Mixed reactions to Tranströmer's Nobel win

The Guardian rounds up the mixed reactions to Tomas Tranströmer's Nobel win, noting that--while it's been mostly positive--there is some feeling that the Swedish poet is little known outside Sweden, that he's an obscure pick, an inside job, and just one of the "arcane names" that "draw perennial bets from Nobel-watchers fond of mocking the Swedish Academy," as Hephzibah Anderson wrote at Bloomberg in a post called "Nobel Jury Blows It Again..." The Guardian writes: "She goes on to state that 'his victory does nothing to restore the standing of a prize whose decisions have increasingly courted accusations of Eurocentricity, political motivation and anti-Americanism' and to criticise the prize for its 'perverse preference for authors obscure, politically correct or downright unreadable (all three in the case of Elfriede Jelinek).'" A low blow to Jelinek, though not a new one: her cultural biography, written by old friend and German lit scholar Gitta Honneger, is called in jest Elfriede Jelinek: How to Receive the Nobel Prize Without Really Trying.

The Telegraph was also largely unimpressed, writing: "As so often with the Nobel Prize, the winner may be a popular favourite in the salons of Stockholm." And The Washington Post can be quoted as remarking, "Who? And huh?" But it certainly seems to be a point of view for few. The Guardian post cites both Paul Muldoon's rave in The New Yorker and Sigrid Rausing's thoughtful response to Tranströmer's work in Granta. "No poet expresses better the relationship between humans and the natural world," she writes. "The black and melancholy seas, the drifting seagulls, the oaks and elks, the storms, rowanberries, the moon and stars, the well, salt, and wolves are agents rather than background; they are what the world is, as much as we are. It's dark, and thoughtful. It is, also, bleakly intelligent."