I don’t know about everyone else out there, but I was totally thrilled that Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. Talk about one hell of a decade that man has lived. Good God. I was sitting in a coffee shop when I read the news of the award and I was so touched and happy for him that I got all teary and blubbery and sentimental and, well, happy that someone from this country was actually being recognized out there in the world for doing some good, old fashioned, making-the-world- a-better-place-type things.
I read somewhere once that Al Gore is a nerd’s nerd; him coming out on top is the ultimate revenge of the nerd, and this thought—along with the mere fact of the prize itself—distracted me from my maudlin moment of patriotism and reminded me (nerd that I am) of how I used to really love reading various Nobel lectures on the Nobel Foundation’s website. Al’s own lecture will join the oeuvre after the December awards ceremony and I look forward very much to reading it. In the meantime, however, I went back and revisited some of my past favorite lectures.
I’m a language person and so, simply by virtue of my own prejudices, many of my favorites are from the literature winners (although that doesn’t mean that I don’t have every intention of making a concerted effort in the future to branch out into the lectures given by scientists and such). But just to name a couple of my favorites: Czeslaw Milosz’s (Literature, 1980) words on poetry and the events that tore Europe in the 20th century and Garcia Marquez’s plea against the solitude of Latin America. I could go on, but I think it’s better that readers explore for themselves; there’s a world of knowledge in those lectures.