Who will be the next American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature?

a pretty presumptuous statement

http://www.ipl.org/div/kidspace/askauthor/photos/pinkwater.gif

why would it not be Pynchon?

Maybe Vollmann although I don't really believe anyone finishes any of his books. Also, i don't think it would be for a long, long time.

he has written a string of BIG. IMPORTANT. NOVELS. Some even say his best ever. One more could put him over the top. And the last 3 or 4 have all been properly political.

i dont think that's the case but i may be wrong. it's given for a career not a book.

He's invented all those new words.

After him, in order, I would say the most deserving would be Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Joyce Carol Oates, Ishmael Reed, John Ashbery,
John Updike.

1) is probably presently younger than 55, and
2) has not yet written his/her key work.

more talk here for people who are bored and need more momus in their life:

Nobel Prize for Pinter

Herta Müller wins this year.

the anonymity of the winners is getting more and more ridiculous

I got a used copy of The Land of Green Plums a few weeks ago (mainly because it was translated by Michael Hoffmann, whom I like) on a bargain bin for a quid!

This looks like a very obvious '20 years since the Berlin Wall fell' thing.

I think its great that they're less well known -- US authors have a high profile already as it is. If anything I need more works from Asia and Africa.

Vollmann's is just a matter of time. Probably not next though.

I got a used copy of The Land of Green Plums a few weeks ago (mainly because it was translated by Michael Hoffmann, whom I like) on a bargain bin for a quid
Yeah, i bought this remaindered a while ago, again because of Hoffman--now I'll actually get round to reading it.

Barack Obama. Yes, his output is small and perhaps not of obvious literary note, but why should that be an obstacle.

I think Mamet will get it at some point, even if his new plays are Sid Caesar sketches.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/04/william-trevor-nobel-prize-literature

Literary Saloon's annual round-up of runners and riders. Fancies Murakami, Goytisolo, Ko Un.

Of course, last time there appears to have been strong disagreement -- the choice of Jelinek -- they announced on 7 October .....

Misread this as Jandek.

'Authors' who have no chance of getting the prize but are listed at Ladbrokes:
Bob Dylan (10/1) (I'm embarrassed even to mention him in conjunction with the Nobel Prize ...)
Andrea Camilleri (50/1)
Herman Koch (66/1)
Jonathan Littell (100/1)
E.L.James (500/1)

really don't think Murakami will win, those odds look driven by mug bets to me

he's definitely one of the ones odd don't give you a read on. think you're probably right - bit too pop, bit too soon.

Nadas has moved to 5/2. That might be something.

But then I think Lit Saloon is probably right:

Hungarian -- and between Kertész Imre and recent eastern European (Herta Müller) and central European (Jelinek) winners, I just can't see it

Man, if Murakami gets it I will get so angry

I like Murakami a lot, but he doesn't strike me as the kind of author the lit committee usually favors. Feel like a lot of what's kept him in the convo is a sense that East Asia is due for a winner.

I've enjoyed some of his work, but he's a real lightweight using a few tired tropes to look more serious/important than he is

i can see trevor winning. old. revered. heaney won in the 90's if they actually do think about those kinds of things. the country thing.

still can't see anyone other than roth being the winner in u.s.

would love to see alice munro win, but somehow i doubt it. you know, technically, saul bellow could be considered a canadian win. though i'm guessing he became a u.s. citizen?

Munro wrote no novels, therefore she's not serious enough for the committee.

no idea what's embarrassing about dylan that isn't about murakami

prob the harmonica

the empire burles

que jacket

got a lil overexcited there

Murakami looks knocked out loaded on most of his dust jackets.

Mo Yan for the win. Good ol' Mo Yan.

where would we be without him?

For English-speaking audiences, Mo Yan should translate his name and try to package a publicity tour with Gwen Stefani.

Why the sarcasm? I'm really looking forward to checking a couple of his novels..

"where would we be without him?"

i thought you appreciate obscure stuff, or is it just in music?

also, he should tour with No Doubt (Don't Speak=Mo Yan)

hey i like hearing about people i don't know about. which is a lot of nobel winners. i never end up reading any of them though. i DO think its funny/cool that i've never heard of the people who win what is arguably the most prestigious world prize in the world until the day they win it. i've heard of the movie red sorghum at least! that's a start.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/11/gripes-of-roth-nobel-prize-literature

HOW MANY OF YOU GUYS CHECKED OUT THE POETRY OF Tomas Tranströmer AFTER HE WON THE NOBEL LAST YEAR, HUH??? HUH????

yeah, that's what i thought. he does write poetry, right?

and none of the winners are "obscure". not in their home countries anyway.

