Bob Dylan corner

[JSngry]

 

 

[Scott Dolan]

I guess live poetry isn't literature either. I mean, what with all the inunciations, inflections, and even physical mannerisms...

[JSngry]

 

 

 

[danasgoodstuff]

3 hours ago, JSngry said:

 

 

 

Bob's better literature, better everything than either of these, so is the  more familiar "St. Louis Woman".

[JSngry]

I disagree, but, ok.

[danasgoodstuff]

Of course, I also think Van Morrison spelling his girlfriend's name is better poetry than anything Patti Smith has ever done.

 

[JSngry]

 

Words! Music! At the same time! But no song! No songwriting! Probably not great poetry/literature, but at least it is that. Ain't no songs there.

Let a songwriter write a song, that's work enough for anybody.

 

 

[JSngry]

Does this in any way sound like a "Popular Song"? Do these words and this music seem to organically spring out of each other? Or does it sound like a clever grafting of things that really have nothing to do with each other? Would Ben Webster learn these words before he played this song?

 

 

[danasgoodstuff]

I dig Ken Nordine, Cleo Laine not so much.  Not sure what your point is here.

[JSngry]

Point is just that writing song lyrics and writing poetry are separate disciplines/crafts/arts that of course overlap, but only partially. One is not the other. Conflating them, imo, does a disservice to both of them.

[danasgoodstuff]

...and the're both literature, IMHO, YMMV, etc.  There's no dividing line to art.

best poetry is the horn line at the end.

Edited October 16, 2016 by danasgoodstuff

[JSngry]

There are dividing lines to the business of art, best believe their are. And prizes such as this are never awarded in a business-of-art vacuum.

All I really want to know is if the Noble committee will be honoring future songwriters with the Literature prize, and if so, will they do us all a favor and call it what it is when they do? That would be fine with me, really. Or is this just a one-off, and if so, why?

Because

Prize motivation: "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition"

opens up a whole ginormous field of potential future awardees, and, of course, missed past ones. The key word there for me are "poetic" and "within". Not doing any new poetry in the tradition of poetry/literature, but being "poetic" within the song tradition.

So, are they really opening this up, or are they gonna let this be a one-time affair? Is this gonna get complicated for the Nobel Future?

Dylan has never been all that complicated, imo,. It's other people who complicate him for themselves. I don't see this as being an exception.

Quo vadis, Nobel? Que pasa?

Also...if songwriting=literature, let's say I'm a kid of a literate bent who is all about my songwriting. I want to go to college and submit my songs to a university scholarship selection committee. Do I submit them to the English department or to the Music department? Or the lyrics to the English Department and the melodies to the Music Department and hope to hit a double jackpot?

The correct answer, of course, is fuck all that, get a business degree with a minor in pre-law and peddle your songs as you see fit. Bit apart from that...

[danasgoodstuff]

Oh I agree, and thought I had made it clear above, that there's a whole lot of messed up stuff packed into the Nobel peeps rationale here, but that doesn't stop me from being glad they did it - if peeps had to just go from one wholly consistent position to another, they'd never get there.

Edited October 16, 2016 by danasgoodstuff

[Scott Dolan]

Some write poems and publish them in books. 

Others write poems and release them as music albums. 

They are either both literature, or they are both not. You can't start picking gnat shit out of pepper to strengthen your personal narrative. Reality doesn't work that way. 

[mjzee]

I understand that this unreleased Dylan song was instrumental in the Nobel committee's decision:

http://picosong.com/aQh2

[danasgoodstuff]

1 hour ago, mjzee said:

I understand that this unreleased Dylan song was instrumental in the Nobel committee's decision:

http://picosong.com/aQh2

Still better 'n half the shit that passes for poetry, thanks!

[JSngry]

3 hours ago, danasgoodstuff said:

- if peeps had to just go from one wholly consistent position to another, they'd never get there.

 

2 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

 You can't start picking gnat shit out of pepper to strengthen your personal narrative. Reality doesn't work that way. 

