Apparently Bob Dylan has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/arts/m....html?_r=0

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Bob Dylan, the poet laureate of the rock era, whose body of work has influenced generations of songwriters and been densely analyzed by fans, critics and academics, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday.

It is the first time the honor has gone to a musician. In its citation, the Swedish Academy credited Mr. Dylan with “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”

The choice of Mr. Dylan for the world’s top literary honor came as something of a surprise and was widely viewed as an expansion of the academy’s traditional notions of art. Mr. Dylan, 75, joins a pantheon that includes T. S. Eliot, Gabriel García Márquez, Samuel Beckett and Toni Morrison — the last American to claim the award, in 1993.

Honestly, this is ridiculous.

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“The old categories of high and low art, they’ve been collapsing for a long time,” said David Hajdu, a music critic for The Nation who has written extensively about Mr. Dylan and his contemporaries, ”but this is it being made official.”

Soon enough, some feminist fart painting will be nominated for the Nobel Prize.

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In choosing a popular musician for one of the most coveted prizes in the literary world, the Swedish Academy dramatically redefined the boundaries of literature, setting off a debate about whether song lyrics have the same artistic value as poetry or novels.

This kind of nonsense is an indication of the decline..

Have you never listened to "Blood on the Tracks"?

Quote: (10-13-2016 05:51 PM)Onto Wrote:  

Have you never listened to "Blood on the Tracks"?

I love Bob Dylan, but he is not worthy of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The same pantheon that shakespeare, Tolstoy, Faulkner, Gabriel García Márquez, etc resides.

Tony Morrison is not worthy of the Nobel Prize in literature either.

Quote: (10-13-2016 05:55 PM)Tenebrous Wrote:  

Quote: (10-13-2016 05:51 PM)Onto Wrote:  

Have you never listened to "Blood on the Tracks"?

I love Bob Dylan, but he is not worthy of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The same pantheon that shakespeare, Tolstoy, Faulkner, Gabriel García Márquez, etc resides.

Huh? The Nobel Prize isn't awarded posthumously and Tolstoy was snubbed during his lifetime.

You are merely expressing your personal preference.

I consider Dylan a far more worthy winner than literary elitists like Pinter and Lessing that couldn't make two pennies of their works before they were honored with the Award.

^
Exactly.

Dylan is a once in a generation artist and we should should consider ourselves lucky to be able to enjoy him while he is still alive.

"Huh? The Nobel Prize isn't awarded posthumously and Tolstoy was snubbed during his lifetime.
You are merely expressing your personal preference.
I consider Dylan a far more worthy winner than literary elitists like Pinter and Lessing that couldn't make two pennies of their works before they were honored with the Award."

You can like or dislike Dylan (He's too old for me, I don't think I've ever heard a single song of his.) but to give a musician the Literature prize is stupid. It's a small thing, but another sign of just how screwed up our society is.

You may as well give him the Nobel prize in physics because his guitar created soundwaves, or the Nobel prize in Chemistry because he took some LSD when he wrote one of his songs.

The nobel prize is such a hallowed institution to you that you choose Dylan, of all people, to make your stand?

If you said that giving awards is stupid in general, I could agree with you. With all the cultural enemies being lauded left right and center, it's nice to see an artist who brought untold joy being celebrated.

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/...laureates/

They have honored poets before. Dylan is a poet. He has also published fiction and non-fiction.

"They have honored poets before. Dylan is a poet. He has also published fiction and non-fiction."

He's not being given a Nobel for his poems or fiction. He's being given a prize for his music.
He's being given a prize for an area in which he has no real accomplishments, because someone on the committee is a Dylan fan.

That's not what the Nobel prize is supposed to be.

^^^

You hit the nail on the head.

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Sara Danius, a literary scholar and the permanent secretary of the 18-member academy, which awards the prize, called Mr. Dylan “a great poet in the English-speaking tradition” and compared him to Homer and Sappho, whose work was delivered orally. Asked if the decision to award the prize to a musician signaled a broadening in the definition of literature, Ms. Danius responded, “The times they are a-changing, perhaps.”

