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| Bob Dylan, giving his Nobel Lecture |
This year, the Nobel Committee will announce (likely in September/October), for the first time, two winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Last year, due to scandals on the Nobel Committee, the organization wasn't able to choose a winner, the first time that this was not accomplished since World War II. While it seems unlikely, even with two victors, that the United States will win another trophy so soon (I suspect they'll make the country wait a decade), there is at least a chance with them surely going for two different continents that they'll pick an American author again. The United Kingdom, after all, saw a win in both 2005 (Harold Pinter) and 2007 (Doris Lessing), so there's some recent precedent for a quick turnaround victory. Therefore, I'm reviving this ongoing series, hoping if nothing else that I can provide a few ideas for your next beach read before summer finishes. Listed here are the ten people (obviously all living) who I think are most likely to be the next American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Honorable Mentions: I thought about throwing out someone like Rachel Kushner, Colson Whitehead, Richard Powers, Michael Chabon, or George Saunders, but their careers seem too scant to put on a list like this, or at the very least too recent. Tony Kushner isn't out of the question, though an American playwright so soon after an American songwriter might be a bit of a stretch (I suspect the next American will be a novelist or poet); you could make the same claim for Stephen Sondheim. Woody Allen or Junot Diaz both are impossible choices considering the Nobel Committee's scandals last year and their own associations with the #MeToo movement. Richard Ford & Annie Proulx are both roughly the right age and worth mentioning here, but they seemed just out-of-reach of this Top 10.
Born: August 28, 1952 in Akron, Ohio
Signature Work: Thomas and Beulah
No Stranger to Awards: Dove has won the Pulitzer Prize, as well as the National Medal of the Arts and was the first African-American to serve as Poet Laureate
For Her: The Nobel Committee isn't shy about giving the award to poets, and Dove is arguably the most well-known living American poet upon the death of Maya Angelou. Dove's won almost every accolade you can think of for a poet except the Nobel, and as the first African-American poet to win the Nobel, the diversity that the committee values could help her in this regard (the Nobel Committee for Literature has increasingly focused on diverse perspectives, particularly in the past thirty years).
Against Her: Dove is more nationally famous in literary circles and less internationally recognized, so it would be a bit of a surprise if they went with her. In addition, her most famous work came over two decades ago and she perhaps peaked a little earlier than she should have (timing is a rough one for the Nobel Committee in this regard).
Born: December 5, 1934, in Sacramento, California
Signature Work: The Year of Magical Thinking
No Stranger to Awards: She's won the National Book Award in 2005, as well as the National Medal of Arts.
Going for Her: Didion is one of the well-respected figures in American letters, and perhaps considering her forays not only into fiction but also memoirs & journalism, the author with the most diverse portfolio on this roster. She's wildly successful, particularly late in her career which is a change-of-pace from some of the other authors on this list (not to mention, quite frankly, Toni Morrison & Bob Dylan), and is someone who adds something new to the list considering the deeply personal nature of her writing.
Going Against Her: The Nobel committee is more reliant on authors of fiction (it's rare that they go for a memoirist or a journalist, rather than someone who is a novelist or poet), and Didion's peak fame is so recent (by Nobel standards) it might be seen as jumping on the bandwagon and risk being a flash-in-the-pan.
Born: May 8, 1937 in Glen Cove, New York
Signature Work: Gravity's Rainbow
No Stranger to Awards: He's won the National Book Award, and was due the Pulitzer Prize (he won the jury's vote unanimously for Gravity's Rainbow), but the Pulitzer board dismissed their decision so Pynchon went home empty-handed.
Going for Him: Well, no one's going to argue that Thomas Pynchon doesn't stand-alone in the literary community. Novels like Gravity's Rainbow and The Crying of Lot 49 have entered the lexicon in ways few living authors have been able to do, and Pynchon's is a genius that is quite singular-there's never been anyone quite like him in the literary world (maybe if Salinger had actually decided to publish something at some point during his last forty years he might have come close), and he'll likely show up on lists of missed opportunities for the Nobel Committee if this never happens.
Going Against Him: Honestly, if they could actually get him to show up I think he'd win by unanimous consent. The infamously reclusive author makes Cormac McCarthy look like Kim Kardashian-it's hard to imagine the Nobel Committee giving the award to a man who will never accept, and possibly not even acknowledge the award (or more damning, mock it through a New York Times editorial).
Born: November 20, 1936 in New York City
Signature Work: White Noise
No Stranger to Awards: DeLillo has won the National Book Award, as well as was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Going for Him: The Nobel Committee occasionally likes to pick troupers, novelists who have long been part of the literary community but who haven't always been headliners (lest we forget, the likes of Marcel Proust and F. Scott Fitzgerald never picked up the Nobel). DeLillo, long considered one of the great men of letters who admittedly never took the center stage in the way that, say, John Updike or Norman Mailer did, would be an interesting choice, and while he is pretty private, my hunch is he'd still show up to win the prize.
Going Against Him: He's not a flashy choice-if you're going to choose an American and deal with the press of such a thing, why not go with someone more well-known and less press-shy? Additionally, DeLillo's work post-Underworld has shown a marked decline, and authors rarely win old-age awards; they usually are victorious when they are still producing high-quality prose.
Born: July 20, 1933 in Providence, Rhode Island
Signature Work: Blood Meridian
No Stranger to Awards: McCarthy has basically won it all: the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award are all on his shelf.
