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

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

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Robyn Hitchcock)

Derrida Cross The Mersey

il n'y a rien en dehors du texte de nabokov

Easy Derrida Blues

slave to derrida, hmmm?

Bonnie Tyler's "Lost in Différance"

Abrahammatology

All à langue, le lecteur

Talkin' Archie de-Bunker Blues

Xpost lol

Écriture From the Muddy Lagoon

Nine Below Degree Zero

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

Fuck that for a game of soldiers., I know you won't anyway though.

I've written a great melody to the Pynchon song I posted. I always try to sing them.

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

Fuck that for a game of soldiers., I know you won't anyway though.

"Fuck that"

Terry Jacques, "Les saisons en enfer"

Sorry, should have been Thierry Jacques.

should have been "dormez-vous"

Bob Z dans le métro

Lol

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

The final one in GR is to Amazing Grace, I believe.

il n'y a rien en dehors du texte de nabokov

From "Don't Read So Close To Me"