Henry James Does Not Win Nobel Prize for Literature
The Nobel Prize for literature was today awarded to Herta Müller, a Romanian-born German author “who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed.” I must admit to never having read her work.
Yet again, Henry James was ignored, and was not awarded the prize, which he certainly deserved more than many of its winners. (Granted, they only give prizes to living authors, but the prize was awarded during 15 years of Henry’s life, and he certainly merited it more than some of the now forgotten authors who received it. Not that Henry needed such a prize to be recognized, but it is easy to notice that the Nobel committee pretty ignored American authors for the first thirty years of the prize. (Though they could have considered Henry to be English at the end of his life.)
