A Music Fan Explains Why Bob Dylan Doesn’t Deserve The Nobel Prize in Literature
Giving the Nobel Prize in Literature to a musician is no different than giving an actor a Grammy or a musician an Oscar or a pop star a CMA Award. Or I don’t know, maybe electing a reality TV star President.
Can any of these individuals turn in an effort of acceptable aptitude in whatever discipline they’re being awarded in despite it not being their life’s purpose? Of course they can. Do Bob Dylan’s songs work as standalone poems? Most certainly. Is Bob Dylan a man of letters beyond his music? Most assuredly. But Bob Dylan doesn’t deserve any distinction that is meant to go to someone who deals in the medium of literature exclusive of musical accompaniment. Giving him the Nobel Prize in Literature is a travesty for the art of the written word which is a dying medium dangling by a thread in a manner that makes all the concerns about the dwindling economic viability of music seem frivolous.
Look, I love Bob Dylan. And the only regret of my Bob Dylan fandom is that I run a country music website that doesn’t allow me to express my love and respect for his music as much as I wish. His album Blood On The Tracks is one of my tops of all time, and that came out a decade after he revolutionized music and culture all around the world with the power of his words. And I say that without reservation, even with the full knowledge of all of Bob’s weird transgressions over the years, not limited to his recent take down of the sainted Merle Haggard that he later haphazardly, but luckily, apologized for.
Aside from Willie Nelson, there is no other musical creature alive on planet Earth that deserves more praise for their auditory contributions to human civilization than Bob Dylan. But he doesn’t deserve a literary prize, especially one that is so rare to be bestowed, and especially at a time when literature is so under siege, and so necessary to re-institute if civilization is ever going to reel itself back towards sanity.
It’s so fitting that in 2016 were giving the Nobel Prize in Literature to a popular musical star. No wonder we’re in the shape we’re in. It’s the most 2016 thing that could possibly happen. When so few can find the time to read a sentence—let alone a book—what else do you expect? Excuse me, but can you deliver what you have to say in video or podcast form? Sorry, I’m too busy to read what you’re trying to convey. Can you set it to music so I can pay attention?
And the foundation behind all cognitive thought collapses.
As much of a musical fan as I am, and a Bob Dylan fan specifically, I’m a bigger fan of institutions staying in their lanes. We need literary prizes to go to literary contributors, music awards to go to musicians, country awards to go to actual country artists, and so on and so forth because we need all hands on deck right now, and the aces in their places. You want to know why it appears true journalism in dead in 2016? Because we’re giving away the industry’s highest honors to entertainers.
The case could be made that Bob Dylan deserves the Nobel Peace Prize before the literary one. As Jimmy Carter—a Nobel Peace Prize recipient himself in 2002—said in introducing Bob Dylan at a Grammy event in February 2015 (the same event where Dylan criticized Haggard incidentally), “Mr. Dylan’s words on peace and human rights are much more incisive, much more powerful and much more permanent than those of any president of the United States.”
So there. Give Dylan the Peace Prize. But the Nobel committee determined they couldn’t do that I guess, but they wanted to give Dylan something because they are really, really big Bob Dylan fans apparently. So screw some literary contributor who could actually use the publicity and would be honored by the distinction. Instead let’s make this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature a vehicle for some committee members to reciprocate their fandom to a man who doesn’t give a shit about it.
I know I’m not saying anything new on this subject—and that these words are somewhat tardy. But I hope I’m doing a fair service in representing an actual music fan who can also see the folly of giving Bob Dylan this award as opposed to whatever pasty bookworm deserves it. But the worst part about this award decision is that Bob Dylan doesn’t even seem to care, or may not believe he deserves it either. As is being reported, Dylan has yet to acknowledge the accolade, and isn’t even returning the Nobel committee’s phone calls. Maybe Dylan will snap out of it at some point and show up to their little award ceremony. After all, that’s the point of giving a Nobel Prize to Dylan, right? So folks will actually pay attention to your shindig whenever it goes down?
But it’s Bob Dylan. If you didn’t know there wasn’t at least the possibility he would brush off your little award moment or even admonish it, you’re clearly not a Bob Dylan fan, and probably shouldn’t be giving him anything in the first place. Sorry, Bob’s too busy to acknowledge your accolade; he’s too busy being Bob Dylan. So you don’t even get your big publicity moment, if it doesn’t blow up right in your face.
