Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize...for Literature

Jaymann · Post by **Jaymann** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 8:58 am

Yes it's true.
You gotta think Masters of War weighed heavily on the decision. But surely Hurricane put him over the top:

...And ride a horse along a trail
But then they took him to the jailhouse
Where they try to turn a man into a mouse

Lagom Lite · Post by **Lagom Lite** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 9:08 am

Jaymann wrote:Yes it's true.
You gotta think Masters of War weighed heavily on the decision. But surely Hurricane put him over the top:

...And ride a horse along a trail
But then they took him to the jailhouse
Where they try to turn a man into a mouse

Ah! You beat me to it. I deleted my double post.

Congrats to the USA!

Swedish Academy says: "...for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 9:11 am

I look forward to Little Wayne winning in 2035.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 9:42 am

Hurricane? Really? Some of his worst lyrics (imo, of course)

We're gonna put his ass in stir
We're gonna pin this triple mur
der on him
He ain't no Gentleman Jim

No one here loves Zimmy more than I, and Yay for the Nobel Prize, but Hurricane?

Give me a break.

Jag · Post by **Jag** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 9:43 am

tgb wrote:Hurricane? Really? Some of his worst lyrics (imo, of course)

We're gonna put his ass in stir
We're gonna pin this triple mur
der on him
He ain't no Gentleman Jim
No one here loves Zimmy more than I, and Yay for the Nobel Prize, but Hurricane?

Give me a break.

The lyrics may not be his best, but the story he tells is chilling and something all to common today.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 9:52 am

Jag wrote: the story he tells is chilling and something all to common today.

Which could be said for many of his songs. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol still gets me choked up.

This? I still crack up.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 10:24 am

Thankfully they're celebrating a body of work, so you guys can both be right!

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 10:27 am

Honestly, this seems like a cop-out to me. As much as I love Dylan's songs, we go to popular music and literature for different things, and I don't thing Dylan's lyrics hold up there.

Plus there's a whiff of "Lifetime Achievement Award" about this. Plenty of accomplished authors are far more deserving.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 10:31 am

I think I have to disagree. I think the work he's done over his lifetime more than merits this kind of recognition. More so than any other artist I can think of, he's given a voice to so many events and people throughout some truly turbulent times in American history.

malchior · Post by **malchior** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 10:32 am

I have been reading articles all week about how Americans keep getting snubbed for Literature. That said - many of them indicated it generally is seen as a Lifetime Achievement award which is why they tend to be older than other Nobel winners. I think it was an interesting way for the Swedes to both award an American (a worthy one IMO) but also thumb their nose at "traditional" American authors.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 11:37 am

hepcat wrote:I think I have to disagree. I think the work he's done over his lifetime more than merits this kind of recognition. More so than any other artist I can think of, he's given a voice to so many events and people throughout some truly turbulent times in American history.

But for Literature?

Binktopia · Post by **Binktopia** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 11:39 am

Isn't poetry a kind of literature?

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 11:42 am

and music is a form of poetry.

Look. I get it. But he is a song writer. "WRITER", sure.... but it's music - it's its own art. IMO - separate from "Literature".

Perhaps to me, Literature comes without a tune.

Lols.... I guess that's where Dylan slipped in.

Binktopia · Post by **Binktopia** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 11:55 am

Music is the sound that often accompany a song. I listen to a lot of music that has words, and even though I cannot hear the words am still moved.

Dylan's poetry can move you without his music. People sing the Chimes of Freedom and feel uplifted, People sing the Motorpsycho Nightmare and laugh, people sing God on our side and think, and you don't need a guitar or harmonic to feel those things!

In fact, a lot of critics used to say his music was too simple. That he just used the same three cords. But his songs and are ideas are what inspired people. His stories, the lonesome death of Hattie Carrol, A Hard Rain is a Gonna fall, The Ballad of Hollis Brown were stories and had lessons did reflect ideas of America.

