Nobel for Literature

As reported everywhere in the damn world, French novelist Jean Marie Gustave le Clézio has been awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature.

So says the Swedish Academy: “[He is an] author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.”

Of course, this year the Prize for Literature garnered some extra attention due to some comments from the Academy’s Horace Engdahl, suggesting that the U.S. is too culturally insular. Some people got a little peeved, to say the least.

Avoiding comment on le Clézio himself, I do enjoy that the award then went to a Frenchman. As we all know, there is nothing more patently anti-American than that.