Re: Nobel Prize for Juenger

["Umberto Rossi" <urossi@programatic.it>]

> Who would the only Academy member be who knew about Italian
> literature ? A name would be interesting. By the way, it would be
> interesting to learn what Italian authors you might believe are suitable
> for the prize. Come on, are'nt we a little nationalistic now ?

You should know that Italians can be nationalistic only when it comes 
to soccer and food.

I wish I had that article in my papers.  So let's forget this issue, 
because I wouldn't like you to think that I dreamed of it.

As for the suitable authors, surely there are not many.  Italy wasn't 
so productive in this century.  But I still think that Carlo Emilio 
Gadda is a greater writer than Eugenio Montale.  If a Nobel prize 
should have been awarded to my country, it was Gadda who deserved it. 

As for misconstructing, I probably misconstructed my sentence;  I 
should have added "no matter how good his/her writings can be".

Anyway, now that I think of it, it is only highly ridiculous that a
Nobel prize was awarded to Grazia Deledda, and not to Gadda.  Or to
Pier Paolo Pasolini.

And now the issue of political correctness:  the core of the
"politically correct" doctrine (which is a widespread theory in
Anglo-Saxon academia today) is that you evaluate literary text on the
basis of their political content and not on the basis of their
literary qualities.  The Nobel prize to Solgenitsin (sorry, I used
the Italian transliteration) had political reasons.  The fact that
Juenger will receive no Nobel prize can be explained with political
reasons as well.  As you can see, here the issue is not literary
quality, but political correctness.  Solgenitsin was a Russian
dissident, he was "good", he got the Nobel.  Juenger has been a
nationalist writer, is a right wing thinker (i.e. many consider him
a right-wing thinker), he is "bad", no Nobel.  That's the way it
works. 

Umberto Rossi

"A commission is appointed 
To confer with a Volscian commission 
About perpetual peace"--and nobody told me!