For 121 years, the Nobel Prize for literature has sought to honor the best writing in the world, and for 121 years everyone has argued that it has managed to do no such thing. In the battle between the Swedish Academy and its most fearsome opponents, annoying people on Twitter (as well as Twitter antecedents, such as the newspaper column, the radio dispatch, and probably something involving a telegraph and/or a horse), neither party has scored a decisive victory. For every Sholokhov, there is a Canetti. For every Sully Prudhomme, a Toni Morrison. For every Winston Churchill, a … Rudyard Kipling? OK, wait, never mind.
