Bob Dylan won a Nobel Prize in Literature! Did you hear the news? Bob Dylan won a Nobel Prize in Literature!
Yeah, OK — I'm pretty happy about this. I'm glad for America, for one thing — no writer from our turf has won a Nobel for Literature since native Ohioan Toni Morrison won (properly so) in 1993. That's a long drought. (Other American writers who've won: T. S. Eliot, Gabriel García Márquez, Samuel Beckett.) It grew a bit tiresome to read every year about the list of worthy Americans likely to be passed over again (Don DeLillo, Joyce Carol Oates, Phillip Roth, etc.), and now that's that.
And Dylan! The Times noted, “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.”
Tangle that up in blue, if you like. Thoughts? Email rrollins@coxohio.com.
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