<nettime> A Formal Offer: Literature for Peace

[Max Herman via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

"An Open Letter From the World's Writers to Its Politicians"

1/15/2026



Dear Leaders, both Military and Economic:

We poets, novelists, essayists, and authors would like to make you an offer.

We know you are in a tough spot.  The old order fritzed out, as it often does, and there isn't a new one yet.  Goodness only knows what wars and horror lurk around the next corner and behind that thicket of trees and bramble we call human uncertainty.  You are all re-arming, clamping down, and purging your systems of command-and-control.  We get it.  We've seen it before: 1950, 1980; 1910, 1930.

Our relationship has always been imperfect, you and I; and it has sometimes been our fault.  We don't want to cast blame or judge, for who would that benefit anyway?  It is better to find solutions.

Therefore we offer an exchange: we'll nominate the sitting president (whoever that is, of any country) to receive the Nobel Peace Prize if, and only if, said president reciprocally nominates "The World Novel" for the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Simple and basic, no fine print, all quite plain.

This exchange wouldn't mean we won't criticize each other -- of course we will.  It also doesn't mean we'll agree on everything because we can't.

All it really means, beyond the obvious absurdity, is that the planet's life of the imagination and its life of material necessity must sufficiently agree to cooperate in a positive way to get us through the century and the millennium.

Repeating the twentieth century just isn't good enough.


Attested to this day of January 15, 2026,

The undersigned


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