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Beware self-deprecation
It usually implies even greater self-praise:
Norman Mailer...ruminated on his failure to win the Nobel Prize.
It wasn't politics that soured his chances, he declared; it was stabbing his second wife with a pen knife in 1960. "The Swedes are very intelligent people and they're proud of their prize, and they're damned if they want to give their prize to a guy who is a wife stabber and as sour and bitter as I am, and I don't think I can blame them," he said.
I believe that Mailer has become a quite underrated writer, especially his Harlot's Ghost. But wife-stabbing is not the main reason why he has failed to win the prize.
Here is the link and article, which focuses on Gunther Grass, another tricky self-deprecator.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 14, 2007 at 07:59 AM in Education | Permalink
Comments
Just about the only thing I remember from 8 years of Latin in an English public school (yes that does mean a 500 year old private school in England) is the phrase
"self-deprecatory irony concealing self-congratulation" which a commentator used to describe Horace, but always struck me and resonated as the foundation of English culture.
Posted by: hb at Aug 14, 2007 8:49:06 AM
I, for one, failed to win the Nobel prize because I prefer Parmesan cheese. Damn Swedes.
Posted by: Hei Lun Chan at Aug 14, 2007 9:24:20 AM
Politics?
why?
Most winners are left wing extremist.
Posted by: JEAN at Aug 14, 2007 9:28:54 AM
I don't think anyone could accuse Tyler of self-deprecation...
Posted by: seer at Aug 14, 2007 12:13:28 PM
I don't think anyone could accuse Tyler of self-deprecation...
Posted by: seer at Aug 14, 2007 12:13:42 PM
One reason why Mailer has never won the Nobel Prize is that his later writing is just not that good. He has never regained the brilliance he showed in his first novel, "The Naked and the Dead." Granted, mediocrity has never been too much of a barrier to winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, but I do think that Grass, the ex-Waffen SS conscience of Germany, deserves his. His later stuff is just as good as his earlier works.
Posted by: Ned at Aug 14, 2007 1:53:25 PM
"The Swedes are very intelligent people and they're proud of their prize..."
Intelligent on the science side of the Nobels for the most part, but I question the choices the decision makers have made in recent years on the literature and "peace" prizes. I am in favour of The Economist's position, that the Nobel prizes should go back to being awarded only only in years that someone is truly deserving, not as a yearly prize to be dispensed regardless of whether or not there is a suitable winner. The literature and peace prizes have been scrapping the bottom of the barrel over the last ~15 years, the latter even longer.
Posted by: Shaun M at Aug 14, 2007 3:03:16 PM
And why is self-praise something to "beware of"? Huh? Why?
Posted by: AC at Aug 14, 2007 3:32:14 PM
Golda Meir is reputed to have said, "Don't be so modest, you aren't that great."
Churchill on Atlee: "A modest man, who has much to be modest about."
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