Olga Tokarczuk – Nobel Lecture – Literature Prize 2018 | Hacker News Reader

Olga Tokarczuk – Nobel Lecture – Literature Prize 2018

nobelprize.org

91 pointsMaysonL22 comments

I've been avoiding her books but being a Polish I tried to appreciate her writings when she got the Nobel. I found her style technically very good, but nothing special (compared to other Polish literary giants like Miłosz, Szulz or Lem). The bigger issue for me was the contents - it was over-intellectualized and lacking in meaning; a classical triumph of form over content.

The best Polish female writer I've read is Maria Dąbrowska and her amazing book "Nights and Days". Something like Polish "The Forsyte Saga".

To be honest her books are simply boring. Nobel prize in literature used to mean something, but recently it isn’t about literature anymore, it’s about “who furthers progressive-left agenda the most?”

The same Nobel prize that was given to Peter Handke in 2019? I like Handke's work an awful lot, as I do Tokarczuk's, but he's certainly not someone who furthers any "progressive-left agenda".

This is such conspiratorial nonsense. Everything you don't like is a 'progressive-left agenda'. I've read Drive Your Plow, it's good. The protagonist is an older woman and the story meanders a bit, but the ending ties it all together wonderfully. The character meanders, so the story does too.

This idea that art is right or left wing purely because the authors don't support the worst head banging of western right wing parties is such bollocks.

I agree about the boring part. I'm Pole and hold all previous Polish Nobel winners in high regard, but, when it was announced that Tokarczuk got it, me and my friends were shocked. Her books are such shallow crap, compared to works of the greats who got the prize before, it's just baffling.

Do you have even a single piece of evidence to back this up?

Don't be such a pub bore.

It's useless to discuss the "boring" aspect as it's completely subjective, but right-left is very easy to explain. When you look at modern art (the last 50 years or more), it is extremely difficult to find right-wing artists. They definitely exist, but they are outnumbered by those who don't show any political affiliation or those who are openly left.

It's quite natural: the left in general is more about the freedom of expression, "progress" as in finding new ways, whereas the right is by nature conservative, so it's harder to make new breakthroughs in art.

it is extremely difficult to find right-wing artists

Perhaps that bias has something to do with it. Either way, back when Wisława Szymborska won the literature prize, there was a clear right-wing candidate, Zbigniew Herbert. They still chose the poet who wrote paeans to Stalin.

I've never understood how people can have much to say about a book they read in a translated version.

I read a lot of German writers translated in English, and even though I really enjoyed some of them, I don't think I can really judge anything but the plot and maybe the translator skills. Otherwise it'd be like watching a movie that has been dubbed and commenting on an actor's performance.

Are you saying that you can't have an opinion about a book unless you read it in its original language?

Let me put it this way - if you have someone who speaks two languages fluently, do you think it is possible for them to say the same thing(same meaning, same intention, same context) just in two different languages? If yes, why wouldn't it be possible just through a translator? A good translator will preserve the meaning, rhythm and intention of whatever is being said.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com