And save your wind about how the Nobel Prize committee lost the credibility many years ago. Of course they did. But all the more reason to get back on course now. In 2016, we need institutions like the Nobel Prize to rise to the challenges presenting us. And we need Bob Dylan to be Bob Dylan more than ever. And that’s why the two should remain exclusive of each other. Thank God Bob Dylan at least gets that. At least for the moment.
October 18, 2016 @ 8:10 am
If it was Steve Earle then the prize would make more sense since Steve actually wrote a novel and I would see the connection easier in my opinion.
October 18, 2016 @ 8:29 am
This is all true, but why get worked up about a prize that has lost all credibility? If it weren’t for economics and the sciences, Nobel prizes would be just ribbons for the screedy. Good on Dylan for ignoring them.
I hope he never responds at all.
October 18, 2016 @ 8:39 am
So is the Nobel Peace Prize committee now trying to say that music, specifically songs and albums, can now be reclassified as literature?! Yeah let’s celebrate the demise of the print industry by turning the Nobel Peace Prize into a music awards program. Brilliant…and honor a guy who seems to have contempt for awards, interviews, and the like.
I recently saw The Bob in concert at a gorgeous theater here in my hometown. As is often the case with The Bob, he didnt hardly acknowledge the audience, didn’t introduce his band, didn’t tell any in between song anecdotes, didn’t play much of the material many hoped for. Instead , 98 percent of the setlist was songs off of his latest 2 albums. He did deliver Tangled up in Blue and Simple Twist of Fate, which was nice. I actually saw people falling asleep..because most of the time his tempos varied between slow and crawl….seeing former BR549 steel player Donnie Herron was nice but it only reminded me of how mad I was when Bob broke that band up by taking him away. On the positive side, hey I saw Dylan.
October 18, 2016 @ 3:00 pm
You’ve heard Bob Dylan’s music…what made you think k it would be any different in concert? I, personally can’t stand his voice. He sounds like a cat in heat on helium. I like his music, but I can do without the voice.
October 18, 2016 @ 8:54 am
Bob Dylan – Literature Nobel Prize Winner – Disgraceful:
Let me start off by saying that unlike Trigger, I am no fan of Dylan’s music. However just like Trigger, my opinion has nothing to do with whether or not I am a fan of Dylan or not. If the award was given to my favourite song writer (that just happens to be Mark Knopfler), I would still state that is was a disgrace.
The fact that the award was give to Dylan simply serves to perfectly epitomize the shallow and media hungry culture that we now live in.
Be in no doubt, the award was given to Dylan not because he deserved it but basically to gain a lot of free publicity through news organisations and push the Nobel trademark to the top of the media agenda.
If the award was actually given to a deserving writer with a much lower profile, it simply would have not made media headlines. It would have passed under the radar.
This, the Nobel committee could not tolerate! They need to be in the headlines to validate their existence, to give value to the work they are doing and keep the Nobel Prize a relevant brand.
Basically all the motivations of the shallow dumbed down society that we now seem to live in.
Even the supposedly virtuous Nobel committee are willing to so easily ditch their principles and integrity just to jump on the popularity/celebrity bandwagon.
It is a total disgrace and they have deprived the actual deserving writer of his/her award, possibly the greatest achievement of his/her career.
For this the Noble committee should be well and truly ashamed.
October 18, 2016 @ 8:35 pm
The committee gave an award to someone who they thought was deserving. Dylan’s been writing lyrics for over 50 years and has had a big impact. They’ve given a lot of awards to less famous writers.
You can agree or disagree with their choice.
No reason to be so damn emotional about it.
October 22, 2016 @ 5:12 am
You don’t like Dylan at all but you’re favorite songwriter is most derivative of Dylanesque/Springsteen/JJ Cale/Tony Joe White writers, Mark Knopfler???? Mark Knopfler who produced my favorite Dylan album Infidels and recently toured with him again and considers Dylan to be the reason he does what he does?
Ok. Just checking…
October 18, 2016 @ 9:21 am
Cowboyal might be on to something…mark knoepfler is also my favorite…the fact that my favorite Bob Dylan album is “infidels” produced by 1 mark knoepfler can’t be a coincidence?!anyway the Nobel folk’s are irrelevant in my life…couldn’t care less!!!yawn!
October 20, 2016 @ 2:55 pm
Sebastion: Although I am a life long Dylan fan, I agree with you as to the irrelevance of the Nobel Committee. Aren’t they the clowns who gave Obama the Peace Prize. Still haven’t figured out what for.
