STARRING THE NOBEL PRIZE

Is anybody taking bets on the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, to be announced
tomorrow? Not being privy to the machinations of the 18-member Swedish Academy, I’d be
willing to bet on Philip Roth largely because a star-studded movie of his 2001 novel, “The
Human Stain,” is coming out later this month, and it would be a
shame to waste that kind of publicity. Rival candidates who’ve been touted — among them, Janet
Frame of New Zealand, Inger Christensen of Denmark or Tomas Transtroemer of Sweden — can’t
offer such high-powered Hollywood synergy; not even J.M. Coetzee of South Africa, who’s also
reported to be on the short list, although the Syrian poet Ali Ahmad Said (better known as
Adonis) could give Roth a run for the money on that nickname alone. As a Syrian modernist with
a PhD, moreover, Adonis may have politics working in his favor. Roth, as an
American who’s also Jewish, definitely does not. But could Nicole Kidman, Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris and Gary
Sinise star in one of Adonis’s poems? Not bloody likely.

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