She probably lost her virginity to Bob Dylan song, now she makes sure Dylan wins the nobel prize.

Quote: (10-13-2016 07:25 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  

"They have honored poets before. Dylan is a poet. He has also published fiction and non-fiction."

He's not being given a Nobel for his poems or fiction. He's being given a prize for his music.
He's being given a prize for an area in which he has no real accomplishments, because someone on the committee is a Dylan fan.

That's not what the Nobel prize is supposed to be.

The problem with the Nobel prize is exactly that it's given in only a few areas and that too by a committee of effectively random people. It is a status marker propped up by those who stand to gain the most from it. It reminds me how Goldman Sachs is extremely prestigious, but when you dig deeper you realize the prestige is based on hallowing out the American people. I lost all respect for the Nobel prizes when Obama won one for peace. This is the man who continued the neocon policies of Bush and is responsible for the creation of ISIS.

The more the I learn about the Nobel prizes and some of the people that have won them, the less respect I have for them. For example Bell Labs was notorious for winning many Nobel prizes, though people forget they had a fucking lobbying department whose job it is was to prop up Bell Labs with prizes like these.

Even as an Ivy League alum myself, I now look very skeptically at anyone holding prestigious pedigrees, jobs (e.g. GS, FB, Google) or prizes.

Quote: (10-13-2016 06:54 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  

"Huh? The Nobel Prize isn't awarded posthumously and Tolstoy was snubbed during his lifetime.
You are merely expressing your personal preference.
I consider Dylan a far more worthy winner than literary elitists like Pinter and Lessing that couldn't make two pennies of their works before they were honored with the Award."

You can like or dislike Dylan (He's too old for me, I don't think I've ever heard a single song of his.) but to give a musician the Literature prize is stupid. It's a small thing, but another sign of just how screwed up our society is.

You may as well give him the Nobel prize in physics because his guitar created soundwaves, or the Nobel prize in Chemistry because he took some LSD when he wrote one of his songs.

If you ever really read the lyrics to his songs you might see that it is very much poetry, but you said you never have.

Why do you feel qualified to make an opinion on his song-writing when you've never heard one?

"Why do you feel qualified to make an opinion on his song-writing when you've never heard one?"

Because they're song lyrics, not literature. I don't need to hear them to know they're not poetry any more than I need to see your painting to know that it's not a race car.

Quote: (10-13-2016 06:54 PM)SamuelBRoberts Wrote:  

You can like or dislike Dylan (He's too old for me, I don't think I've ever heard a single song of his.) but to give a musician the Literature prize is stupid. It's a small thing, but another sign of just how screwed up our society is.

You may as well give him the Nobel prize in physics because his guitar created soundwaves, or the Nobel prize in Chemistry because he took some LSD when he wrote one of his songs.

Song lyrics are poetry set to music. The verses of a song are stanzas. The lines of a poem, like the lines of a song, have meter, cadence(stressed and unstressed syllables) and more often than not rhyme. Or are you just one of those people who do not consider poetry to be literature?

@Tenebrous, he wrote the songs. Literature is from the latin word litteratura meaning "writing formed with letters". Sounds like a pretty valid description of how Dylan wrote this songs to me.

Tenebrous and Samuel are poorly trying to argue that songs aren't a form of written artistry to confirm their view that West is falling apart. Maybe it is but this isn't a valid example.

Dylan doesn't deserve this award. That said, awards these days are mostly platforms for the narrative or back slaps for the in-crowd. Thus the quality of the work of Award winners these days can vary from slightly above average to ridiculously inept.

This is clearly a bunch of leftist Boomers giving one of the heroes from their youth one last hurrah. Again, it doesn't matter much since who else would they have rewarded? Some fat white feminist who writes boring, middle-brow novels that no one reads about the meaningfulness of being a left-handed lesbian African rice farmer?

Fuck it, if they can give Barak "Drone and NSA" Obama their peace prize for being black and not being George Bush then Dylan can have his undeserved metaphorical handjob too.

So when is Maya Angelou getting her Best Rock Performance Grammy?

