The Getz Files

I've been thinking that there's a problem with the Nobel Prize for Literature. The prize is supposed to be awarded to the person who, in the literary field, has produced "the most outstanding work in an ideal direction" (no, I'm not 100% sure what that means either). The Nobel Foundation defines literature as as "not only belles-lettres, but also other writings which, by virtue of their form and style, possess literary value". Yet there has been a huge bias towards works of the imagination. As far as I can tell - and I admit I know nothing of the works of Romain Rolland (1915) or Halldor Laxness (1955) - the only people to get it mainly for works of non-fiction are Elias Canetti (1981), Churchill (1953), Bertrand Russell (1950) and Henri Bergson (1927), though Canetti could have got it for his novels as well as his quite weird and wonderful non-fiction (Crowds and Power , "a masterwork of philosophical anthropology about la condition humaine on an overpopulated planet" I found a most thought-provoking, important book). I think that's quite shocking and somewhat unfortunate, as it adds to the impression among people that only poetry and novels and the like are literature, which I don't think could be further from the truth.

Come on Nobel Committee - buck up!