I would say Literature is a perfect place to park Dylan. He also wrote poetry books, and a really good autobiography. He had a way with words that really evoke a kind of truth that we all carry, somehow he touches us in such a deep place that we have to sit and pay attention.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 12:23 pm

I don't get or care for Bob Dylan but I respect that he is a huge influence in literature and would be considered outstanding over his lifetime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... _Bob_Dylan

This list contains songs written by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, including those where he is credited as co-author. The list omits traditional songs where Dylan has claimed arranger's copyright, as well as songs he recorded but were written by other songwriters. 522 songs are listed; arranged alphabetically.

And I think that this goes doubly so when it comes to history. He has been a tale teller of Americana longer than I have lived. He has painted pictures of our history in its beauty and its ugliness for the greater part of a century. He has symbolized and his music has been a symbol for positive change in our many cultures.

The only other musician/lyricist that comes close with such a body of work and influence is Leonard Cohen and he's Canadian. :p However, Cohen has been in the Norton Anthology of Poetry for as long as I've known of its existence for his song writing, specifically for "Suzanne".

And with all of that said, he is literally the worst concert I have ever seen. I got dragged to see him for free by woman I couldn't say "no" to. On the bright side, the Foo Fighters doing an acoustic set were the opener and they were fantastic.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 12:43 pm

So, really my only thorn here is that I feel some author somewhere likely deserved this, for literature, and that Dylan should be praised in the music world.
I'm not up-in-arms about it, but I feel like there are other places he can and should be celebrated.
No biggie.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 12:44 pm

Unagi wrote:and music is a form of poetry.

Look. I get it. But he is a song writer. "WRITER", sure.... but it's music - it's its own art. IMO - separate from "Literature".

Perhaps to me, Literature comes without a tune.

Lols.... I guess that's where Dylan slipped in.

If Gilgamesh and other tales handed down over the centuries in various forms can be considered literature, I see no reason to discount songs.

But I would say that Dylan's work transcends the medium that conveys it.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 12:45 pm

I'm opening my mind to it with each post!

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 12:48 pm

Binktopia wrote: I would say Literature is a perfect place to park Dylan. He also wrote poetry books, and a really good autobiography. He had a way with words that really evoke a kind of truth that we all carry, somehow he touches us in such a deep place that we have to sit and pay attention.

I'm pretty sure he's still alive.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 12:49 pm

Unagi wrote:So, really my only thorn here is that I feel some author somewhere likely deserved this, for literature, and that Dylan should be praised in the music world.
I'm not up-in-arms about it, but I feel like there are other places he can and should be celebrated.
No biggie.

Understood, but from my perspective you are caught up in the music while I am caught up in literature as one of the humanities, a written expression of who we are and who we want to be, using symbols and allegories and alliteration and rhyming and rhythm and empathy. Music was a vehicle for the deliberate use of the words to paint a fiction that stands in for reality, in this case.

Note, while I can't give it to him for his entire body of work, as I've noted elsewhere, I think The Wall is the single greatest expression of 20th century art. Not music, but art. And that comes mainly from the words. Waters painted picture that carried us through the entire 20th century and he did it with all of the traditional and modern art styles. Literally taking us from a history expressed as the grand histroi(?) to petit histio that came in the form of a reaction the to the world wars and industry and what it's done to humanity, accepting unto post modernist thought the lines between author, narrator, and audience have blurred. Everything about the work is almost magic when it comes to learning how to "appreciate" art and the humanities like a critic would have you do.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 12:51 pm

Binktopia wrote:somehow he touches us in such a deep place that we have to sit and pay attention.

Are you trying to get this moved to R&P and get him placed on a sex offenders watch list?

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 12:55 pm

However, I do believe that Dylan failed to capture the spirit of later generations. A spirit that can be so succinctly and beautifully summed up with words like:

I like big butts and I can not lie
You other brothers can't deny
That when a girl walks in with an itty bitty waist
And a round thing in your face
You get sprung, want to pull up tough
'Cause you notice that butt was stuffed

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 1:00 pm

I dunno

Rubin Carter was falsely tried
The crime was murder one, guess who testified
Bello and Bradley and they both baldly lied
And the newspapers, they all went along for the ride
How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool's hand
To see him obviously framed
Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game

Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise
While Rubin sits like Buddha in a ten-foot cell
An innocent man in a living hell
That's the story of the Hurricane
But it won't be over till they clear his name
And give him back the time he's done
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world

Pretty well captures the class warfare justice system and BLM movement that's been boiling over for the last couple of years.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 1:06 pm

But does it let us know that a big ol' butt can solve many of our social issues? That stuffed jeans are something to aspire to?

