{"id":77817,"date":"2014-10-08T19:16:11","date_gmt":"2014-10-08T23:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=77817"},"modified":"2014-10-08T19:16:11","modified_gmt":"2014-10-08T23:16:11","slug":"they-cant-take-that-away-from-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/10\/08\/they-cant-take-that-away-from-me\/","title":{"rendered":"They Can\u2019t Take That Away from Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

On this, the eve of the announcement of this year\u2019s Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy seems so furtive, so inscrutable. The suspense is palpable. Bookies are collecting bets; laureled authors around the globe are making steeples of their hands, entertaining their wildest fantasies. But if you want a quick and easy way to dispel the mythos, to lend a touch of levity to the pomp and circumstance of this nervous hour, just spend a few minutes with the Nobel\u2019s Lord of the Flies<\/em><\/a> game.<\/p>\n

It is heinously unfun.<\/p>\n

Really. Endodontic surgery is more fun than this game.<\/p>\n

In its first stage, you match certain quotations and objects from the novel (glasses, bananas, a pig\u2019s head on a pike) to their respective characters. From there, you\u2019re invited to do more matching, this time pairing objects to themes (\u201cLaw and Order,\u201d \u201cHope and Rescue\u201d) that are mounted to palm trees. But wait\u2014wait<\/em>\u2014what\u2019s that theme there on the right?<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

Look, I know it\u2019s pedantic, but at the moment it\u2019s all we\u2019ve got\u2014a typo,\u00a0a\u00a0typographical error<\/em>, disseminated by the offices of the highest literary prize in the land. A sign of fallibility from these infallible Swedes!<\/p>\n

May it offer some succor to those writers perennially rumored to be Nobel front-runners\u2014all those\u00a0who are passed over, year after gnomic Swedish year. I may never join that banquet in Stockholm, your Philip Roths and Thomas Pynchons can say, but at least I can spell supervision<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On this, the eve of the announcement of this year\u2019s Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy seems so furtive, so inscrutable. The suspense is palpable. Bookies are collecting bets; laureled authors around the globe are making steeples of their hands, entertaining their wildest fantasies. But if you want a quick and easy way to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13633],"tags":[7651,15584,4279,15585,13356,14269,5134],"class_list":["post-77817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-department-of-tomfoolery","tag-games","tag-lord-of-the-flies","tag-nobel-prize","tag-supervision","tag-typos","tag-why","tag-william-golding"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEven the Swedish Academy is Fallible<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"On the eve of the announcement of this year\u2019s Nobel Prize in Literature, enjoy a typo in the Nobel\u2019s Lord of the Flies online game.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/10\/08\/they-cant-take-that-away-from-me\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"They Can\u2019t Take That Away from Me by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"October 8, 2014 \u2013 On this, the eve of the announcement of this year\u2019s Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy seems so furtive, so inscrutable. 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