Contenders for the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature

Nearly 30% of the leading contenders for the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature (according to British betting giant, Ladbrokes, for what that's worth) have visited Albany under the sponsorship of the New York State Writers Institute.

They include frequent frontrunner Philip Roth; upstate New York native and Summer Writers Institute stalwart Joyce Carol Oates; Polish poet Adam Zagajewski; Chinese poet Bei Dao; Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah (who visited twice); Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood; Bronx novelist Don DeLillo (twice); Israeli novelist Amos Oz; American novelist Richard Ford (twice); Irish poet Paul Muldoon; Australian poet Les Murray; and Irish novelist Colm Toibin.

The Wall St. Journal discusses Ladbrokes' oddsmaking regarding the Nobel Prize in Literature here: http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/09/30/bookmakers-weigh-in-on-who-will-win-the-nobel-prize-for-literature/

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Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Edith Grossman

Latin American Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude) famously said that he preferred his novels in English translation by Gregory Rabassa (who visited the Writers Institute in 2006) and Edith Grossman (who will visit the Writers Institute on Tuesday, September 23, 2014).

Here is an excerpt from Edith Grossman's speech about translating Marquez at the 2003 PEN Tribute to the late Columbian author (1927-2014) whose work had a transformative impact on global literature:

"Ralph Maheim, the great translator from the German, compared the translator to an actor who speaks as the author would if the author spoke English. A sophisticated and provocative analogy, for it takes into account something that is not always as clear as it should be, at least to many reviewers, whose highest endorsement for a translation tends to be that it is “seamless.” If I may attempt to translate the damnation barely concealed in their faint praise, I think they really mean that the translator has, with proper humility, made herself or himself “invisible,” a punishing goal that is desirable only if we are held personally responsible for the Tower of Babel and all its dire consequences for our species."

Full text here: http://www.themodernword.com/gabo/gabo_PEN_grossman.html

More about Grossman's visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/grossman_edith14.html

Complete schedule of events:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#.VBBgU1_D_s0

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Coetzee Event: UAlbany Photo of the Day

Nobel Visit

NYS Writers Institute Director, Donald Faulkner moderates a panel discussion with Nobel Prize-winning novelist J.M. Coetzee from South Africa, along with novelist Paul Auster, and a select group of UAlbany students participating in a seminar discussing the work of American author Herman Melville in the Performing Arts Center.

 

Photo credit: Mark Schmidt

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Animal Rights Activist and Nobel Laureate to Speak

J. M. Coetzee is an animal rights activist and ethical vegetarian, in addition to being a Nobel Prize winning novelist.

He is a leading figure of the Australian organization, Voiceless-- The Animal Protection Institute, and co-selected the stories and essays that appear in the 2013 Voiceless Anthology, which will be published in December 2012.

Coetzee calls animal protection, "one of the more urgent social and philosophical issues of our times." His bestselling novel, Elizabeth Costello (2003), explores many of these issues.

More on the anthology:  http://www.voiceless.org.au/grants-and-prizes/writing-prize/2013anthology

Coetzee will share the share with his friend Paul Auster twice today at UAlbany.

More about the events:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/coetzee_auster12.html

Photo of pigs in an industrial farming facility from an op-ed piece by Coetzee in the Sydney Morning Herald decrying Biblical justifications for the eating of meat:

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/animals/nothing-biblical-in-factory-farming-20111205-1oe2o.html

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John Malkovich in Coetzee's "Disgrace"

J. M. Coetzee's 1999 novel about racial strife and a father-daughter relationship in South Africa was adapted as a 2008 movie starring John Malkovich as a troubled college professor who resigns his position after an affair with a student and moves to his daughter's remote farm house in the South African hinterlands to make sense of his life.

See the trailer here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqvIssZT6cg

Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, visits UAlbany tomorrow, Friday, 10/12:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/vws.html#jm

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A Nobel Prize for One of Ours?

British oddsmaker Ladbrokes gives their odds for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Needless to say, many of our previous guests are feature.

The most noteworthy at the moment is Paul Auster (100:1 odds), who shares the stage on Friday with actual Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee. Link here.

Ladbrokes gives the following authors among our visitors a 16:1 chance:  Philip Roth, Amos Oz and Margaret Atwood.

At 20:1, we have Les Murray and Chinua Achebe.

At 33:1, Adam Zagajewski, Don DeLillo, Nurrudin Farah, Joyce Carol Oates and New York State Author E. L. Doctorow.

At 50:1, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chang-Rae Lee, Peter Carey, Bei Dao, Ernesto Cardenal and

A. B. Yehoshua. At 66:1, Kazuo Ishiguro, Colm Toibin, William Gass, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Julian Barnes and New York State Poet John Ashbery. At 100:1, in addition to Auster, Michael Ondaatje, New York State Author Mary Gordon, Marge Piercy and Louise Gluck. If you have any nominations of your own, feel free to post!

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Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity! on Friday afternoon 10/12

Two master writers will discuss "Bartleby the Scrivener," with your participation, this coming Friday afternoon in the Recital Hall of the Performing Arts Center, free and open to the public.

You can prepare for the event by reading the story here: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=1479870

J. M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize winner from South Africa, and Paul Auster, bestselling author, will present a rare opportunity to discuss one of the classic and most influential short stories of modern times:

Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street by Herman Melville

"I AM a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom as yet nothing that I know of has ever been written:—I mean the law-copyists or scriveners."  More.

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The Dark Lady of American Letters, This Friday

Joyce Carol Oates, a towering figure of contemporary fiction, and a favorite to win the Nobel Prize for a quarter century, and a regular visitor to the New York State Summer Writers Institute, will speak on Friday the 13th of July in Saratoga. 8PM, free and open to the public, Davis Audiorium, Palamountain Hall, 815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs.

All events in the series are free and open to the general public

Her most recent book is The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares: Novellas and Stories of Unspeakable Dread (2011).

Publishers Weekly said, "The seven stories in this stellar collection from the prolific Oates (Give Me Your Heart) may prompt the reader to turn on all the lights or jump at imagined noises.... This volume burnishes Oates’s reputation as a master of psychological dread."

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At home with Toni Morrison this week

The AP features an intimate chat with Toni Morrison that ran earlier this week:

"It's Saturday and the 81-year-old Morrison is in a relaxed, informal mood, wearing a gray blouse and slacks and dark slippers, a purple bandanna tied over her gray corn rows, her laugh easy and husky with a pinch of "Can-you-believe-this?" You might mistake her for an ordinary neighbor ready for gardening until you see the pictures of her with James Baldwin, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Elie Wiesel among others, or learn that the low, wooden table by her chair was a prop from the film version of Beloved, her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel."  More.

The Nobel laureate was a UAlbany writer in residence at the Institute's inception and shared space in our offices in the mid-1980s.

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William Kennedy on Mario Vargas Llosa

From the New York Times Book Review, read William Kennedy's 1982 review of newly-crowned Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa's novel, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977, English translation 1982).

"Vargas Llosa once said he didn't like novels with a moral, and he hasn't imposed one here, though any book which is so well wrought, which defines a world with such unarguable accuracy, is moral; and what's more, it made me laugh out loud. Perhaps it carries an antimoral - that soap opera is good for you. It is a work that celebrates story: story that gives pleasure to a large number of people, story also as a pleasure principle for the writer."

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