October 18, 2016 @ 10:10 am
Thank god. I thought I was alone in my thinking that the Nobel prize in literature should go to someone writing, oh I don’t know, actual literature. That’s not to say that Dylan isn’t a genius. Obviously. He’s Bob freaking Dylan. No doubt he’s the best out there, songwriter-wise. (Though he does have some stiff competition. Willie, Leonard Cohen, Van Morison, etc etc)
It’s interesting because one of my college classes (eons ago, unfortunately) had a section in which we studied Dylan lyrics. The approach to looking at lyrics is pretty different than how you read novels and poems, largely because novels exist mainly between the page and readers’ brains, while most lyrics are set to music and interpreted by the artist’s delivery, which influences mood/feeling/meter/etc. and overall experience, often elevating the words. It just seems kind of like an unfair advantage for words written to be sung and heard as opposed to sentences being crafted to be read in one’s head.
Not to take anything away from songwriters. I love very little more than a well-written song, and have immense, immense respect for those among us mere mortals who can make music that sets your soul on fire from nothing but a phrase or a line in their head.
I wonder why there isn’t a Nobel prize for music, though? Seems like an easy way to solve the debate.
October 18, 2016 @ 10:22 am
I’m with Cowboyal!
October 19, 2016 @ 3:37 am
Thank you very much:-)
October 18, 2016 @ 11:12 am
I know this is a country music site, but it the Nobel committee wanted to honor a musician in literature, they should have picked Lin Manuel Miranda of Hamilton fame. His work, while I’m not saying is better than Dylan’s best, is a lot more timely and Miranda wrote 43 songs in numerous genres on an historical figure.
October 18, 2016 @ 11:24 am
Then create a Nobel Prize for Music.
October 18, 2016 @ 7:26 pm
The Nobel Prize for Literature (like every non-Peace prize) is a lifetime achievement award. LMM has a long, long way to go.
July 8, 2020 @ 8:14 am
Hamilton sucks.
Awful musical.
October 18, 2016 @ 11:20 am
Right on, Trigger. As much as I like Dylan, he doesn’t deserve a literature Nobel. And I’m pretty sure that he doesn’t think he deserves it either, given the fact that he hasn’t returned any of the committee’s calls. After reading Chronicles I had a new appreciation for Dylan. He’s openly dismissive of the myth. He admits that half the time he was just screwing around and critics and society made a lot more out of it than what there was because they wanted/needed something to be there. He’s always true to the music and he doesn’t give the rest of it a thought. Not many rock stars have the courage to publicly dismiss attempts to make them a saint (hey Bono, take notes). I hope he never calls the Nobel people back. These are, after all, the same cultural suck-ups that gave Obama a Peace Prize before he showed up for a first day of work (bet they loved the 8 years of drone strikes).
October 18, 2016 @ 11:56 am
I work at a library of Sweden. I have read almost all books written by classical writers such as Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Zola, Hugo, Steinbeck, Hemmingway. I have read thousands of books … But I think you are wrong. To give the prize to Dylan will at least for a while putting poetry into a focus. And for me, Dylan is a poet! ( Who also happen to be musicians and prefers to sing his poems rather than giving it out in book form.)
I do not believe for a moment that this will harm the tradional book reading.
Instead, it will start a debate about poetry that would never have started if, for example, Philip Roth would had gotten it.
The people of the Nobel committee are votet in. They need to be either well known authors or professors in literature or in the very least have deep knowledge of literature. And they work year round trying to improve the literature position in society. And they KNEW this decision would be controversial…
Why would they make decision that make their work harder?
Also…Unlike most music awards these prizes are not sponsored by nobody
And the decision ta give the prize to Dylan was unanimously. Which is not always the case.
I have seen several literature programs on TV, where they were discussing who should get the prize. And these are people who, like me, reading a lot. Some of them said: If they, (the Nobell committee), follow their heart. They’ll choose Bob Dylan. But no one thought they would
But they did…And for those who only have a lot of opinion about Nobells prize but no knowledge… You should read his will.
http://www.nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/will/will-full.html
October 18, 2016 @ 1:50 pm
“Why would they make decision”
Because the Nobel Prize, for the sake of its brand, has to keep itself in the headlines.
October 19, 2016 @ 6:11 am
What damn brand ?. They don’t sell furniture. It’s IKEA who does that.
They don’t sell anything. They have no reason to make populist decision.
An example: One of the members in of the price committee is Per Wästberg. He’s novelis and a poet. He participated in the struggle against apartheid in the 60s. He risked both imprisonment and in worst case being murdered.
Do you think a person like him would make a decision based on which decision will make him the most popular.? He made following comment about Bob Dylan: “He is the best now living American poet who was born after 1950”. He can be and probably are wrong. But it is his sincere opinion…
And do you think that comment will make him popular among other American poets or Americans in general?
