Written and Edited by Peter Buller
Upon learning of his nomination as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote to the committee and requested they remove him from their list. "I suppose that by writing to the Academy," he wrote later in a statement made to the Swedish Press, "I could make matters clear and that there would be no further discussion." Instead, his letter incited a literary scandal: had Europe's most esteemed literary institution been stiffed, and by one of its recipients no less? Sartre's reasons for refusing the prize, while couched in the literary and political quarrels of his time, sparked a discussion on the authoritarian role of institutions in the literary world. The conversation simmered down, only to resurface with the Academy's recent decision to award the Prize in Literature to Bob Dylan.
