I don’t know much about how the Nobel Prize committee works, and normally I don’t follow most of them, but there are at least two this year that struck me.
First, I was intrigued to see that Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature, which is significant because it’s the first time that I’ve actually read a book by a Nobel recipient while the author was still alive. Technically, Doris Lessing is a science fiction writer, in that her novels almost always include elements that are science fiction-esque, but you won’t find her books in the science fiction section of the bookstore; they’ll be in the literature/fiction section. I read one of her books once, but to be honest I couldn’t quite get it. I found her style obtuse, dense, difficult, almost incomprehensible. In short, it was Literature, with a capital L, and definitely Nobel Prize quality Literature.
Second, I was pleased to learn that Al Gore has received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming. I’ve been impressed with Al Gore lately; I’ve always sort of admired him (my admiration tempered by the fact that he was still a politician), and now my admiration feels more justified, just like when Jimmy Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize. I’m interested to see how Gore’s award will be reported in, say, Fox News. Will they note that the Nobel Prize Committee is filled with a bunch of left wing commie pinko radicals who also gave the Nobel Peace Prize to peacenik nuts like Jimmy Carter, Yassir Arafat, Aung San Suu Kyi, Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King Jr., and others? Or will they grudgingly admit that there might be something to this whole Global Warming thing after all? Personally, I’m expecting the former. There are still a lot of folks out there who see this whole global warming thing as a conspiracy against American business interests (how this logic works I’m simply not sure, since it’s the sort of challenge that American businesses are quite good at meeting), so perhaps Gore’s receiving the Peace Prize will simply vindicate their notion that the Nobel Committee is full of whack jobs and loons, just like their founder, Alfred Nobel.
In other news, I’m signing up for Blog Action Day, which is Monday, October 15. Plus, I’m continuing to accept donations for the Office of Letters and Light through; check out the link below.
Support Me in the 2007 NaNoWriMo Write-A-Thon
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