 

Y'all work that out between yourselves.

[A Lark Ascending]

Very good, well-balanced article on getting to like Bobbo here:

Why I took the slow train to become a fan of Bob Dylan

Dylan never appealed to me when I started listening to music c.1970. It was only three years later (a long time when a teenager) that I got hooked. Still like his records and buy the odd new one but I'm no-where near the 'must pre-order the latest odds and sods box set' type of listener. So I can identify with the writer here.  

Written by a poet! Thought poets had gone the way of lamp lighters and royal food tasters. 

[soulpope]

11 hours ago, danasgoodstuff said:

Still better 'n half the shit that passes for poetry, thanks!

Better .... shit .... poetry .... your expertise in this field seems to be quite staggering .....

[ArtSalt]

According to The Telegraph, Dylan is ignoring his Nobel Prize:

By Charlotte Runcie:

The Swedish Academy committee that awards the Nobel Prize has apparently still been unable to contact Bob Dylan about his receipt of the honour. On Thursday, Dylan gave a concert in Las Vegas and didn’t mention the fact that he had just won the world’s most prestigious literary award. He didn’t acknowledge it on Friday when he performed in Coachella, either.

But what happens if Dylan continues to screen the academy's calls? Jean-Paul Sartre is the only known winner of the literature prize to have declined the award voluntarily; he had written a letter to the committee in 1964 asking not to be considered at all, but these were the days before email, and the letter arrived when they had already decided to give it to him that year. 

"It is not the same thing if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre or if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prize winner," he complained at the time. "A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honourable form." It was rumoured, though never confirmed, that he later asked for the prize money anyway.

 

Other writers have declined it because they feared persecution. The Soviet dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did not travel to Stockholm for his ceremony in 1970, because he was concerned that the Soviet Union would not allow him to return afterwards. The committee refused Solzhenitsyn’s request for a public ceremony at the Swedish Embassy in Moscow, so he initially turned down the prize, but formally accepted it in 1974 after he was exiled by the Soviet regime.

Nobel snubs generally go the other way: famously lauded writers who have found themselves ignored by the committee include Vladimir Nabokov, JRR Tolkien, WH Auden, Jorge Luis Borges, Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov.

But although Sartre may have refused the prize, the Nobel committee still listed him as the winner. "The fact that he has declined this distinction does not in the least modify the validity of the award,” they said at the time. In other words, while it is possible to refuse to accept the prize money (currently a cheque for $900,000), it isn't possible to refuse the title. According to the statutes of the Nobel foundation, Nobel prizes cannot ever be returned or rescinded.

Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, emphasised the fact that Dylan has won it whether he acknowledges it or not: "If he doesn't want to come [to the prize ceremony], he won't come,” she said. “It will be a big party in any case and the honour belongs to him."

So, Bob Dylan can ignore the academy all he likes, but the award is still listed in his name. Whether or not he makes an appearance at the ceremony, and at which we will be invited to give a lecture, he will always be known as the winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize for literature.

[soulpope]

2 hours ago, ArtSalt said:

According to The Telegraph, Dylan is ignoring his Nobel Prize:

By Charlotte Runcie:

The Swedish Academy committee that awards the Nobel Prize has apparently still been unable to contact Bob Dylan about his receipt of the honour. On Thursday, Dylan gave a concert in Las Vegas and didn’t mention the fact that he had just won the world’s most prestigious literary award. He didn’t acknowledge it on Friday when he performed in Coachella, either.

But is this really coming as a surprise .... ?

And quite in contrary to Sartre, me truly believes that Bob Dylan will not ask for the money either ;-) ....

[medjuck]

On 10/7/2016 at 6:11 AM, mjzee said:

Now $119.99.

Now $106.

[mjzee]

At last, Bob Dylan acknowledges winning the Nobel Prize.

[JSngry]

He kept us in suspense!

[jazzbo]

1 hour ago, mjzee said:

At last, Bob Dylan acknowledges winning the Nobel Prize.

Elsewhere the veracity of this article is in question.