Nay, it does not. It simply rails on about a falsely imprisoned man who never once experiences a big ol' butt during the course of the song.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 1:23 pm

You got me. I'm not even close to Dylan literate enough to know if he alludes to the coming of the Kardashians in his lyric. He's got to mention The Simple Life or Road Rules somewhere, right?

Binktopia · Post by **Binktopia** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 1:43 pm

Sorry if I am up in arms about it... I just was trying to speak my opinions... Sorry if anyone felt bad or defensive...

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 1:47 pm

Where did you get the idea that anyone was being defensive or felt offended?

As far as I can tell, this has been a pretty cordial conversation...barring my goofy ass, light hearted comments, of course. You're amongst friends, my man.

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 2:51 pm

My attitude here is cordial disagreement.

To say that Dylan isn't literature isn't to say that his excellent, excellent songwriting isn't doubly excellent. It's that literature does its work with language alone and always has, and Dylan's lyrics as language alone very often leave something to be desired. (Music. That something is music.)

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 3:02 pm

Lyrical works can most certainly be literature, in my opinion (and at least one other).

The definition of lyrical is a literary or creative work that can be sung, or is a literary work that is the author's feelings or emotions in an enthusiastic way.

Heck, it may even be one of the earliest forms of literature. Lyric poetry from the ancient Greeks, for example.

But even its purest definition, written works, applies to Dylan's lyrics. The music behind his words has always been more of an afterthought. Its his words that have always drawn the greatest accolades. I think this award simply acknowledges that.

edit: I also found this interesting tidbit on another site:

An estimated 1,000 books have been devoted to the Minnesota-born singer-songwriter in his 75 years, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education. His song “Desolation Row” is in the 2006 Oxford Book of American Poetry, and “Mr. Tambourine Man” is in the tenth edition of The Norton Introduction to Literature.

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 3:36 pm

Sure, sure. Definitions can be stretched. But the Nobel has a very well established tradition that has respected the modern sense of literature as published fiction, poetry, and drama.

I'm not really up in arms about this, since the Nobel isn't nearly as important as some other prizes to the life of the literary world (and in fact prizes themselves aren't really that important). But it just seems a little odd.

I'll go ahead and say it, though: a lot of Dylan's most famous songs are weak as poetry. He forces meaning into rhyme in ways that feel really forced, and he often doesn't develop a conceit or an image beyond its first formulation. If he had published his albums as books of poetry, he'd just be considered a minor among the Beats.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 3:55 pm

Sure, sure. Definitions can be stretched. But the Nobel has a very well established tradition that has respected the modern sense of literature as published fiction, poetry, and drama.

I don't think that's stretching the definition of literature, but I do think citing a "modern sense of literature" does.

I'll go ahead and say it, though: a lot of Dylan's most famous songs are weak as poetry.

And I'm sure he'd agree with you in many cases. But what writer with the prolific output of a Bob Dylan wouldn't have some misfires?

But a thousand misfires are immediately forgotten when you get something like Desolation Row.

They're selling postcards of the hanging, they're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors, the circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner, they've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker, the other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless, they need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight, from Desolation Row
Cinderella, she seems so easy, "It takes one to know one, " she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning. "You Belong to Me I Believe"
And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend, you'd better leave"
And the only sound that's left after the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up on Desolation Row

They're selling postcards of the hanging is just such a great opening line.

Side note: I also think that Tom Waits will be mentioned in the same conversations as Bob Dylan someday. Or at least I hope so. I'd like to think that Nick Cave would be squeezed into those talks as well, but I'm betting he's a little too hard edged and cynical.

