Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize for literature

BigLicks67

Skarloey said:

That ain't the Steinbeck influence. That's Woody Guthrie. 

Is that a bad thing?

xSkarloey

It is what it is. Depends if you like Woody Guthrie. Neither of them are my preferred listening. Neither is Steinbeck my preferred reading. 

Is that a bad thing? 


Anyway, here's one for you: 


Irvine Welsh was very uncharitable about Bob Dylan yesterday. 

I'd just like to leave you in your Captain's tower with this thought: Dylan is better than Ezra Pound but nowhere near TS Eliot. 


I'm off to read a glum novella about assisted suicide and a bloke obsessed with large eared hopping animals. 

DefaultM

Went to see him a few years ago. Couldn't understand what the fuck he was singing, but it's nice to know that it was decent.

guitars4you

I was playing devils advocate a few months ago with my daughters English teachers and teh education system ramming down their throats Shelly, Wordsworth etc etc

I suggested that the lyrics of the likes of Bob Dylan should be looked at and encouraged - I'm not a Dylan fan as it happens but feel the likes of Dylan and/or Lennon would be more interesting and just as relevant, maybe more so, than Byron and his clan

Of course they did not agree - so I see some poetic justice in his achievment

Kebabkid

There was a BBC News report from Vegas this morning with a Bob Dylan fan out there claiming he took the Dylan part of his name from the great American poet, Dylan Thomas

Reverend

paging Drew...

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/oct/14/bob-dylans-nobel-prize-isnt-radical-hes-just-another-white-male-writer ;

57Deluxe

some of my best work has been penned in these threads...

ICBM

Skarloey said:

Irvine Welsh was very uncharitable about Bob Dylan yesterday.

Margaret Atwood was a bit awkward on Newsnight too - she didn't want to answer the questions about whether he deserved it or not.

It comes down to whether you think songwriting is poetry and whether you think poetry is literature, really.

Blueingreen

I don't think he deserves it, although it's hard to care very much about an award that so often goes to very obscure writers.  I'm not arguing it shouldn't go to an Albanian poet or whatever, but how many people can you reasonably expect to be interested?  Not even many Albanians I suspect.

I'm a Dylan fan up to a point (probably own around 10 albums) and I don't have a problem with a literary award going to a songwriter.  But if you abstract the literary element of what makes Dylan great (the music, the performances, the contrived persona, the other musicians, the production) it doesn't add up to enough to justify a Nobel prize.  I've read various think pieces over the past 24 hours arguing that he does deserve it and none has come close to convincing me.

Philip Larkin pretty much nailed my problem with Dylan when he said something like he creates great single lines or images but they don't often cohere as complete poems.  (Tried to Google for the actual quotation but couldn't find it).  There are exceptions (I'd say "Most of the Time" or "Ballad of a Thin Man" for example) but it holds generally true.

How you respond to that may be a matter of temperament, but I like a coherent whole.  For that reason there are lyricists I prefer to Dylan - Joni Mitchell, for sure, and possibly Tom Waits or Paul Simon.

Philip Roth is probably my favourite living novelist and regularly overlooked but I can't really say I feel any disappointment on his behalf.  He's had his fair share of success and doesn't need a prize to be great.  Overall I think he's a less significant artist than Dylan, because we've just lived through an era when rock'n'roll is a more important artistic form than the novel and Dylan is one of the greats.  But Roth would certainly have been the better choice for a literary prize.

axisus

Meh. Not into his mumbled ramblings personally. I've never got through a whole Dylan song let alone an album.

To be honest though, I'm more irked by those that think themselves important enough to bestow a gong rather than the recipient. If I was offered one I'd ask if there's a cash alternative.

Blueingreen

It's a cash prize, basically, worth nearly a million dollars.

funhouse

Who's Irvine Welsh to criticise the Nobel committee? The sad fact is that he hasn't produced anything of significant literary merit since Trainspotting. He would be well advised not to invite scrutiny of his (mediocre) literary output.

ArchtopDave

Yesterday was considerably brightened by this news. He's been an important part of my musical life since his records first appeared.

impmann

OK - Dylan's classic works are wonderful, but he hasn't really done anything that has resonated with *everyone* since the late 60s. His recent stuff maybe lyrically 'great' but its usually unintelligable and buried in piss poor arrangements (and not very good 'songs').

Does he deserve a Nobel? Hmmm - toughie. Y'see, from a lyrics perspective I'd suggest that Joni Mitchell walks all over his rambling nonsense. She can say in two lines what it takes Dylan 20+ verses to say - and that, to me, is much more clever and more worthy of such an award.

As an 'artist' he is supremely important - and from a socio-political perspective his influence cannot be over-stated.

But I'd argue that its his *influence* that is more important than his actual output. And that isn't what the prize should be awarded for...

Its a populist award, that the cynical in me says is just designed to get people talking about the Nobel prize - as most people didn't give a flying fart about them until yesterday... .

p90fool

Have a wis on all counts @impmann

Of course Dylan was the first in the pop music world to take the easy path to being hailed as a genius, ie, be so fucking breathtakingly humourless that a decent proportion of the population gets dragged along with your ego.

The fact that's it even worked for hacks like Van-bloody-Morrison and Bonio just proves my point.

ICBM

p90fool said:

The fact that's it even worked for hacks like Van-bloody-Morrison and Bonio just proves my point. 

Bono has written some pretty good lyrics though, to be fair. He does have a bit of an ego problem admittedly, and a tendency to preaching… although even then he can occasionally be worth listening to.

I'd rate Dylan higher though - he is more mystical, and doesn't always make sense, but that's also possibly why it's poetry (and hence literature) rather than just songwriting.

thebreeze

impmann said:

OK - Dylan's classic works are wonderful, but he hasn't really done anything that has resonated with *everyone* since the late 60s. His recent stuff maybe lyrically 'great' but its usually unintelligable and buried in piss poor arrangements (and not very good 'songs').

Does he deserve a Nobel? Hmmm - toughie. Y'see, from a lyrics perspective I'd suggest that Joni Mitchell walks all over his rambling nonsense. She can say in two lines what it takes Dylan 20+ verses to say - and that, to me, is much more clever and more worthy of such an award.

As an 'artist' he is supremely important - and from a socio-political perspective his influence cannot be over-stated.

But I'd argue that its his *influence* that is more important than his actual output. And that isn't what the prize should be awarded for...

Its a populist award, that the cynical in me says is just designed to get people talking about the Nobel prize - as most people didn't give a flying fart about them until yesterday... .

I'm not sure the Nobel prize is about him resonating with everyone (which isn't possible, but wasn't that Adele hit a Dylan song?).  Joni Mitchell is another genius but they're different.  However, Dylan's cannon is littered with examples of his succinct lyric writing ability as well as his ability to spin yarns, tell stories and do streams of consciousness etc.  TBH I don't know the exact parameters for what the Nobel prize should be awarded for but his writing is profound and charts 50 years of one of the most complex periods in human history - and he was the person capturing it, in a multifaceted way.