The Editors of LIFE - LIFE Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

PHOTOGRAPH BY ELLIOTT LANDY/MAGNUM

In 1968, Dylan and his son Jesse are spending time outside the family home in Byrdcliffe, New York.

PHOTOGRAPH BY DANIEL KRAMER

Not quite hiding in New York City in 1965.

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Vol. 16, No. 21 December 9, 2016

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Cover: The rock star in 1965 at the Newport Folk Festival. PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID GAHR/GETTY

Introduction

Nobel Man

KEN REGAN/CAMERA 5

Dylan in Bangor, Maine, during the early days of the Rolling Thunder Revue tour in 1975.

The unorthodox selection of Bob Dylan as the 2016 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature was bound to cause controversy. He became the first American to win the prize since Toni Morrison in 1993 and, more significantly, he became the first songwriter, from any country, to win it ever.

Although there had been a quiet groundswell for Dylan-as-Nobelist over the yearssupported in part by university academics who teach his lyrics in their classroomsmany within the literary community squirmed. What about Philip Roth? What about Don DeLillo? What about... ? The novelist Irvine Welsh derided the Dylan selection as an ill-conceived nostalgia award. The poet Natalie Diaz wondered why the late Bob Marley never got considered. Some writers groused about ancillary things: Dylan is rich and famous enough already! He doesnt need it! Or, Song lyrics arent really literature! More than one writer suggested that Dylan follow the path of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who in 1964 was awarded the Nobel but refused to accept it.

Yet many others, indeed the heavy bulk of the public commenters, were thrilled at the choiceboth in admiration of Dylans writing and also because the committee had shown a willingness to buck tradition and test institutional bias. At the vaunted Swedish Academy the times are a-changing. The frontiers of literature keep widening, Salman Rushdie told Britains Guardian while lauding Dylan as a personal inspiration. Its exciting that the Nobel Prize recognizes that. Billy Collins, Americas former poet laureate, gave his blessing to Dylans Nobel. Songwriters cheered for one of their own. (Holy mother of god, wrote Rosanne Cash.) Barack Obama tweeted his congratulations.

Dylan stood by impassively, letting all the fuss blow in the wind. He didnt bother to respond to the Academys call informing him of their choice. (Impolite and arrogant, a committee member griped.) He played concerts in Tulsa, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Albuquerque, and El Pasoat 75, Dylan is perpetually on tour; hell play four or five nights a weekwithout mentioning the Nobel to the crowd. A note acknowledging hed won the award went up as a short aside on his website but then was taken down. Weeks went by before Dylan said anything publicly at all. When he finally did, he told a reporter that he would attend the award ceremony, If at all possible. Later he said he didnt think hed make it there after all. Dylan being Dylan.

According to the official release, Dylan was named literatures 113th Nobel laureate for, having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition. The Swedish Academys permanent secretary, Sara Danius, later compared Dylan to Homer and Sappho and said that reaching the decision had not been difficult. Were really giving it to Bob Dylan as a great poetthats the reason we awarded him the prize, Danius said. Hes a great poet in the great English tradition, stretching from Milton and Blake onward. And hes a very interesting traditionalist in a highly original way. Not just the written tradition but also the oral one; not just high literature but also low literature.

High or low, literatureor rather what we might mean by itis not easy to define. Merriam-Webster has it simply as: written works... that are considered to be very good and to have lasting importance, a measure by which the writing not only of Bob Dylan, William Faulkner, Alice Munro, and every other laureate clearly qualifies but also such works as, say, the Guinness Book of World Records, Mad magazine, and the 2017 Chevy Impala owners manual. Perhaps then, we mean something else by literature, something about texts that communicate implicitly as well as explicitly, that find a way to say things that might otherwise not be said, that have, at their center, a conscience. The will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish philanthropist who set up the whole Nobel enterprise, decrees that the literature prize go to someone who produced the most outstanding work in an ideal direction. The type of works considered, Nobels will says, should be not only belles lettres but also other writings which, by virtue of their form and style, possess literary value.