I did! he's really good!!

Since 1994, though, the Americans have struck out every year. And as the dry spell wears on, the reactions get angrier. So far, Mo Yan has been getting a tiny bit more respect than usual, perhaps because, while Americans are as clueless about Chinese literature as any other, a Chinese winner does at least make the narrative of American decline more historically piquant.

Mo Yan isn't so popular in china, it seems (at least till today that is).

for a body of work - and for what the nobel crowd goes for - roth is the only american i can think of who actually deserves some sort of medal. not that i read all his stuff, but i think he's probably the only "important" american writer alive. and i don't even know why i think that. i just do.

too controversial i guess

(for the noble jury that is)

i've tried to read some nobel winners and...it doesn't go so well. i get sleepy. i always thought i would like patrick white but i've never finished a book of his. i've read very little nobel lit. i look at the books and i just can't commit. i've never even read andre gide. i liked camus and hesse when i was a boy.

i liked some sartre novels when i was in high school. same with hemingway and sinclair lewis.

bellow the exception to the rule. one of my all-time faves.

i never end up reading any of them though.

Well you should you damn provincial ;-)

Lots of great writers haven't won it, from many countries: Borges is possibly the prime example, so nothing special about Roth not having won it.

Doesn't mean anything, merely another avenue to hear about more writers, albeit a very high profile one.

xp = Patrick White and Sartre aren't all that (ok I haven't read seen the plays). Read Oe (who mines Sartre's existentialism) and Laxness' Under the Glacier and tell me if you've slept through that one.

i am really really anglo-centric. i am the first person to admit that. and this is simply because english is the only language i read and write. and i love it. and if i lived ten lifetimes i would never get a handle on it. because i'm too lazy to learn latin, greek, french, and german. and i can have a problem with translations. i get a nagging feeling that i'm missing a lot. i really feel this way when i'm reading books translated from asian languages. i try to ignore it.

Roth, if any. But probably the next American winner will be in like 2067.

i'm actually reading a Lee Child "Jack Reacher" novel right now that my father gave me for my birthday. i shouldn't be on this thread at all! (hey, there's something to be said for chapters that are a page long.)

I've tried two different White novels and given up. The dude's ponderous.

did you try Voss? it's awesome.

my dad loves Lee Child :)

my dad loves all those guys. and "gals" as he would say. that's all he reads. james lee burke up the wazoo.

actually not true. he is kinda particular. there are crime dudes he just won't read.

HOW MANY OF YOU GUYS CHECKED OUT THE POETRY OF Tomas Tranströmer AFTER HE WON THE NOBEL LAST YEAR, HUH??? HUH????

yeah, that's what i thought. he does write poetry, right?

and none of the winners are "obscure". not in their home countries anyway.

― scott seward, Thursday, 11 October 2012 21:59 (1 hour ago) Permalink

you should

I read some Tranströmer, and I thought it was excellent (I'm Danish, though, and that might help in knowing what all the nature-descriptions are about). And good on Mo Yan. Here is a short story of his: http://www.granta.com/New-Writing/Frogs Haven't read it yet, but I'll get to it some time this year.

Everybody should go and read Octavio Paz, and not just the poems either cos his essays on art & lit are just wonderful too.

The market for global fiction's declined since the fifties and sixties, no?

National Insecurity

The Under Secretary leans forward and draws an X
and her ear-drops dangle like swords of Damocles.

As a mottled butterfly is invisible against the ground
so the demon merges with the opened newspaper.

A helmet worn by no one has taken power.
The mother-turtle flees flying under the water.

read one! i do enjoy turtles...

i'm not sure what an ear-drop is but its evocative.

drop earrings yeah?

transtromer translation problems. apparently. buyer beware!

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/books/review/tomas-transtromers-poems-and-the-art-of-translation.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

"drop earrings yeah?"

yeah i mean that's what i guessed but i've never heard anyone use the words ear-drops to describe earrings before. makes me think of medicine.

for a body of work - and for what the nobel crowd goes for - roth is the only american i can think of who actually deserves some sort of medal. not that i read all his stuff, but i think he's probably the only "important" american writer alive. and i don't even know why i think that. i just do.

― scott seward, Thursday, October 11, 2012 6:03 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

what about pynchon...

