Great comments, Mapman.
Dylan wins Nobel Prize in Literature
Awesome. Best news I've read in a while.
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Czar, many others around the world as well I am sure, but well, I live in America, so I am certainly not qualified to judge other countries artistic icons, nor who qualifies most for an international award. I can only speak for my guys, and Dylan is one of those. Apparently others overseas feel the same. Frogman, thanks for that. Hope I didn’t mangle my choices too much. :^) My son is doing overseas studies in St. Petersburg Russia this semester. I'm looking forward to asking him what he may have observed about such things from that perspective when he returns. |
IMHO, inna has some issue that prevents him from accepting what most others hear when listening to Dylan. That's ok, but there are some things like art/music that transcend explanation. If you don't get it, (as bdp24 said), that's OK. Asking one to explain what (moves) another in any art form is a hard, maybe impossible task. Even then, it is person specific. It's the meaningful, thoughtful way of expressing a song, the grasp of the subject matter and relating it in a song. It is Dylan's voice, that has moved so many throughout decades of our history in a relevant way that I find meaningful even more as I grow older. What moves me will not likely move someone else in the same way. |
Speaking of Dylan and Cash. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1qaym4_bob-dylan-johnny-cash-girl-from-the-north-country_music |
Inna: There are many sublime lyrics. Too many to list. But to show just one of his many writing talents--- the depth of his ability to inhabit a foreign state of mind and write from that perspective, read the lyrics of "Every Grain of Sand" (google will do), a song written by a Jewish boy who turned Christian for a while (not sure if he still is). Can you imagine any artist who can switch religions, inhabit the new one for a short time and write about it with such grace? |
A Facebook friend of a friend of mine yesterday posted an article entitled "How Jimi Hendrix's obsession with Bob Dylan led him to Woodstock". It was from something called "Cuepoint", whatever that is. I was unaware Hendrix was obsessed with Dylan. A different friend's comment on the posting reads "His (Dylan's) singing on Blood On The Tracks is so incredibly great it defies words". One man's incredibly great is another man's trash. |
Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Read his lyrics and his book, Chronicles Volume One and you'll see why. While his music helps put across his poetry (much as Elizabethan stagecraft helped convey Shakespeare's) his musical sensibilities are primitive, sometimes very effectively so. I don't see how this discussion veered off onto Dylan's vocal abilities or guitar skills. There is no Nobel Prize in guitar playing. If there were, Jeff Beck would win that. |
For anyone desiring help in understanding Dylan, or why others like him more than thee, here are some books that may be of interest: The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes; by Greil Marcus. Includes great info on the hugely influential Basement Tapes and The Band. No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan; by Robert Shelton Bob Dylan: Performing Artist, Vol.1: The Early Years 1960-1973; by Paul Williams. Paul also chronicled the making of the Beach Boys’ Smile album, Brian Wilson's lost masterpiece, as it was transpiring. It was originally published in three installments in Crawdaddy Magazine, and later reprinted in three chapters of his great book Outlaw Blues. Bob Dylan: A Biography; by Anthony Scaduto |
The classic Dylan interview with the dude from Time magazine is timeless... https://youtu.be/mnl5X5MQKTg |
inna wrote, "Would you recommend a couple of albums, I only heard him once long time ago", & Debily,blayd'. I think the more important question that needs addressing is, why a member has formed a years long, (maybe life long), opinion based on hearing an artist "once". Then requires another member to go into a more detailed explanation of why this member's reasoning for supporting Dylan's work should be relevant? I could not base a formative opinion on any artist based on listening only once. That's just me, I guess. (What does "Debily, blayd'" mean?) Not that your response would be of much importance based on that two word statement, but may help me understand any future posts you make. |
Sarcasm. Is this a rational response to someone's post? Does sarcasm have on it's own merit, a place on these forums as a rational, effective response to any kind of discourse? Please rate your response to this as: (1) I agree that sarcasm should be a sufficient response to any post made. Having accepted this form of response, I also agree that this form of response stands as the ultimate definition of what my point is and that I can't make or conceive any other form of another reasonable, rational counterpoint. (2) I agree that sarcasm should have no place as a response to any post made. Let the voting begin. |
