Sometimes the Nobel Prize is Given to Mediocre Writers on Purpose

I understand some might be confused by this idea, but hear me out. The Nobel Foundation is the foremost institution for the recognition of literary merit. Wouldn't it be only logical that sometimes they give their award to the people, instead of an individual writer? Now, how do they do this, you might ask? Easy! They award not a great writer, but a painfully mediocre one, and those of the global readership who recognize this may then feel superior and delight at the idiocy of those who hail the new nobel laureate as a great artist and what not. This is also a good opportunity for the Nobel Foundation to assess roughly how many people actually know anything about literature.

I first developed this theory before WWII, when Sillanpää got the Nobel Prize. And for what, Ladies and Gentlemen? “For his deep understanding of his country's peasantry and the exquisite art with which he has portrayed their way of life and their relationship with Nature." HA! I laughed myself silly at that back in the day. Sillanpää writes stories about the Finnish outback, with never more than six words in a sentence, and every second being "hungry" or "tired". He passes on to us that 19th centurey peasants in a country cold as any a country might ever get and living as serfs are, wait for it, hungry, tired, and cold. Funny stuff. Anyways, I had to go fight in the war then and kind of forgot about it. Until last year, that was.

Now I have A LOT of Jon Fosse's works laying around at home. I love that guy. I can have a pulse of 180, right after running, and I can simply go to my pile of Jon Fosse books and open any - any, I say! - of them at any page, and within two seconds of just LOOKING AT THE LETTERS, LET ALONE ACTUALLY READING ANY OF THE WORDS, I will be alseep STANDING, with a pulse of 40 at best, completely rigidized (a doctor said my state was in fact completely indistinguishable from rigor mortis), and I will remain thus even if you splash a bucket of ice water over my head, until my wife comes and reads me some Hemingway. And his writings have the same effect on everyone I know. People always ask how we raised our four children, and I always retort: "Septology!" And it's true, too; play the audiobook, earplugs in, and, voila, four children not a moment ago busy with beating each other to death and defecating all over the place are transformed into comatose puppets that can be brought to bed while the Misses and I enjoy our afternoon. The fact that Mr Fosse ever put pen to paper is a blessing to all of mankind, and there is not a day I don't thank him for it.

NOW YOU MAY IMAGINE MY ENJOYMENT OF LAST YEAR'S BIG ANNOUNCEMENT, WHEN OUR GREAT NOBEL FOUNDATION WITH IT'S EVER SO SUBTLE IRONY AWARDED MR FOSSE THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable." Insayable indeed! My abs were sore for a while from all the screaming I did at that news. Great stuff! I might have inquired more into the precise reasoning for the decision, but as you might guess from the above, reading a text which often quotes Jon Fosse is an impossibility for me. That is when I remembered Sillanpää, and then some time passed and I forgot about it again, but tonight I remembered it so I thought I'd write it down here. Well, that's that, time to bring the grandchildren to bed! A little Fosse to help them sleep better, if you know what I mean. Ha-ha! See ya!