Maya Angelou maybe?

they will never give it to pynchon in case he doesn't turn up

I read Conjunctions and Disjunctions by Octavio Paz. It was cool, but also seemed quite old-fashioned anthropology. Some good stuff about sex in christianity vs hinduism. I've read stuff by only four of the people who have won the nobel prize this century: Kertesz, Pamuk, Vargas Llosa and Tranströmer. And I've studied comparative literature...

I'm really rooting for Pynchon. They've given it to people who probably wouldn't show up before, though that was mainly dissidents... Also, because they gave it to someone from east asia this year, we won't have to listen to all the people who say that murakami should win for a few years. yay.

it'd be so awesome if they gave it to pynchon and he actually showed up.

Scott is not a Pynchon fan iirc?

this is gonna sound mean and i swear i'm not trying to be mean but i think i'd need to be a bigger nerd to be a pynchon fan? i just suck so bad at math and science. i feel the same way about zappa. basically: all that brain power in the service of a titty joke? why, frank, why? i think you need to think that pynchon is funny AND that he is worth following through all the twists and turns. i'm down with borges though. but basically i get all my pynchon-esque needs met by science fiction and stanley elkin novels. and peter de vries is way funnier to me. i don't learn anything from pynchon either, i guess. not that that's a prerequsite for me, but it helps. like nabokov, he feels like a closed system. or a locked room. or an airless room and everyone else in the room doesn't need to breathe air and i do. i could completely change my mind in ten years time. it happens with me. i am constantly changing and evolving. i love eating mushrooms now. i was really enjoying a nina simone album the other day. i would never rule out liking pynchon someday. i should probably try one of the later shaggier ones. i dunno though....i'll look in one of his books sometimes and its like someone gave tom robbins smart drugs and some PKD books to read. for some this is heaven.

good overview: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/11/hallucinatory-realism-of-mo-yan-the-first-official-chinese-winner-of-the-nobel-prize-for-literature.html

I read The Crying of Lot 49 and V. (and earlier short stories he was embarrassed about later, in the intro to Slow Learner) while I was in high school, where I also was noooo good at math (kicked in the head by a mule). But I also had nooo probs with those books (also np w first couple Mothers Of Invention records--later met a muso who said Frank told him he started playing guitar in the mid-60s; if true, that may well be why he didn't get very freaking fancy on the good old early stuff)

Oh yeah and I (more recently) enjoyed the poems of Tomas Tranströmer too. Must've lucked out w the translator, whose name I forget (this was in the New Yorker).

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
7/2
Haruki Murakami
9/2
Svetlana Aleksijevitj
6/1
Adonis
10/1
Ismail Kadare
10/1
Patrick Modiano
10/1
Jon Fosse
12/1
Philip Roth
12/1
Peter Handke
12/1
Assia Djebar
14/1
Peter Nadas
14/1
Joyce Carol Oates
16/1
Adam Zagajewski
20/1
Nawal El Saadawi
20/1
Milan Kundera
25/1
Mircea Cartarescu
25/1
Thomas Pynchon
25/1
Cees Nooteboom
25/1
Bob Dylan
25/1
Les Murray
25/1
Bei Dao
25/1
Ko Un
33/1
Umberto Eco
33/1
Nuruddin Farah
33/1
Darcia Maraini
33/1
Margaret Atwood
33/1
Don DeLillo
33/1
Amos Oz
33/1
Antonio Lobo Antunes
33/1
Richard Ford
33/1
Don Paterson
33/1
Karl Ove Knausgard
33/1
Paul Muldoon
33/1
Karel Schoeman
33/1
Juan Goytisolo
33/1
Salman Rushdie
50/1
Javier Marias
50/1
Cormac McCarthy
50/1
William Trevor
50/1
John Le Carre
50/1
Tom Stoppard
50/1
Colm Toibin
50/1

Go Pynchon!

That would be tiresome.

Interesting names that I would like to read and don't see any translations of:

Nawal El Saadawi
Assia Djebar
Darcia Maraini
Nuruddin Farah

an of course Ngugi Wa Thiong'o

If Murakami wins I'm punching somebody

Most overrated living "literary" writer

Would Murakami be winning mostly for the wind up bird chronicle? I've read many books by him and i think he's good but WUBC is the only one i can think of that could possibly be considered "great" or "important."

Guess I'm kind of over Murakami myself.

bob dylan should win a nobel prize. i mean, not really... but really.

treesh........

^good answer

treesh would be a more deserving winner than bob dylan

bloody over rated rubbish!

