Sad scenes at the Swedish Academy where an institution of this dignity and value is brought to its knees by accusations of testerone-fuelled impropriety or worse, inter alia. This should, of course, be punished and condemned in the strongest terms if proven (as seems highly probable) but storming out after failing to secure a qualified majority for dismissal of a member seems the wrong reaction to me, unless one thinks that the institution is without value in other respects. Klas Östergren’s “I’m leaving the table, I’m out of the game” seems out of place in this should-be palace of the guardians of the Swedish language (can’t we let Swedish have a few niches to itself?).
I suppose we should be grateful that none of the other members replied “Don’t think twice, it’s all right”.