Essay Argues Annie Dillard Should Have Won the Nobel Prize in Literature

In a 3 Quarks Daily essay, Jonas Gardsby contends that Annie Dillard, who recently passed away and is now ineligible for the Nobel Prize because the Swedish Academy does not award it posthumously, should have received the honor. Gardsby presents three reasons. First, Dillard was a major practitioner of literary nonfiction, a genre historically overlooked by the Nobel committee; her works such as Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, "An Expedition to the Pole," "Total Eclipse," and For the Time Being were shaped by the structures of long poems rather than fiction, and her influence extends to writers like Ocean Vuong. Second, she pursued spiritual questions, appealing to both religious and secular readers through concepts like via negativa and holy the firm, with admirers including Mark O'Connell and Ted Chiang. Third, her international scope was evident from early reviews of British, Canadian, Norwegian, Argentinian, and ninth-century Chinese works, and her books set in China, Yemen, Tahiti, Ecuador, and Antarctica. Gardsby notes rumors that Dillard was nominated, though nominations remain confidential for fifty years. He suggests the committee could make restitution by awarding Anne Carson, whom Dillard supported early in her career by selecting "Kinds of Water" for The Best American Essays 1988. The essay also references Bob Dylan's 2016 Nobel win and Dillard's own skepticism about Dylan as a poet.