2008 Nobel Prize for Literature goes to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
Friday, October 10th, 2008
Stolen from the New York Times
The French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, whose work reflects a seemingly insatiable restlessness and sense of wonder about other places and other cultures, won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday. In its citation, the Swedish Academy praised Mr. Le Clézio, 68, as the “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.”
Mr. Le Clézio’s work defies easy characterization, but in more than 40 essays, novels and children’s books, he has written of exile and self-discovery, of cultural dislocation and globalization, of the clash between modern civilization and traditional cultures. Having lived and taught in many parts of the world, he writes as fluently about North African immigrants in France, native Indians in Mexico and islanders in the Indian Ocean as he does about his own past.
Well, seems, from his description, that he fits the non-insular type that the Nobel Prize Selection Committee was looking for this year. Sniping at the committee aside, there are a couple of lovely snippets of his work translated provided by the New York Times, as well. Unfortunately for us Americans who can only read English or German, a search of Amazon turns up little in translation. I’m left with the impression that it would be a great pleasure to read more of his work. Alas, it’s not just Americans who don’t translate much.
, a social history of robots in Japan, author Timothy N. Hornyak discusses in great length the impact on Japanese society of this play when it was performed there in the 1920s, and he contrasts the very different Japanese response to the concept of robots with that of Europe’s and the western world. And he argues that this difference forms at least some of the basis for Japan’s different approach to and welcoming acceptance of robots in their culture. 
