Irving Wallace - The Prize

‘Nepotism, my young buck, good old-fashioned nepotism,’ said Gottling. ‘Four small Scandinavian countries-Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland-with about as much talent, per capita , as you could put in a thimble, but one big mutual admiration society. Take the first sixty years of the Nobel Prize. Those Scandinavian countries got thirty-one of the prizes. Can you believe it? Thirty prizes in the first fifty years. Sweden and Norway kept patting themselves on the back, and each other, and their Nordic neighbours. What crap.’

‘It’s not what Nobel wanted, is it?’

‘Who knows? I don’t suppose so. He said the prizes should be given without regard to nationality. But his heirs didn’t believe him. They put the screws on right from the beginning. You’ve heard of Bertha von Suttner? Nobel’s secretary? Well, when she didn’t get one of the first Peace Prizes, the Nobel family went to Oslo and said, in effect, look, Nobel set up the Peace Prize for old Bertha, so let’s get on the ball. Sure enough, in 1905, old Bertha got the prize. After that, the doors were wide open. Who in the devil ever heard of Nathan Söderblom outside Scandinavia? But look up 1930. He won the Nobel Prize for peace. Why? Why not? He read the services at Nobel’s funeral. And he was the Archbishop of Uppsala. And so it’s gone. How many people outside Scandinavia read von Heidenstam, Gjellerup, Jensen, Sillanpää, Pontoppidan? All Nordics. All laureates. Hell, in 1931, the Swedish Academy broke its most inflexible rule to give their prize to a dead man. They sure did. They loved their Secretary-nice guy-poet by the name of Erik Axel Karlfeldt, and his widow and daughters needed the dough, so they gave him the prize. Very touching. But what has all that got do do with honouring great writing, and what does that make of the prize itself?’

‘It’s still the most respected prize on earth,’ said Craig.

‘Of course it is. You know why? Because most of the democratic world has abolished titles and all that crap. But men are human. They yearn for titles, for an élite , for an upper class. The peasants have their equality, but there is the old nostalgia for royalty. So along comes the Nobel Prize, at the right time, at the turn of the century when everything is drab and dull. The masses were waiting for it. They made it the new knighthood. That’s why it’s respected and popular. Because people are masochistic, inferior fools.’ Gottling swallowed his third double gin. ‘If they only knew what crap goes on behind the scenes of the awards, not only nepotism, but all the narrow prejudices and politics.’

‘I don’t think that’s a secret,’ said Craig. ‘Jacobsson took me up to the Academy yesterday, and he was damn honest about the literary voting. He said there was good and bad.’

‘Jacobsson,’ Gottling muttered, rolling his glass on the table. ‘Count Bertil Jacobsson? That old stuffed parrot, he should have been put in a time capsule years ago. He lives in the past. He has nothing to do with breathing people. Why do you think the Foundation supports him? Because he’s a front-he’s got blue blood, he knew Nobel, he makes with the erudition and history-and part of his gambit is to anticipate criticism. I wager you ten to one, he gave you the old routine-why Tolstoy and Ibsen and Hardy didn’t get it-but reminding you of all the big names that did. It’s all technique to disarm visitors and send them off beaming. Studied frankness to strip you of your objectivity. And another wager. I’ll bet you he wasn’t frank enough to confess how the Nobel committees have always sucked around the Germans-like that turd, Krantz-and looked down their noses at the Americans, at least until the Second World War, and how they got a permanent boycott going on the Russians.’

The whisky had gone to Craig’s head, and the room reeled. ‘I like Jacobsson,’ he said.

‘You Americans love everybody,’ growled Gottling, ‘just to be sure somebody loves you. What crap. So you like Jacobsson. But did he tell you how his Nobel crew ass-licked the Germans and put the knife in the Russians?’

‘No, he didn’t. I better have another drink.’

‘Me, too… Hey, Lars, refills!’ He turned his bloodshot eyes back to Craig. ‘You like this old Wärdshus?’

