Bob Dylan, Nobel Laureate

Bob Dylan has won the nobel prize for literature. This is surprisingly moving to me - fills me with more delight than I could have imagined. There will be complaints (that one isn't stupid, just a complaint that Dylan is a musician, not a writer; or something), but I don't care. Dylan's art is made of words, and words are literature, and that's enough for me.

I wrote about him recently so I won't go into depth again. The relevant part of that essay might be this paragraph - Bob the writer:

Leave it then. Let's get to the good stuff. Because there is no denying his genius: as a writer at least, though he is not slouch as a songwriter, and though he is not what you would call a singer - he is most definitely a voice. But it is the words that make him what he is. I sometimes come across people who doubt the Bob - who try to show he wasn't so good after all - they are incorrect. They might complain about some aspect of his writing - the obscurity and obliqueness of some of his songs - but they complain about those things by ignoring the songs that are nothing like that: that get to the point and fast. What's obscure about Hurricane or the Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll? But plain or obscure, conventional or experimental - he was always sharp, dazzling, surprising and careful. The words make him what he is, the words and how he uses them. It's there in those piles of words, lines, images in the early songs - in the clear, direct statement of songs like the Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll - in the meandering narratives of 70s songs, from Desire or Blood on the Tracks. He uses words to make music - the way they clash and throng, jammed together out of time, their mysterious pauses and transitions, repetitions, all the poetic tricks he uses - rhymes and internal rhymes and alliterations and assonance - While preachers preach of evil fates/Teachers teach that knowledge waits... lay slain by a cane... (or those three tables, also in ...Hattie Carroll...) - they all add up. However they read on the page, he always wrote these words to be sung - or performed, anyway - they are rhythmic and propulsive, ragged (usually), fitted to his voice. It's as if the words were a musical instrument.

For the full appreciation, I would recommend Edroso - he's far more eloquent... But for me - this makes perfect sense. Song writers deserve to be honored as writers once in a while. It is good to have people appreciate words across different media. As for Dylan himself: I like him, though he is probably not my favorite songwriter, even considered purely as a writer. I always liked Lou Reed more; I have my own little pantheon of heroes - Richard Thompson, David Thomas, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey - and in more conventional styes, Mick Jagger (And Keith Richards, whatever their division of duties is), and, maybe most of all, Smokey Robinson. But those are my preferences, undoubtedly idiosyncratic in places - and Dylan has the advantage over all of them in terms of the length and breadth of his career, his influence, both on the world and other writers/singers/musicians. He did indeed strike out in new directions as a "pop" songwriter - the others followed. Most of them (the ones I named) explicitly following Dylan. So - you bet he deserves this prize.

And so? some music, huh? A beautiful video for Don't Think Twice, It's All Right.



Something about the roots - where he comes from, where he took it - and, you know.. Dylan on TV, singing Man of Constant Sorrow:



And - influence: Richie Havens covering All Alongthe Watchtower:



And deeper influence, I guess - a school of rock band covering the Minutemen's Bob Dylan Wrote the Propaganda Songs":