those people have not a single molecule of world building in them - they don’t really think about what they write.
Hmm. Lot to unpack here.
I mean it’s generally accepted that most of Ecos books are hard to read, even you had to slow down, right? Many people do not like that or have the mental energy to read one page phrases. Some don’t amuse themselves reading those kinds of books, and read books that are simpler. Most good books are not simple even if there are counter examples (L’etranger for example is dead easy to read).
Maybe you’re checking out bad litterature prices? Kundera got the nobel price, and I understand why (not because of the book itself, which is one of his worst IMO, but for his life œvre).
Also maybe you just don’t appreciate some types of books? Do you have an example of a known book that’s particularly bad in your opinion ?
If you like world building, and Eco, go read Baudolino if you haven’t yet (it’s fabulous in French if you do read that).
Just like with movie awards. The ones that win awards are usually snoozefests. Artistic, sure, but zero rewatchability. Meanwhile the goofy comedy that becomes a cult classic and remains relevant for decades gets snubbed and ignored.
Yep. Cannes, Berlinale, etc. All movies that would not exist without 80% external funding, because they are only shown in small cinemas as part of the Sunday matinee. And most of them have not much more story than “Watch Paint Dry” (an actual movie of 8 or 10 hours length).
The 1961 prize was awarded to Ivo Andrić (1892–1975) “for the epic force with which he has traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from the history of his country.”
The Bridge on the Drina is supposed to be an incredible work - sort of the Yugoslavian answer to War And Peace. But it’s not going to get picked up by Amazon or New Line Cinema, so the vast majority of Millennial age Americans will never hear about it.
I’ve read a good portion of it in English. It’s a good read if you like historical dramas. It’s about a Bosnian village called Višegrad. In the 16th century, the Ottoman Sultan has the titular bridge built there to connect two parts of his empire. The book follows the residents of the village as the construction and then continued operation of that bridge shapes their lives over the centuries, all the way up to the start of WW1.
It’s not character-centric, because it covers such a huge time period, but it’s still great if you have any interest in the history of that part of the world.
You can also visit the bridge itself if you have some time to spend in Bosnia. I’ve not been there yet, but I imagine it’s more impressive than the street corner in Sarajevo where Franz Ferdinand was shot, which I have been to and can confirm is very underwhelming.
Why is “being known by millennial Americans” important in this context?
The anglocentric bias is ever stronger on the internet. And I say that as a Tolkien fan: in no way he is worthy of a Nobel prize.
This demonstrates how low we went for literature since TV appeared. Literally what is happening right now on our eyes with movies after we switched to internet.
