Nearly one year after awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature to Elfriede Jelinek, one of the members of the prize committee – Knut Ahnlund – has resigned in disgust over the decision:
According to Ahnlund, 82, Jelinek’s work is "a mass of text shovelled together without artistic structure" and declared that "after this, I cannot even formally remain in the Swedish Academy. As of now, I consider myself an outsider."
Jelinek certainly never expected to receive the prize, and she might even agree with Ahnlund’s assessment of her work as Gewaltpornographie (ponography of violence). According to Merkur Online, her only response to the report was a written non-statement:
Dazu erklärte Jelinek schriftlich: "Nein, dazu gebe ich keinen Kommentar ab."
Jelinek has endorsed Thomas Pynchon to receive this year’s prize, which is expected to announced this week. My personal choice would be John Updike.
