BOB DYLAN WAS AWARDED NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE? IT’S CRAZY

So far, I haven’t come across any negative views about this. Everyone from Salman Rushdie to Will Self insists that Dylan fully deserves to win it. Well, if Dylan deserves to win it on the basis of his song-writing talent, you could come up with a long list of singersongwriters (or such teams) who should get it, too.

How about Joan Baez, who brought Dylan out of the woods? The Nobel is awarded not just for a lifetime’s achievement but for a central work (for example, Ernest Hemingway got it when he wrote ‘The Old Man and the Sea’, his seventh novel). If other Nobel Awards (such as for peace or various sciences) could be shared, there’s no reason why this one couldn’t be shared by Dylan and Baez. She should get it on the basis of ‘Diamonds and Rust.’

Then again, what about Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, or Pete Seeger, John Denver, Elton John and any number of younger contemporary pop singers? Pity that it couldn’t be awarded posthumously, or John Lennon (as well as the Beatles) deserved to win the Nobel, too.

First, let’s consider Dylan’s case. He’s one of those ‘profound’ singer/ songwriters. The following are typical of his lyrics:

“Darkness at the break of noon/shadows even the silver spoon/the handmade blade, the child’s balloon/eclipses both the sun and moon/to understand you know too soon/there is no sense in trying.”

Or this, from Tom Thumb’s Blues: “When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez, when it’s Easter time, too/and your gravity fails and negativity don’t pull you through/ Doesn’t put on any airs when you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue/they got some hungry women there and they really made a mess outta you.” Great. You can quote ad infinitum, they go and on and these are the kind of lyrics which make intellectuals swoon, which is actually a very hard thing to do. On that basis alone, Dylan should get the Nobel. But it should be a separate prize – the Nobel Prize for Music.

You can’t have a Nobel Prize for song-writing, and that’s why the lit prize was given to him. But songs are primarily acoustic. People may buy a book of lyrics after the singer becomes famous. Therefore, there should be a Nobel Prize for Music, because if Dylan was a poet, not a singer -- well, he might have won the Nobel or he may have been bypassed like so many other brilliant poets.

But these lyrics were heard over the radio, as discs played in living rooms and bedrooms, or as cassette tapes, before anyone saw them in print. Few singers have the ability to write great songs. Song writing is a different profession, and often a collaboration between two or more people. Elton John is a gifted song writer but some of his best songs were written together with Bernie Taupin. The Beatles songs were often a collaboration between John Lennon and Paul Mccartney, with other band members contributing at times.

What Dylan, and others, deserve to get is a high profile prize for music. That doesn’t exist, so the literature award has been given. How long would we have to wait before another singer-songwriter gets it? How about Stevie Wonder getting it the next year? But, getting back to John Baez, her song ‘Diamonds and Rust’ which sums up her break up with Dylan is as intense as anything by Anna Akhmatova.

“As I remember your eyes/ Were bluer than robin’s eggs/ My poetry was lousy you said/where are you calling from?/a booth in the Midwest/ Ten years ago/i bought you some cufflinks/you brought me something/we both knew what memories can bring/ They bring diamonds and rust.”

These words bring to mind the best of Anna Akhmatova, the Russian poetess who was nominated for the Nobel but did not win it. Or these lines from Simon and Garfunkel’s song America:

“Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together/ I’ve got some real estate here in my bag/so we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner’s pies/and we walked off to look for America.”

None of this is meant to say that Dylan doesn’t deserve the Nobel. It’s simply that there are many more out there who deserve it just as much. This year’s choice has been hailed as a broadening of frontiers for the Nobel Committee. A separate prize for music would actually broaden it more. Musicians deserve a Nobel as much as writers do, and the prize wouldn’t be just for song writing, or for pop music. If that actually happened years ago, South Africa’s Miriam Makeba could have won the Nobel Prize for music just as Nigeria’s Wole Soyinka won it for literature. Again, a separate prize for music is necessary because each time a singer/songwriter wins it (and shouldn’t they consider going to song writers because it’s literary ability, not singing or musical talent, which is considered here) a writer somewhere who has laboured for many decades is going to feel left out. Another problem with this development is that singer-songwriters who do not work in English will not get it. With literature, one can argue that a reputed novelist or poet who has worked hard for forty years will quite probably get translated into English, and hence catch the Nobel Committee’s eye. But singers and song writers do not get translated, and that would pose a grave injustice. William Self, English novelist, journalist and political commentator, said in his comment on Dylan: “I have a vexed relationship with popular music – so much so that I barely listen at all for years at a time; but my relation with Dylan’s art has been consistently intense and rewarding. No, my only caveat about the award is that it cheapens Dylan to be associated with a prize founded on an explosives and armaments fortune, and more often awarded to a Buggins whose turn it is than a worldclass creative artiste. Really, it’s a bit like when Sartre was awarded the Nobel – he was primarily a philosopher, and had the nous to decline it. Hopefully Bob will follow his lead.”

No one (apart from Self, maybe) really cares now about how Alfred Nobel got his money. There’s no reason for Bob Dylan to turn down the prize. Assuming he has made enough money already, he can give some of it to charity. As for pop music, it’s what I reach out for (along with other kinds of music) when I get tired of books, for example due to mental fatigue or eye strain. Musicians deserve a Nobel of their own and that’s a cause Dylan can take up, with all the power now bestowed upon him by the Nobel.

William Woodard Self (born September 26, 1961) is an English novelist, journalist, political commentator and television personality. Self is the author of ten novels, five collections of shorter fiction, three... Wikipedia