I agree with the point that people who haven’t read Pinter don’t have much business criticizing his plays and poems. Yet it’s difficult to leave out the politics when it comes to the Nobel Prize in literature, especially when you consider that Pinter probably boosted his chances of winning on the day he called for Tony Blair’s impeachment.

Consider some other recent Nobel winners:

Elfriede Jelinek (2004): A radical feminist among radical feminists.

Gunter Grass (1999): A Cold War appeaser and a hater of capitalism; America, he once said, is founded on “stolen land and the genocide of Indians.” (Despite this nonsense, a good case can be made that his literature is Nobel-worthy.)

Jose Saramago (1998): A card-carrying Communist.

Dario Fo (1997): “Regardless of who carried out the massacre,” he said of September 11, “this violence is the legitimate daughter of the culture of violence, hunger and inhumane exploitation.”

There have been some deserving winners, too, such as V.S. Naipaul in 2001. But it’s tough not to see a pattern here.