‘Greatest place on earth,’ said Craig thickly.

‘You’re damn right.’

‘What about the Hun?’ asked Craig.

‘Germans? Forty-nine prizes in sixty years. Russians? Seven prizes in sixty years, and lucky at that.’

‘I’d say that shows courage,’ said Craig, ‘thumbing your nose at Russia, when they’re looking down your throat.’

‘Courage, ha!’ exploded Gottling. ‘Every Swede is scared stiff of Russia, and when it counts, Sweden crawls. Why do you think we didn’t join NATO? Because we’re afraid of Russia, that’s why. I wish we had half the guts that Norway has. They defied the Nazis, when we didn’t, and now they defy the Communists, when we won’t. Like giving that 1961 award to old Dag Hammarskjöld, knowing the Bolshies hated him dead or alive. But us next door? We’re yellow, a yard wide, and we know it, and we don’t like it. So how do we salve our national conscience? We make believe we’re men by childish crap-by sticking our tongues out and keeping the Nobel Prize from Russia. So where does that put the holy Nobel Prize? It puts it in local politics. It makes the prize a political instrument that you dumbheads in America -except the Polacks-consider an honest honour. Christ, what crap.’

The new drinks came, and Craig spilled part of his before he brought it to his mouth. ‘You said something about the prize being anti-American and pro-German-’

‘That’s what I said. Cold figures. I may be looped, but I got it all in my head. Take chemistry. Only one American, Richards of Harvard, won it in thirty-one years. Take physics. Only one American, Michelson of good old Chicago, took it in twenty-two years. Take literature. Only one American, Red Lewis, in thirty-five years. Take medicine. Only two Americans, Carrel and Landsteiner, in thirty-two years. But the Germans-oh, our Nobel boys worshipped them. Fifteen winners in the first ten years, not counting the peace prize, which isn’t worth spitting on. In Sweden, if you could show a degree from Frankfort on the Main or Heidelberg, you were practically nominated. For forty-some years, those krauts were the superior race over here, Nordics just like us. But when you kicked the hell out of them in the Second War, and when you came up with the atom bomb, there was a fast shuffle in all the Nobel committees-and now they pour prizes at you and Great Britain like it was confetti. Don’t ever talk to me about impartiality, when you talk to me about that lousy prize you won.’

‘What’s wrong with the prize I won?’ Craig peered at Gottling with owl eyes and spilt his drink again.

‘What’s wrong? Haven’t you been listening to me? You plastered or something? I told you about Russia-’

‘I forgot.’

‘Seven Russians in sixty years in five categories, and not one of them a clean-cut award. It’s not just anti-Communism. It’s plain anti-Russianism. We’ve been shaking in our boots since the time of the Czar. What happened in physiology and medicine in the first sixty awards? Old Pavlov should have carted off that first award hands down. But no, the Committee kept snubbing him for four years, until there was so much pressure they gave in. And they had to give half of Ehrlich’s prize to a Russian in 1908, because it was on the record he deserved half the credit for advances in immunity. Two stinking medicine awards to Russia in sixty years and none in half a century of that sixty years. Take a look at chemistry. One-half of the 1956 prize, and that’s it, brother, that’s all in sixty years. What about physics? One prize, divided among three Russians, in sixty years. There’s your science awards. I’m not a Russky lover. I told you before, they stink. But what’s that got to do with accomplishment? That’s a country where they’ve done the best work in longevity and genetics and stuck a Sputnik and a guy named Gagarin in the sky. That’s a country where they invented artificial penises for soldiers wounded in the war. That’s a country where Popov demonstrated radio transmission before Marconi, and where Tsiolkovsky had multi-stage rockets in 1911. But not according to our Swedish Academy of Science-no. According to our Nobel idiots, Russia is the land without scientists. And those idiots in Oslo are just as bad. Russia didn’t get a single Peace Prize in sixty years, but Germany-Germany!-got three and France eight and you Americans twelve. And now, my son, we’re home again-literature.’