Nobel Prizes

Parent Cafe
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<p>Umm, that would be Roy Glauber in 2005. Is that not recent enough for you?</p>

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<p>You mean like all the way back in the late 1990s to the mid 2000s? There wasn’t so much competition back in those ancient days, huh? In the last 10 years, 7 Nobels have been awarded to Harvard faculty members or to professors who were on the Harvard faculty when they did the research that earned them the award. That’s a pretty favorable record of institutional achievement by any measure.</p>

<p>First you were asserting that native-born Americans weren’t winning many Nobel prizes, and now you are saying that it’s Harvard that is falling short in the Nobel department. Incorrect on both accounts.</p>

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<p>Wow… doris lessing gets the literature Nobel… when was her most significant book? 1962 ? Methinks there’s some political correctness going on.</p>

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<p>I’m a pretty lit-centric person, and year to year it’s often difficult to understand the committee’s choices for this prize.</p>

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<p>Agreed. Though some of the more political choices were at least au courant. Lessing seems a very dated choice.</p>

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<p>Say what? Lessing isn’t dated. She writes from the perspective of racist colonial Africa, extreme leftist politics reconsidered and the shadow of two world wars. The depth of her perspective is wondrous.</p>

<p>She’s been publishing on a bi-yearly basis for the last few decades. <a href=“http://www.dorislessing.org/herbooksby.html[/url]”>http://www.dorislessing.org/herbooksby.html&lt;/a&gt; Even though I don’t quite get the nuances of her style, I recently read and enjoyed ‘The Sweetest Dream’ and ‘Time Bites’. ‘Sweetest Dream’ in particular ranks up there among my favorite primers for what ails the leftist boomer generation. She pulls no punches as she assesses her experience and her previous ambitions.</p>

<p>Too bad Fountain Siren is off CC. We had some wonderful Lessing discussions this past year…sigh.</p>

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<p>Dated in more ways than one!</p>

<p>In 1976, when I met my wife (and we were younger than my daughter), The Golden Notebook was one of her favorite books in the world. I read it because I liked her (my wife-to-be). It was dated then, too. At that point, my wife had read everything Lessing had ever written, but the Canopus books lost her.</p>

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<p>Unlike prizes in science and medicine, the literature prize is given for life time achievement. Lessing is truly well deserving.</p>

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<p>Funny, JHS, I also read The Golden Notebook in 1976, and also thought it was dated then (though I remember enjoying it.) Then I read her Children of Violence books – written earlier, I think – and being thoroughly irritated. Canopus books gave me a good excuse to bail. I suppose it may be interesting to reread Golden Notebook now that I’m so much older and wiser – and sample some of her later stuff.</p>

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<p>padad – no doubt about it. Far lesser talents than Lessing’s have been awarded the Nobel.</p>