Steinbeck admitted that he did not deserve it, but accepted anyway. Sartre assumed that he did deserve it, but refused on principle. Pinter plainly did not deserve it, but accepted, also on principle. Tolstoy was glad to miss out, because he would have had to dispose of the money. Joyce, who could have done with the money, was never nominated.

The follies attending the selection process of the Nobel Prize for Literature constitute one of the only two interesting things about the prize. The other interesting thing about the Nobel is not the acceptance speeches, though Pinter’s speech, a note-perfect send-up of anti-American paranoia, suggested that the old ham could still turn on the absurdist humor of his early plays. No, the other interesting thing is the subsequent trajectory of the winner’s reputation.

Pinter’s speech suggested that the old ham could still turn on the absurdist humor of his early plays.

For the committee, despite its best efforts, is not entirely daft. Nor are its judgments irrelevant. Even in a bad year, the decision reflects the price of a reputation, if not the value of the work. That price is usually an index of political taste, and whatever passing pieties might conform to Alfred Nobel’s meaningless request that the prize go to writing that worked in an “ideal direction.” In 1961, the committee rejected J. R. R. Tolkien on the perfectly accurate grounds that Tolkien’s troll-ridden sagas could not be confused with “first-rate prose.”