Chapter 5 explores Faulkner’s lifelong interest in the physicality of writing and the relationship of this interest to questions about religion and literature. With his 1954 novel A Fable, he foregrounds a play of text and materiality that had been present in his work since his early handmade books. Faulkner persuaded Random House to issue A Fable with no title on the hardbound cover beneath the dust jacket but rather iterations of the cross, a motif they used throughout the book, but which has disappeared from current editions of the novel. Faulkner dedicated the book to his daughter Jill on her twenty-first birthday, which he later maintained was a way of saying that she was now on her own. The book itself, though, which interweaves aspects of the Gospels with a First World War narrative, becomes its own quasi-sacred physical support for readers, a new kind of Bible as material text. Multiple characters in the novel try to find versions of sustenance in physical texts, but many come away disappointed. Finally, the chapter examines Faulkner’s ambiguous use of the term literature, which generally took on a more positive sense for him when connected with the materials of writing.

Norway’s “nation brand” rests on the notion that this country is characteristic for its inclination to do good on the world stage. This brand is at risk of being exposed as hypocrisy, however, since Norway demonstrably also causes harm. In this chapter, I focus on the work that goes into maintaining Norway’s image as a good power. I will argue that a key mechanism of such maintenance work is the strategic production and management of ignorance, a phrase that refers to various forms of secrecy, selection, or suppression of information. As an extended illustration, I provide a reading of the TV series Nobel, which details a whole catalogue of Norwegian vices and crimes, and which fictionalizes how those vices and crimes are hidden or marginalized. But if Nobel might thus appear to be a hard-hitting piece of national self-criticism, I suggest that its effect could actually be the exact opposite: In line with its tragic form, what Nobel ultimately offers its viewers is a momentary – self-critical – venting ritual, after which everything can return to normal.

Modern literary prizes date from the Nobel Prize in Literature, first awarded in 1901. In France, the Prix Goncourt followed in 1903 and by mid-century numerous others had been established, many of which garner significant public interest to this day. This chapter considers French book prizes, their progressive commercialization heralded by the development of new media in the early twentieth century, and the question of their reliability as indicators of literary quality and durability. It examines the development of the practice as well as the politics of awarding prizes, the relative success of individual publishers, authors and works, and how this feeds into the wider concerns of literary history. The award of prizes is considered against the shifting political currents of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This historical examination evokes well-known names as well as many now largely forgotten.