Mark Twain/Nobel Prizes/Márquez

Let’s take a breather, from World War II, that is. It’s great to hear from my readers, by email, by comment, or by following. “Followers” is such a funny term for this. Wouldn’t “subscribers” be a better choice? If you follow me and my ramblings, there is no telling where you’ll end up. The posting of my blogs is on Pacific Time, in case that interests you.

One of you reported another story about look-alikes: Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper. Excellent! A good book for parents to read with their small children. Twain is possibly the best writer that America has produced to date. But if memory serves me accurately, Twain died before the Nobel Prizes came into existence. Otherwise, he might have won the award. I’ve enjoyed most some of his essays, especially one called “That Awful German Language” but it won’t be so funny to anyone not knowing something about German verbs. Huckleberry Finn ranks as one of our greatest classics, not a racist production at all, as some attempt to make it, but a work of beauty, as my detailed study of it in graduate school proved. It’s a novel that deserves reading more than once.

On the other hand, the choice of Nobel Prize winners depends on who is currently serving as a member of the Swedish Academy that makes the decision. For many years now it has seemed the winners were socialistic writers, or even self-professed Communists. It’s almost as if an author doesn’t have a chance otherwise.

One of the latter is Gabríel Garcia Márquez, whose volume one of his autobiography, Living to Tell the Tale, is an outstanding literary work, beautiful and inspiring to other writers (he doesn’t use –ly adverbs), in spite of his adoration of Fidel Castro, and his anti-Americanism which barely shows through. But this Columbian’s fiction is something else again. I can’t stand it. Every fictional story of his I’ve tried to read was filled with the same sort of thing: constant alcohol drinking by the very poor, even by youths; brothel visiting even by youths; incest; thievery; and what have you. I gave up on One Hundred Years of Solitude. So much for Oprah’s recommendations! I don’t trust them.

Mark Twain is so refreshing by comparison.