Dylan’s silence on Nobel win called out as ‘disrespectful’
Here’s a group you don’t usually hear associated with celebrity feuds: the people who hand out Nobel prizes.
But one member of the Swedish academy is calling out Bob Dylan over his failure to respond since its Oct.13 announcement bestowing the Nobel Prize for literature to the 75year-old singer. He is the first musician to win the literature award in the academy’s 115-year history.
Dylan has not discussed the honour publicly nor indicated whether he intends to attend the Dec.10 ceremony in Stockholm. As of Friday, all mentions of the Nobel Prize had been scrubbed from his website.
Per Wastberg said Dylan’s lack of reaction to the honour was predictable, but disrespectful nonetheless.
“One can say that it is impolite and arrogant. He is who he is,” Wastberg was quoted as saying in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. He said Academy members have stopped trying to contact him, saying the ball is now in Dylan’s court.
Only two people have declined a Nobel Prize in literature. Boris Pasternak did so under pressure from Soviet authorities in 1958 and JeanPaul Sartre turned it down in 1964.
Dylan’s attitude may be explained by lyrics from his 1981 song “The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar”: “Try to be pure at heart, they arrest you for robbery. Mistake your shyness for aloofness, your silence for snobbery.”