There's a moment
to say I am delighted, and I am delighted. I'm delighted
to have been in the company of the other nominees
tonight who of recent days I've heard read from
their works and being so impressed by the variety
of our feelings and our approaches. There was no
uniformity at all in what we brought except the
wish to do well by the English language, to find
the word that mattered. I honor the people who were
with me because I enjoyed so much hearing them read
and hearing this large diversity.
I want to say in response
to Stephen King that I do not - as I think he a little
bit seems to do - I don't regard literature (which
he spoke of perhaps in a slightly pejorative way)
I don't regard the novel, poetry, language as written,
I don't regard it as a competition. It is so vast.
We have this marvelous language. We are so lucky that
we have a huge audience for that language. If we were
writing in high Norwegian, we would be writing in
a great ancient language but we would have mostly
reindeer for our readers. I'm not sure that that is
the ideal outcome. We have this huge language so diverse
around the earth that I don't think giving us a reading
list of those who are most read at this moment is
much of a satisfaction because we are reading in all
the ages, which have been an immense inspiration and
love to me and are such an excitement.
I can take one of the
ancient poems of our language and feel so excited
and moved and even sometimes terrified by it that
it seems very immediate to me. I don't see this as
"we should read this or we should read that."
We have mysterious inclinations. We have our own intuitions,
our individuality toward what we want to read, and
we developed that from childhood. We don't know why.
Nobody can explain it to us.
I think America especially
is drowning in explanations and what we need is more
questions, not explanations, perhaps, because the
explanations are not leading us into good places,
at least the official ones that I hear.
I'm so grateful for
readers, for writers. We are here because we love
our language. We are reading and writing from both
sides. It draws up all our humanity, and we need our
humanity and we need our individuality, our originality.
We need them more than we ever did because we are
in such a position of power. I don't mean readers
and writers, I mean, in this nation. We should do
our best by the language. We mustn't torture it, we
mustn't diminish it. We have to love it, nurture it
and enjoy it.
Pleasure, that's what
we want from it, the true pleasure. A lot of information
comes through pleasure and generosity and that's what
we have in literature. That's what we have in fiction.
I thank you so much for this Award. It's lovely for
me but I honor every writer who is here and every
reader. Thank you.
Transcript
of Antonya Nelson's announcement
Shirley
Hazzard's Homepage