.....

kadare is such a nobel winner he might as well be given it now

fairly sure he would be given it now if he had cancer or something

Shaun Hutson or gtfo

What makes Murakami such a likely pick? He doesn't seem particularly more Nobel-ish (idealistic, oppressed) than plenty of others.

Murakami would be a populist pick. After a populist pick last year, maybe that's the way the current committee leans. Kundera at 25-1 seems like appealing odds.

the more i think about it, the more insane murakami seems a pick. his protagonists are mostly slacker everymen who get dragged into a world of sexuality and the unconscious, only to return from it mostly unchanged: a little humbler in some ways, maybe, but in a more important sense more self-assured. this is the same as judd apatow movies.

In truth, the most insane pick on that list would be Svetlana Aleksijevitj, at least from a historical standpoint. The only two solely nonfiction writers the award has ever gone to have been Winston Churchill and Theodor Mommsen (the second ever winner of the award). Would be nice to see them expand their horizons though.

awards are terrible why do we do this to ourselves

xp to myself, wind up bird chronicle is the same as this in every respect but integrating the stuff about the japanese occupation of china has interesting consequences. you discover that the placelessness of murakami's books, where most of the cultural reference points are american and characters all speak in the same inflectionless faux-naive manner, is a thin facade concealing a history that has been violently repressed. japanese identity is what the narrator is looking for in the well, i think, but he doesn't find it and eventually he stops looking. this solution to japan's national shame might be unsatisfying but it seems preferable to mishima's fate. although, murakami wouldn't be murakami if he was capable of the sort of un-ironic, literal commitment to an ideology that undid mishima in the end.

it's interesting to me that america hasn't had to reckon with its atrocities in the same way. i mean, in the wind up bird chronicle it seems that both the violence in nanking and the shame of the atom bombs are too traumatic to integrate into a coherent national identity. better to be global citizens. why isn't slavery like this? why aren't the atom bombs like this from our end? are we just assholes or do history's victors just never have to explain themselves?

also he goes into a well and then the book is over or something

plus he has to kill his brother-in-law in a dream in order to fulfill an oedipal fantasy that will bring his wife back to him and also kill this brother-in-law in real life.

yeah i dont really get/remember that part

treesh u are reminding me why i read so few novels

i liked when the one guy was skinned alive and then the other guy went in the well tho

they had to kill all the zoo animals by firing squad

Bob Dylan can fuck off too

bob dylans book is pretty good tbh

bob dylans book is pretty very good tbh

With (Roy Orbison), it was all about fat and blood. He sounded like he was singing from an Olympian mountaintop and he meant business. One of his previous songs, "Ooby Dooby" was deceptively simple, but Roy had progressed. He was now singing his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff. He sang like a professional criminal. Typically, he'd start out in some low, barely audible range, stay there a while and then astonishingly slip into histrionics. His voice could jar a corpse, always leave you muttring to yourself something like, "Man, I don't believe it." His songs had songs within songs. They shifted from major to minor key without any logic. Orbison was deadly serious - no pollywog and no fledgling juvenile. There wasn't anything else on the radio like him.

bob dylans book is pretty very good the best book that has been or will ever be written tbh

“When Johnson started singing, he seemed like a guy who could have sprung from the head of Zeus in full armor.

i could read 10,000 pages of this kind of prose

ya he shd do another one

He sang like a professional criminal

this is the line that always made me laugh

“I really was never any more than what I was -a folk musician who gazed into the gray mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze.”

these kinds of lines are really funny to me too. his transparently disingenuous "golly gee" mode

kinda mad that Marias isn't more highly favored

in re: Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize for Literature

This man has sold a gazillion units of vinyl, CD and downloadable whatnot. It's like he hit an oil well that never stops pumping money. The committee that awards the prize kind of regards that kind of commercial success as too crass to deserve Nobel recognition. Modest plaudits among the public at large, complemented by a high esteem within academia, seems to be the best way to punch your ticket.

dude lives on a tour bus 11 months out of the year

dude could buy his own fleet of Lear jets if he wanted to

ITT -_------->>> pictures of william t vollmann (no shops allowed)

if Dylan bought a fleet of Lear jets it would bankrupt him tbrr

i don't think he should win the prize, but if the issue is him being "compromised" by corporate success i don't think it's applicable in his situation. he was destined to spend his life trying to expand the possibilities of the folk song whether it led him to fame or poverty. this is what i think based on everything i know about him.

