JACK ENGELHARD: THE CALL FROM SWEDEN THAT DID NOT COME
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15791#.VDpd8vfZjzZ
First, I should say that I never win prizes. My name is never called. Wait. Years ago I won a bowling trophy. So don’t count me out.
Not so fast, for each year around this time comes the Nobel Prize for Literature. I sit and I wait. I wait by the phone…along with Philip Roth.
This is what people talk about in my business – the phone call. Yes, the phone call from Sweden. It’s supposed to come early in the morning and sure enough the phone rang. “Congratulations,” said the man. “It’s you.” Only it wasn’t Sweden. It was Moishe.
“You’re nuts,” I said.
“Your gloomy outlook on life stops as of today. You’re in. Mazel Tov. Though I’m told success ruins a writer.”
“So does failure,” I said. “Listen up. You’ve got to stop this.”
“Listen, Yankele. Why not you? I hear it’s a French guy who won moments ago, a Jewish Frenchman. Who else could it be?”
It could be Patrick Modiano, son of a Belgium mother and an Italian Jewish father. But that information only came later. Meanwhile…
“So are you at the computer, watching TV?”
“I’m still in bed. It’s five in the morning. Wait till I get my hands on you.”
“Your wife will need to go shopping and you’ll need a tux. Let me read you this…”
He read, from a CNN report, that the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature was an obscure Frenchman.
“So you were born in France. This we know. You are also obscure, right, Yankele?”
“Indeed.”
“Nobody knows who you are and nobody cares – until now. The wheel of destiny has finally done justice.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“No you’re not. Worldwide fame and a millions bucks comes with this. Listen to what else it says…”
It says that the winner writes in elegant but simple language and his works are often tied with France’s troubled past during the Nazi occupation.
“Nu?” said Moshe. “That’s you from head to toe. Imagine – all your books will now be bestsellers. Indecent Proposal was nothing compared to this. Hello?”
“I’m thinking. I’m thinking.”
“Wake up and smell the new furniture! You fit all that like a glove. Act humble. Ham it up, if you’ll excuse the expression. In your address to his royal majesty the Swedish king and to the world act the part of a grateful but unworthy recipient of so lofty a recognition.”
“Do I have to?”
“Pretend, my boy. Pretend that others were more qualified, that the same grunts and misfits that keep winning Pulitzers and Man Booker awards are far more deserving – even as in your heart you’re lying and kvelling like a cat with a mouse between its teeth. Has your wife picked out a color for the Rolls yet?”
“I think Roth deserves it,” I said.
“Good. You’re lying already. For some reason, by the way, Jewish writers do well with the Nobel Prize. Do you consider yourself a Jewish writer?”
“I’m trying my best. But think of the competition. Moses, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Rashi, Judah Halevi…”
“Think current. Elie Wiesel.”
“He won it for peace.”
“So think Bellow, Agnon, Singer, Pinter.”
“Agnon, okay. Bellow was a kvetch. Singer, well meaning but always comes up repetitive and empty. Pinter? The man hated his faith.”
“Makes your point, Yankele, about this generation’s moral decay. You always say that it’s only small talent but big luck that wins the jackpot.”
“I also say we’ve lost our sense of taste and that writing is prayer.”
“Your prayer has just been answered. The winner is Patrick Modiano. Go back to sleep. You’re safe for another year.”
And maybe this year they got it right?
Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the novelist, the Middle East/media thriller “The Bathsheba Deadline.” Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller “Indecent Proposal” that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Website: www.jackengelhard.com
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