The Plot Against America, Or, Why Philip Roth Is the Susan Lucci of the Nobel Prize in Literature

By Douglas Healey/AP Photo.

Nobel week! Day four of five. Today’s champion: Mo Yan, Chinese author of Red Sorghum, The Republic of Wine, and Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out, among other works. Per a press release from Stockholm: “Through a mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives, Mo Yan has created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition.” Or, in book-blurb-speak, “A romp!”

Losing authors include Thomas Pynchon, Alice Munro, and Philip Roth, the last of whom is slowly becoming something like the Susan Lucci of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Bloomberg book critic Hephzibah Anderson writes of Roth: “There is a compelling case to be made for this award rendering itself meaningless if it continues to ignore him. Apparently, it’s one competition that could actually benefit from a referee lockout.”

But will Stockholm surprise the world by awarding Roth tomorrow’s peace price? Like as a peace offering? And would doing so make Roth the second-strangest recipient of said prize, or the first?

Nobel gold medal count
U.S.A.: 3.
Japan: 1.
France: 1.
Britain: 1.
China: 1.
Philip Roth: 0.