Bob Dylan and The Nobel Prize Inspires Worldwide Gossip, Much of It Very Silly, and avoids seeing the truth, which is just a plain picture


The award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to croaky troubadour Bob Dylan has drawn out much comment and indeed silliness from taste-makers and opinionistas.  I'll state up front that, in my view, Dylan's position in the Tower of Song is probably above Hank Williams and much as I admire Portnoy's Complaint and the Nathan Zuckerman novels, I'm not sure what giving the gong to bookies favourite Phillip Roth would have achieved.
Some of the most unfocussed comments I've read are from former Nirvana confidant Everett True, who attempted to perform as The Legend many moons ago on Creation Records, so is well placed to understand that ones intentions are often difficult to alchemise into performance.  Nevertheless ,at everetttue.wordpress.com he lists what he says are "some facts", such as "Bob Dylan winning a Nobel Prize for Literature is like your third rate English teacher at school, trying to look cool" and contends that the event is "not a reflection of 2016, and is rather shabby really.  Might as well give Trump the Nobel Peace prize for services to women." and ends with "Why not Nina Simone?  Why not Beyonce? Why not Fill in your own fucking name?"
Who sounds old and out of touch here?  Sadly this is typical of much knee-jerk commentary and sad posturing abroad in response to the award, much of which is then circulated on the WWW as if it has some weight.
Those who feel the Nobel is misplaced fall into two broad camps, Everett in the one which feels Bob is no longer enough of an artist to be worthy.  Now, Cultureberg can confide that Tempest and Live Through This, as well as the Sinatra cover jobs, are not regulars in the CD tray, and neither do we fall into the camp that feels that every live interpretation is a masterclass in phrasing and performance,. To contend, however, that Dylan has not, for the length of his career, attempted to engage in his art in new and novel ways, with a questing spirit and a desire to represent the truth and communicate this, and he has done so in a form which he trailblazed, is myopic and misleading.  Ernest Hemingway recieved the Nobel in 1954, for works that were published years and decades before, but one can't deny his influence or, indeed, the uniqueness of his style and vision.  Pace Bob.
Also wading in with misjudged comment is Primal Scream  Associate, Author and former Housing Dept employee Irvine Welsh.  I'm  not sure that what he's saying bears close consideration, in that he confesses to being a Dylan fan whose art is on a different level to his own, yet fulminates "This is an ill-concieved nostalgia award wrenched from the rancid prostrates of senile, gibbering hippies."  Irvine is in camp two, that which seems to deem Dylan's oeuvre Non-Literature or at least unworthy of award, or critical that the establishment is seeking to co-opt a rebel, but picking on a superannuated, toothless one.  The committee, in citing Homer and Sappho and their roots in performance, seem to me to eloquently pull the carpet from under those who have also seen the award as populist and playing to the crowd, or eventhose who claim to worry that the award is further undermining literacy and the noble art of Book Reading.  The committee are in a lose-lose position - award to an Armenian Poet and you are elitist, award a universally recognised icon and you are vacuous and populist.
Everyone seems to be ignoring Chronicles Part One, a pretty well written Proustian memoir, and Tarantula, a somewhat less successful example of Dylan's art.  He's had a few books out, and I'm not going to attempt to argue that the Collected Lyrics constitutes a work of poetry, because this volume in fact only illustrates that the songs are indeed songs which take on an added dimension when sung and not poems. It is his songs that earnt him the nomination. If being a pioneer in the American Song Tradition which he has enlivened and re-invigorated is not, in the broadest sense, Literature and Art, then we are truly stuck in The Groves of Academe with F R Leavis and Matthew Arnold, with the High Culture/Low Culture division intact and only words on printed page worthy of stature.
The evening of the announcement I engaged in two Bob related cultural endeavours.  I listened to Uncuts free CD of interpretaions of Highway 61 Revisited, by the likes of Dave Alvin and The Handsome Family.  Whatever the versions' individual merits, the craft and singularity of his vision, still fresh and unique 50 years on pulsated through the different takes on the songs.  Great lines abound, and the communication of ideas clearly, powerfully and profoundly sounded like the ringing of a bell (as another populist great would have it).  I also watched Don't Look back again and throughout Dylan is alive in the moment, hyper-aware, questioning, challenging, coming at reality from new angles, destroying the mundane.  When, after Donovan has strummed a pleasant ditty, only to sit consumed with awe and unworthiness when Bob  pointedly and persuasively responds with a verse of It's All over Now Baby Blue , it is beyond doubt that Mr Dylan is as worthy of a Nobel Prize as any previous artist whatever their mileu.  In some senses it is more interesting to question why people feel the need to say he does not deserve it.
As he says in Don't Look Back, The truth is just a plain picture.