@aLynHall, your complaints might be more credible if Dylan weren’t a giant of 20th century words. He may not be to YOUR highfalutin taste, but he is a cultural icon, and, importantly, still alive to receive this.
Maybe the nobel committee should think about starting a new award for popular music? It’s a powerful enough force in the world to deserve it. Then you wouldn’t have to have this debate.
3 Likes
I respect Bob Dylan’s work, but 20th century is a bit of a stretch. A giant of mid-20th century words, one of many who ended up the face of a movement, but just one of the many, who happened to cross over to Pop enough to achieve that.
Thus he is a political choice given the current political climate. I don’t have a problem with Bob Dylan, I just think it is difficult to see this as anything but a snide comment on American politics.
2 Likes
It could also be a recognition that he’s getting older and if they’re going to honor him, now is the time. Unfortunately, that means they’ll never get a chance to give it to Leonard Cohen, as he’s not looking great lately…
3 Likes
While I like Cohen, probably 95% of the people in the world who can recite a few lines of Dylan never heard of him.
[quote=“aLynHall, post:23, topic:87362”]
I just think it is difficult to see this as anything but a snide comment on American politics.
[/quote] Perhaps for a few such as you, but not for the many millions worldwide.
1 Like
True, and I agree that Dylan is a worthy candidate for the award, but there is something to be said for the award being given for something more than popularity - which isn’t why Dylan got it. I think it’s more like it was in spite of his commercial success. One can be like Dylan, both literary and popular, but not being incredibly popular certainly doesn’t rule someone out for a Nobel. Plus, Cohen has books of poetry and novels to his credit, in addition to his albums.
But honestly, I just read a long form article on Cohen and he’s pretty infirm at this point. It would be nice to see him honored like this for his work.
4 Likes
But influence doesn’t seem to be that common of a choice in the Literature prize. There were some people who were famous beforehand (Hemingway, Steinbeck, etc.), but quite often the winner is a writer from a third-world nation that few people outside their nation has heard of and whose winning is (at least in part) a way to make the rest of the world notice the problems of their country’s post-colonial development as described in their work.
1 Like
I agree, but it needs to be balanced with “the tree falls in the forest”. The Science Nobels don’t honor well done but irrelevant works. They honor the ones that have become the building blocks of science. Dylan’s work was a building block of postwar world culture. He inspired the subsequent generations of “singer-songwriters”, something that had been a rarity before. The Beatles and Stones saw him as encouragement to write their own words and music at a time they were doing covers. He validated the idea of really expressing yourself in the medium of music at a time when pop music was vapid. In the Billboard top 10 of 1962 when he released his 1st album was Roses Are Red (My Love), Mashed Potato Time & The Twist.
2 Likes
I think that’s more true now than it was, historically the west and global north are overly represented. The literature prize has more recently sought to highlight the post-colonial world/global south, but pretty that’s a pretty recent developement:
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lists/countries.html
Someone from france has won a nobel 51 times since 1903, for example. Germany 61. Sweden 29. UK 85. USA 259. That’s spread among all the prizes.
And, as I said, I agree that influence isn’t the sole reason to give the award. That doesn’t disqualify them either. If either Fela Kuti or Bob Marley were still around, both of them would be more than worthy of this prize.
3 Likes
Sure. And he was a poetic songwriter to boot. So, again, I’m not arguing against Dylan getting the award, rather that a number of factors go into the choice and that popularity doesn’t need to be a key measuring stick, especially album sales in the west.
Plus, let’s not forget that while Dylan is an influence here, there are plenty of other artists who are as well known in other places who just never made a dent in US/Western Europe. Someone like Umm Kulthum was incredibly influential across the global south, for example. And I mentioned Fela above.
1 Like
from the other thread:
the analysis ITT is more well thought-out than over there. I guess I was thinking more as @aLynHall (albeit from a more naive perspective) but @gellfex made a good point [quote=“gellfex, post:28, topic:87362”]
it needs to be balanced with “the tree falls in the forest”. The Science Nobels don’t honor well done but irrelevant works. They honor the ones that have become the building blocks of science. Dylan’s work was a building block of postwar world culture.
[/quote]
Well, I dunno. His fans look kind of dour, like he’s bringing them down. I hope he followed it up with “Bob Dylan’s Blues” or maybe “I Shall Be Free.”
1 Like
He’s not part of the zeitgeist anymore, but he has put out some highly critically acclaimed albums in the last thirty years. Personally, while I admit it’s not as groundbreaking, I would rank 2001’s Love and Theft up there with his 60’s work.
1 Like
Oh, man. That’s a bummer to hear. He’s like what you would end up with if Bob Dylan could actually carry a tune.
5 Likes
It’s doubtful he’ll tour again, apparently. I read this yesterday:
I dunno, I think Dylan and Cohen are very different kind of songwriters. Plus, Cohen is a novelist and poet.
3 Likes
Yeah, they called him Judas, and no one even got the reference til a few millenia later.
1 Like
This made me laugh out loud, when there’s so many out there who dis Cohen’s vocal ability as well.
3 Likes
4 Likes
Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:
At the New Republic yesterday, Alex Shepard suggested that this might be the year for Don DeLillo to win the Nobel Prize in Literature:
No American has won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 23 years, not since Toni Morrison. And it’s easy to presume that the game is rigged against the United States:
In 2008, Horace Engdahl, then the permanent secretary of the Swedish
Academy, went out of his way to dis American literature as a
whole…The backlash to Engdahl’s comments was severe…But the criticism changed nothing: Seven Nobel Prizes in Literature have been awarded since then, and none of them went to Americans. Many in the U.S…think that the Swedish Academy has blackballed American writers.
…Of all the leading American Nobel candidates, DeLillo is a
writer of the moment… Swedish journalist Jens Liljestrand of the
newspaper Expressen also thinks that this might be DeLillo’s year. “The Academy is very much aware of the fact that their disregard for American literature is starting to look silly, and might even make the ‘brand’ of the Nobel Prize suffer internationally,” he wrote in an email.
Call me cynical, but this is the lens through which I judge Bob
Dylan’s Nobel win. The Academy did indeed feel like their boycott of
American literature was starting to look silly, but they still didn’t
want to award a prize to an actual American writer. So they chose Dylan.
No matter what you think of his work, I view this as practically the
ultimate snub of American novelists. You think Pynchon and DeLillo
and Roth and Oates are great writers? Hah! They’re not even up to the
standards of a good pop singer.
And now they can spend another two decades ignoring American writers.
2 Likes
I adore Bob Dylan’s music. I had a boyfriend (oh, Dave, you were lovely) who insisted that his words and his voice were inextricable – to love one was to love the other. I still don’t know if I agree with him. But this Nobel decision has both thrilled and disturbed me. If we are handing out Nobel prizes to songwriters, it’s Joni Mitchell. Always. There’s a contemporary of his, of sorts, who radically changed the narrative from “how many roads does a man walk down” to “hey, buddy, we’re here too and want all the same ‘On the Road’ freedoms you mofos have (really, really poorly realized interpretation of her work).”
I’m not purposefully trying to veer into gender politics, but I am suggesting it’s important we ask why. Why him? Why now? And what does the Nobel mean? Is it meaningful anymore, and if so, then why more old, white guys instead of the fantastic stuff produced by so many others?
6 Likes