And my comment was directed at Trigger’s statement that the elections of Dylan would harm the reading of other writers. Something which I don’t agree with.
And another thing this will NOT give Taylor Swift ,or even worse, Max Martin a Nobell Prize in literature..!!! It’s JUST NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!! This was an exception because Bob Dylan himself is an exception!. The price will never be given to “conventional songwriter”. Nobody has written song LYRICS like him And it is because of these LYRICS he has received the prize. Not for being a singer. And not even for being a
songwriter…
And one more thing. Now I have seen articles as: “scientists say that Bob Dylan is not the Homer of our Time”. They, the people in the prize committee, never said he is They just made a parallel with Homer saying that his work were meant to be sung and played not read.
But other people have though….Quote from the Los Angeles Times:
“There is no way to accurately or adequately laud Bob Dylan,” producer, songwriter and musician T Bone Burnett once said. “He is the Homer of our time. The next Bob Dylan will not come around for another millennium or two, making it highly unlikely that it will happen at all.”
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-bob-dylan-nobel-20161013-snap-story.html
“highly unlikely that it will happen at all”……….That’s also means it highly unlikely that another
singer/songwriter get the prize. So I do not think neither you or Trigger needs to worry about that…
I will not write any more comments after I posted this since I cant really see the point in doing so. Since It’s to me obvius that many of you have no ide why these these prize was established….
Again if you really are intressed… READ Nobells WILL… http://www.nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/will/will-full.html
October 19, 2016 @ 4:52 am
At last someone with some sense of what literature is. Poetry started where in the old cultures people sang their stories and vented their feelings accomponied by instruments and dance, from out of that came the written word which at some time evolved into prose. The trouble with a lot of poetry today is that it moves too far away from what can be sung, which has structure, rhythm and rhyme. And bear in mind, the nobel prize goes to writers that have done something idealistic in this world (Hemingway had something to say about war, and he was in places where there was war and tried to do good), and although Dylan stays far from politics, he sure writes songs that have moved people to rethink things politically. Even if I would have approved if Don Delillo had gotten the prize, surely Dylan’s greatness makes him deserve it as well, and by the way, I know many who just like me have started reading novels after reading his poems, he brought literature to the streets, something Delillo cannot say, and hey, I like Joyce, so don’t call me populist. By the way, the writer of the article says he cannot play Dylan on his country station, as if Dylan did not also revolutionize country, beginning with recording Blonde on Blonde in Nashville! It’s this attitude that makes elitists say that songwriters do not belong to literature. The Nobel prize for Dylan honours all song writers in a way that makes me glad.
October 19, 2016 @ 10:15 am
“The Nobel prize for Dylan honours all song writers in a way that makes me glad.”
And it also downgrades all the folks who work in the written word exclusively.
If it’s so obvious why songwriters should be considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature, why has it never been given to a songwriter before in 115 years? Nobody’s even saying songwriting can’t be considered literature, but that is not what the Nobel prize is there for. This was the Nobel committee’s MTV moment.
October 19, 2016 @ 4:59 pm
But poetry did begin as ballads which were sung many centuries ago.
October 19, 2016 @ 7:20 am
Paul William Roberts just wrote
“David Kinney says Dylan’s songs were “not meant to be read on a page”. Perhaps not, but neither was most poetry and prose until 500 years ago, when a “page” was invented.
As a lady on the Nobel committee pointed out, Homer and Sappho’s work was designed to be heard, not read. Most early lyric poetry was sung to music. More people probably heard Thomas Wyatt, and even William Blake sing their poems than ever read them in books. It is obvious from whence the term “lyric” springs. As echoes in his songs show, Dylan has always been well aware of lyric poetry’s European origins in the Troubadours, Arnaut Daniel, and Dante, as well as their continuation in Verlaine and Rimbaud.”
Taking a longer perspective, it makes perfect sense to give it to Dylan.
October 19, 2016 @ 8:23 am
Very good point. I was on the other side; I believe you may have changed my mind
October 18, 2016 @ 11:59 am
It’s sort of weird to read this pissin’-in-the-wind stuff about “deserving” from inside the tent of someone passionate enough about the deep culture of popular music to devote a huge chunk of time and love to writing about it. (And spending several hours at the Country Music Hall of Fame exhibit “Dylan, Cash and the Nashville Cats” exhibit nailed down for me exactly how crucial Bob was for the betterment of country music’s soul, so there’s a touch of the ingrate in bemoaning his Nobel, which clearly applies via Dylan to Nashville and Americana’s big bang of creativity as well.) For one thing, it’s a done deal, whether or not Bob responds or shows up in Stockholm, so deal with it. For another thing, who cares about killjoy putdowns of Bob’s Prize based on professional guild aggrievement (his work isn’t ink on paper from book publishers for the most part) and narrow genre border policing (he doesn’t write “high” literary stuff like novels, but songs and albums). And narrow genre border policing remains this web site’s number one risk and occasional sin.) For sure there’s not a greater artist working in words and imagery and lyric forms over the last half century.
