Today, Anne Carson won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy praised her bold, inventive work and the way she moves freely between poetry, essay, fiction and the classical world. At 12:59, Carson was already an extraordinary writer. At 13:00, she became a Nobel laureate. Her books, naturally, remained exactly the same. Only the number of people suddenly planning to read them changed. Which is one of literature’s quieter ironies: the work may take decades. Recognition can arrive in a single sentence. I checked my own chances of winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. The good news is that I am still eligible. The less encouraging news is that so are several billion other people.