Bob Dylan awarded Nobel Prize in literature !

[sukumvit boy]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/ar...iterature.html

[Stavros]

I don't have a problem with Bob Dylan, I became a fan in the 1960s and admit the last album I bought was John Wesley Harding, after which his output declined in quality, in terms of both the lyrics and the music. As a live performer he has never held any interest and one expresses surprise he even bothers, although I understand he does it to maintain alimony payments.

The obvious problem is the Nobel prize itself, because it does nothing for literature, has over many years privileged writing in English, French, German, Spanish and Russian, and has in the same period ignored literature which may fit the vague brief of the prize awarded "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction".

What does that mean, 'in an ideal direction'? One could argue that James Joyce took language into realms of expression no other writer had produced before, or since, as in both Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake there are layers of meaning derived from words that are a fusion of European languages and ideas, while being set in a Dublin frozen in time, c1904. But is it an ideal direction if, as has been the case, few people actually read either Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake? And how has the 'stream of consciousness' novel fared since Joyce's death in 1941?

Is the ideal direction one that reaches as many people as possible? If that were the criterion, Isaac Asimov, Agatha Christie, Stephen King, Roald Dahl and other writers of huge appeal in genres such as Crime Fiction, Sci-Fi, Children's literature would all be valid candidates. Indeed, because the prize has been given to some truly poor writers such as William Golding and Doris Lessing, it would make more sense to give it to someone associated with 'Popular Fiction' than supposedly 'serious' literature, given that it is hard to take seriously the tedious English conservatism of Golding or the incoherent, amateur anthropology of Lessing, both written in sloppy English that obscures more than it reveals.

Whether or not song writing should be considered literature is another issue, for is it not more closely associated with culture and social relations in the sense in which we think of folk music as part of cultural, social and political history as we also would with, say, tapestry, pottery, art & sculpture, pop music, Jazz and the musical?

I suspect these are questions without an answer, or they offer more questions -if Bob Dylan, why not Leonard Cohen? After all he has published both poetry and fiction (assuming one sets aside Dylan's Tarantula as a publishing mistake). More intriguing still, if there were a Nobel Prize for Music, who would be the contenders? Philip Glass or Stephen Sondheim? Sofia Gubaidulina or Andrew Lloyd-Webber, or Stevie Wonder?

Maybe the best thing to do would be to abolish prizes. Starting with the Nobel nonsense.

[peejaye]

Understand what Stavros writes but I'll keep this really simple;

A total Legend in my book, up there with the very best. A very pleasant surprise in todays so predictable world. Well done Bob!

[sukumvit boy]

Lots of interesting points and questions posed by Stavros including "why not..." so and so and why not just do away with such things.
I find it interesting to peruse the list of past Literature winners .They seem to reflect the temper of the times .
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_priz...ure/laureates/
Also find it interesting to peruse the chronological discography of his work. Funny , I also stopped buying his albums around the time of the 1967 "John Wesley Harding " album , he soon after got all Christian Evangelical. However , I always thought the "Blonde On Blonde " and " Highway 61 " albums were just brilliant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan_discography

[Stavros]

QUOTE=sukumvit boy;1725056]
Also find it interesting to peruse the chronological discography of his work. Funny , I also stopped buying his albums around the time of the 1967 "John Wesley Harding " album , he soon after got all Christian Evangelical. However , I always thought the "Blonde On Blonde " and " Highway 61 " albums were just brilliant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan_discography[/QUOTE]

I am not a Dylanologist, but I think there is a distinct break between the first four albums which exhibit the debt Dylan owed to Woody Guthrie in terms of the lyrics and the music, and the apparent 'break' with the civil rights/protest movement (cf My Back Pages on Another Side of Bob Dylan) and the move to a more personal/imaginative lyric starting with Bringing It All Back Home, which contains his finest song, Mr Tambourine Man. It may be that as Dylan made more money and got more deeply into narcotics his political commitment, if it ever existed, waned perhaps in the way that those who were there when it was fresh became tired with the intensity of the movement and sought a more relaxed life. Certainly the songs become more imaginative and I think the albums starting with Bringing It All Back Home through to John Wesley Harding mark the high tide of this phase of Dylan's life which was punctuated by the 'motorcycle accident'...

I think in more general terms the question to ask might be -What does winning the Nobel Prize for Literature do for the writer's reputation? In some cases the writers are not well known, so the prize might go some way to introducing their work to a new audience, as might have been the case with the Japanese, Chinese and Arab laureates, though I doubt it much as I doubt it with regard to Elfride Jelinek, Tomas Transtromer and Svetlana Alexievich which is no slur on their reputations. In other cases, most of the writers already had a solid reputation that the Prize never affected, while for Samuel Beckett it was the money more than anything else that changed his life, giving him the means to purchase a small house outside Paris where he could write in solitude and take the numerous girl-friends who now came his way.

[nitron]

I worry sometimes , that , the Nobel Committee has a flair for existential humor.

[Yvonne183]

And Rod Stewart became a knight. There's hope for an award for Miley Cyrus in her future.

[Stavros]

And Rod Stewart became a knight. There's hope for an award for Miley Cyrus in her future.

Hmmm Yvonne...I think Ms Cyrus has to achieve something first as they don't award prizes for embarrassment or irrelevance...and Sir Roderick Stewart became a Knight Bachelor for 'services to music and charity'...

[bluesoul]

i don't think bob dylan gives a shit about a nobel prize

[sukumvit boy]

I worry sometimes , that , the Nobel Committee has a flair for existential humor.

Yes , in the tradition of Jean-Paul Sartre 1964 , T. S. Eliot 1948 and Gunter Grass 1999.