Nobel – Arthur Hofn

Thank you for this award.

This week the laureates of the Nobel Prize For Literature 2018 and 2019 both received their awards. I’m not going to get into the controversy over one of them, instead I’m wondering how many writers have fantasied about winning it for themselves.

The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded most years since 1901 and it’s always extremely satisfying when one is named to actually know who they are (the latest two? I’ll be honest and say I’ve never heard of them before). The Prize is given for the full collection of a person’s work and not a specific text (or relevant piece), although sometimes a particular work is mentioned.

The point then is; hands up if you’ve ever fantasied about winning an award for your work. Have you imagined them calling out your name? Planning your reaction? Don’t lie. I don’t actually believe I will win a Nobel of course, it’s totally impossible. I don’t have delusional dreams, just dreams of grandeur.

In reality we’d be foolish to take these dreams seriously, but a writer’s job is to imagine and often to imagine the impossible. It’s hard wired into us, so it’s not a major step for imagination to turn to fantasising. Add wanting to do well with your work and again it’s not too far from dreaming about achieving great things because of it.

The interesting thing is some writers who have won the Nobel haven’t dreamed it was possible for them have achieved this.

In 2017 Kazuo Ishiguro won for some brilliant novels, ones I’m pretentious enough to wish I’d read before he won it. (Bob Dylan is the only laureate of whom I had “read” the works of before they were announced… come on Michael Palin.)

On wining Kazuo Ishiguro is quoted as saying “I thought the normal procedure is that the winner is told first, so I didn’t believe it for a long time. When the BBC phoned, I thought it might be true.” Procedure’s of the Academy aside even when the BBC told him, he still doesn’t seem certain. If the BBC told me I’d be on that plane to Stockholm that afternoon, long before I was expected. I’d just loiter outside the Palace looking smug until the actual ceremony. I suppose that’s why the modest and brilliant writer Kazuo Ishiguro is doing so well compared to arrogant old me.

Being a writer, especially one who has tried to go through the official route of submitting to an agency you get so many knock backs, or non-replies you need something positive to aim for. Just after we’ve submitted something, to an agent or for a competition, what is going through our minds? Probably a mixture of outright being accepted or claiming first place right down the spectrum to it being laughed at and put in the bin. But somewhere in there, we have that hope. The fact that we put ourselves through it again and again means this train of thinking is becoming a habit to us; we practically live on the roller-coaster.

The question is does it do any harm to occasionally fantasise about winning something?

I mean how many people who want to be a pop star imagine winning the X Factor or whatever? It’s not just in our field nearly everyone must have daydreamed about their name being read out after hearing “And the winner is…”. I guess for a writer we just dream of a classier prize (see I’m arrogant and smug).

There is an interesting verse in the song L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N by Noah And The Whale (a band so far above that of a reality TV winner) that tells of an artist who manipulates the story of what is actually happening in his life:

“Some people wear their history like a map on their face
And Joey was an artist just living out of case
But his best work was his letters home

Extended works of fiction about imaginary success
When chorus girls in neon were his closest things to friends
But to a writer, the truth is no big deal”

There is so much truth there that I’m sure it’s been experienced by the lyricist and by many many more. The whole issue of how true writing has to be is another subject for another day but should we let the truth get in the way of moments of daydreaming?

When we are so used to planning the lives and the ups and downs of our character’s journeys do we start to do that for ourselves? Of course in a novel or play we want there to be some jeopardy and some greying of how well things turn out. If we could write the rest of our lives, or careers as a writer, I’m sure we’d be a lot kinder to ourselves then we are to our creations.

Instead sometimes the best prizes we can realistically hope to get is some nice words said about what we’ve written.

In the end I don’t think it hurts to imagine too much, but only if we also have our feet firmly in reality at the same time; and I guess the blending of both worlds is what makes us want to write fiction anyway.

Buy The Remains Of The Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Listen L.I.F.E .G.O.E.S.O.N