his success seems coincidental and sort of arbitrary to the music he creates. not totally arbitrary obviously, but relatively so. much as could reasonably be expected

http://i.imgur.com/HYksNIp.png

this thread went in a great direction

now i am wondering what would happen if lagoon revealed that i was worth 180 million dollars. would ilxors resent this? would they opportunistically try to become closer to me? or, a third option, would they treat me exactly the same?

i actually sincerely think the third option is what would happen, and that is why ilx is superior to the nobel prize selection committee

can i have like a million dollars

just interjecting to say nobody who has done a chrysler commercial should win the Nobel prize for literature

well aren't you just blah blah blah and et cetera

sorry i need to go to sleep

i live by a simple code

I don't especially care that Mr. Zimmerman has a vast net worth derived from his artistic endeavors. I've always enjoyed a large fraction of his output. But I suspect a certain gaggle of self-important Swedes would never see him as a worthy recipient, so I'd never risk a penny betting on him getting it.

lol peace activist

tbf, they list it after disc jockey

he makes money at that one!

paul muldoon >>>> bob dylan

Bob Dylan should get the peace prize

He seems peaceful enough

"All those evil motherfuckers can rot in hell."

The odds make little or no sense, but that's novelty odds I guess

get the sense that Murakami's chances are increasing year by year, but I think it's dumb money that really pushes him to favourite (the heuristic seems to be something like "is non-anglophone, have heard of, is literary/rated").

I'm a bit surprised that Kundera's down with the long shots (20/1 and longer, say), but then no-one seems to talk about him now. Did people just switch off when he moved into French?

Don Paterson being on the list at all is quite odd. Maybe ppl thought a Scot would get it if they voted yes?

Handke at 12/1 seems v short, given the fuss over the Ibsen award.

japanese identity is what the narrator is looking for in the well, i think, but he doesn't find it and eventually he stops looking. this solution to japan's national shame might be unsatisfying but it seems preferable to mishima's fate.

I think you are reaching. iirc Murakami isn't that preoccupied with Japanese identity as much as Mishima or Kawabata.

Murakami seems a bit light for the Nobel, but the Nobel is always good at confusing people - some years its 'political' on the left, then right, then something else.

In terms of people you (or the bookies) never heard of she might be good:

http://www.seagullindia.com/books/md.asp?cbosearch=category&txtkeyword=Selected%20Works%20of%20Mahasweta Devi

Learjet 85's private, high-tech luxury to cost a mere Learjet 85's private, high-tech luxury to cost a mere $20.8M0.8M

Dylan can only afford eight lear jets before he's toast

that's not even enough to fly the band and road crew let alone the caterers

https://twitter.com/lrb currently running through archive articles on the favourites

Patrick Modiano won

xp murakami only seems interested in japanese history and identity in the wind up bird chronicle. but questions about japan are always looming in his books as an absent presence due to how thoroughly "americanized" things seem.

Modiano seems like Le Clezio in 2008. Someone in the academy likes this kind of french stuff. Of course, I say this without having read a line of Modiano, but his wiki-page seems dull!

Seems boring like Le Clezio, was what I meant to write.

re: Murakami. to me he is lamely referencing western pop culture as opposed to the other Japanese authors like Mishima who had nationalist leanings. I don't think -- and its been a few years -- the referencing ever leads to questions around history and identity

France has the most Nobel laureates in literature by some margin and a high percentage of them are boring, forgotten novelists.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/emma-brockes-column/2014/oct/09/patrick-modiano-nobel-prize-literature-prize-philip-roth-loser

Within mins there is an article fit for the question the thread is asking.

xp

that doesn't seem true! or they might be boring but they aren't forgotten. Roger Martin du Gard is the only whose name's a total blank for me.

JOHN D WUZ ROBBED

OK OK I exaggerated, their Nobel record probably isn't worse than most other countries. But JMG Le Clezio was the worst selection of the last several years.

My favourite French writers are Celine, Proust, Duras and Genet (and a few other poets too) and none of them have won it.

There is a piece on Modiano in the LRB (Michael Wood). A quote about 'time' again and I don't think I can finish it.

