Who will be the next American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature?

Or 'The Art of Bob Dylan'. Denmark's biggest art film festival is devoting it's yearly retrospective to the films of Neil Young this year.

Where's the idea that the Nobel prize is for the ilx contrarian antipopulist cabal coming from?

Fuck giving it to Dylan but also fuck the above too imo

If you had read my post carefully, you'll see that I said it's important that the Nobel is not restricted to the obscure (and of course I only mean obscure to the general population, not within their fields, within which they should be stars) to preserve its integrity. Dylan is bad because he is known to the general population AND hurts the integrity of the prize (not actually well-regard within field of literature)

The above in my post refers to my own first line fwiw. Coming across a little aggressive on rereading.

Wasn't a direct response to any one post flopson, but to an opinion offered repeatedly in the general discussion

ok punk

;-)

Where's the idea that the Nobel prize is for the ilx contrarian antipopulist cabal coming from?

ignoring that wording - i like populist books just fine, the idea that less popular writers win it comes from... the winners.

Where's the idea that the Nobel prize is for the ilx contrarian antipopulist cabal coming from?

oops

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Literature

nearest analogue in the list so far is winston churchill imo, then maybe kipling? (obv* i have not read all of them)

*i say obv even tho it hurts my ilx branding a bit

ps i have read all of kipling except some of his many many poems probably and his novel the light that failed

pps also i expect he wrote op eds that began "why oh why have we not colonised GREENLAND yet it is past time" i haven't read them

I only learned today about THE POLAR PRIZE FOR MUSIC which is apparently regarded as like a Nobel for music (though I don't know its exact relation to the Nobels).

Dylan has already won it.

Did the mention of Greenland remind you of it?

(xp) Surely the only time Paul McCartney and the Baltic States have shared a prize?

Pleasantland also referenced in a joint offensive manouvre

People keep saying its a category error but how many warmongers have been awarded the Nobel Peace prize?

if it's a category error, the busting probably already happened: there are several playwrights on the list and plays like songs are written to be performed (unless you think pinter got it for his poems, which is… possible)

(obviously if yr an arnoldian -- ?do i mean him? -- then you argue that the REAL shakespeare is on the PAGE and being acted merely degrades or distorts it)

an interesting test wd be whether a stand-up is allowed to be awarded it (i'm a derridean when it comes to drawing the hard line between writing and speech = it can't be done)

(sorry the connection between the last two thoughts is super-compressed -- what i'm getting at is that the refining of a joke as delivered on-stage to its most effective form squares more with why writing is considered writing than why speech is considered speech) (tbh if i decompress the the thinking much more i am going to rewrite of grammatology except abt gags)

too bad russell brand is only on for the peace prize

(unless you think pinter got it for his poems, which is… possible)

LOLz. Or his novel.

Where's the idea that the Nobel prize is for the ilx contrarian antipopulist cabal coming from?

To be honest, what I love about the Nobel Prize is the number of truly great books I've read that I would never have heard of if not for the prize. So yeah, to be honest, for me, the value of the prize is precisely in its uplifting of the obscure or obscure-outside-their-own-country. I love Alice Munro and I think she deserves every bit of her Nobel Prize but it means way more to me that they gave it to Svetlana Alexievich.

LOL I'd forgotten plays to be written as performed on stage (possibly because I have never formed a theatre going habit, they only live on the page for me)

Idly wondering where people would have drawn this line - like would there be as much protest if at some point it had gone to, say, Gil Scott-Heron or John Cooper Clarke.

(NB giving it to JCC would be fucking glorious).

Plays have always been considered literature, every literature course includes Shakespeare, Chekhov, Brecht, Ibsen, etc. What would be new would be giving it to a filmwriter, for example. The difference is that plays are distributed in writing, and is meant to survive being performed by others. While many has covered Dylan, and while he originally worked in a folk idiom, my argument against him goes that his writings simply aren't that good on the written page. Take a verse like 'Now you see this one-eyed midget / Shouting the word "NOW" / And you say, "For what reason?" / And he says, "How ?" / And you say, "What does this mean?" / And he screams back, "You're a cow / Give me some milk / Or else go home" Without a very specific performance of it, it's simply crap. Take his breakthrough chorus, Rolling Stones favorite song of all time: 'How does it feel? / How does it feel? / To be on your own / With no direction home / A complete unknown / Like a rolling stone?' It's just not that good without the melody.

Otm

To be honest, what I love about the Nobel Prize is the number of truly great books I've read that I would never have heard of if not for the prize. So yeah, to be honest, for me, the value of the prize is precisely in its uplifting of the obscure or obscure-outside-their-own-country. I love Alice Munro and I think she deserves every bit of her Nobel Prize but it means way more to me that they gave it to Svetlana Alexievich.

exactly. as if deems even knew the list of previous winners anyway.

Idly wondering where people would have drawn this line - like would there be as much protest if at some point it had gone to, say, Gil Scott-Heron or John Cooper Clarke.

it just wouldn't happen. the only reason bob dylan was allowed to transcend this boundary is fame.

I'm questioning whether it's a boundary given those two artists self-identified as poets and Dylan doesn't really.

Dylan uses the term figuratively but literally stoning is a form of capital punishment for committing a crime. Among other places, it is described in the Old Testament of the Bible. For example, Deut. 13:10, “So you shall stone him to death because he has sought to seduce you from the LORD your God…”

The double meaning for “getting stoned”, meaning getting drunk or high, comes in later in the song.

seems a bit harsh going after deems for not knowing the previous winners, i only have a vague idea of them because of an old FT project which never got anywhere: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/wedge/2005/10/freaky-trigger-best-of-lists-forlorn-idea-dept/

the missing picture is poor old unread sully prudhomme

yeah i don't expect him to know them off by heart, but given his comment.

I'm not hugely invested here it's quite OK I object to Dylan in general and this seemed like a fun puddle to jump in

You should listen to "Blood on the tracks", deems

in honor of bob dylan and mark s. i bought some books today:

https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/14718862_1679367702376875_4612234056667266000_n.jpg?oh=f795f3c4510da5dd7838e010f72cc545&oe=5866CFC8

https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/14642258_1679367892376856_3789853582198621489_n.jpg?oh=7de721dc435c72dde4ff5e17d7d61a76&oe=58643746s

haha half my kiplings were my gran's -- so they come from before the 30s and still have his swastika design on the spine (he stopped using it when the nazis started, he detested germans)

i kinda don't ever read those ones on the bus

How about this song from a lovelorn wittgensteinian? A better lyric than anything Dylan ever wrote!

this edition has the swastika on the inside. so that it's a secret between you and kip.

😏

ha

The Iron Din

probably doesn't belong on this thread but i have long been of the opinion that pynchon's songs HAVE TUNES -- sometimes i think he writes the words with an extant melody in mind (in the genre the song in question is meant to be) and sometime i wonder if he writes some of the melodies himself

(on ukulele and kazoo obv)

had my version of "nansen and johansen" (those sturdy young pals of the pole) stuck in my head quite a while

i have never been able to supply the tunes (or any tunes) but i feel tp is actually strongly encouraging us to do so

His songs are one of the most consistently dismaying things about his work.

lol whatever the opposite of consistently dismaying is, there we find the pinefox's stubborn resistance to the charms of pynchon

Teh pinefox otm. They usually remind me of that one scene in The Prisoner in which they sing "Dry Bones."

perhaps they are like dylan in this respect and we need to hear someone singing them to grasp why they are great litereture

litereture is a derridean term obv

l'itereture

De Do Do Do, Derri Da Da Da

Every petit a she does is magic

otm