Hopeful reminder

... that sometimes good things do happen to good people: Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek has won the Nobel Prize for literature. The Independent reports:

The author, who is the first Austrian and the 10th woman to win literature's highest accolade, is best known for her 1983 autobiographical novel The Piano Teacher, filmed in 2001.

However, she has also gained a reputation as a ruthless social critic and for her savage indictments of Austria's failure to confront its Nazi past. She has more recently been vociferous in her opposition to the rise of politician extremism in her homeland and the far-right politician Jörg Haider. "She is an author who shatters the convictions of her readers with anger and passion," said Per Wastberg, spokesman for the Swedish Academy. "Above all, she has criticised Austria's consumer society, which has not faced up to its own past."

Jelinek's works were banned in her home country from 1996-98, and Haider has accused her of "taking pleasure in dragging Austria through the mud." But the prize committee rightly saw otherwise:

The Swedish Academy praised Jelinek, 57, for her "musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power."

As a committed practitioner of political theatre myself, it is heartening to see a playwright like Jelinek get this kind of recognition. In these parlous times, we could use more artists with her courage - but it's often impossible to find anyone brave enough to fund edgy social/political performance. Maybe this award will make it just a little bit easier.