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

and has called herself a longtime fan.

Come again?

You mean she isn't?

glad this whole stupid thing is making the nobel people look very silly

Prizes that must be awarded every year, regardless of the merits of the candidates, can easily yield silly results. The implied equivalence between all the winners is a convenient fiction that can't be sustained under the slightest scrutiny. The prize committee is almost set up for the occasional pratfall right on their faces. I really don't envy their position. The MacArthur Foundation "Genius" grants can be equally comical, but draw less attention.

Sure, sure, sure, but Dylan was still a monstrously stupid choice, and his response has made it seem even stupider

Dylan was merely a weak, bumbling and vacillatory choice. Trump was a monstrously stupid choice.

You mean she isn't?

She's only called hereself that, we don't know if she actually is or not.

wait so you think, in a world with deserving, living writers they'd eaten well when they chose alice munro and were indigested when fucking bob dylan burped out? c'mon. who doesn't envy a bunch of kingmakers who are never called to any real task?

They've been called silly, weak, bumbling, vacillatory and monstrously stupid in just the past few posts on this thread. That's a fair bit of ridicule and revilement. Calling further, for their criminal prosecution for example, would seem a bit ott.

james has a thing though

more than one, tbh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GmlJ6iiq3w

“He kept calling me Sir Ronnie,” Ronnie Wood said, in part of a Rolling Stones interview that will appear in this week’s G2 Film&Music, “and when Charlie walked in he said, ‘And Sir Charlie, too! Everyone from England is a sir, right?’ We said, ‘Yeah Bob, but it’s not like … it’s really good about your Nobel prize.’ And he went, ‘You think so? It’s good, huh?’ And we said, ‘You deserve it.’ And he said, ‘That’s great – thanks.’

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/dec/08/stephen-king-attacks-bob-dylans-nobel-prize-knockers

you're a pulp writer dude come on

wtf steve king body shaming dylan

nah "prize knockers" is a compliment

first rate

A Hard Rain's Gonna, er...

I’ll know my song well before I start singin’

I was under the impression that Patti would also read a note from Bob?

james morrison was v against this when it happened but i think he shd read below bcos it's v profound and might change his mind.

The announcement that Dylan had won the literature prize caused controversy with critics arguing his lyrics were not literature. On learning he had been awarded the literature prize Dylan said he thought of Shakespeare. “When he was writing Hamlet, I’m sure he was thinking about a lot of different things: ‘Who’re the right actors for these roles? How should this be staged? Do I really want to set this in Denmark?’

i don't understand what the nobel committee expected. this is a purposefully elusive person who communicates mostly in riddles and weird anecdotes

(xp) 'What will Fred B think of it?'

the people who say that he shouldn't have won because "lyrics aren't literature" -- as if literature was more important than music -- are the worst, wrongest people

I think Dylan's statement, or what I've seen of it, is really good.

Here it is. Yes, I think it is really good.

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2016/dylan-speech.html

Yes, it is very good. The 'London Palladium' made me lol.

Why?

In the UK it has lots of old time showbiz connotations, and just seemed like a slightly odd venue for Dylan to pick out (the Albert Hall, to offer the most obvious counter-example, is much the bigger and more 'prestigious' venue.) Although I did see Lou Reed at the London Palladium on his New York tour, so there you go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki9e_LUZ8dY

bruce forsythe singing 3 minutes in

You mean like Flanagan and Allen?
(Xpost)

F&A I know very little about, but the Palladium was definitely home to mainstream Brit entertainers like, yes, Bruce Forsythe, or Tommy Steele, or Norman Wisdom - or visiting American showbiz royalty like Danny Kaye or Sammy Davis, Jr. It's just not a venue especially associated with rock or pop, and is not in the least bit hip or cool - maybe it speaks to Dylan's idea of himself as just a regular song and dance man, I dunno.

i know she had to stop and start a verse over again but otherwise i thought patti's smith performance was pretty incredible

I think it's more that it's associated -- via its long-running if intermittent TV incarnation -- with val parnell booking a tranche of popular american musicians that entirely predate dylan (and elvis) in style, if not in actual chronology: the las vegas supperclub crowd, from sinatra via danny kaye to sammy davis jr, bing to liza to frankie laine

(british performers were actually somewhat eclipsed in this regime, tho its's also hosted the royal variety performances many times for several decades -- which routinely include younger TV stars doing imitatins of flanagan and allen)

i know she had to stop and start a verse over again but otherwise i thought patti's smith performance was pretty incredible

this is long but worth it

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/06/05/listen_to_bob_dylan_s_nobel_lecture_video.html

Text: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2016/dylan-lecture.html

I liked this speech.

You mean the one he plagiarised from Sparknotes? http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2017/06/did_bob_dylan_take_from_sparknotes_for_his_nobel_lecture.html

Makes it more impressive

That's some next-level trolling from a provocateur who has always fucked with institutions.

You guys are like Trump defenders. "He's playing 5D chess, man!"

Well I love Dylan's work, theft and all, and given the grudging nature of his delayed acceptance, and sending Patti Smith in his stead, and dribbling the ball over the line in the last few seconds to score the prize, one could be forgiven for thinking he was finding a way to enjoy it after all.

Or that he's a lazy fucker who has plagiarised before and then did it again because he had to turn in an essay in a few days or miss out on $1 million

What could be more american than that?

JM I don't see any conflict between what I said and what you said. Except "lazy fucker", I don't see how someone who at 76 years old plays 90-150 shows a year, every year, and has put out 45 albums, qualifies for that.

hang on, he gave a Nobel acceptance speech made up of précis of some of the most famous novels of all time?

yup

adding essayistic reflections, it's not a bad read at all, includes this:

John Donne as well, the poet-priest who lived in the time of Shakespeare, wrote these words, "The Sestos and Abydos of her breasts. Not of two lovers, but two loves, the nests." I don't know what it means, either. But it sounds good. And you want your songs to sound good.

more fun than TED talks

I wonder who first wrote it.