Yahoo News Digest reports that after 50 years of secrecy, it has been revealed that French Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre declined the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964 via regular mail.
But the letter arrived too late, and so he received the prize.
3 Questions That Arise From This Story
1. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, is that the same thing as a letter being sent and nobody being there to read it? We think so, which is why this prize-winning philosopher should have seen this dilemma coming and sent a telegram instead.
2. That email that insulted your boss, for which you accidentally hit “reply all” didn’t get lost, yet a Nobel Prize rejection did – how unfair is that? Sounds like another good question for a philosopher to help you with. Just don’t send your question by regular mail.
3. Are there other rejection letters lost in the mail that you never received? Hey, maybe that email your forwarded your boss in the last paragraph was on borrowed time, since you were fired by mail seven years ago, and never got the memo.