Since long I've had the tradition to to write a funny little story as a
seasonal greeting. around time for Christmas and the New Year. This year's
story is in English since it deals with the internationally well-known Swedish
Academy, which is often in the centre of controversy, especially recently (a
person close to the Academy is accused of serious sexual harassment).
Here's some scenes from a meeting, but any similarities to reality are of
course PURELY accidental. This does NOT at all describe how the Academy works!
Not AT ALL! Do you HEAR! But they do have their Thursday meetings and each have
a chair with a number. (Swedish readers may recognise clues to some names,
otherwise google for the member and chairs list.)
A slightly belated a Joyful Yule and a Cheerful New Orbit Around the Sun to
you all - God Jul & Gott Nytt År, that is!
--Ahrvid
THE ACADEMY
"As you all know," the Secretary said, "it's here on our informal Christmas
meeting that the real winner of The Prize is decided. The prize for artistic
power and truth which depicts human conflict as well as some fundamental
aspects of contemporary life..." (1 - see notes last)
The powerful office of secretary for the Academy was now held by this serious
woman on Chair 7, and she had an unruly bunch to herd. But beside The Prize
there was the recent /s/e/x indecency crisis to handle. She needed a drink or
two. But those were available.
"...and after deciding we leaf through the nominations," said Chair 17 who
held the secreterial office before but now was free to write about his divorce
from that feminist witch. "We pretend to take nominations seriously and
motivate the winner with some crap about human understanding and subtle
analysis of contemporary culture. (2) So who is in the tombola for the next
Prize?"
The Academy had gathered in their chambre separee in the Golden Peace
restaurant, as they always did this day of the week. The traditional Thursday
pea soup with mustard was warm and the Snaps was cold, ice-cold Swedish Punsch,
the Arak-based sweet liqueur. The bottles had already been opened and the
members of the Academy had helped themselves. Helped themselves with some
generosity.
"I wonder why pea soup is a Thursday dish," Chair 8 said. "And boiled peas do
somthing to your intestines if you eat it too fast..."
"Dangerous stuff. Maybe we should call the police and have a fart control!"
Chair 2 commented.
"King Erik XIV is said to been poisoned by pea soup," Chair 10 noted with his
historian authority.
It was the last meeting of the year, the one after the TV-broadcasted Grand
Meeting with the King and the Royal family and the elite of the literary world,
who all sat listening to ultra-boring speeches with straight faces.
But this smaller and more jolly get-together was in reality the more
important gathering. The Prize would be decided now, before they regretted it.
The work coming spring and summer was just a formality.
"Skål to you all!," Chair 12 said as he gulped his well-filled glass of
Punsch in one go. "Now, about the Prize. I have some ideas that will really
confound the literary know-it-alls..."
"Oh no! Not a pop singer again," chair 10 said. "I don't care about his
soaring flight and the evocative imagery of his poetry, which in a visionary
fashion reflects the conditions of our time. (3) All we got for a Prize lecture
was a cut-and-paste job on a DVD full of mumbo jumbo. How about a science
fiction writer?"
"Wasn't it enough with Mrs Lessing," Chair 17 said. "Not to forget poor old
Space-Harry, even if he did catch the dewdrop to reflect the cosmos. (4) His
stomach sadly enough caught a pair of scissors..."
"We could always do as we did when we had brain haemorrhage and gave the
Bucks to Pearl..." Chair 12 said.
"What did 'we' do then?" asked the Secretary. "None of us was in the Academy
way back in 1938. I agree they didn't exactly show sensuous strength and
intellectual clear-sightedness (5), but who does after gallons of booze! You're
not in for rich and truly epic descriptions at such as time (6).
At that moment, as if mere words held power over matter, a heavily laden
waiter arrived. He balanced a tray with bottles of all kinds, not least Punsch.
He took the the now empty plates of pea soup and replaced the empty bottles on
the table with his new load. He knew that this was the evening the Academy had
to get pissed so they could make their Important Decision.
"Well, according to the secret minutes," Chair 12 continued as he stretched
for one of the new bottles, "we just put all names into a hat and pulled one. I
understand that the Punsch had flowed generously that time. It was a Pearl for
the pigs and our reputation was almost Gone with the Wind!"
"It was Mrs Mitchell who wrote that, fool!" Chair 10 said. "Anyway we should
have awarded good ole Herbert George. He foresaw trips to the Moon, the World
Wars, the Atomic Bomb, and even visited Sweden the year after. Unfortunately he
wasn't nominated at that time, so he wasn't in the hat. But he was a great
historian!"
"Anyway, here's my list of candidates," Chair 12 said and presented a small
stack of papers. "Has anyone a hat we can use?"
"Not the hat trick again," Chair 3 ALLEN said. "We'll end up giving that King
of horror the dough! That would spread fright and fear in the high-brow
circles! That car should have hit him harder."
"As long as we don't do as when that Italian clown won," Chair 11 said.
"Someone You-know-who stuffed the hat with fake ballots to get to the award
fund. And then the are other clowns who leak the result and make the betting
odds jump up and down."
"Speaking of that," Chair 6 said. "I have to take a leak. Where's Winston
Churchill?"
"Huh?" said Chair 11. "You want to meet a dead Prize winner and war leader?"
"I mean, the WC," Chair 6 said and fled in the direction another member's
finger pointed.
