Americans Defend Literary Ignorance

A Frenchman (pfft, the French) has won the Nobel Prize for literature. This comes after Nobel committee member, Horace Engdahl, ignited contoversy days ago with this inflammatory statement:

"The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature," Engdahl said. "That ignorance is restraining."

However, American lit scholars were quick to come to the defense of why it's hard for American writers to keep up with so much literature coming out of Europe. You have a bunch of tiny countries that are hard to tell the difference between. Can anyone tell me the difference between Holland and the Netherlands, for instance?

One scholar mentioned a lack of maps doesn't do Americans any favors in knowing what's going on with the lit scene overseas:

“I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uhmmm, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps..."

It's pretty easy for someone in England to participate in what's going on in French literature because, well, the countries are about as far apart as taking a Sunday ferry from Michigan to Illinois. It'd be pretty easy for us to keep up with things if we only had to look as far as Canada, Texas, or Mexico. But we all know how the Europeans like to wag their skunky tails at us ignorant Americans!