a068  0610  13 Oct 83
PM-Mulligan's Stew, 1st Ld - Writethru, a087 of Oct 12, Adv14,1050
$Adv14
Adv for PMs Fri Oct 14
Eds: Subs 2nd graf starting At a ... to CORRECT that clock involved
is in the Stockholm stock exchange; Subs 4th graf starting Stevenson,
despite ... to CORRECT spelling of Franz Kafka's name; subs 12th graf
starting Although a ... to CORRECT spelling of kroner sted kronor;
subs 14th graf starting We know ... to CORRECT spelling of French;
The Nobility of Gnomes
By HUGH A. MULLIGAN
AP Special Correspondent
    RIDGEFIELD, Conn. (AP) - The gnomes of Stockholm are to world
literature what the gnomes of Zurich are to world finance, mystery men
whose ways of weighing and assessing the gold and currency in which
they deal - words, in this case - are unsearchable by mere mortals.
    At a recent stroke of one at Stockholm's stock exchange, the
secretary of the Swedish Academy made his traditional appearance to
announce that the 18 gnomes of culture had awarded this year's Nobel
Prize in Literature to William Golding, a rather minor British
novelist with a somewhat bleak view of human nature.
    Golding has been something of a cult figure on college lecterns and
in student unions since the publication in 1954 of ''Lord of the
Flies,'' a dark fable in which the author savagely reincarnates Robert
Louis Stevenson's ''Treasure Island'' into a sort of Devil's Island
on which the marooned little monsters lose no time in amusing
themselves at beastly, murderous games.
    Stevenson, despite his enduring popularity as a children's author,
also had his dark side and could agree with Golding that ''man
produces evil as a bee produces honey.'' Witness that beehive of
iniquity, ''The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,'' which
Vladimir Nabokov, among other admirers, regards as ''a fable that lies
nearer to poetry than to ordinary prose fiction,'' and in a class
with the best allegories of Franz Kafka, Leo Tolstoy and George
Orwell.
    Alas, Robert Louis Stevenson never won the Nobel Prize for
Literature. He was seven years in his grave - having died ironically
like Hyde with his face suddenly turning into a horror mask from a
blood vessel bursting in his brain - when the gnomes awarded the first
prize in 1901 to the ever to be forgotten Rene F.A. Sully-Prudhomme
of France. Hardly a man now alive is guilty of taking one of his books
from the library.
    But then Nabokov, who was very much alive for many years afterwards,
never won the Nobel Prize, nor, for that matter, did Tolstoy, Kafka
or Golding's countryman Orwell, whose ''Animal Farm'' and ''1984'' are
the wisest and most woeful parables penned of man's modern capacity
for inhumanity on an organized scale.
    To be fair, the gnomes of Stockholm are not just singling out ''Lord
of the Flies'' for world acclaim and a paycheck of 1.5 million
Swedish kronor ($191,815). The gnome secretary stressed the citation
also lauded Golding's subsequent novels like ''Pincher Martin,''
''Free Fall,'' ''The Spire'' and ''Rites of Passage,'' which ''with
the perspicuity of realistic art and the diversity and universality of
myth, illuminate the human condition in the world today.'' To this
smorgasbord of pedantry, the secretary added a truffle of twaddle:
''The impact of his complete oeuvre has increased, of course.''
    When critics and custodians of culture begin using the world
''oeurve,'' it is time for all honest men to flee to the everlasting
hills, far from the groves of academe and the best-seller lists, and
brood over the literary fortunes of their favorite authors.
    Evidently the academicians in residence on Parnassus above the
fjords never thought much of Joseph Conrad's oeuvre, or Sean O'Casey's
oeuvre or even Marcel Proust's - and what other author is more
ethnically entitled to an oeuvre par excellence?
    In 1922, James Joyce published his masterpiece, ''Ulysses.'' In
1922, the Nobel Prize for Literature was conferred on Jacinto