"Boys and an occasional lady, we have important matters to deal with before
the blood level sinks in our circulatory systems," the Secretary said. "You
know this guy, this hang-around who runs his shabby cellar club and hoodwinked
us to the keys to our Paris apartment. It seems he employs any young aspiring
women writer he can find, pays her under the table, and then lays her over the
table... And then he, lets call it - with an euphemism - exhibits rich
inventiveness which shows the indomitable spirit and versatility of man. (7)
The press isn't happy. Their prattle to try to force entry into oppression's
closed rooms. (8)"
"Fuck that guy!" chair 12 exclaimed.
"That 'F' activity is apparently what he's been doing all the time," said the
Secretary. "He's in scourging our authority and and hardly upholding the
dignity of the downtrodden... (9) Why the heck did you recommend him to that
Royal medal!"
"He fooled me," chair 12 sighed. "I thought he was a real gentleman. But my
fragile experience of that individual never saw his barbaric arbitrariness..."
(10)
"I'll crush him like like fly under my thumbnail," Chair 5 said.
"You have my permission," Chair 12 agreed.
"Anyway, I have prepared a press release," the Secretary said.
"Unfortunately, murder is for some strange reason forbidden by law, so I let
our actions stay short of that. Otherwise, well, pass around these sheets with
the statement..." http://file770.com/?p=39127
Hands reached for her piece of paper, and even more hands reached even more
eagerly for their bottles of choice. A silence fell over the Academy while they
read (and drank). Small murmurs of approvals could soon be heard.
"Brilliant!" chair 11 finally said. "I especially like that you have ordered
us to keep our mouths shut while an investigation is ongoing! That way, we
don't have to say anything and they can't confront us in this embarrassing
mess. The press release is a monument to suffering and courage in our time!"
(11)
"So it's settled then," chair 17 said with a smile showing his content.
"After all, our motto is Wit and Taste. Skål! I feel my wit increases with the
taste of this..."
"Back to the Prize then," chair 11 said. "No so called singer-song writer, it
seems. No popular writer who sells hundreds of millions of books. But it must
be someone totally obscure and surprising. I happened to surf around on this
curious Interweb and found this coming comet..."
"Metoo," chair 14 said. "I also happened to see that guy! I'm a poet, and I
can tell you that's the strangest poet I've seen! It seems his work passes no
filters of critique at all before it hits the unsuspecting, innocent reader. He
uncovers the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world,
indeed." (12)
Calm Chair 14 had for many outsiders the public image of being really dull
and tedious, but for the Academy she was the humorous entertainer who got all
the laughs. So if she liked a candidate it must be a really good joke.
"Hm," said Chair 10. "Me too think I've heard of this guy. But that's only
because I'm practically married to my computer, a digital buff who sees
everything on the Net. Also. I used to work with crytoplogy and intelligence
for the military, and I can't decrypt his babble which shows not a trace of
intelligence... He should thus be perfect!"
"And best of all," Chair 12 said. "Everyone will be so dumbfounded that
they'll totally forget this /s/e/x unwanted intimacy scandal which the press
chews about day out and day in! Show of hands, everyone!"
A bunch of hands went up, most of them gripping by now empty glasses. The
Secretary smiled.
"Thanks guys!" she said. "I was afraid we would have to debate one obscure
writer after another for hours at end. This surely follows our tradition to in
innumerable guises portray the surprising involvement of the outsider, as The
Prize is awarded.(13)"
"Good," said chair 16, the very distinguished literature researcher who up to
now had sat silent. "So it is decided that The Prize next year shall be
bestowed upon Comet-John Benzene jr..."
-----
Notes:
1: From the citation in 1937 (Roger Martin de Guard)
2. From the citation in 1976 (Saul Bellow)
3: From the citation in 1960 (Saint-John Perse)
4: From the citation in 1974 (Harry Martinson)
5: From the citation in 1979 (Odysseus Elytis)
6: From the citation in 1938 (Pearl S Buck)
7: From the citation in 1984 (Jaroslav Seifert)
8: From the citation in 2005 (Harold Pinter)
9: From the citation in 1997 (Dario Fo)
10: From the citation 2002 (Imre Kretesz)
11: From the citation in 2015 (Svetlana Alexievich)
12: From the citation in 2017 (Kazuo Ishiguro)
13: From the citation in 2003 (JM Coetzee)
"Comet-Johan Bensin Jr" - here internationalised to the toxic substance
Benzene... - will in 2018 have haunted Swedish science fiction circles for 40
years. His incomprehensible poetry first appeared in a 1978 fanzine. More
barely recognisable sweet idiocy, filksongs and other strange stuff has over
the years followed through his literary agent (=Yours Truly). CJBjr is eg often
seen on the Swedish sf/fantasy writing list SKRIVA. One of his hangups is that
he claims to be constantly top candidate for this Academy's well-known Prize!
But the only chance he win is if I write it in a story myself. Thus this tale...
--
ahrvid@xxxxxxxxxxx / Follow @SFJournalen on Twitter for the latest news in
short form! / Gå med i SKRIVA, för författande, sf, fantasy, kultur
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novellsamling Mord på månen: http://zenzat.wordpress.com/bocker C Fuglesang: ;
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fråga om hans sf-fanhistoriska uppslagsverk Fandboken / YXSKAFTBUD, GE VÅR
WCZONMÖ IQ-HJÄLP! (DN NoN 00.02.07)
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