First of all, I’d like to congratulate the Academy for choosing someone who doesn’t hail from the East—not from the Far, Middle or Near East, not from Southeast Asia or even Eastern Europe. No, they did not choose someone who writes in a language that no one in the Swedish Academy actually has the ability to read and whose major works have never been published in a language they do. They have not chosen someone who we are ashamed to admit we’ve never heard of and whose books we will still not read, not even when they are translated, even now that they are written by a Nobel prize winner.
No, The Academy has gone for a North American again. It’s been a while but it’s our turn again. Time for someone who writes in English but whose “voice” brings us a perspective different from that of the mainstream establishment. It had to be either a woman (again) or a minority (again). The names most brought up in circles where these things are actually discussed were, apparently, Margaret Atwood (Canadian, woman) and Philip Roth (American, Jew). Now Atwood is no slouch, but she’s no Doris Lessing, either. I have to admit I pretty much stopped reading her in the 90’s when I took up Crime Fiction and Espionage (John Le Carre for a future Nobel?), but really, dystopian feminist fiction? For the Nobel? And Roth. Well, Roth has a significant body of work under his belt but he’s recently retired from writing, which might be seen as a kind of slap to the literary world and, more to the point, do the words “Too Jewish” mean anything to you?
But Dylan. Now we’re talking. An authentic voice, coming from the throat of one of the worst singers of our time but with all the complexity, all the angst, all the power and the anger and the poetry and the drama of our generation. The very definition of our generation. And a Jew who changed his obviously Jewish name and chose that of an Irish poet. A Jew who dabbled in the dark side for a while (“You Gotta Serve Somebody”) but who returned to us in that brilliant, secular, Talmudic fashion that so defines us in America. An authentic voice emerging from The Heartland, honed in the streets of New York, ending up on the beach in Malibu. And one always in motion, always traveling. The troubadour who brought his songs directly to the people in the rural south in the 60’s and now to the people of Melbourne and Kuala Lumpur and whatever other god-forsaken place his manager has booked him. (My joke upon hearing that Dylan won the Nobel was “Does this mean he can afford to stop touring?”) Not just the voice of our generation but the voice heard, literally, round the world.
Yes, Swedish Academy, you did good. This debate over whether he’s a writer or “just” a songwriter is, of course, absurd and the discussion will end in due course. But we will soon get to witness Bob Dylan, in full dress, accepting the Nobel Prize in Stockholm. What in the world is he going to say?