Pregnant pause gives birth to million dollar baby,
as I mentioned yesterday.

Stephen Schwartz describes what happens when the Nobel Committee is more interested in “sticking it to da man” than in literature (many thanks to Maria for the link):

Given that Pinter has produced no significant work for the stage in 40 years, one should perhaps admire the candor of his self-criticism. But viewed from another perspective, the Swedes have written a new chapter in ignobility, presenting the world’s top literary honor to an author who considers his own work irrelevant. That, at least, could not be said of some of the anti-democracy miscreants previously so recognized in Stockholm. They have included the 1999 choice, German novelist Gunter Grass, a veteran of the Nazi forces in the Second World War and unsparing foe of Western values; the 1998 laureate, the Portuguese Jose Saramago, a former Communist censor, and his immediate predecessor Dario Fo, a tireless enemy of religion. Some have never forgiven the ignominious past selection of Pablo Neruda, a fervent Stalinist and clandestine agent for the Soviet secret police. But, at the very least, none of those puffers and fakes would have disclaimed the importance of their writerly efforts.
. . .
Some in the media described Pinter’s Nobel as “surprising,” but the Swedes were actually reprising the scandal they perpetrated last year when they presented the award to an obscure Austrian pornographer, Elfriede Jelinek, whose only claim to fame was her production of a work attacking the U.S. intervention in Iraq.

I bet you $5 this work will never make it to the Nobel Prize. After all, it’s literature. More importantly, it’s literature from a living writer who continues to produce important work to this day.

Roger likes the Prize’s choice.

Update, Monday Oct. 17 Mark Steyn doesn’t.

(techonorati books harold pinter Mario Vargas Llosa)