U.S. Lit Dissed by Nobel Committee

Julia Keller of the Chicago Tribune has an interesting article about the Nobel Committee commenting on American Literature.

Here’s an excerpt from her column:

Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which chooses the Nobel Prize for literature. Engdahl said that the United States is “too isolated, too insular” to match Europe’s output of masterpieces.

“Europe still is the center of the literary world,” he declared to The Associated Press.

And then she poses a disturbing question:

So is it true that our literature is as subprime as our mortgages?

Falling from prominence: Our economy, our literature, Budweiser. What’s next baseball and apple pie?