Editor’s note: The Los Angeles Times recently asked a group of notables for their alternate nominations for this year’s Nobel Prizes. The full results were published in the October 1, 2006 edition. Below is William Kristol’s nominee.
The Nobel Prize for literature should go to the American comic-mystery writer Donald Westlake. Enough with honoring self-consciously solemn, angst-ridden and pseudo-deep chroniclers of the human condition. Westlake is smart, clever and witty–a prolific craftsman–and quite deep. But do the Nobel judges have a sense of humor? I doubt it.
-William Kristol
