The Nobel and the Price of Prestige in the 21st Century

In the late 20th century, the Nobel Prize enjoyed an unrivaled position as the most powerful instrument of literary consecration. But recent shifts in the relationship between money and prestige, and in the forms of scandal that attend cultural awards, are weakening the Nobel’s symbolic hold. Symptomatic missteps by the Swedish Academy, occurring against a backdrop of increasingly extreme concentration of wealth, have opened a window of opportunity for the founding of a new super-prize better suited than the Nobel to dominate today’s economy of world-literary prestige.