Western Book Roundup

Guy from Albuquerque Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

By Jenny Shank, 10-15-08

This year’s Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, a French citizen, or as I prefer to think of him, a guy from Albuquerque.  According to the Nobel Prize website, “Since the 90s Le Clézio and his wife share their time between Albuquerque in New Mexico, the island of Mauritius and Nice.”

The American literary blogosphere has been abuzz for a couple weeks over the comments that Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, made to reporters from the Associated Press.  Engdahl said: “The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature…That ignorance is restraining.”

Since he is the “top member of the award jury,” his beliefs would seem to put any American writer out of contention for the Nobel until Engdahl resigns.  When Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio was announced as the winner last week, most took it as a sign that Engdahl had made good on his promise to exclude Americans, but the guy lives part time in Albuquerque.  How non-American can he be?  As David L. Ulin writes in the L.A. Times:

“…Le Clezio does seem intriguing; an “irregular” resident of Albuquerque—he has taught, on and off, at the University of New Mexico—he is fascinated by the notion of borders, both real and metaphorical, and has written nonfiction about the American Southwest and Mexico.”

I admit that like Ulin, I had not heard of Le Clézio, and as a bookish person who also happens to be married to a French guy, I suppose I should be ashamed of that, and take it as a sign of the ignorance in which I’m currently marinating along with my countrymen.  Nah.

Besides living part time in Albuquerque, Le Clézio has another connection to our region: the University of Nebraska Press, one of my very favorite small presses, published English translations of two of his books.  The press specializes in the literature of the American West, baseball, and French stuff, so you can see why I am so fond of it.

The three-day Women Writing the West symposium kicks off today in Denver, and it features some great female writers from our region.  Poet Maria Melendez and fiction and nonfiction writer Pam Houston read today, Deirdre McNamer, Teresa Jordan, and Page Lambert, among others, read tomorrow, and Friday features Alyson Hagy and Karen Volkman.  Most events are at the Tivoli on the Auraria Campus.  Copper Nickel, the literary magazine of the University of Colorado at Denver, is one of the sponsors of this symposium, and their new issue takes Women Writing the West as its theme.  The launch party for the new issue will take place at the Denver Press Club on October 17 (6 p.m.).

A few other readings of note: Ron McLarty will discuss his novel set in Colorado, Art in America, tonight at the Boulder Book Store (7:30 p.m.).  On Saturday, October 18, Missoula author David Allan Cates will read from his new novel, Freeman Walker at Shakespeare and Company (7 p.m.).

Finally, the Colorado Book Awards were announced last week.  Among the winners were several books that we’ve featured here: Home Land: Ranching and a West That Works, by Laura Pritchett, Richard Knight and Jeff Lee (Johnson Books) won for Anthology/Collection, Migration Patterns: Stories by Gary Schanbacher (Fulcrum) won for fiction and Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway by Kirk Johnson, illustrated by Ray Troll (Fulcrum) won for nonfiction.  The complete list of winners is here.

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