>Now this is interesting. I never would have thought Anti-American bias in the Nobel Prize for Literature. I used to submit writings to contests but realized there was a bias but could not figure out what it was. All I was doing was wasting money and time and effort. Is this the same thing but on a much larger scale? Onto the associated press article:
The Swedish panel that awards the Nobel Prize for Literature isn’t biased toward European writers or against American writers, a member of the panel said Wednesday.
Nationality isn’t an important factor in selecting the prize winner, Swedish Academy member and acclaimed poet Kjell Espmark told The Associated Press.
Other members of the Swedish Academy have suggested both biases exist.
In 2008, the committee’s then-permanent secretary, Horace Engdahl, said European writers tend to beat out American writers because American literature is overly insular. In 2009, his successor, Peter Englund, worried the prize was too “Eurocentric.”
The list of the past 20 laureates includes one American — novelist Toni Morrison, in 1993 — and 11 European writers, including German novelist Gunter Grass and British playwright Harold Pinter. Some of the others selected during that time are not from Europe but have spent much of their writing careers there.
The literature prize election is by secret ballot among the 18 members of the Swedish Academy. Espmark has been a member of the Academy since 1981.
Engdahl sparked an uproar in 2008 when he declared in an interview with the AP that Europeans tend to win because they deserve to win, particularly compared with Americans, whom he dismissed as “too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture.”
Engdahl’s words were taken out of context, Espmark said Wednesday.
Brick ONeil 