America wants a Nobel Prize in literature. America demands it! America doesnâ??t understand why those superannuated Swedes havenâ??t given one to an American since Toni Morrison in 1993. America wonders what theyâ??re waiting for with Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon. America wonders how you say â??cluelessâ? in Swedish.
OK, enough. But the literature Nobel will be announced this Thursday and if an American doesnâ??t win yet again, there will be the usual entitled whining â?? the sound of which has been especially piercing since 2008, when Nobel Academy permanent secretary Horace Engdahl deemed American fiction â??too isolated, too insularâ? and declared Europe â??the centre of the literary world.â?
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