FYI

AP: "Nobel literature head: US too insular to compete"

Bad news for American writers hoping for a Nobel Prize next week: the top member of the award jury believes the United States is too insular and ignorant to compete with Europe when it comes to great writing.

Counters the head of the U.S. National Book Foundation: "Put him in touch with me, and I'll send him a reading list."

Funny: The claim that American literature can't measure up to European writing.

Funnier: The indignation with which Americans quoted in the article greeted the announcement.

Funniest: Calling the aforementioned Americans (David Remnick of the New Yorker, Harold Augenbraum of the National Book Award) "literary officials." What, now we have literary officials? Are they by any chance part of this country's vast aesthetic-industrial complex?

I wonder if The Onion knows that Adorno and Horkheimer got there first.