On 9 October 1997, Fo, driving along the Rome-Milan motorway at the time of the announcement, was alerted to the news when a car drew up alongside his with an enormous placard in the window exclaiming "Dario, you've won the Nobel prize!" The announcement came as a shock to Italians and non-Italians alike.
Umberto Eco expressed delight that the award had been given to someone who "does not belong to the traditional academic world." However, 86-year-old Italian literary critic
Carlo Bo was mystified: "I must be too old to understand. What does this mean? That everything changes, even literature has changed."
Mario Luzi, a poet regarded as a likely next Italian recipient at the time, slammed the phone down on one reporter: "I'll say only this. I've just about had it up to here!" U.S. playwright
Tony Kushner, however, expressed his approval, writing: "[Fo] has dedicated his genius to making everything he touches debatable. [It] is brave and perhaps even reckless because it subjects Literature, and prizes, and Newspapers of Record, to the Fo effect". The
Roman Catholic Church, having previously censured Fo's plays which are described initially by some critics as "rather lightweight", also criticized the academy's decision to bestow him the prize.
Salman Rushdie and
Arthur Miller had been favoured to receive the prize, but a committee member was later quoted as saying that they would have been "too predictable, too popular." When he accepted the award, Fo presented a specially devised piece called
Contra jogulatores obloquentes (Against Jesters of Irreverent Speech) alongside some paintings, with this later being described as "undoubtedly the most flamboyantly theatrical and comical acceptance speech ever seen at the Swedish Academy." ==References==