Dylan knows best: He doesn’t deserve Nobel
The Swedish Academy made an embarrassing mistake with its annual Nobel Prize in literature this year, bestowing the honor on a cantankerous folk singer instead of a writer. You know who agrees with me? Bob Dylan. Go ahead and fill my in-box with your furious notes, angry Baby Boomers. The academy’s choice is disastrous, and the only silver lining has been Dylan’s snotty response.
After five days of silence, Dylan allowed his team to update his website with the news that he’s the 2016 Nobel winner. On Friday, Oct. 21, he removed even that sentence from his site. He still hasn’t spoken to the academy, released a statement or said whether he’ll accept the award in Stockholm.
“I am not at all worried,” the academy’s permanent secretary, Sara Danius, told the Guardian this week. “I think he will show up.” She thinks? Dylan’s response shows this choice to be the embarrassment it is.
Now, I know there may be any number of extremely simple reasons why Dylan has chosen to keep his mouth shut.
Dylan doesn’t like parties and has skipped award ceremonies before, so maybe he just isn’t interested in this one. I get it — Stockholm is cold and dark in the wintertime.
Dylan has never been great at writing speeches — “Critics say I can’t sing,” he complained in 2015, while accepting an award from the Recording Academy. “Why don’t they say those things about Leonard Cohen?”
Well, Bob, they don’t say those things about Leonard Cohen because Cohen
can sing. Plus, he’s a better lyricist than you are.
Sour grapes aren’t going to fly for an honor of this magnitude, and maybe Dylan doesn’t want to write a real speech. The academy probably wishes he would compose a song for the occasion — can you imagine anything annoying Dylan more?
But this is the Swedish Academy. It doesn’t take no for an answer — something Jean-Paul Sartre learned when he tried to reject the prize in 1964. “The fact that he has declined this distinction does not in the least modify the validity of the award,” said the Nobel committee of Sartre’s denial.
So Dylan knows there’s no wriggling out of this one.
There must be a reason for his silence, and I don’t think it’s his “mystique.” (The fact that Baby Boomers bought into the marketing of Bob Dylan as a shaman is a big part of the reason for this mess.) I’ve been using my imagination, and here’s what I’ve come up with.
On the day of the announcement, Dylan was in Las Vegas. He was sitting in his hotel room, drinking tea and watching “Antiques Roadshow” when an assistant ran in with the announcement.
He read the statements and took a few minutes to contemplate the academy’s bizarre logic. “His influence on contemporary music is profound,” the academy wrote, forgetting that its task was to award a Nobel Prize in literature rather than music.
Meanwhile, the assistant’s iPhone was exploding with beeps and alerts. He turned to the woman and asked her to read some reactions to the announcement. (Try as I might, I can’t picture Dylan doing his own smartphone scrolling.)
“Contemptuous of writers,” said Pierre Assouline, the French-Moroccan writer.
“An ill-conceived nostalgia award wrenched from the rancid prostates of senile, gibbering hippies,” said Irvine Welsh, the Scottish writer.
“A little bitter,” Dylan said. “What about Karl Ove Knausgård? I liked all his struggling.”
“He said he’s divided,” the assistant stammered. “He loves the committee opening up the realms of literature — we all love it — but he’s sad for Cormac McCarthy and Thomas Pynchon and Philip Roth.”
“Philip Roth will never win a Nobel Prize,” Dylan said. “Why do people keep bringing his name up? Hasn’t he heard of anyone else? Ko Un has written beautiful poetry for decades. He went to prison for his beliefs. Ngugi wa Thiong’o has written renowned plays and novels, rescued a suppressed language and survived an assassination attempt. Tell Karl he should read them.”
“Oh, wait, here’s one more reaction,” the assistant said. “Leonard Cohen. He’s thrilled. He says you’re too good for the Nobel.” “What?” “He says the prize is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the tallest mountain. You’re that great.”
“After all these years, Cohen’s still trying to get in my head. He knows full well I’m the guy who wrote, ‘Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, like a bowl of soup.’ ” “Should we answer them?” “There must have been some mistake. I’m going onstage. By the time I get off, this will all have blown over.” Alas. Sometimes you can’t give it away, Bob.