October 10, 2013

 The top four runners for the Nobel Prize for literature, in 2013, are sketched below.

Haruki Murakami was 5/2 odds for his Kafka on the Shore (English translation 2006) winning the Nobel prize. His book has cats that talk. Now that is realistic. Hard not to hope he wins, even if he is the front-runner. 

Alice Munro (4/1 odds). Her book Dance of the Happy Shades: And Other Stories (2010) mentions a cat who gives a "baleful glance." Talking cats realistic, cats that sport baleful glances, not so much.

Svetlana Alexievich (6/1 odds). One of her  books is Voices from Chernobyl (English translation appeared in 2005).  She references how the Russian authorities sealed the houses when they evacuated the area after the accident. Sometimes that meant cats were trapped inside. We'd give the prize to this writer from Belarus. 

Joyce Carol Oates (8/1 odds). A leading American author but not a great writer. Her literary territory has not changed, just become claustrophobic. She won't win, but her own cats already have. She is a great cat person. I don't know if her new husband, a neuroscientist at Princeton, I believe, feeds the cats like her deceased one did, but I know meals are regular.