Quote: (10-13-2016 08:38 PM)Germanicus Wrote:  

Dylan doesn't deserve this award. That said, awards these days are mostly platforms for the narrative or back slaps for the in-crowd. Thus the quality of the work of Award winners these days can vary from slightly above average to ridiculously inept.

This is clearly a bunch of leftist Boomers giving one of the heroes from their youth one last hurrah. Again, it doesn't matter much since who else would they have rewarded? Some fat white feminist who writes boring, middle-brow novels that no one reads about the meaningfulness of being a left-handed lesbian African rice farmer?

Fuck it, if they can give Barak "Drone and NSA" Obama their peace prize for being black and not being George Bush then Dylan can have his undeserved metaphorical handjob too.

So when is Maya Angelou getting her Best Rock Performance Grammy?

Yep.

Quote: (10-13-2016 08:27 PM)Goldin Boy Wrote:  

Song lyrics are poetry set to music. The verses of a song are stanzas. The lines of a poem, like the lines of a song, have meter, cadence(stressed and unstressed syllables) and more often than not rhyme. Or are you just one of those people who do not consider poetry to be literature?

Yes, Sam is smart enough to know this. However, lyrics set to music doesn't qualify a bunch of songs to be up for an award given for the printed word medium of novels, selected non-fiction, and poetry unaccompanied by music.

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@Tenebrous, he wrote the songs. Literature is from the latin word litteratura meaning "writing formed with letters". Sounds like a pretty valid description of how Dylan wrote this songs to me.

Well thank you for showing off your Latin knowledge. It's still a silly stretch to reward a songwriter with a literature award. 100% of movie scripts are written down-- with letters-- and I very much doubt it would be deemed acceptable to give the Nobel prize to a filmmaker for his movie, even if it was very well done.

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Tenebrous and Samuel are poorly trying to argue that songs aren't a form of written artistry to confirm their view that West is falling apart. Maybe it is but this isn't a valid example.

No, Sam and Tenebrous are saying that the medium of music is a different category than the printed word. Your argument is much poorer than theirs. Rhetorical flourish of whipping out the Latin dictionary nonwithstanding.

I have been laughing at everyone mad about Dylan winning.

Fuck all the haters. Point me to anyone in "literature" writing something better than "It's alright ma" or "Visions of Johanna". I'll wait.

I had the honor of seeing Bob Dylan perform this Summer to a huge crowd. He is still very good, don't let anyone tell you otherwise, and he is still writing more.

He has evolved greatly.

Hahahaha, it's not poetry? Really? What is poetry then? And trust me, I have studied literature, I have read all of the classics.

Everything is rhetoric. It is expression vs communication. Bob Dylan is incredibly great not simple because of the quality of the content he expresses, but also because of how he communicates it. Rhetoric has two parts, not just one.

If anything, this helps redeem the Nobel committee for giving a prize to Obama.

The last time Nobel Prize in Literature was even remotely relevant was about 100 years ago.

If Obama and Colombian President Santos won the Peace prize I'm cool with this

"The last time Nobel Prize in Literature was even remotely relevant was about 100 years ago."

I think we can all agree on that.

Quote: (10-13-2016 08:38 PM)Germanicus Wrote:  

This is clearly a bunch of leftist Boomers giving one of the heroes from their youth one last hurrah. Again, it doesn't matter much since who else would they have rewarded? Some fat white feminist who writes boring, middle-brow novels that no one reads about the meaningfulness of being a left-handed lesbian African rice farmer?

I'm with you on this one, and Dylan is one of my all-time favorites. As a lyricist, he has no modern rivals. However, the art of writing novels, for example, is an altogether different beast: character development, logical order or ideas, mechanics, style, etc. It's the paragon of artistic forms, in my opinion. Anyone who has attempted to write a novel can attest to this. And it's far more challenging than a poem even (which Dylan's work is more readily compared to). There had to be a handful of novelists who were far more deserving of this award.

But to your original point, I sense a bit of leftist virtue signalling in this nomination. The election is almost upon us, and Dylan was a voice of the counter-culture generation from the 60s. It's a nudging reminder that we have another member of that generation, groomed in a similar ethos, who happens to be running for president.

