Is Postmodernism American?

That's one aspect of Max Fisher's response to the comments Paddy directed us to earlier. He argues that the Nobel folk don't dislike America as much as they dislike postmodernism, and this mode has come to dominate American literature over the last thirty-some years. He points to non-American postmodernists who would be well ahead of any Americans in the Nobel pecking order - Rushdie and Eco, for example - who have similarly been overlooked. Postmodernism's general skepticism with regard to politics and idealism make its texts unattractive to a highly political body like the Nobel committee. (one could easily substitute Joyce or Nabokov in for postmodernism, I think)

So perhaps the real question should not be "Why does the Nobel committee hate America?" but "Why does the Nobel committee hate the last forty years?"