Nobel Prize for JKR?

[Amy Z]

Naama wrote:
 
> Winston Churchill won Nobel prize for literature - mainly, I think, 
> for his monumental seven volume history of WWII. So, I've 
never quite 
> understood what types of literary works are eligible for the 
prize.

I remember learning long ago that the Nobel in literature is given 
for a body of work, not necessarily or even usually for a particular 
volume.  This seems to be contradicted by the quote from 
Nobel's will given at the official website 
(http://www.nobel.se/literature/index.html), which says 
something ambiguous about "work," but it is borne out by the fact 
that the prizes do not seem to be granted in a year when the 
person has just released a masterpiece.  E.g., what did Faulkner 
publish in 1948, the year before he won the Nobel?  Intruder in 
the Dust.  Not exactly his best-known work, and while that 
doesn't mean it wasn't his most brilliant, I suspect the committee 
was thinking of As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, and 
other novels published many years earlier.

It seems to me that sometimes the Nobel committee members 
grant a prize in an unlikely category because they want to 
recognize the person but don't have an appropriate category with 
which to bestow the honor.  Bertrand Russell won it for 
literature--huh?  What's that about?  (They could've given it to him 
for Peace, actually.  But they were probably trying to acknowledge 
his brilliance in mathematics and philosophy, and couldn't find 
another hole to squeeze those pegs into, so Literature won out.) 

So maybe that's what's going on with Churchill; he didn't really 
win for being a writer, but he *was* a writer, so they seized on 
that because they don't have a Nobel Prize for statesmanship.  
He, too, could've won the Peace Prize; it's been awarded to many 
a warrior, including some whose names should be on the roster 
in hell instead of on a pedestal alongside Churchill's, and 
probably will be when they finally go to their just reward.  Not that 
I have anyone specific in mind.

Either Joywitch or bboy wrote--sorry, you two look so much 
alike--:

> > One interesting note, though -- the decisions of the Nobel 
> committee 
> > are sometimes questionable.  

Isn't it strange that we even need to comment on this?  One 
would think it goes without saying of any decisions made by any 
group of humans.  And yet there is something untouchable about 
the Nobel, as if it were handed down by the angels and not by a 
group of Swedes, who I'm sure are very nice and smart but not 
the be-all and end-all.  The same goes for the Trustees of 
Columbia University or whoever it is who tells them whom to give 
the Pulitzers to each year.  

No matter how silly or even corrupt the process for deciding on 
prizewinners, it is all forgotten the moment the prize is awarded, 
and the awardee is covered in glory thenceforth.  It's a very odd 
phenomenon.  I guess the human mind loves prizes, and 
pigeonholes.

I personally would lose all respect for the Nobel in Literature if it 
were awarded to JKR, and you know what?  I wouldn't be 
surprised if JKR said the same thing.

Amy Z