Letter to the Nobel Prize Committee

Dear Nobel Prize Committee,

First, let me be clear that I’m not here to enter into the debate as to whether or not this year’s (current) recipient should have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Enough frantic typing has gone on about that one already. Besides, we know you make interesting choices sometimes, and we still think you’re great and that scoring a Nobel would be ace. Yes, there was that prospective Peace Prize for Barack Obama when he’d just scored the big job (I gather that was a bit like granting a new CEO options that only vest years hence if certain performance hurdles are met). And there was the Literature Prize for Churchill, best known word-wise for cracking oratory that didn’t really fit with the Peace Prize, zingers Dorothy Parker would have been proud to call her own and a five-volume bio about his ancestor that, had it been submitted by another author, might well have been edited back to a single fat hardback.

But enough of that. I have heard that this year’s recipient briefly put a line on his website about the award, and then removed it, and that he hasn’t returned your calls.

So, it’s time for me to come out and say something many writers (or at least several) have thought, but none has yet dared to put into words: if your preferred candidate isn’t really interested in being this year’s Nobel Laureate for Literature, it’s okay to pick me now. I WILL TAKE YOUR CALL. I WILL COME TO STOCKHOLM.

Though I might have to hire a suit. But leave that with me. Not your problem. (Appreciating the ultra-low-maintenance, yet massively enthusiastic, vibe being put out by the new potential candidate yet? Sure you are.) I do have one suit that fits, but it’s a business-type pin-stripe from the 90s that my dad gave me, and I think for your dinner the code is black tie. Or white. Either way: easy. I also have my grandfather’s tailcoat, made by Austin Reed of Regent Street in 1937, which survived numerous Med Balls (and other balls) in the 80s, but I don’t exactly fit it now as I’ve porked up a little since then or, as I like to call it, ‘broadened across the shoulders’.

Okay, so some might think you’d rank thousands of writers around the world (including many in Australia) ahead of me. This needs to be addressed. I’m probably flattering myself by saying only thousands.

But let me present my credentials:
– 26 books (yes, this writer does books – no room for debate there)
– extreme willingness to accept award, make a big deal of it, turn up at the dinner, talk up you Nobel folk pretty much forever (totally setting aside that whole ‘funded by explosives’ thing) and permanently bold the line mentioning the award on my CV
– have been compared with a total of one (1) other Nobel Prize winner for literature, that being VS Naipaul (yes, a surprise to both me and Sir Vidia, but one of us was happy to take it)
– author of one novella recently called ‘the most perfect novella in the history of the format’. Yes, I’m the one who kicked Boccaccio’s arse. And all those other arses. We’ve had 653 years of novellas, you know.
– only writer included in the Age’s 2012 list of 10 greatest living Australians (along with Shane Warne and Warwick Capper)
– 12th in a national poll for Australia’s favourite novelist in 2013.

Okay, so that was the year I whored myself most shamelessly for votes the length and breadth of this here interwebbage, and therefore my highest position achieved to date. And, yes, coming 12th could be seen to imply that there were 11 ahead of me, though several are sadly no longer with us – and therefore DQd – and who, among the others, has taken the bold step of expressing willingness?

I’m confident I’m the highest-ranked author in that poll to have contacted you and offered myself as a solution to your awkward situation. Semi-confident.

Anyway, you know where I am.

Nick