Dylan winning this award from the Nobel crew has divided opinion, with most either deriding it as the end of civilisation or questioning why such a thing took so long to happen. This is clearly part of the reason he got the award – which is part of the problem.
Instead of joining the cacophony I am going to try and seriously evaluate, as objectively as possible, Bob Dylan’s merits in regards to winning the Nobel Prize for Literature.
First off, are the lyrics to the songs he wrote literary enough on their own to merit this level of serious adulation? As a big fan of Dylan’s work (which I should mention for reasons of disclosure alone), I can say that his lyrics range from the extreme banal to the extremely awful (the lyrics to “Wiggle Wiggle” should be examined in a fresh light after the Nobel nod) to the admittedly brilliant. But even the great ones work strictly as song lyrics – i.e. as words that sound good when sung by someone, particularly Bob Dylan – rather than as literature. What I mean is they sound semi-profound when The Band is pumping along behind but rather ordinary when read on the page.
There are musical lyrics that I would count as good enough to be considered poetry – but very, very few of them. David Berman’s stuff springs to mind. The fact that 99% of you will have to Google his name tells its own story; Bergman is a poet who tried to turn his poetry into music. Dylan, in my opinion, is no poet. Therefore, I don’t feel his lyrics should be eligible for the Nobel Prize of any type on their own.
He has written some books, though, so we should consider those. His first “novel” was the infamous “Tarantula”, which may very well be the worst book ever written. If you don’t believe me, check it out for yourselves (you have been warned). So it appears that Dylan’s entire claim to literary greatness rests on one book, “Chronicles, Volume One”. This was a group of autobiographical chapters thrown together by Dylan, some of them set in the pre-fame early ’60s, some of them from the late ’60s, early 70s, after Dylan had suffered a burnout from which he never entirely recovered – at least, his mid-60s greatness was again never approximated never mind surpassed. The reason it was subtitled “Volume One” incidentally is because he was meant to write two further volumes. The first one came out in 2004. Dylan clearly didn’t get the Nobel Prize because of his work rate in regards to literature.
The “Chronicles” are okay when looked at compared to other celeb biographies. But nothing more than that.
So having evaluated the evidence, it strikes me that Mick Jagger is probably more worthy of a Nobel Prize for Literature (at least he never wrote his own “Tarantula”) than Dylan – and Mick Jagger is certainly not Nobel worthy. That’s what makes the grading of this so difficult. Bob Dylan deserves a Nobel Prize for Literature about as much as Donald Trunp deserves to be president of the United States. Which is to say not at all. So on a scale of ridiculousness regarding Dylan’s latest honour, I strangely have to give it a zero. Or infinity – either will do.
I suppose that the Nobel bunch already made a of a joke of themselves in handing Barack Obama a Nobel Peace Prize several years back. It all makes me want to rail about the world going to hell in a hand cart, but I don’t want to sound like an old man.
I supppose I should look on the bright side. My four year old daughter has started reading about biology and can speak about medical condidtions in a very, very cute (yet not altogether diagnostically accurate) manner. Next year’s recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology? You never know these days.
While I’m normally in agreement with your political views, Nick, your post on Dylan is decidedly more ‘Under The Red Sky’ than ‘Highway 61 Revisited’.
There’s room for disagreement about whether there are more deserving candidates for the prize than Dylan and even whether it should go to writers whose work is designed to be performed rather than read (although what about Dario Fo?). But surely Dylan could be seen as a great lyric poet in the tradition of (say) Robert Burns?
My formal study of poetry ended at school, but I remember learning in A level classes that what marked out poetry (and indeed literature) were such things as richness and complexity in use of language, nuance and the possibility of alternative meanings, ability to say something profound about the human condition.
On all of these points Dylan succeeds in a way that most pop lyrics, even those by notably literate and intelligent writers such as Joni Mitchell or Elvis Costello, don’t. Dylan is really practising a different art from the rest of them. Among writers of pop/rock songs, maybe only Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave transcend genres in quite the same way. Despite David Berman’s alternative career as a published poet, even his best lyrics (e.g. ‘Smith and Jones Forever’) don’t reach the same heights as, say, a ‘Jokerman’, ‘Caribbean Wind’ or ‘Visions of Johanna’.