Benavente of Spain. In the years 1902 to 1904, Henry James added ''The
Wings of the Dove,'' ''The Ambassadors'' and ''The Golden Bowl'' to
his considerable oeuvre, but the Nobel prizes went successively to
Theodor Mommsen of Germany, Bjornstjerne Bjornson of Norway and, in
1904, a dual award to Frederic Mistral of France and Jose Echegaray.
    Others oeuvres overlooked in Stockholm include those belonging to
such enduring literary lights as F. Scott Fitzgerald, D.H. Lawrence,
William Somerset Maugham, Evelyn Waugh, G.K. Chesterton, L.P. Hartley,
Robert Frost, James Thurber, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Brian
Moore, John Cheever, Gore Vidal, Malcolm Muggeridge, Anthony Burgess,
J.B. Priestley.
    Although a disproportionate number of Viking bards and saga spinners
may seem to win favor with the glacial gnomes, there apparently is
nothing insular or peninsular about their taste in oeuvres. Henrik
Ibsen, perhaps the best of breed in those frosty high latitudes, never
was honored with one of those coveted kronor checks.
    The gnomes have anointed only a handful of women in eight decades of
choosing the world's best authors. Willa Cather, Edith Wharton,
Flannery O'Connor, Muriel Spark, Elizabeth Bowen, Katherine Mansfield,
Eudora Welty, Ivy Compton Burnett, Joyce Carol Oates never won the
Nobel Prize. Pearl Buck did in 1938 however, and her oeuvre is an
acquired taste that leaves a lot of people hungry for some good
reading an hour later.
    We know now, as we have long suspected, that Graham Greene may never
win the Nobel Prize because one of the grand old gnomes, Artur
Lundkvist by name, just can't stand his oeuvre. It was Lundkvist this
year who broke the sacred seal of gnome confession by letting the
world know he didn't care much for William Golding either. Decent
enough writer, he told a Swedish journalist in an unprecedented
interview that shocked his fellow academicians, but hardly Nobel
timber. Lundkvist, it turns out, was piqued because the gnomes
assembled in the Stockholm stockmarket of all places had favored
Golding over his favorite, French novelist Claude Simon, for the big
check from the estate of munitions maker Alfred Nobel.
    Among the steady canonization of questionable talents, there have
been some towering Nobel laureates in literature over the years:
Kipling, Yeats, Shaw, Galsworthy, Mann, Pirandello, O'Neill, Eliot,
Hemingway, Faulkner, Mauriac, Camus, Sartre, Steinbeck, Beckett,
Solzhenitsyn. Still, the time is long overdue for finding a better way
of choosing the world's best.
    Entrusting the Nobel Prize in Literature to the musings of some
moody Swedes is like leaving the selection of the world's most revered
sailing trophy to the members of the New York Yacht Club. It took 132
years to pry the America's Cup away from those fossils on 44th Street
in Manhattan, and even when the bottom at last seemed to be dropping
out of their privileged world, they tried to drop the bottom out of
their boat for the final decisive race.
    Hang in there, Graham Greene. Winds of change may yet blow over
Stockholm, even as over Newport.
    End Adv PMs Fri Oct 14
    
ap-ny-10-13 0913EDT
 - - - - - -

a094  0938  13 Oct 83
PM-Advance Advisory,
    Eds: The following advances moved this cycle:
    
    RIDGEFIELD, Conn. - PM-Mulligan's Stew, 1st Ld-Writethru, Adv PMs
Fri Oct 14, a068.
    DAMMAM, Saudi Arabia - PM-Saudi Education, Adv PMs Mon Oct 17, a073.
    NEW YORK - PM-Radio-TV, Adv PMs Fri Oct 14, a069.
    WASHINGTON - PM-Washington Today, Adv PMs Fri Oct 14, a072.
    NEW YORK - PM-Business Mirror, Adv PMs Fri Oct 14, a087.
    UNDATED - PM-Turntable Tips, Adv PMs Fri Oct 14, a075.
    UNDATED - PM-Religion in the News, 1st Ld-Writethru, Adv PMs Fri Oct
14, a090.
    UNDATED - PM-Religion in the News, 2nd Ld-Writethru, Adv PMs Fri Oct
14, a091.
    NEW YORK - PM-Inclusive Scripture, Adv PMs Fri Oct 14, a093.
    
    The AP
    
ap-ny-10-13 1239EDT
***************