Fifteen years.

That's how long it's been since the World Wide Web was created.

That's how long it's been since the Lorena Bobbitt incident shocked the country. And really scared adult males.

That's how long it's been since Doom (the first-person shooter that started it all) was released for personal computer.

and…

That's how long it's been since an American won the Nobel Prize in Literature. It happened in 1993 when Toni Morrison won as a still relatively young author after Beloved achieved international fame.

So why should you care? Because the Nobel Prize is basically the epitome of accolades in general in our world today. It is the award to end all awards. It is used in jokes, and its winners are glorified as heroes (Al Gore, for instance. No, seriously. Stop laughing.) and the monetary reward is rather hefty as well. You should care because the most important award of our time is being withheld from some of the greatest authors of our time. The proof that this injustice is more than just a coincidence?

"The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature," said Horace Engdahl, a member of the Swedish selection committee, last year before the award was given out. Take that America! Because your recent government has enraged the world at large, ALL of your citizens must suffer the consequences. Sorry Philip Roth. Your incredible body of work won't cut it.

Insular? That would be as in: related to or deriving from an "island." Apparently, Mr. Engahl was implying that American fiction does not have a worldly appeal. I take offense: read our most recent Book Worth a Look. Blood Meridian focuses on man's inhumanity to man. Isn't that a rather universal issue? Is there no inhuman violence in Europe? I seem to recall a Great War, maybe two…

No, the award won't be given out for several months now. But I have recently written an article elsewhere on the lack of respect given by popular culture and by the university community to contemporary American fiction, and it got me thinking on this subject. When I looked up the numbers (1993 was the last time an American won the award; before that, I think you have to go back to 1962 when Steinbeck for the last person born in the US to win) I was appalled. Morisson is certainly deserving. Steinbeck was good, even if East of Eden is underwhelming. But both are just what the Nobel Prize commission loves: uber-liberal authors with uber-liberal themes. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Not at all. The problem here is that excellent authors are being ignored because of European closed-mindedness. The Modernist movement, perhaps THE great cultural movement of the last century, was spurred by both US citizens and expatriate American authors. Where has the respect gone? The LitHuman opinion (at least as far as the Nobel Prize goes) is that the respect lost by the American foreign policy decisions of the last several years has carried over into other realms as well. In my opinion, Cormac McCarthy's The Road is quite a universal novel, with an appeal that does not rely on its American-ness. Unfortunately, the fact that McCarthy is a card-carrying Southwestern American will probably preclude him from the runnings in December. His post-apocalyptic novel, the setting of which – the US – is only barely recognizable by decaying signs (and was inspired by a trip to IRELAND, which happens to be a European nation), and which brings up questions of father-son companionship and the future of mankind… well it's just too insular.

I suppose we are harping on the Nobel Commission with the hope that you, the reader, will begin either to see it as a less prestigious award (and begin to look for other awards, such as the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, the PEN awards, etc. for suggestions on what to read) or send angry mail to Sweden declaring our disgust at their own lack of open-mindedness. It would pretty sad if their opinion is derived as a reaction to American intolerance; it would appear that their own behavior reflects a rather hypocritical mindset.