Prize For Literature

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - The reclusive South African writer J.M. Coetzee, whose novels explore his country's painful history of apartheid and continuing anguish since the end of white supremacy, was awarded this year's Nobel Prize in literature yesterday by the Swedish Academy. The academy cited Coetzee's writings, including the novels Waiting for the Barbarians, Life and Times of Michael K and Disgrace, for "their well-crafted composition, pregnant dialogue and analytical brilliance."

Doris Lessing, the Persian-born, Rhodesian-raised and London-residing novelist whose deeply autobiographical writing has swept across continents and reflects her engagement with the social and political issues of her time, yesterday won the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature. Announcing the award in Stockholm, the Swedish Academy described her as "that epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny." The award comes with a 10 million Swedish crown honorarium, about $1.6 million.

An article yesterday incorrectly identified Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet, as a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Heaney won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.The Sun regrets the error.Pub Date: 10/07/97

The World With no other countries stepping forward to provide troops for Iraq, Pentagon officials said it was increasingly likely that fresh American forces -- either National Guard or active duty -- would have to begin replacing U.S. soldiers early next year. A female U.S. soldier died in a bold daylight attack just outside an Army base in Tikrit, Iraq. She was the fourth woman to die in Iraq or Kuwait since the war began. An ailing Pope John Paul II appointed 31 new cardinals, enlarging the body that will choose his successor and further solidifying his conservative influence on the Roman Catholic Church.

Land mines are a land mine for the administration, the Nobel Peace Prize to the would-be banners being merely the first detonation.Awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature to a Communist jokester was radical because it legitimizes, not Party lines, but jokes as literatoor.If they won't let you land your chopper in the valley, buy the valley.Pub Date: 10/15/97

Bawlmer can be forgiven a little excitement. We don't get a pope every Sunday.L The O.J. Show is a tough act to follow. So let's nobody try.Seamus Heaney is (A) a poet (B) respectable (C) accessible (D) TC Irish (E) Northern Irish Catholic (F) voice of the tradition of rural spoken eloquence (G) professor at Oxford and Harvard (H) waiting decades (I) not overtly political and (J) exuberant user of long Latinate words -- in case you were looking for 10 reasons to give him the Nobel Prize for Literature this year.

Kenneth Starr published his celebrated phantasmagoric fable, "Report," too late for this year's Nobel Prize for Literature, alas.The prize for economics goes to the House of Representatives, for making so much out of so little.The chemistry award goes to Bill Clinton for the variety of reactions exposure to him brings out in others.The physics prize to Betty Currie, for advances in making things disappear.The Peace Prize can only go to Rep. Henry Hyde, for taking the nation's focus off war, famine, pestilence and depression.

Octavio Paz,84, Mexico's top literary figure and the winner of a Nobel Prize for poetry and essays exploring the many paradoxes of the Mexican psyche, has died in Mexico City. HTC Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo announced the death yesterday, but did not give a cause of death or say when Mr. Paz died.He won the Miguel Cervantes Prize, Spain's most prestigious award, in 1982. In 1987, he was given the T. S. Eliot Award in Chicago. Three years later, he won the Nobel Prize for literature.

Toni Morrison (1931-) was born Chloe Anthony Wafford in an Ohio steel mill town, the daughter of of black share-croppers who had migrated from the South. She read voraciously as a child, and in 1949 attended Howard University, where she later taught English. She began writing, after the breakup of her marriage, which resulted in her first book, "The Bluest Eye," in 1970. She eventually moved herself and her two sons to New York, where she wrote fiction and became a senior editor at Random House.

Today in history: Oct. 8 In 1869, the 14th president of the United States, Franklin Pierce, died in Concord, N.H. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire erupted while another deadly blaze broke out in Peshtigo, Wis. In 1892, Sergei Rachmaninoff publicly performed his piano Prelude in C-sharp minor in Moscow. In 1956, Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in a World Series to date as the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers, 2-0. In 1970, Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for literature.

Today in history: Oct. 8 In 1869, the 14th president of the United States, Franklin Pierce, died in Concord, N.H. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire erupted while another deadly blaze broke out in Peshtigo, Wis. In 1892, Sergei Rachmaninoff publicly performed his piano Prelude in C-sharp minor in Moscow. In 1956, Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in a World Series to date as the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers, 2-0. In 1970, Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for literature.

Kenneth Starr published his celebrated phantasmagoric fable, "Report," too late for this year's Nobel Prize for Literature, alas.The prize for economics goes to the House of Representatives, for making so much out of so little.The chemistry award goes to Bill Clinton for the variety of reactions exposure to him brings out in others.The physics prize to Betty Currie, for advances in making things disappear.The Peace Prize can only go to Rep. Henry Hyde, for taking the nation's focus off war, famine, pestilence and depression.

Octavio Paz,84, Mexico's top literary figure and the winner of a Nobel Prize for poetry and essays exploring the many paradoxes of the Mexican psyche, has died in Mexico City. HTC Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo announced the death yesterday, but did not give a cause of death or say when Mr. Paz died.He won the Miguel Cervantes Prize, Spain's most prestigious award, in 1982. In 1987, he was given the T. S. Eliot Award in Chicago. Three years later, he won the Nobel Prize for literature.

Toni Morrison (1931-) was born Chloe Anthony Wafford in an Ohio steel mill town, the daughter of of black share-croppers who had migrated from the South. She read voraciously as a child, and in 1949 attended Howard University, where she later taught English. She began writing, after the breakup of her marriage, which resulted in her first book, "The Bluest Eye," in 1970. She eventually moved herself and her two sons to New York, where she wrote fiction and became a senior editor at Random House.

If Italian playwright Dario Fo had opened the New York Times last week to read the announcement of his Nobel Prize in literature, he would have gotten a chuckle. Irony was written all over the page.Right next to the Nobel news, which had been greeted with "guarded amazement" and "outright dismay" by the Vatican, was an article headlined "Italian Government Falls." Accompanying it was a big photograph of the prime minister da giorno, Romano Prodi, with the face of a man who has just eaten 16 dill pickles and is feeling the backlash.

Land mines are a land mine for the administration, the Nobel Peace Prize to the would-be banners being merely the first detonation.Awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature to a Communist jokester was radical because it legitimizes, not Party lines, but jokes as literatoor.If they won't let you land your chopper in the valley, buy the valley.Pub Date: 10/15/97

POOR ALFRED NOBEL, a bit of a writer himself, directed that the prize for literature he endowed honor "the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency." That's not what the Swedish Academy honored this year. The poet Wislawa Szymborska was given the award for "ironic precision," which is not the same as idealism.She must have been an idealist of sorts once, breaking into the poetry game as a socialist realist in a Communist dictatorship. A couple of decades later she was comparing Josef Stalin to the Abominable Snowman.

In awarding the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature to Seamus Heaney, the Swedish Academy acknowledged the importance of Ireland to English letters, but struck a blow for poetry.It is a small island of some 5 million souls, but this is Ireland's third Nobel Prize for Literature after the poet-playwright William Butler Yeats (1923) and the playwright Samuel Beckett (1969), the fourth if the playwright-essayist George Bernard Shaw (1925) is credited to the country of his birth. Ireland's contribution of talent that glorified the English more than the Irish language for centuries is immense.

An article yesterday incorrectly identified Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet, as a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Heaney won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.The Sun regrets the error.Pub Date: 10/07/97