Predictions 2010

An American will win the Nobel Prize in Literature. It will not be Barack Obama.

The Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and National Book Critics’ Circle Award will be given to three different novels. All three authors will be professors in creative writing programs. Applications to their programs will continue to decline.

Martin Amis’s twelfth novel The Pregnant Widow will be universally reviled by critics on the Left. They will not prevent it from becoming a bestseller in both the U.K. and U.S.

Philip Roth will publish Nemesis, his twenty-seventh novel, leading even more critics to scoff that he has reached the end of the line. They will be wrong. Again.

Another sex scandal will engulf another “famous” poet. No one will notice.

Borders will announce the shuttering of about a third of its retail stores and will lay off half its work force.

Amazon will unveil a Kindle that is compatible with Nintendo’s Wii gaming system.

The Modern Language Association will vote at its December convention to condemn the successful Israeli strike upon nuclear installations in Iran, which by then will have had the effect of galvanizing the Green Movement to overthrow the mullahs and create a fledgling democratic régime. The English professors won’t care.

Christopher Buckley will finish his novel satirizing a posh conservative writer who fell for a messianic left-wing presidential candidate. Two years later he will announce that he is voting to reelect Obama.