{"id":24657,"date":"2019-10-12T13:05:38","date_gmt":"2019-10-12T17:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=24657"},"modified":"2019-10-10T23:52:35","modified_gmt":"2019-10-11T03:52:35","slug":"americans-dont-read-the-worlds-best-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/12\/americans-dont-read-the-worlds-best-literature\/","title":{"rendered":"Americans don&#8217;t read the world&#8217;s best literature?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Two authors won the Nobel Prize in Literature this year: Peter Handke and Olga Tokarczuk. I hadn&#8217;t heard of either of these writers so I figured I would head over to Amazon and pick the ones that got the best reader reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/35r8uHc\">Amazon page for Handke<\/a> lists books with, mostly, between 0 and 5 reviews. For <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/35hJVMW\">Olga Tokarczuk<\/a>, there are just two books, with a maximum of 44 reviews. Compare to Ta-Nehisi Coates&#8217;s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2MyPspI\">Ode to Victimhood<\/a><\/em> (4,200+ reviews), anything by <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2OAGzPi\">Stephen King<\/a> (up to 10,000 reviews!),  Michelle Obama&#8217;s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/325YAc3\">How to Marry a Successful Man<\/a><\/em> (15,500+ reviews), etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Do we conclude that these recent Laureates are not truly great authors? Or that Americans don&#8217;t bother to read authors of great literature?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I want to give <em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2AY1XG6\">Slow Homecoming<\/a><\/em> a try, since it starts in Alaska. <em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2AZY5nU\">Flights<\/a><\/em> seems promising since it is about travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Readers: Had you heard of these authors? Planning to read anything by them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Related:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Peter_Handke\">Wikipedia<\/a> says Peter Handke questioned the demonization of Slobodan Milo\u0161evi\u0107 (thus upsetting the European righteous)<\/li><li>the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Olga_Tokarczuk\">Wikipedia page for Olga Tokarczuk<\/a> says &#8220;she has leftist convictions&#8221; (so she might agree with <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Slobodan_Milo\u0161evi\u0107#Economic_policies\">Slobodan Milo\u0161evi\u0107, at least, on the merits of socialism<\/a>?)<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/10\/10\/books\/nobel-literature.html\">NYT article on these prizes<\/a> quotes Olga Tokarczuk as an enthusiast for low-skill migrants going to the U.S. (but not to her own homeland of Poland, it seems!): She also referenced increasingly severe immigration policies in the United States. \u201cTwelve years ago there was no mention of the idea of walls or borders, which were originally adopted by totalitarian systems,\u201d she said. \u201cBack then I must admit that I was sure that we had put totalitarianism behind us.\u201d<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two authors won the Nobel Prize in Literature this year: Peter Handke and Olga Tokarczuk. I hadn&#8217;t heard of either of these writers so I figured I would [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Americans don&#039;t read the world&#039;s best literature? - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/12\/americans-dont-read-the-worlds-best-literature\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Americans don&#039;t read the world&#039;s best literature? - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Two authors won the Nobel Prize in Literature this year: Peter Handke and Olga Tokarczuk. 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