Imagine hearing Hendrix's rendition of "All Along The Watchtower" in 1967, when all you'd ever experienced with respect to pop music prior was skiffle, "The Purple People Eater", and "I Wanna Hold Your Hand".

Albert Camus in 1957 for "L'Etranger" (The Stranger) in 1957!

Actually was surprised to see that Winston Churchill won the prize in Literature 1953, a year before Hemmingway.

Quote: (10-13-2016 09:11 PM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

The last time Nobel Prize in Literature was even remotely relevant was about 100 years ago.

I used to hate poetry, and in some way I still do, but that is because it is more complex than prose. I don't want to get into technical rhetorical details, but a lot of it comes from how much can be packed into such few words when it comes to good poetry.

Poetry is also supposed to be inherently more expressive on the rhetorical scale - which goes to stream of consciousness on the most expressive side to an extremely non-complex movie with no subliminal messaging on the most communicative side. (I may be incorrect on what is most communicative, it may be a documentary). The ability of good poetry, and especially of someone like Dylan, is to take a very expressive set of lyrics and communicate it well. The complexity of the poetry makes it so that multiple messages can be inferred, and different people take a slightly different message based on their own life experiences and state of mind.

(((Bob Dylan))).

Quote: (10-13-2016 09:09 PM)Slim Shady Wrote:  

I have been laughing at everyone mad about Dylan winning.

Fuck all the haters. Point me to anyone in "literature" writing something better than "It's alright ma" or "Visions of Johanna". I'll wait.

I had the honor of seeing Bob Dylan perform this Summer to a huge crowd. He is still very good, don't let anyone tell you otherwise, and he is still writing more.

He has evolved greatly.

Hahahaha, it's not poetry? Really? What is poetry then? And trust me, I have studied literature, I have read all of the classics.

Everything is rhetoric. It is expression vs communication. Bob Dylan is incredibly great not simple because of the quality of the content he expresses, but also because of how he communicates it. Rhetoric has two parts, not just one.

If anything, this helps redeem the Nobel committee for giving a prize to Obama.

Mad? Scoffing, yes. Rolling my eyes, yes. Mad? Nope. It's just amusing to watch nutthuggers gleefully suck Old Balls McGee's leftist dick when he gets a scooby snack for his art in category he's not actually entitled to.

He may be a fine musician...but yeah, he's a musician. He got a literature award...for his music. No one said it wasn't a kind of poetry. But a literature award kind of implies, you know, a reward for something that was published explicitly for print. So he's still able to strum his guitar while making pleasant sounds with his throat. It doesn't matter how great he is at that. It doesn't matter how he expresses via sound because he chose to communicate in a medium that is not the printed word i.e. not in the same category as every other work that was ever considered for that particular prize.

So, anybody want to give Francis Ford Coppola next year's literature prize for the movie adaptations of The Godfather or Apocalypse Now? Those were really good and came from scripts which were in turn based on books. By the nutthug precedent, it's possible. Anybody care to hazard a guess when Haruki Murikami will be getting a Grammy for his novels?

This is the main point here:

Quote: (10-13-2016 09:25 PM)MajorStyles Wrote:  

I'm with you on this one, and Dylan is one of my all-time favorites. As a lyricist, he has no modern rivals. However, the art of writing novels, for example, is an altogether different beast: character development, logical order or ideas, mechanics, style, etc. It's the paragon of artistic forms, in my opinion. Anyone who has attempted to write a novel can attest to this. And it's far more challenging than a poem even (which Dylan's work is more readily compared to).

Reward the man for his music? Ok, with a music prize. Don't hand him a literature award just cause a bunch of now elderly Swedes reminisce about the time they were 19 and protesting Vietnam with Dylan's songs in the background or smoking up while reading the Communist Manifesto and listening to The Times They Are A-Changing.

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There had to be a handful of novelists who were far more deserving of this award.

Probably not, actually. Which is the other half of why I'm not mad about this. It's a bullshit award that hasn't been given to a quality author in decades. This award is a handjob and Dylan just got a tug for being a leftist that other leftists love. Nothing new here in the least.