Is Bob Dylan overrated?

The great gift of this video is showing that footage of Bob Dylan performing in the 60s is more authentic than a home shopping network. Truly some great, mindblowing art here.

Oh wow Rolling Stone magazine proclaims the new video to "Like a Rolling Stone" is brilliant, didn't see that one coming.

Truly some great, mindblowing art here.

don't think anyone here claims it's mindblowing. it's kind of a novel application of technology, that's about it.

Bob Dylan performing in the 60s is more authentic than a home shopping network

I happen to believe this is true fwiw

will happily sub "more interesting" for "authentic" there if necc

yeah i think placing the song in such an "inauthentic" (i might say more distracted and fleeting) media context is meant to both demonstrate how the song has been fully commodified (it's hard to "hear" the song with fresh ears) while also paradoxically ratcheting up what remains bracing and "authentic" about it through that very context. the song break through despite everything (or so the intention as i read it seems to hope). it's an interesting double gesture, i think.

it's like "i can't really show young dylan tearing through this song, we've all seen that, it's not really 'new' anymore...so instead i'll go to the opposite extreme in order to suggest that same feeling."

So, this Nobel prize.

I don't care if Trump gets it, just no PHILIP ROTH

now he's overrated

LOL, not half!

well-deserved imo

Sure, but why now? Slow year in lit?

It's an award for lifetime achievement, not for any particular work. So I guess they just ran out of reasons not to give it to him.

nyt sez he is like homer and sappho

http://orig15.deviantart.net/1378/f/2008/104/3/d/halloween_iii_homer_by_blacksupernova.png

hah seeing his name trending I naturally thought the worst (given the way this year has gone) so this is quite pleasant news, really

Given the basic scenario of a Nobel prize in literature going to a pop singer, one would expect inevitable howls of outrage from at least some corner of the literary establishment. It will be interesting to see if this happens with Dylan- or who will be the highest profile author to voice discontent with the choice. I expect the protests from those rarefied precincts to be scarce. If so, that will be a kind of tribute in itself.

Going by the Irish Times today, its looks like 80% of our literati are pretty cool about it

it'll just be this guy lamenting the fate of the world...

https://nevalalee.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/bloom.jpg

truth is, if anyone is prone to hyperbole where dylan is concerned its academics/poetry professors/lit professors/writers/poets/etc. they love the guy more than anyone.

so many dots to connect for the egghead crowd. they looooove dots.

"for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition"

fuck off and die! Equally as bullshit as your peace prizes to genocidal psychopaths.

an act “wrenched from the rancid prostates of senile, gibbering hippies”.

truth is, if anyone is prone to hyperbole where dylan is concerned its academics/poetry professors/lit professors/writers/poets/etc. they love the guy more than anyone.

― scott seward, Thursday, October 13, 2016 8:13

That's true. Christopher Ricks' Dylan is more absurd and incomprehensible than Tarantula.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP85Uc6H79U

ha, trainspotting. oi, sicky fell in the loo! i remember that movie.

A few snarky takes in here, notably one from Gary Shteyngart:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/trainspotting-author-criticizes-bob-dylans-nobel-honor/

truth is, if anyone is prone to hyperbole where dylan is concerned its academics/poetry professors/lit professors/writers/poets/etc. they love the guy more than anyone.

this is otm. his stuff reads very well as poetry esp if yr hermeneutic is a new-criticism style -- you can break it down, you can do stuff with it, there's always a little something you can't square

It seems like the acceptable move will be to argue that its a category error and not to confront Dylan's worthiness directly.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/jun/30/popandrock.poetry

notably ... Gary Shteyngart

does not compute

"It is funny that the only people who actually approached the ferocity of early pre-motorbike crash Dylan (1966 being the dividing line between scary can-do-no-wrong Dylan and bloody, beaten, bowed, sometimes scary, and good-when-he-feels-like-it Dylan) were the art brut garage and punk bands of the 60's and 70's. The dandies and aesthetes of those eras mainly pegged the corn pone/po'boy/nasal/fake Carter family/should sound like you're 60 when you're 20/spaghetti western Dylan that he could get away with because he was and is a freak of nature and because he invented the shit in the first place. That ferocity was hunger and could previously be heard on Charles Ives and Eartha Kitt records, making it alien to most pop and pop-folk fans at the time. The juvenile delinquents heard Dean and Brando in his voice, but unfortunately his words were too good and the boring people heard Shakespeare."

I can't really buy into that motorbike-crash dividing line theory. A lot of those early albums are frankly kind of uneven. It's true that Bringing it All Back Home through Blonde on Blonde is probably his best consecutive run of three albums, but if I had to choose between only hearing the pre- and post-crash albums for the rest of my life, I would choose the post- in a second.

you can find definitions of literature that include things that are SUNG. i mean it just has to be written to be literature. i think. i'm all for it. would have been happy for leonard cohen too. now HE doesn't have a chance. too dylan-y.

I listen to John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline, and New Morning more than to the mid sixties stuff

if the criterion is "how does this stuff sound when recited unaccompanied" cohen is >>>>>>>> dylan, but it isn't and he's not.

lou reed kinda the supreme example of *please don't try to read this out loud without musical accompaniment*. as far as post-dylan bards go.

I listen to John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline, and New Morning more than to the mid sixties stuff

And if you include the Basement Tapes stuff that was also recorded around this time and the Self-Portrait out-takes that were released in the bootleg series, this becomes a very strong contender for best Dylan period bar none.

really kinda wish steve allen had made an album of lou reed recitations before he died.

"Don't you know you'll stain the carpet?" (arches eyebrow)

I definitely think this was informed by the death of Bowie and Prince and they were nervous Dylan he was next and they wanted to do it while he was still alive. He wrote "Love Minus Zero/No Limit," he deserves it.

now he is (to answer the thread title)

I like Dylan a lot but this was a weird thing to do considering there are so many other qualified writers in the world; and it's not like he needed more exposure.

stadows sellin a little slow

i'm glad dylan got it instead of delillo because delillo's dylan-like character was named bucky wunderlick and that is the worst sub-pynchon character name in literary history. it's even sub-pkd. you can't reward a person who could come up with a name like that.

Its like "Twig TheWonderkid"

scott seward
Posted: October 13, 2016 at 8:40:44 PM
you can find definitions of literature that include things that are SUNG. i mean it just has to be written to be literature. i think. i'm all for it. would have been happy for leonard cohen too. now HE doesn't have a chance. too dylan-y.

The only other one I could countenance for something like this would be mark e smith, there's this speedfreak palimpsest source-code-of-consciousness zone that only him and Dylan (of song lyricists) have visited IMO

is bob dylan oversated?

http://66.media.tumblr.com/41507359e09ee5ce462754687654cb8c/tumblr_ni2tfpOkyh1ti7dwio1_400.jpg

I'm a little confused by the Leonard Cohen comparison since Cohen is a poet, even in the most traditional/conservative sense of the word. I'm probably biased because I find his music unlistenable but I always thought of him as a poet first and foremost.

most people don't remember that cohen was a poet first though. and he was obviously heavily inspired by dylan. that's why i thought of him.

Leonard Cohen On Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize: “It’s like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain”