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Today the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded journalist Svetlana Alexievich approximately $970,000 in recognition of a lifetime of excellence. The 67-year-old author ofVoices From Chernobyl and War's Unwomanly Facewas praised by the Swedish Academy "for her polyphonic(复调式的) writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time."
Prizes like the Nobel inspire much expectations before the announcement. People give their best guesses as to who will win, look back on past winners, and even place bets as if spectators at a Derby(赛马会).
Literary prizes reward artistic brilliance. They help writers earn a decent living. But is the public's fascination with prize-winning authors healthy? Our impulse seems to increasingly contribute to a culture of turning authors into celebrities, where readers follow the author instead of the book.
A story should stand on its own, as a considered, complete book, without biographical information from author. It's an idea perhaps best conveyed in Roland Barthes's 1968 essayThe Death of the Author. "The image of literature to be found in contemporary culture is arbitrarily centered on the author, his person, his history, his tastes, his passions."
Nearly 50 years later, a few still agree. "I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors,"New York Timesbestselling author Elena Ferrante once wrote. "If books have something to say, they will sooner or later find readers; if not, they won't, "she continued. "True miracles are the ones whose makers will never be known."
①But the rules for submission for the Man Booker International Prize, for example, strongly encourage authors to "make themselves available for publicity". And the foundation behind the National Book Award requires finalists to participate in their "website-related publicity".
② In 2007, a reporter who showed up uninvited at Doris Lessing's house was the first to inform her that she had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Today the Twitterati came knocking on Alexievich's digital door hour before the award was even official. To be considered for a prize is to be a public figure.
③ Harry Potter series author J. K. Rowling, with over 5.6 million Twitter followers, has actively addressed readers through public appearances and social media, revealing much more than we could have imagined when we closed the finalHarry Potterbook. We now know the house Harry's children will be sorted into, that Dumbledore is gay," Voldemort" is actually pronounced with a silent "t", and a whole host of the other minor and major details about the backstory of the characters.
The magical world Rowling created in her books—a relatively tight mystery with well-laid clues that led to a satisfying conclusion, which had to prove their merits to the reader based on an internal logic—is beingunraveledby her own hand.
④ Of course, public attention also has very important benefits for authors. For three months after receiving the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in fiction, Jennifer Egan'sA Visit from the Goon Squadsold about triple its print sales from before the prize,Publishers Weeklyreports. On Oct. 5, 2010, in the first FT/Oppenheimer Funds Emerging Voices Awards, as Nigerian-born Chigozie Obioma accepted the prize for fiction with an easy smile, his excitement was appreciable. Given the cash prize of $40,000 for each winner, it's hard to downplay the importance of such an honor. Such awards bring necessary visibility and funding to writers facing a literary landscape dominated by white men.
But our culture of celebrity is often too wrapped up in the way we read: How might the meaning of a work change if the author really didn't grow up in a poor neighborhood, or if he or she was abused in childhood? Readers studied the author's life as if it were the key to interpreting his or her novels.
Behind our fascination is the question that drives all such questions: What did the author intend? By all means, let us praise brilliant work and in doing so trust that the author has already told us enough, and that the story he or she meant to tell ended with the final page.
