"Confirming Authority" Prize
When Usain Bolt
wins a race, it is obvious who won. It is not a subjective decision. Not so
with the Nobel Prize that is highly subjective. And outrageously dumb at other
times. Did you know Einstein never won a Nobel for his Theory of Relativity?
(He won it for something else). Wow! So the man didn’t win a Nobel for the
theory that changed our understanding of the universe?!
I feel that even
more strongly in hyper-subjective fields like literature. To make things even
more subjective, people win that prize for stuff written in different
languages. Who exactly is qualified to compare stuff in English v/s Tamil v/s
Swahili v/s Chinese? Literature is often tied to the context; so not only does
the judge need to know the language, (s)he needs to know the culture. Good luck
finding such people anywhere on the planet.
I woudn’t be
ranting on this if it were some random prize. But this is one of those
“confirming authority” prizes, as in what Calvin told Hobbes:
“They only recognize greatness when some
authority confirms it.”
Or as this
article says:
“A small group of Swedish critics pretend
to be the voice of God, and the public pretends that the Nobel winner is
Literature incarnate.”
All of which
brings me to Bob Dylan’s response to winning the Nobel. Rather, his lack of
response. As in that Sherlock Holmes story, it’s what the dog did not do that matters!
Jean-Paul Sartre
declined the Nobel saying:
“The writer (must) refuse to allow
himself to be transformed into an institution.”
Dylan has gone
one up on Sartre, as that article said:
“Instead of declining the prize, he has
simply declined to acknowledge its existence.”
His reason seems
to be as per the message in one of his songs:
“If you love me for what I am, don’t make
me be what I am not.”
Of course,
there’s little chance that the stuffy coats in Stockholm “who are used to a lot
more gratitude from their laureates” would appreciate this attitude though. The
irony is lost on those dullards. One of them called Dylan “impolite and
arrogant”. Really? Which century are these dinosaurs from?
I would consider Dylan to be impolite and arrogant along with being "swindler" if he accepts the Nobel prize money. I don't know what is his stand as yet.
ReplyDelete----
But if he ignores Nobel prize to the point of ignoring the prize money too, then I would agree to what you say.
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About Nobel prize, I agree with you mostly. About Einstein, I would say his photo-electric equation deserved great appreciation, because his idea not only explained a tricky question then but also identified the light quanta, the photon. Even though Max Planck's quantization of black body radiation was revolutionary, nobody including Planck himself had any clue how to take off further. In that sense both Planck and Einstein should be considered the first runners who started the relay race of quantum mechanics.
That said, if Marie Curie was awarded two Nobel prizes, what prevented the silly Nobel committee from giving two prizes to Einstein? It was relativity and quantum mechanics which together heralding a new era in physics. As you say rightly, Einstein not getting an reward for relativity is idiotic of Nobel committee.