Congrats to Mr. Dylan! I really don't know whether he deserves it any more this year than someone else, but a group of people in Sweden have declared him worthy. Frankly, they know more about modern literature than I do and I suspect they know more about that subject than anyone posting on this thread. |
Any one not sure about Dylan or the importance of Johnny Cash should read what Dylan wrote when Cash died. http://www.frankgrizzard.info/public_html/cash.html |
Mapman, thanks for that. You've reminded of a little-known Dylan work, "Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie," which you can read here: http://bobdylan.com/songs/last-thoughts-woody-guthrie/ or you can hear Bob himself read it aloud (which is better) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0OdNY8Aybw |
I agree with @jesusa0 and others. Look, I appreciate what Dylan has done for culture, for zeitgeist, for capturing and creating and extending through his lyrics what culture could only embody as an inchoate creation without him. But really? Dylan over Borges, Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, Oates, Murakami? Without the stage and the studio as his media, his lyrics would never have had the impact they had. He had tools at his disposal these other far more deserving writers never had. I vote next year the Nobel Committee consider Springsteen, Ice Cube, and Neil Peart among their shortlist for the Nobel Prize in Literature. What a joke. |
@bdp24 That's a logical fallacy. My saying that Dylan is less deserving than other authors is not the same as my saying my judgment is superior to the Nobel committee's. Besides, there is no committee or cabal anywhere that's impervious to second guessing or to flawed reasoning. One one level, I'm disagreeing with the Nobel committee for its choosing of an author who used the medium of music as a channel for his poetry - something no other Nobel authors have done. On another level, as a literature professor, I feel safe in saying that the literary merit of the authors I mentioned, as well as their influence on literature throughout their career, far surpasses what Dylan has done. |
simao That's a logical fallacy. My saying that Dylan is less deserving than other authors is not the same as my saying my judgment is superior to the Nobel committee's ...You just committed another logical fallacy: Call to Authority. |
Everyone is entitled to an opinion. Dylan is great because of the words he writes, nothing else. That’s literature. People can read the words to his songs without the music and have the same experiences as reading any other comparable short work. There are also many to read, quantity as well as quality. I understand the argument that putting the words to music provides an advantage. Perhaps an unfair one assuming certain rules that apparently do not exist. But one can also argue that the music makes the words even more powerful and hence of greater impact which is what I think the Nobel is mostly about. Its an interesting development for sure. I can understand why traditional writers might not be happy. The game was just upped in a sense. |
Marcel Proust, Vladimir Nabakov, James Joyce, John Updike, Primo Levi, Virginia Woolf and Leo Tolstoy all never won the Nobel. I don't think it effected anybody's thinking about these writers. The Nobel is a contest fundamentally no different than an Academy Award. Sometimes they get it right and sometimes it's questionable, but only the passage of time reveals the divide. If Mr. Dylan is still relevant fifty years from now, then the Nobel committee probably got it right. |
"Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink: arise ye princes, and prepare the shield./For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth./And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels; and he hearkened diligently with much heed./...And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground." ~ Book of Isaiah, Chapter 21, verses 5-9 the last stanza of Dylan's All Along the Watchtower, All along the watchtower Princes kept the view While all the women came and went Barefoot servants, too Outside in the cold distance A wildcat did growl Two riders were approaching And the wind began to howl ;-) |
@onhwy61 That many of the writers you mentioned, particularly Nabokov, did not win a Nobel, but Dylan has, is testament to the myopia of the Committee. It's as if, in a desperate bid to appeal to the masses, they chose a good lyricist. Kind of like an inverted analog of when Jethro Tull won the Grammy for best metal album in 1989. again, I'm not faulting Dylan himself, nor am I diminishing the import of his work in contemporary pop culture (and counter-culture), but I'm skeptical his Nobel worthiness. And Harvard professor notwithstanding, @dgarretson , I doubt Dante would want Dylan to accompany him down to Hell in lieu of Virgil, just as I doubt Dylan will still be read and listened to in 2000 years. |
