Be Not Afraid, Brah

 “Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.” — William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

In the NYT yesterday film critic A. O. Scott wrote with rather blithe skepticism about the Nobel Prize for Literature (and a little less so of Frances Ford Coppola’s new film Megalomania.) “What Good Is Great Literature?” That was the title. 

“Cry ‘havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war!” Right?

Fine. I read the piece end to end and it was not nearly so Philistine as the title suggests. (Do even critics and columnists get to write their own headlines? Even in the New York Times? I always wonder if there isn’t some editorial party whose only real job is goosing up titles. I’m sure it’s a gift, but it often feels like a waiter sticking those horrible birthday cake-sparklers into an otherwise perfectly palatable tiramisu.)

“What good is greatness?” he asks. “The concept has an old fashioned, even retrograde ring.” 

Take those separately, second sentence first, and he’s absolutely right. Conceptually that word “greatness” assumes not just that there must be far more not-so-great by comparison, but also ideas and principles to which the lot probably aspired and only the very few came within a country mile of — to use an old fashioned phrase from my rural youth. The idea of less good writing persists of course, else what’s a freshman essay course for? But just what makes an author not just good or even better but great has never been quite so democratically and hotly disputed as now. 

Good. That’s good trouble. I mean if you happen to be a Professor of English Literature it might not feel great to be alive right now and I genuinely sympathize, but even just within my lifetime there has been SO much work done to loosen the dead hand. SO much. And the results have been a very real boon to literature. We’ve never had such access to all the literature of the world. There are more great translators doing more great work today than ever before. There are more authors, living and dead whose work we can read today than I ever dreamed I’d see in even working in a bookstore.

So is Scott right to suggest that nobody needs a bunch of Swedish academics to hand out those fancy paperweights anymore? (Who still uses a paperweight?) He quite rightly points out that nowadays celebrity, even literary celebrity comes with rewards both financial and personal undreamt of by any writer in history save the occasional Dickens or Twain or Tolstoy — and he’s right to mention that all those old boys were exclusively, well, men. So who needs a Nobel?

And just this morning came the answer. Han Kang won. Scott is also at pains to make sure his readers appreciate that unlike a Pulitzer or a Booker or a National Book Award etc., the Nobel for Literature isn’t awarded for a book but rather for an author’s body of work. The latest recipient has that; a deep and widely respected — and translated — oeuvre. Not everybody gets an oeuvre. And very few writers in history even with one of those gets a Nobel Prize. Does that matter?

Not to disagree with A. O. Scott of the New York Times, but yeah it does. Maybe not to a writer invited to keep a “writer’s notebook” in the paper of record, but to Han Kang? I’m going to say, “yes.” To South Korea? And to folks who have never read her work? To the people like me who read and sell her work? You bet.

The function of regional, national, and international literacy prizes is pretty clear when it comes to getting readers and selling books. Stephen King doesn’t need a prize. Emily Henry doesn’t either. Dr. Chuck Tingle? He’s good. They’ve all achieved celebrity, money, even the kind of fame recognized on morning shows and even TikTok.

Back in the day the comedian Red Buttons used to do a regular routine, particularly at comedy roasts. It was about all the famous people who “never got a dinner,” as in, “Ponce de Leon who said when he discovered the Fountain of Youth said, ‘Where the hell are the paper cups?’ Never got a dinner!” Scott points out that the Nobel Committee, like all such organizations, has frequently missed their chance; as in Vladimir Nobokov never got a dinner! It happens. Graham Green, Virginia Woolf, Italo Calvino, Natalia Ginzburg never got a dinner (Nobel Prize.)

Doesn’t mean they didn’t deserve one, maybe even more than some of the people who did win. (Herta Muller? Bob bloody Dylan?! My list.) But this also doesn’t mean Han Kang won to spite Percival Everitt. My personal favorite for years to maybe win has been the Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom. Doesn’t mean I wasn’t thrilled when Annie Ernaux won!

What it did mean when Annie Ernaux won was that we got all her translated books into stock and displayed them in multiple copies with appropriate signage and sold more Annie Ernaux books than I’d have probably been able to hand-sell in my working lifetime. That’s what it means, why it matters. Hell, we even sold a fair number of Hurta Muller and Jon Fosse books when they won and I barely lifted a finger for those Laureates. 

So “What good is greatness?” He asks? Well, way down here where booksellers and librarians and serious and curious readers not interested in the latest Colleen Hoover pulp happen to be, greatness matters still. We want to know. We like prizes. We read reviews. We want to read the best books we can find. We want to discover Han Kang.

The one thing I can pretty much guarantee most of us won’t be doing? Watching Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis.