jakeem Posted October 13, 2016 Share Posted October 13, 2016 The iconic singer-songwriter Bob Dylan has been named the recipient of the 2016 Nobel Prize in literature. According to The Swedish Academy, which issues the award in memory of the philanthropist Alfred Nobel (1833-1896), Dylan was honored for "having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition." It is the first time the award has been bestowed upon someone primarily known as a musician. Dylan is the first American to win the literature prize since 1993, when it was awarded to author Toni Morrison. Nobel Prizes traditionally are announced in October and presented in December. Dylan He becomes only the second person to win that honor and an Academy Award. The great Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1925. He then won the 1938 Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay for "Pygmalion," which was based on his 1912 stage play. He shared the award with Ian Dalrymple, Cecil Lewis and W.P. Lipscomb. Dylan received the 2000 Academy Award for Best Original Song: "Things Have Changed" from the late Curtis Hanson's comedy/drama "Wonder Boys." The film starred Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Frances McDormand, Katie Holmes, Rip Torn and Robert Downey, Jr. The 75-year-old performer -- born Robert Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota on May 24, 1941 -- also received a Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for his contributions to music and American culture. http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-37643621 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DownGoesFrazier Posted October 13, 2016 Share Posted October 13, 2016 The iconic singer-songwriter Bob Dylan has been named the recipient of the 2016 Nobel Prize for literature. He becomes only the second person to win that honor and an Academy Award. The great Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1925. He then won the 1938 Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for "Pygmalion," which was based on his stage play. He shared the award with Ian Dalrymple, Cecil Lewis and W.P. Lipscomb. Dylan received the 2000 Academy Award for Best Original Song: "Things Have Changed" from the late Curtis Hanson's comedy/drama "Wonder Boys." I'm confused. Literature? Are song lyrics "literature"?i Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jakeem Posted October 13, 2016 Author Share Posted October 13, 2016 I'm confused. Literature? Are song lyrics "literature"? He's a storyteller of sorts, isn't he? We can only hope that Stevie Wonder is next! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dargo Posted October 13, 2016 Share Posted October 13, 2016 I'm confused. Literature? Are song lyrics "literature"?i Good question here, DGF. I dunno. (...perhaps the answer is blowin' in...errr...oh...never mind) 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MovieMadness Posted October 13, 2016 Share Posted October 13, 2016 This choice is as drugged out as he is. Just go listen to his Christmas album, I almost died from it. lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jakeem Posted October 13, 2016 Author Share Posted October 13, 2016 This choice is as drugged out as he is. Just go listen to his Christmas album, I almost died from it. lol Was this song on it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DownGoesFrazier Posted October 13, 2016 Share Posted October 13, 2016 Good question here, DGF. I dunno. (...perhaps the answer is blowin' in...errr...oh...never mind) Well, I guess they define literature more broadly than they used to. The times, they are a changin'. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
misswonderly3 Posted October 13, 2016 Share Posted October 13, 2016 This choice is as drugged out as he is. Just go listen to his Christmas album, I almost died from it. lol So, it's fair to pick the worst thing an artist has ever done and hold that up as an example of how they are undeserving of being honoured? I agree with you, Bob Dylan's Christmas album is wretched. I have no idea what he was thinking when he made it, but I would say it is pretty bad - except as a source of humour, as jakeem seems to think, at least when it comes to "Must Be Santa". (Which I think is hilarious, possibly intentionally so...) But to sarcastically cite this one bad album as reason to object to Dylan's receiving the Nobel Prize for literature is like citing "Kiss Me, Stupid" as reason to object to Billy Wilder ever receiving an Oscar. You don't go by the artist's worst work, you go by their best. And Bob Dylan has many "bests". 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bogie56 Posted October 13, 2016 Share Posted October 13, 2016 I Love Dylan's Christmas album. It's funny and I can finally sing along to something and not worry about being off key. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vautrin Posted October 13, 2016 Share Posted October 13, 2016 I never realized that Tarantula was that good. Total travesty. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jakeem Posted October 13, 2016 Author Share Posted October 13, 2016 I never realized that Tarantula was that good. Total travesty Funny Or DieVerified account@funnyordie News Flash Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vautrin Posted October 13, 2016 Share Posted October 13, 2016 There was that near riot at the Newport Book Festival back in '65. