Nobel Prizewinner

[jno]

Bob Dylan.... hmmm, the times the times they are a-changing

[Bazile]

What has he done to win the prize ?

[dannyk13]

Something to do with the way he has expressed American literature in his music.Nobel Prize for Literature

[Bazile]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-37643621

[wolf63]

Written songs

He's just an All-American Boy but he is getting on and sort of Knockin' on Heaven's Door

[jno]

I set my monkey on the log
And ordered him to do the Dog
He wagged his tail and shook his head
And he went and did the Cat instead
He's a weird monkey, very funky.

[Gromit]

A huge insult to all the writers who have worked hard over the past 12 months.
I suppose the writing was on the wall when they gave Obama a Peace prize when he had only been in the Whitehouse for a fortnight.

[jno]

Obama had been in office nearly a year - they're announced this time every year. I'm not sure how much he's done even now for peace, but I suppose "not starting wars" must count for something.

[andy-hughes]

Gromit - //A huge insult to all the writers who have worked hard over the past 12 months. //

The award has been given on the basis of a lifetime of work, not twelve months' output.

[Gromit]

Obama had been in office for 8 months and two weeks.

// I suppose "not starting wars" must count for something. //

The Syrian War is an American creation. The rebels only acted because they knew they had CIA money behind them. Same financing for the Kurds and extremist Jihadists. Most of the other Arab Spring events such as Libya were US inspired operations.

[Gromit]

andy-hughes
Dylan hasn't written anything decent for nearly half a century. His last top 10 single was in 1969. His last top 40 in 1978.

[woofgang]

quite a lot Jno!

[andy-hughes]

Gromit - //Dylan hasn't written anything decent for nearly half a century. His last top 10 single was in 1969. His last top 40 in 1978. //

If chart positions are a measure of artistic validity, that makes Mr Blobby more important than Paul Simon, and the Venga Boys more artistically credible than Leonard Cohen - would you suggest that is an accurate measure of worth?

Whether you like Mr Dylan's work or not - personally I like very little of it - you cannot gainsay the committee's point that he has constantly produced challenging and artistically valuable work with a consistency and impact that makes him a worthy recipient of the award.

[mikey4444]

Much though I am a fan of Mr Dylan, I am somewhat surprised about this decision. He is primarily, and almost completely, a song writer, not a "writer" in the usual sense of the word.

If this was the Nobel Prize for Songwriting, I wouldn't argue the choice at all, and perhaps wonder why he hadn't received it before.

But how does he compare to Pinter, Grass, Heaney, Bellow, Solzhenitsyn, and Sartre, not mention Steinbeck ?

I heard on the radio this morning, that the announcement was late this year, and there was suspicions of disagreement within the Jury members, and now its obvious why.

[Gromit]

Andy-hughes,
The award is weird and without merit however you measure it.
I would sooner Morrisey won it, at least he has written a book or two.

[mikey4444]

Andy....but is songwriting "literature" in the sense that we have all come to realise as such ?

Dylan may also be a good cook, but he isn't worthy of the Nobel Prize for cooking, is he ?

[Baldric]

In 2016, Dylan received the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".
Wiki.

[andy-hughes]

Gromit - //Andy-hughes,
The award is weird and without merit however you measure it.
I would sooner Morrisey won it, at least he has written a book or two. //

I see you offer no comeback to my point about artistic validity - fair enough.

The notion that the award is 'weird and without merit' is a viewpoint, not one shared with the majority of the artistic community.

Are you being ironic with your reference to Morrisey? His autobiography was universally panned as some of the most dreadfully written pseudo-artistic claptrap of the last fifty years!

As for books - Mr Dylan has published twelve of them - three are lyrics collections.

[jno]

fans are ecstatic:

Irvine Welsh (@IrvineWelsh)
I'm a Dylan fan, but this is an ill conceived nostalgia award wrenched from the rancid prostates of senile, gibbering hippies.

[andy-hughes]

mikey - //Andy....but is songwriting "literature" in the sense that we have all come to realise as such ?

Dylan may also be a good cook, but he isn't worthy of the Nobel Prize for cooking, is he ? //

I take your point, but I think that committee are viewing Dylan's work as literature in a wider context than simply printed works.

Were there to be a Nobel Prize for Cookery, and Mr Dylan good enough a cook to be considered worthy, then there is no reason why he should not win that as well, since it is independent of his writing.

[mikey4444]

Flipping heck jno !