October 18, 2016 @ 1:00 pm
It seems you have a loy of Mark Knopfler fans here, including me. Certainly he writes about the most diverse topics of just about anyone.
Any news of why he rarely gets mentioned by the americana/country scene?
October 18, 2016 @ 7:36 pm
I’ve mentioned Mark Knopfler on this site numerous times, and am a fan as well. I just don’t really think he pushes his music in the country/Americana channels aside from the album he did with Emmylou Harris in 2008.
October 18, 2016 @ 1:03 pm
Just let the man have his damn award. It’s Bob Dylan.
Literature defined: check a dictionary
“writings published on a particular subject”
“written works (such as poems, plays, and novels) that are considered to be very good and to have lasting importance”
” writings in prose or verse; especially : writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest”
Sounds like Bob Dylan to me.
And I think the most significant living singer is Colm Wilkinson but never mind that, you’re right about Willie Nelson being one of the few artists equal to Dylan.
point is that out of all the problems facing our culture today, like Hillary Clinton running for President, and riots in the street, and everything Jason Aldean does, and the travesty that will be the upcoming CMA/ACM awards, and the fact that creepy stalker music like Thomas Rhett can go to number 1, and the Kardashians, giving Bob Dylan a literature award doesn’t seem quite so crazy.
Where was the full length article when Luke Bryan got an entertainer award for shaking his hips?
Where was the outrage when Jason Aldean won a vocalist award?
Why didn’t I see an article like this when FGL took vocal duo?
All these awards shows are cramming square pegs through round holes and giving out egregiously undeserved awards based on no merit, but out of all the times we could have written articles about undeserved awards, we get one when Bob Dylan gets a perfectly deserved literature award.
Literature is under siege but if Bob Dylan didn’t get it we run the risk of that same award going to some new “50 shades of Twilight” or “the Hunger Thrones” or whatever the big deal in literature is now.
I think “Redwall” deserved a literature award. But when Brian Jacques died his most recent novel wasn’t even considered.
Awards are stupid anyway because they use arbitrary metrics to belittle or demean one art and glorify another, but this one isn’t a big deal.
October 18, 2016 @ 1:19 pm
I think I agree. Lyrics (good lyrics anyway) are a form of literature – they are a form of poetry. I think giving the award to a songwriter is no different than giving it to a playwright. Just because the written words are primarily accompanied by a performance and other elements, does not mean the words are outside the category of literature.
October 18, 2016 @ 7:19 pm
exactly. Shakespeare wrote plays, but he’s still required reading in LITERATURE CLASS.
I get why people are upset, because it’s a pretty odd concept, but when you get right down to it what does it matter? it’s Bob Dylan, and he’s an icon.
From my perspective, in thirty years we’ll still be listening to Dylan, but whatever novels or short stories may have been nominated may not have the longevity. Remember Twilight? nobody cares anymore!
Shame that it happened to Redwall because Redwall was my favorite book series as a kid.
Point is that I just don’t see a contemporary novel that has the longevity of a Dylan song.
So it makes sense that he gets the award because he’s proven that his work has no expiration date.
October 18, 2016 @ 7:38 pm
“Why didn’t I see an article like this when FGL took vocal duo?”
Are we unclear about how Saving Country Music feels about Florida Georgia Line? It seems an article along those lines would be quite redundant.
October 18, 2016 @ 8:42 pm
thank you for that concise non-confrontational response. I apologize for getting a bit steamed up when I wrote my earlier comment.
October 18, 2016 @ 2:32 pm
You wouldn’t give an Oscar to musician…unless you’re Ryan Bingham, that is.
October 18, 2016 @ 7:39 pm
Yes, but that Oscar was for a musical category. As many have said, you want to give a Nobel to a musician? Make music a category. I’m all for it.
October 19, 2016 @ 10:16 am
Yes, they really should make a Nobel category for songwriting.