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr6666 Posted October 13, 2016 Share Posted October 13, 2016 "Homer and Sappho—they wrote poetic texts that were meant to be performed with instruments . . . it's the same with Bob Dylan." —Dr. Sara Danius, Nobel committee http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/10/13/disillusioned-words-bullets-bark-folk-great-bob-dylan-awarded-nobel-prize-literature 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr6666 Posted October 13, 2016 Share Posted October 13, 2016 The best argument for Dylan's Nobel Prize comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson, even though he died a century before Shot of Love. His 1850 essay "Shakespeare; or the Poet," from the book Representative Men, works as a cheat sheet to Dylan. For Emerson, Shakespeare's greatness was to exploit the freedoms of a disreputable format, the theater: "Shakespeare, in common with his comrades, esteemed the mass of old plays, waste stock, in which any experiment could be freely tried. Had the prestige which hedges about a modern tragedy existed, nothing could have been done. The rude warm blood of the living England circulated in the play, as in street-ballads.".... http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/why-bob-dylan-deserves-his-nobel-prize-w444799 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sewhite2000 Posted October 14, 2016 Share Posted October 14, 2016 Dylan did write his memoirs, Chronicles: Vol. I, which made the Top 10 lists of many book critics the year of its release. However, it has slowly emerged in the years since that there are many parts of it he didn't actually write. Whether the inscrutable Dylan intended outright plagiarism or is just having a grand joke on us all, probably only he knows. http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/12/bob-dylan-and-plagiarism/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HelenBaby2 Posted October 14, 2016 Share Posted October 14, 2016 If you compare song lyrics to poetry, then he's deserving and it's not unprecedented that poets have won in the past. However, there are other lyricists who are just as good, such as Cole Porter or Stephen Sondheim. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fedya Posted October 14, 2016 Share Posted October 14, 2016 Wait until Dylan goes to the awards ceremony and discovers the Physics laureate has been replaced by a doppelgänger. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
im4cinema2 Posted October 14, 2016 Share Posted October 14, 2016 Bob Dylan??? Really? Half the time I have trouble understanding what he's singing his style is so garbled Why now? Isn't it a belated gift? They couldn't find a good "recent" writer so rather not giving an award they went back to the archives like the 1960s to cull their award. Nice. Better late than never. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slaytonf Posted October 14, 2016 Share Posted October 14, 2016 I'm confused. Literature? Are song lyrics "literature"?i Is poetry literature? Are lyrics poetry? Bob Dylan amply deserves the honor. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slaytonf Posted October 14, 2016 Share Posted October 14, 2016 However, there are other lyricists who are just as good, such as Cole Porter or Stephen Sondheim. Or Paul Simon? Bob Dylan??? Really? Half the time I have trouble understanding what he's singing his style is so garbled Why now? Isn't it a belated gift? They couldn't find a good "recent" writer so rather not giving an award they went back to the archives like the 1960s to cull their award. Nice. Better late than never. That is what I understood as the intent of Mr. Nobel, to reward brilliant work by young and promising individuals to encourage them and advance them in their fields. It has over the years changed to enshrining elder masters for their life's major accomplishment. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vautrin Posted October 14, 2016 Share Posted October 14, 2016 Okay, now I get it. Come out tonight everything will be tightWinterlude, this dude thinks you're grand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sepiatone Posted October 14, 2016 Share Posted October 14, 2016 Dylan did write his memoirs, Chronicles: Vol. I, which made the Top 10 lists of many book critics the year of its release. However, it has slowly emerged in the years since that there are many parts of it he didn't actually write. Whether the inscrutable Dylan intended outright plagiarism or is just having a grand joke on us all, probably only he knows. http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/12/bob-dylan-and-plagiarism/ If you've ever read his first PLAYBOY interview, you'd realize he's long got a kick out of "funnin' " with those things. I wouldn't presume to question the motives of the Nobel commitee. But then, I'm speaking as an intense Dylan fan for the last 50+ years. I WOULD say however, in response to Helenbaby.... Porter and Sondheim? The difference from them and Dylan lyrically is gargantuan! NOW all Bob needs is that LONG overdue Gershwin award! Sepiatone 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DownGoesFrazier Posted October 14, 2016 Share Posted October 14, 2016 If you've ever read his first PLAYBOY interview, you'd realize he's long got a kick out of "funnin' " with those things. I wouldn't presume to question the motives of the Nobel commitee. But then, I'm speaking as an intense Dylan fan for the last 50+ years. I WOULD say however, in response to Helenbaby.... Porter and Sondheim? The difference from them and Dylan lyrically is gargantuan! NOW all Bob needs is that LONG overdue Gershwin award! Sepiatone An "intense" fan? Anyone who puts down Dylan, you go after with an axe? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
midwestan Posted October 14, 2016 Share Posted October 14, 2016 Bob Dylan??? Really? Half the time I have trouble understanding what he's singing his style is so garbled Why now? Isn't it a belated gift? They couldn't find a good "recent" writer so rather not giving an award they went back to the archives like the 1960s to cull their award. Nice. Better late than never. I thought the same thing when I first heard the announcement. Still, he's written lyrics and recorded enough stuff over the years to have his own section in the Library of Congress! My favorite Dylan song..."Gotta Serve Somebody". I like all the contrasts the lyrics contain. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sepiatone Posted October 15, 2016 Share Posted October 15, 2016 An "intense" fan? Anyone who puts down Dylan, you go after with an axe? Naw. I merely pity them their simplicity. We Dylan fans are used to realizing that the only "put-down" most come up with is that he doesn't sing good or isn't a "pretty boy". Some people think THAT's more important than structure and substance. Like those tin-eared mooks who like DISCO for instance.... Sepiatone Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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