Even a fairly straightforward Dylan song, such as ‘As I Went Out One Morning’ challenges the listener to decide whether it is simply a dreamlike shaggy dog story or a meditation on the downside of political radicalism or of Dylan’s own appropriation by the protest movement. ‘Every Grain of Sand’ is at face value an affirmation of religious faith, but one that subtly conveys the writer’s sense of doubt. I could cite any number of examples, but others have done so at greater length and better. The point is that Dylan’s lyrics are capable of being subjected to the kind of literary close reading that is normally reserved for poets rather than pop lyricists. As such I recommend this article.
So ridiculous on a scale of 1–10 – Nought I would say. Of course even the most eminent poets/literary figures have had their works dismissed as worthless. Kingsley Amis described Auden’s oeuvre as ‘Shameful shagbaggery’, while Evelyn Waugh wrote of Stephen Spender that ‘to see him fumbling with our rich and delicate language is to experience all the horror of seeing a Sevres vase in the hands of a chimpanzee.’ It is open to anyone to dismiss the literary/linguistic merits of Dylan’s work in similar (or indeed more thoughtful vein), but taken as a whole, surely in both intention and execution Dylan’s lyrics mark him out as engaged in the same kind of literary/linguistic enterprise as an Auden, Spender or Dylan Thomas (or even a Seamus Heaney to cite an actual Nobel Prize winner).
Sorry my attempt to post a hyperlink didn’t work – Where I wrote ‘recommend this article’ I meant the following link: http://www.lchr.org/a/7/kb/press.html
Well, Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
They were the best of friends
So when Frankie Lee needed money one day
Judas quickly pulled out a roll of tens
And placed them on a footstool
Just above the plotted plain
Sayin’, “Take your pick, Frankie Boy
My loss will be your gain”
Well, Frankie Lee, he sat right down
And put his fingers to his chin
But with the cold eyes of Judas on him
His head began to spin
“Would ya please not stare at me like that,” he said
“It’s just my foolish pride
But sometimes a man must be alone
And this is no place to hide”
Well, Judas, he just winked and said
“All right, I’ll leave you here
But you’d better hurry up and choose which of those bills you want
Before they all disappear”
“I’m gonna start my pickin’ right now
Just tell me where you’ll be”
Judas pointed down the road
And said, “Eternity!”
“Eternity?” said Frankie Lee
With a voice as cold as ice
“That’s right,” said Judas Priest, “Eternity
Though you might call it ‘Paradise’”
“I don’t call it anything”
Said Frankie Lee with a smile
“All right,” said Judas Priest
“I’ll see you after a while”
Well, Frankie Lee, he sat back down
Feelin’ low and mean
When just then a passing stranger
Burst upon the scene
Saying, “Are you Frankie Lee, the gambler
Whose father is deceased?
Well, if you are, there’s a fellow callin’ you down the road
And they say his name is Priest”
“Oh, yes, he is my friend”
Said Frankie Lee in fright
“I do recall him very well
In fact, he just left my sight”
“Yes, that’s the one,” said the stranger
As quiet as a mouse
“Well, my message is, he’s down the road
Stranded in a house”
Well, Frankie Lee, he panicked
He dropped ev’rything and ran
Until he came up to the spot
Where Judas Priest did stand
“What kind of house is this,” he said
“Where I have come to roam?”
“It’s not a house,” said Judas Priest
“It’s not a house . . . it’s a home”
Well, Frankie Lee, he trembled
He soon lost all control
Over ev’rything which he had made
While the mission bells did toll
He just stood there staring
At that big house as bright as any sun
With four and twenty windows
And a woman’s face in ev’ry one
Well, up the stairs ran Frankie Lee
With a soulful, bounding leap
And, foaming at the mouth
He began to make his midnight creep
For sixteen nights and days he raved
But on the seventeenth he burst
Into the arms of Judas Priest
Which is where he died of thirst
No one tried to say a thing
When they took him out in jest
Except, of course, the little neighbor boy
Who carried him to rest
And he just walked along, alone
With his guilt so well concealed
And muttered underneath his breath
“Nothing is revealed”
Well, the moral of the story
The moral of this song
Is simply that one should never be
Where one does not belong
So when you see your neighbor carryin’ somethin’
Help him with his load
And don’t go mistaking Paradise
For that home across the road
Stick to politics Jokerman.
Agreed. You`ll get hate from fanboys though.
Dylan does not deserve a noble prize. It’s completely ridiculous.
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