October 18, 2016 @ 8:26 pm
Or Bruce Springsteen
October 18, 2016 @ 2:52 pm
Dylan actually has an Oscar and a Golden Globe for “Things Have Changed” (2000) from the movie, “Wonder Boys”. It was chosen Best Original Song by both organizations
October 18, 2016 @ 3:19 pm
At first, I agreed with you 100 percent. Then I had a lengthy argument about it and have to concede the point that songwriting is poetry, and a song is defined as a poem set to music. Literature is written works, and poetry and songwriting are forms of it. If songwriting is a form of literature, Dylan does deserve it.
October 18, 2016 @ 4:22 pm
“A truckload of art, sits burning on the highway. Precious objects are scattered all over the ground. It was a terrible site, if there was someone to see it. But there wasn’t a nobody around ”
Then yodel….
October 18, 2016 @ 4:36 pm
I’m no expert on Nobel prizes, but I would assume that the prizes are supposed to be awarded to individuals based on accomplishments over the previous year. I mean, you don’t give the peace prize to Mother Theresa or Martin Luther King this year. You gave it to them when they were alive and did something to deserve it. If my interpretation is correct, what has Bob Dylan written this year (or even in the past thirty years) to deserve a Nobel prize? Perhaps he should have won back in say, 1965. It kind of seems like an attention-getting gimmick for them to bring attention to their awards. I suppose it worked.
October 18, 2016 @ 7:35 pm
Only the Peace Pruze works like that. That’s why the Peace Prize has such a shitty track record.
The rest are lifetime achievement awards, which is why they usually have great track records.
October 18, 2016 @ 8:46 pm
It’s funny to see a bunch of people who frequent a website/blog devoted to delving deeply into a particular area of popular music–angry and bitching because a revered songwriter was awarded a literature prize.
If this were a literature blog and I saw people complaining about Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for literature, I would understand or even expect it. But on music/songwriting site? Bizarre.
October 18, 2016 @ 9:18 pm
“If this were a literature blog and I saw people complaining about Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for literature, I would understand or even expect it. But on music/songwriting site? Bizarre.”
This was the whole reason I chose to post it. I felt like all the literary critics of this decision needed someone from the music world to stick up for them. I understand it is unusual, and I respect anyone who feels like Dylan deserves the distinction. But as soon as I heard the news, this was my immediate reaction. I’m a fan of country music, but I’m a fan of good writing too. Bob Dylan has received his fair share of accolades, and is likely to receive even more. This is one that could have gone to someone more deserving in the literature field. In my opinion.
October 19, 2016 @ 10:51 am
BUT here me out. if I may.
What work of literature released even in the past decade will ever have the type of acclaim that a Dylan song has?
I’d rather Axl Rose get a CMA for male vocalist than Luke Bryan, because at least Axl Rose is a hell of a singer.
I’d rather Dylan get a literature award for his music than see it go to some cheap novel that will be populating Goodwill en masse in ten years.
If someone in the literature field actually deserved it, and there probably was someone, I might say let them have it.
But I’d rather honor quality of work than the type of work it is.
I’d rather the CMAs award talented non-Country artists than give the awards to untalented people who make Country Music.
Dylan probably doesn’t “deserve” the distinction, but if nothing else it helps maintain the sanctity of the concept of an award by not giving it to someone who doesn’t meet the criteria.
We can argue for days whether or not a Dylan song is literature, we can argue for days if Luke Bryan is a Country singer.
But it’s blatantly obvious to anyone that Luke Bryan isn’t a great singer, and if the award cites singing ability as merit, it should go to someone who can sing,
Likewise, whether or not Dylan’s work is literature, if the award cites quality composition and word choice as a qualification, and the actual novels don’t measure up (like twiglight or 50 shades) then Dylan deserves the award because it’s better to give it to someone based on merit rather than a “type of work” or “genre” distinction.
October 19, 2016 @ 1:34 pm
Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates?
NW, by Zadie Smith?
And, again, it’s a lifetime achievement award. Heaney received his in 1995, and his most highly regarded works are from 1966 and 1975 (my favorite sequence of his, the Clearances sonnets, were published in 1987).
The better question is which living non-Laureate had a better literary body over the last 30 years. Stuff like Twilight doesn’t enter into it.
October 18, 2016 @ 7:07 pm
Your words were perfect! I was astounded that that guy got a Nobel Prize!
October 18, 2016 @ 7:33 pm
Just hoping they’re doing this to get some headlines for an actual literary figure next time.
John Banville maybe?
October 19, 2016 @ 12:11 am
I really don’t understand this desire to separate songwriters from literature, as if Robert Johnson, Hank Williams, Joni Mitchell, Willie Dixon or Lou Reed aren’t more important “literary” figures than 99% of page poets. “Cognitive thought” would be infinitely impoverished without them.