Going for Him: Name me a more celebrated American novelist of the past twenty years (except, perhaps, the next guy on this list). Seriously, between No Country for Old Men (which went on to be a masterpiece cinematically) and The Road, McCarthy's novels have become landmarks in the literary canon, and he proves that authors continue to make compelling, interesting work decades after they initially come onto the scene.
Going Against Him: Doesn't it feel like this should have happened about 6-7 years ago? I know the Nobel Committee is occasionally slow to react to trends, but McCarthy was such a big deal for so long, frequently showing up on "greatest American novelists of all-time" lists every chance authors could get, and for a brief moment there his reclusive nature was completely out-the-window, doing interviews for Time Magazine and Oprah Winfrey. He could still win, but at 86 the window is getting shorter and shorter.
Born: August 17, 1959 in Western Springs, Illinois
Signature Work: The Corrections
No Stranger to Awards: He won the National Book Award for The Corrections, as well as was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize. He also appeared on the cover of Time Magazine with the title "Great American Novelist" and was also an Oprah Book Club selection. Perhaps you remember?
Going for Him: Franzen is surely someone that will be on lists like this for decades, provided his health holds. He's the exact sort of author the Nobel Committee clamors for, with a novel roughly twice a decade and every one of his books being hailed as an event. His novels The Corrections and Freedom both were landmarks, and I have another personal bet with myself over whether it will be Franzen or Ian McEwan that wins the Nobel first (I think McEwan, but I suspect they'll both do it).
Going Against Him: Franzen's kind of a jackass, which can't help him in this regard though it doesn't preclude him, as jackasses have won this award in the past. Perhaps more damning is his relative youth. While authors such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez have won the prize at a younger age, recipients tend to be older. If we're betting solely on 2019, I think Franzen might be a bit young, though honestly he might have the best shot of the bunch here if we're betting on truly the next American victor of this prize.
Born: October 25, 1941 in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Signature Work: Breathing Lessons
No Stranger to Awards: Tyler has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize
Going for Her: Tyler has steadily become one of the most recognized authors in American letters, having won most of the major literary prizes and been recognized in recent years for her contributions to fiction, getting compared to everyone from Eudora Welty to John Updike. She's a well-known figure, with several easily name-checked novels, and she's still making significant contributions to literature, getting her Booker Prize nomination for 2015's A Spool of Blue Thread.
Going Against Her: Tyler's work is not without its critics, and the Nobel Committee might not take kindly to the criticisms of Tyler's work, which is frequently considered too "kind" or "feminine." While the committee made a sport of ignoring the contributions of Philip Roth while he was alive, they aren't exactly clamoring for the softer, warmer prose of someone like Tyler.
Born: June 7, 1954 in Little Falls, Minnesota
Signature Work: Love Medicine
No Stranger to Awards: Erdrich has won the National Book Award & the National Book Critics Circle Award, and also was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize.
Going for Her: Erdrich would make history if she were to win (she'd be the first Native-American author to win the award), a huge accomplishment and something the committee might find a compelling narrative for the prize; Erdrich's career has never been hotter, quite frankly (all three of her awards name-checked above came in the past ten years, despite decades of being a signature figure in the literary world), and a long career with a lot of momentum could be a solid recipe for success with the Nobel Committee. She's been scooping up lifetime achievement awards left-and-right in recent years-this would be quite the capper.
Going Against Her: Is she famous enough? Admittedly the Nobel Committee occasionally exhaustively combs through a nation trying to find a notable author and picks someone no one in the international literary community has heard of, but Erdrich triumphing over Oates? Over McCarthy? It seems pretty David and Goliath, and generally the American winners have been more famous than she is.
Born: November 26, 1943 in Sandpoint, Idaho
Signature Work: Housekeeping
No Stranger to Awards: Robinson has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award (twice), and was shortlisted for the National Book Award. She also won the National Humanities Medal in 2012.
Going for Her: Robinson is one of those authors who somehow manages to keep pumping out critically-acclaimed and celebrated novels even without the added benefit of movies being made of her films or the celebrity of a Cormac McCarthy. Her work is religiously-inspired, which I think might be something the Nobel Committee thinks stands out (she's by far the most drawn to her faith in her writing of any author on this list), and she's also had a major impact in her 60's and 70's in the literary community with Gilead and Lila. No one can argue that she isn't producing some of the most important work of her career this century.
Going Against Her: While being prolific has its downside (see Number 1 on this list), Robinson only has four novels. That's hardly the sort of thing that wins a Nobel, even if one of those novels is Housekeeping. Could someone with such a short bibliography win the Nobel?
Born: June 16, 1938 in Lockport, New York
Signature Work: them
No Stranger to Awards: She's won the National Book Award, as well as the National Humanities Medal, and though she's never won, she's been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize five times.
Going for Her: Everything? She's an icon in the world of letters (who doesn't like Joyce Carol Oates?) who continues to write vociferously and continues to have gushing reviews (one of those Pulitzer Prize nominations happened this decade).
Going Against Her: Productivity? Honestly that's all I can think of since she's overdue for the Nobel. There's a stigma against writers who produce a gargantuan body of work, and with nearly sixty novels to her name, Oates has definitely surpassed the body of work of almost every other novelist on this list combined. Oates has cleverly made fun of this in the past ("more titles and I might as well give up all hopes of a 'reputation'"), but it could be what's holding her back.
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