CSotD: Something is happening here, and Mr. Nobel knows what it is
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Belgian cartoonist Frédéric du Bus gets the lead today with this simple observation that some people write with a pen, others write with guitar and it's all literature.
And Jeremy Banx notes that purists have tried to keep Dylan in a box for nearly as long as Dylan has been around. And they've done a pretty poor job of it, haven't they?
There are people freaking out over the notion that the Nobel Prize for Literature could recognize lyrics rather than novels this year, but I'm inclined to agree with Dubus that the writing instrument is less relevant than the writing produced.
The Nobel doesn't go to poets all that often, though its citations often praise novelists for poetic writing. When it does go to a poet, it's apt to cite prose works as well, which took a bit of effort this time.
It seems the Committee has, throughout its history, leaned heavily towards prose.
So, is Dylan a poet? His lyrics are remarkable, his tunes generally less so, even when covered by more able singers. I'd be surprised if anyone honored him for his musical composition.
Dylan's lyrics, however, began to be taught in university courses early on, and I recall thinking at the time that it was a desperate attempt for college professors to appear relevant. (There was a lot of that going on.)
On the other hand, I'm not the right person to make that judgment: I shifted from English to a major in Great Books because I didn't want to spend my college years explaining precisely why (Nobel Prize Laureate) William Butler Yeats used the phrase "pern in a gyre" and would rather discuss what he meant by the poem, which I realized meant figuring out why he wrote it and why he chose certain phrases but not to the point where you forgot all about the poem itself.
So there's a long and honorable academic tradition of examining lyrics under a microscope to which I have no desire to be disloyal, and a lot more English majors than Great Books majors in the world.
I suppose you could make an argument for continuing to allow people to major in English, but not to study the works of writers until they are either dead or have won the Nobel Prize, but that only brings us to where we are.
I like Dylan's songs. Not all of them, and mostly the older ones, but there's nothing unusual about that. If you find a poet whose every work seems brilliant, you may be more of a gushing fan than a discerning reader.
And, while some of his songs are just fun and mostly resonate by virtue of reminding me of events in my own life that occurred at about that time, others are profound and continue to inspire. If you can't find that in his work, you aren't looking.
I was going to compare Dylan's "Desolation Row" to "The Wasteland," by (Nobel Prize Laureate) T.S. Eliot, but when I went to look it up, it turned out that everybody already has, including some who did so for academic credit.
I'll leave it to you to Google your way through it all, but the opening stanza is not a random collection of strange phrases.
I don't believe that Dylan, as he claimed, knocked out an eleven-minute-long song larded with specific historic and cultural references in the back of a cab any more than I believe that little Julian Lennon happened to draw a picture of a girl named Lucy, in the sky, with diamonds.
But the reason I didn't major in English is that I prefer to take note of the obvious references and let the rest wash over and create impressions, on the general theory that, if you disassemble a hummingbird to see how it flies, it no longer will.
Meanwhile, both Jimmy Margulies and Gary Huck came up with the same image, and, while they laughed over the "great minds" coincidence on Facebook, it's a valid commentary on the loosening of knickers in Stockholm, where the literature prize is often used to point out under-appreciated writers whom we should be reading instead of honoring deserving ones that we do.
To which I would add only that, after I switched majors, one of our frequent discussions was a definition for what constitutes a "great book" or a "great work," and our general consensus was always that it raised and examined important questions that yet remain unanswered.
Now here's your moment of Nobel Prize Winning Zen:
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