October 19, 2016 @ 10:20 am
“I really don’t understand this desire to separate songwriters from literature.”
The written word is under siege more than any other artistic medium in society. Institutions like the Nobel Prize are one of the very last bulkheads of support behind literature before it completely evaporates. Giving the award to someone who makes their living primarily in music is like a nail in the coffin. Who out there in the world has never been exposed to Bob Dylan’s music, and now will be because he won this award? Meanwhile, a novelist or a poet could have their entire career solidified around this distinction.
October 19, 2016 @ 7:42 am
I just don’t understand Bob . I mean…. I ‘literally ‘ don’t understand Bob . I NEED to read his lyrics cuz I just don’t understand Bob when he sings them . I have to wonder if Bob is who Sturgill listened to in developing a vocal …style ?
One other thing I don’t understand . How ignorant , inexcusable and insulting is if for guys like Bob and Van Morrison to almost completely ignore an audience that’s paid a King’s ransom to see a live show and then expect that audience to continue paying their rent , clothing their kids , putting food on their table and buying the Porsche and every new album they release year after year. Or maybe I should be asking ” How foolish is that audience “. Good manners are the basis of respectful behaviour. My folks taught me that while I was still crawling .
Oh ….and yeah …..what Trigger said .
October 19, 2016 @ 8:17 am
Really? I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem understanding the words when Bob sings. There might be a lot of them and I don’t know what they mean all the time, but such is my experience with poetry sometimes.
As to your second point, I pretty much agree. I’ve seen Bob once in the mid 90’s, which would have been a couple of years or so before Time Out of Mind and his comeback.. He actually did say hello midway through prior to introducing his band, but that was it. Show was OK. Maybe if it was fantastic I’d have gone to see him again. From what I here, it’s a crapshoot going to see him.
October 19, 2016 @ 10:09 am
Dylan is extremely overrated but at least, they didn’t give the award to Taylor Swift.
October 19, 2016 @ 2:44 pm
You’re the only one that you are screwing,
when you put down what you don’t understand.
October 19, 2016 @ 3:12 pm
Amen ….
October 19, 2016 @ 11:19 pm
On what planet is Dylan overrated? Please elaborate beyond your opinion. Whether you like Dylan or despise him, there is little argument that the man was a huge influential force in music, at the least in the mid-twentieth century if your being stingy, and beyond if you’re being honest.
October 19, 2016 @ 3:14 pm
”Dylan is extremely overrated but at least, they didn’t give the award to Taylor Swift.”
I meant ‘ Amen’ to this comment .
October 19, 2016 @ 4:02 pm
Bob Dylan deserves an award for what he does, and I’m sure he has received a number of them. I say, even if there are plenty of unrecognized authors and poets out there who can use the benefit of receiving such a Noble reward, Dylan’s songwriting shall be acknowledged at the least. He singlehandedly wrote countless songs and others can benefit upon: From his old work to his new work. Once he was interviewed in the 1960s about whether or not he plays his old songs in his shows, he at the time said “no” in response. I thought about this and I realized how his current concerts hardly ever feature a handful of his older materials, and that was when I remembered him saying “I sing about how I feel, and if I am not feeling that way, then there is no use for me singing those songs.” Granted his setlists at most of his concerts are more of the same per tour, much like other artists these days, I figure that what he sings is what he has to say at a time.
Recently, he played at the two Desert Trip festivals in Indio, California, and both concerts, as well as a Vegas one that he had in between were mostly about the songs of his past. Partly, these old setlists could have been a part of his Noble Prize award, or likely because he wanted to suit the event’s concept about nostalgia, as the setlists from the other artists in the festival were at least slightly modified as well.
October 19, 2016 @ 5:08 pm
I agree with a person who was quoted in the New York Times as saying this is an award for them all.
All of the great songwriters through the American tradition, Robert J, Hank, Cole Porter, Woody G., if you will, all of them in the that great tradition. No other organization can actually deliver that tribute as effectively as the Nobel committe.
October 19, 2016 @ 8:01 pm
But if it was an award for them all then it would been awarded to them all. This was awarded to Bob Dylan and only Bob Dylan.
October 19, 2016 @ 9:15 pm
Billy Joe Shaver on the Imus in the Morning show accused Dylan of not giving him credit for a song Dylan recorded. Others have said something similar. Big NO on the Nobel prize to that turkey.
