Music
Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize in Literature
by Jeremy Mersereau
October 13, 2016
The Nobel prize goes to an unorthodox, but legendary, choice.
Many Bob Dylan fans will admit that Dylan lyrics are sometimes better read than heard, and it appears that the Nobel committee agrees: they’ve awarded him the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature.
The Swedes decided to grant the 75-year-old music legend the prize for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,” as per Professor Sara Danius, the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy:
Bob Dylan is the first American to win the prize since novelist Toni Morrison in 1993. The Nobel for lit is given in recognition of an entire lifetime’s body of work rather than a single project, and will be presented to Dylan on December 10th. Danius explained the committee’s choice by likening Dylan’s poetic to the greats, and by “greats” I mean the real greats. Get out of here, Auden!
“If you look back, far back … you discover Homer and Sappho,” Danius said. “And they wrote poetic texts that were meant to be listened to, they were to meant to be performed, often with instruments. But we still read Homer and Sappho and enjoy it, it’s the same way with Bob Dylan”.
Dylan will be awarded 8 million Swedish kronor, or about 1.2 million CAD for his five-decade career of writing lyrics to raspily sing. Well, at least the money’s going to someone that needs it. I think it’s been scientifically proven who the prize should have gone to, though.
[H/T Spin]