Side note 2:

Not really in defense of my point, but just because I like Robyn Hitchcock.

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 4:27 pm

I do like this:

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 4:31 pm

Very few lyricists, perhaps none, can be left in a void of no music IMO. And that's by design. It's the medium they are working with. That said, you can take a few lyricists and reduce their work to language and still have something amazing after you've removed the music.

Off the top of my head.

Peter Gabriel
Paul Simon
On his better days, Peter Murphy (do they all star with P?)
Leonard Cohen (I guess not)
And Bob Dylan
come to mind without having to have a debate or thinking too hard.

Their work with language is a collection is amazing.

Paul Simon, OMG, he is literary master to my untrained brain. Maybe it's because his lyric always intrigue me and Dylan's don't but when you sit down and listen to his stuff, it's like he's Mark Twain. He'll tell you there is nothing particular deep going on. No allegory. No nothing. But when you hear his lyric, it's like he's begging you to uncover what he's really talking about. How do you not associate "Graceland" on at least two different wavelengths of Elvis and the roots of modern music and Africa and the spirit only to realize he's maybe he's looking for personal redemption published for my amusement and his profit or is the need for redemption a ubiquitous state of humanity? Was he weaving back and forth intending all of this or something else?

And I suspect Eminem will some day be appreciated for his work with language, though I can't give him accolades I give the others because his work with language doesn't run as deep, as absolutely stunning beautiful and original as it is. There is not question he is a top level poet, but the substance isn't quite there.

I suck at it but I love art talk. I love how people do or don't appreciate the creation of ideas.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 4:34 pm

hepcat wrote:Heck, it may even be one of the earliest forms of literature. Lyric poetry from the ancient Greeks, for example.

In the form of plays, handed down orally. Crazy man, crazy.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 4:39 pm

hepcat wrote:But a thousand misfires are immediately forgotten when you get something like Desolation Row.

They're selling postcards of the hanging, they're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors, the circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner, they've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker, the other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless, they need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight, from Desolation Row
Cinderella, she seems so easy, "It takes one to know one, " she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning. "You Belong to Me I Believe"
And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend, you'd better leave"
And the only sound that's left after the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up on Desolation Row

Wait, that was published in 2005 and not a single mention of a big ass?

Foxy Shazam beats Dylan according to your own standards.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 4:40 pm

Binktopia wrote:Sorry if I am up in arms about it... I just was trying to speak my opinions... Sorry if anyone felt bad or defensive...

Not at all. Your post was heart felt and honestly made me look at it a bit differently. I truly gained from reading it.

Serious here: How can I deny YOU the literature of Bob Dylan. ya know?

I do this All over life. I like my labels on things and my definitions of things. And the world isn't as Crisp and Clean as I often think it is supposed to be, and then I often learn I'm OK with my new understanding and move onto some other thing I'm being inappropriately rigid about.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 4:46 pm

LordMortis wrote:
hepcat wrote:But a thousand misfires are immediately forgotten when you get something like Desolation Row.

They're selling postcards of the hanging, they're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors, the circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner, they've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker, the other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless, they need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight, from Desolation Row
Cinderella, she seems so easy, "It takes one to know one, " she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning. "You Belong to Me I Believe"
And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend, you'd better leave"
And the only sound that's left after the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up on Desolation Row
Wait, that was published in 2005 and not a single mention of a big ass?

I didn't quote ALL of the damn song, man.

p.s. Desolation Row was released in 1965.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 4:47 pm

Holman wrote:I do like this:

yeah. I like that too.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 4:52 pm

What if someone's work was released only on audible.com?

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Thu Oct 13, 2016 5:01 pm

hepcat wrote:p.s. Desolation Row was released in 1965.

So now you're telling me

His song “Desolation Row” is in the 2006 Oxford Book of American Poetry

Is a work that will fail to capture the spirit of recent generations? What the hell good is it then? Isn't that what literature is supposed to do? Be timeless insight into the spirit of what means to be soilent green?