October 21, 2016 @ 11:21 pm
Thank you for writing this. I’ve felt very alone in my opinion that Dylan does not deserve the Literature prize. I think the debate about Dylan receiving this award is not about putting him down as an artist. It’s about a fundamental difference in opinion about what the purpose of this award is. For me, it should go to someone who is writing literature. Period. It’s not a music award. Dylan deserves all the music awards.
As someone who cares about actual literature and actual books, I’m disappointed that the award did not go to a writer who would have appreciated and deserved it. It’s surprising because, over the last few years, the Nobel prize for literature has gone to some obscure writers and it really gave those writers more notoriety and made it possible for their work to reach a greater audience and to be translated into English. Think of Patrick Modiano, a French writer who received the award a few years ago. Before the award, few of his books were available in English. Now, many of them have been translated and published. Just last year, the academy gave the award to Svetlana Alexievich who, over many decades, has produced innovative, vital, and essential work about Chernobyl and the Soviet Union.
There are so many writers doing important work, who are dedicating their lives to the written word and who are illuminating the human condition. This was a missed opportunity to give those writers the recognition they deserve. Dylan has attention and accolades. No one is diminishing his contribution. We are just asking that a prize for literature go to those who are creating actual literature.
October 26, 2016 @ 7:49 am
Dylan is bigger than the silly Nobel.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/opinion/the-meaning-of-bob-dylans-silence.html?referer=
November 4, 2016 @ 12:08 pm
Nonsense. Dylan doesn’t sing well or play well; his magic is on the lyrics which when you read them without the foreknowledge of them being songs will find very good poetry almost unimaginable as just verses for singing. And why did the Academy lost its credibility? For not awarding any American for a long time I will assume. The world isn’t America. Joyce Carol Oates and Cormac McCarthy perhaps are deserving of the Prize, Mr. Roth and Mr. Pynchon not so much and so wasn’t the French Mr. Modiano. The only thing that irks me about Dylan’s Nobel is that it goes for another anglophone; you know, there’s more languages beyond english and french and german; portuguese, czech, hungarian and korean, for example, are vastly underrated languages with dense and beautiful literature of much higher quality that anything any anglophone have produced in the past two decades. For solely literary value I (opinion) would say that John Banville is one of the very few anglophones who deserve such as the Nobel.
December 12, 2016 @ 1:17 am
“Aside from Willie Nelson, there is no other musical creature alive on planet Earth that deserves more praise for their auditory contributions to human civilization than Bob Dylan. ”
On this planet really? Maybe in America, but not in the rest of the world.
February 15, 2017 @ 5:44 pm
Dylan is overrated. The whole movement are overrated. The times they where changing indeed, and they would whether or not filthy hippies would do drugs, fuck and listen to pointless pretentious lyrics like Dylan’s. It was the time for change so the world changed.
And the peace prize to a musician is ridiculous, nobody gets peaceful by listening to a fucking song. Why don’t we send Dylan to the Middle East then so he can make some songs and make some change over there as well? Well coz it doesn’t fucking work like that, just like ppl don’t get violent from video games, death metal or action movies, ppl don’t get peaceful all of a sudden through music.
The reason Dylan got the Nobel prize is coz the members of the committee is of that same age and has their head up their pretentious asses and of course loves Dylan coz back then we really did something!! Dylan is a genius! He pretty much saved the world with his in-cohesive ramblings!!
Yeah well fuck off hippies, i bet there is ruthless capitalist out there that has done more for humanity than Dylan just by pure accident and greed.
Dylans music is good and deep if you’re young without responsibility, getting fucked up, talking about how the world works and how you are going to solve all it’s problem without really knowing shit.
Somehow ppl from that generation never grew out of that mindset and it’s quite sad, and now they are handing out Nobel prizes to their teen idols. Funny how things work out sometimes=)
April 1, 2018 @ 1:02 pm
Bob Dylan is to music what Picasso is to art: tremendously overrated.
April 15, 2020 @ 3:21 pm
The Nobel Prize in Literature is perceived as a “high art” institution, and Dylan was the principal actor in tearing down the distinction between “high” and “low”, popular art in the 60s. That’s why awarding him the Literature Nobel makes sense: he’s the guy who, in this day and age, made it impossible to see a work of popular art as something that cannot have high artistic merit and consequently deserve recognition by a “high art” institution.
And he deserved it if only for writing “To Ramona.”
Speaking of Dylan being busy being Dylan, here is a little film whose “Dylan” arguably outdylaned even the man himself.
https://vimeo.com/400946288?fbclid=IwAR0XUFVDZNLrblGRPfur7Au2jOUvdlJioxkwVcGoiTBL03DB2o662J2Vd6I