Dylan’s Nobel silence is golden

Bob Dylan’s decision not to travel to Stockholm to accept his Nobel Prize for Literature at the official ceremony on Dec. 10 must be quite upsetting to the Swedish Academy that chose him as this year’s laureate. But, to a great many of us regular folks, the great singer-songwriter’s choice to eschew the spotlight and maintain his quiet dignity is rather uplifting.

That the 75-year-old performer was polite and respectful in conveying his regrets — he wrote a personal letter to the academy expressing how honoured he was to receive the award, but indicating that other commitments prevented him from accepting it in person — is another example of his general good grace, not to mention an ability to resist seeking public attention that is almost anachronistic for its rarity in an age of craven publicity hounds.

Dylan’s comportment runs completely counter to the celebrity worship that blights popular culture, which exalts attention-hungry people on the basis of their sex tapes, rich parents, crass behaviour or reality television appearances (or sometimes all of the above). The president-elect of the United States is a man best known for ousting contestants from a televised competition by pointing a finger and proclaiming, “You’re fired.”

He owned a beauty contest, traded one trophy wife for another, owns a sky-high suite noted for its garish decoration and lives to slap his name across real estate projects. Trump’s political triumph is testament to just how potent fame has become in modern America — fame for just about anything, as long as people notice — but also underlines how scarce the likes of Dylan have become: people with true gifts and abilities, who are recognized for those gifts even though they don’t parade themselves on red carpets or invite cameras into their bedrooms.

The 2011 wedding of Kim Kardashian to NBA player Kris Humphries was broadcast as a two-part special on television. Some might argue that this excessive public scrutiny of two eminently minor personalities was a factor in the couple’s divorce 72 days later; on the other hand, why should anyone care?

One is a much-travelled basketball player, the other known mainly for the size of her posterior and astonishing abilities at self-promotion. Actor Daniel Craig — who is somewhat Dylan-like in his own efforts to maintain a personal low-profile despite playing the world’s best-known fictional spy — said it best when he denounced the Kardashian/ Humphries circus: “You see that and you think, ‘What, you mean all I have to do is behave like a f--king idiot on television and then you’ ll pay me millions?’

Yes, Daniel, they will. Happily. Dylan is welcome relief from such nonsense. The Swedish Academy’s recognition of his five decades of artistic achievement is a muchneeded reminder of what real talent looks and sounds like.

He deserves the distinction for, as the academy put it, “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” But it may be that Dylan recognizes the risk of overshadowing art with honours, not just by setting up a competitive arena in what is at heart a subjective realm, but also by focusing attention more on the artist than his creations.

Here, a quote from Dylan is helpful. Even though he has turned up in person to accept previous awards, he also observed once that, “Being noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot.” In other words, he’d rather we all leave him alone to create.

It was the Swedish Academy’s decision to recognize an artist who is known to value his privacy. Dylan did not ask for the pleasure of the public prize and should waste no time in feeling guilty for choosing to gracefully bow out of the imposed limelight. The rest of us should celebrate both his ability, and his understanding that standing in a spotlight to accept it adds nothing to the legacy he has built.