WMB posted last week on how Horace Engdahl of the Nobel Prize jury has summarily judged all of American literature to be, not to mince words, insular and ignorant and unworthy of their attention.  As you might imagine, the Americans have rebutted with their own criticisms.  The general feeling among literary U.S. patriots can be described as two-pronged:

  1. The Swedes, in this instance, are idiots. 
  2. The Swedes are ignoring the obvious, that European culture is mostly dead.

 Here’s what one critic had to say: 

As long as America could still be regarded as Europe’s backwater—as long as a poet like T.S. Eliot had to leave America for England in order to become famous enough to win the Nobel—it was easy to give American literature the occasional pat on the head. But now that the situation is reversed, and it is Europe that looks culturally, economically, and politically dependent on the United States, European pride can be assuaged only by pretending that American literature doesn’t exist. When Engdahl declares, “You can’t get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world,” there is a poignant echo of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard insisting that she is still big, it’s the pictures that got smaller.

 I say: Invade Sweden.  At least it won’t be a preemptive strike.