Three Writers Who Should Have Won The Nobel Prize (But Didn't) by George Jones

Well, it’s that time of year again – the Nobel Prize for Literature is about to be announced. While it’s impossible to predict who will win, it’s easy to look back at those who should have won, but didn’t. And since I like doing easy things, that’s what I’ll do.

 

3. Philip K Dick

 

What Did He Write?

 

Some of the greatest short stories in literature. Dick followed the time honoured sci-fi tradition of “mindblowing ideas first, everything else second”, all though for him it was more like “mindblowing ideas first, enough amphetamines to kill an elephant/mildly inconvenience Keith Richards second, everything else third.” His stories were entirely built around mindfucking the reader in as many different ways as possible, up to and including a bounty hunter who chases down humanoid robots, only to suspect that he may be a humanoid robot; the Antichrist taking over the world with gumball machines; a man who pays to have memories of being a spy on Mars implanted in his brain, but turns out to have actually been a spy on Mars; and many more. You may recognise a couple of those as the plots of famous films, and that’s because, if you’ve seen a sci-fi film made in the last thirty-odd years, chances are the filmmakers got some of their ideas from Philip K Dick. Total Recall and Blade Runner are both adaptations of his work, and countless other films have been influenced by him. The man was one of the best short story writers of all time, and his ideas make Inception look like the straightforward thriller that it actually is.

 

So Why Didn’t He Win?

 

It’s simple – he was a sci-fi writer at a time when the literary establishment was even more snobbish than it is now. When Dick was around, most “serious” readers considered sci-fi to be little more than pulp escapism, if they considered it at all. Even today “genre writing,” as idiots call it, is looked down on – if you were writing sci-fi, fantasy or horror back in Dick’s day, you had to resign yourself to a career in the literary ghetto.

 

Significant Works

The Man in the High Castle, “Faiths of Our Fathers,” “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”

 

2. Sylvia Plath

 

What Did She Write?

 

Angst. Just, so much angst. Along with Anne Sexton, Plath pioneered confessional poetry, which is a style you may recognise from that diary you kept as a teenager. The difference is, unlike teenage you, Plath was a genius. Her poetry contains some of the finest depictions of depression and mental instability ever written, all rendered in the most exquisite language possible. Plath could take anything – bees, a cut thumb – and use it as a jumping-off point for an excavation of the deepest depths of the soul, but above all else, she had a phenomenal ear for language.

 

So Why Didn’t She Win?

 

The Nobel Prize can only be awarded to living writers, and by the time Ariel – the collection on which her reputation mostly rests – was published, Plath was no longer in that category. She committed suicide in 1963, making her ineligible for the award.

 

Significant Works

 

Ariel, The Bell Jar

 

1.     Sarah Kane

 

What Did She Write?

 

Sarah Kane was one of those rare writers who makes the rest of us look like amateurs. Between 1994 and 1999, she wrote five plays and one short film, all masterpieces. Her work deals with themes of violence and depression, and so it is characterised with tedious regularity as “depressing” and “shocking” – usually by extremely tedious people. Yes, she wrote about depression; yes, her work can be almost unbearably harsh; but she was not some immature writer out to shock. A sense of compassion characterises all her writing, and no matter how bleak it may be, love and kindness shine through every word. Not despite, but because of the darkness and the horror, Kane’s plays are, quite simply, beautiful. On top of that, she wrote some of the most insightful critiques of our society’s attitude to gender that I have ever read. There is a reason why Kane is at the top of this list – she was one of history’s truly brilliant minds, a writer who made it her mission to create a new form for each work. Every one of her plays is unique, not only in the context of wider theatrical conditions but in the context of her own body of work.

 

So Why Didn’t She Win?

 

If you noticed the dates I gave earlier, you’ll probably be able to figure out why. Yep, she killed herself (seriously, writers, stop doing that). Eventually, the depression that was one of Kane’s constant themes was what killed her, on the 20^th of February 1999, meaning that she was only writing for five years – nowhere near long enough to be considered by the Nobel Committee. On top of that, her plays were reviewed almost entirely by monumental fuckwits[1] (other wise known a the British press) who were incapable of looking past the violence of her plays to the humanity at their core. At the end of the day, the theatrical establishment has never liked anything truly original, and even today Kane is viewed in many quarters as being dependent on cheap shock and spectacle. But those of us with half a brain recognise her as a playwright of staggering genius, regardless of what the intellectual pygmies in the papers think.

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[1] Insert link to http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/reviews/article-1326742/Blasted-Cannibalism-nudity-The-Loony-Left-love-it.html