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Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Books / Money Book Bookies

Posted by Paul Constant on Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 3:25 PM

The Literary Saloon brings news that online oddsmaker Ladbrokes is taking bets on who will win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here are the odds:

* Amos Oz 4/1
* Assia Djebar 5/1
* Luis Goytisola 6/1
* Joyce Carol Oates 7/1
* Philip Roth 7/1
* Adonis 8/1
* Antoni Tabucchi 9/1
* Claudio Magris 9/1
* Haruki Murakami 9/1
* Thomas Pynchon 9/1

Personally, I think Philip Roth is the Susan Lucci of the Nobel Prize for Literature. It's becoming a bad joke by now. So my vote is that he won't win this time. I'd love to see Murakami or Pynchon win. I also like the list of people who are tied for 100/1 odds:

Beryl Bainbridge, Cormac McCarthy, David Malouf, Eeva Kilpi, Ernesto Cardenal, F. Sionil Jose, Ian McEwan, John Banville, Jonathan Littell, Julian Barnes, Kjell Askildsen, Marge Piercy, Mary Gordon, Maya Angelou, Michel Tournier, Patrick Modiano, Paul Auster, Rosalind Belben, William H Gass.

I like those odds. That's actually a very good list of authors; you could pick up a book by just about any one of those long shots and enjoy it tremendously.

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Comments (9) RSS

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if Joyce Carol Oates wins, I will projectile vomit...

Posted by michael strangeways

on September 23, 2009 at 3:30 PM

Amos Oz sets tone better than God. (At least, if God were to ever choose to focus on that while writing his next burning bush tractatus... Come to think it, God seems to have the tone thing down.)

Posted by oxyala trio

on September 23, 2009 at 3:41 PM

What I love is how in England you can place a bet on just about anything.

Posted by Abby on September 23, 2009 at 4:06 PM

@1: Co-signed.

Posted by Christopher Hong

on September 23, 2009 at 4:34 PM

I love Paul Auster and think he deserves the win. If I were in England, I'd put a fiver on him.

Posted by kj on September 23, 2009 at 5:49 PM

@1-she terrifies me. seeing her in person is even scarier (i live near the town she teaches in).

@5-i totally agree. auster is pretty underrated in the states. i think europe appreciates him a lot more than we do.

Posted by jayme on September 23, 2009 at 8:10 PM

Philip Roth is the Susan Lucci of the Nobel Prize in that each is very famous and not very good at the thing for which he or she is supposedly famous.

Posted by Stace

on September 23, 2009 at 10:39 PM

What Stace Said. Though Roth, at least, is getting better with age.

Any betting line that puts Maya Angelou and William Gass at the same level deserves to be arbitraged.

Posted by klhoughton on September 28, 2009 at 9:30 AM

If this October is like last October, Philip Roth won't be sending his tux out to the cleaner and I won't be updating this blog post: "No Way, No How, Nobel." http://flapcopy.blogspot.com/2008/10/no-…

I was lucky enough to meet the great man himself at the now defunct Cafe Gray on Columbus Circle. Asked about the rancor aimed toward his excellent 'Sabbath's Theater,' Roth said with a rueful half-smile, "The women didn't like it." I suspect this, along with the absurd, timeworn "self-hating Jew" accusations he's long endured, will once again prevent him from claiming his rightful prize in Stockholm this year. Well in keeping with the Swedes' other well-known historical blunders, like overlooking Proust, Joyce, and Nabokov.

Posted by StoutHouse on September 28, 2009 at 12:46 PM