Re: Proust - this was interesting on the wiki page for the prize:

Nobel's choice of emphasis on idealism in his criteria for the Nobel Prize in Literature has led to recurrent controversy. In the original Swedish, the word idealisk translates as either "idealistic" or "ideal".[2] In the early twentieth century, the Nobel Committee interpreted the intent of the will strictly. For this reason, they did not award certain world-renowned authors of the time such as James Joyce, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Marcel Proust, Henrik Ibsen, and Henry James.[4]

Joyce and Proust were never even nominated

found out by dicking around with this:

http://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/literature/database.html

The Royal Swedish Academy’s appointed judges themselves say they don’t like the effects of the creative writing school battery farms on the New York publishing scene

redlined: no matter your talent, perspective, or volume/quality of creative work there's always some middle aged French guy to whom they'd rather award the prize

Remember this thread

redlined: no matter your talent, perspective, or volume/quality of creative work there's always some middle aged French guy to whom they'd rather award the prize

The winners since, say, '68 have been from a few countries (not that many French winners since then) and perspectives.

I don't think there is a lot that has come out of NY that would trouble the Nobel. Even if they hadn't chosen Modiano there are easily a dozen living writers from around the world you'd turn to before UK or US.

So is Modiano good? Has anyone read him? I'm seeing almost no mentions in the ILX archives.

Dunno, but might now get around to finally watching my DVD of Lacombe, Lucien (Modiano co-wrote the screenplay)

Read an excerpt once, seemed like typical French navel-gazing to me, but I couldn't determine whether it was the good kind of navel-gazing or the bad kind.

So nobody's read this guy but we've decided he's a boring conservative choice anyway then?

He has a few film credits, the most notable of which by far is co-writing Louis Malle's Lacombe, Lucien.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0595272/?ref_=fn_nm_nm_1

Nah, I have no opinion on Modiano in particular, but the default assumption for a Nobel winner is that it was a boring, conservative choice.

FYI it's not exactly fair to criticize the Nobel on Proust. At the time he died, only half of In Search of Lost Time had been published.

Englund said: “Patrick Modiano is a well-known name in France but not anywhere else. He writes children’s books, movie scripts but mainly novels. His themes are memory, identity and time.

“His best known work is called Missing Person. It’s the story about a detective who has lost his memory and his final case is finding out who he really is: he is tracing his own steps through history to find out who he is.”

He added: “They are small books, 130, 150 pages, which are always variations of the same theme - memory, loss, identity, seeking. Those are his important themes: memory, identity and time.”

This could be in a "make up a Nobel Literature laureate" thread.

So nobody's read this guy but we've decided he's a boring conservative choice anyway then?

― Matt DC, Thursday, 9 October 2014 15:23 (25 minutes ago)

never get between americans when theyre wounded about their worthless boomer culture being overlooked

Hey, I was the first one to call it a boring choice, and I sure as heck am not American! I do root for Pynchon, though.

But what do you want us to do? It's the nobel-prize, nobody's ever read the winner. What should we do, not have an opinion like a goddamn idiot?

And I'll still say it's a boring choice. They gave it to another from France just six years ago, and there are so many worthy potential recipients all over the world. Even if Madiano is worthy, and he could very well be, it's still a boring choice. Much better than Murakami, though. Whom I've also never read.

“His best known work is called Missing Person. It’s the story about a detective who has lost his memory and his final case is finding out who he really is: he is tracing his own steps through history to find out who he is.”

lol

it turns out hes the killer at the end

heavy stuff

Are you saying there's a way to convey trauma and the mysteries of identity without resorting to amnesia? I'd like to see that.

Modiano is different from Le Clezio who had a different trajectory: started off writing Noveau Roman then seemed to go off toward dispatches from different regions of the world, and I think its the later part of his writing that got him the Nobel.

I feel a lot of French fiction on the latter half of the century had much of its energies slowly sapped by what was going on in film so having a sometime screenwriter winning it suits.

xp theres a way but its so brutal and shocking that you wouldn't remember it

So, I'll chime in since Modiano's one of my favorite contemporary authors and I've read probably half of his output (the guy is prolific). In France, he is a household name, you can probably buy his latest book in any supermaket with a small book section.
He is extremely consistent in his themes and style so you probably only need to read one of his books (usually short and breezy to read) to figure out whether he is for you or not. Memory and nostalgia for periods and places now gone are his bread and butter.

smh nobel handing out awards to euro supermarket authors while our most esteemed cranky misogynists remain unloved

ha as it turns out patrick modiano is my wife's distant relative, modiano is her old family name.

probably fourth cousin twice removed or w/e, who the hell knows.

that make you about 1/50th of a nobel prize winner

which is still a useful amount of a money

http://gifrific.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/homer-rocking-chair-gun-twirl.gif

just heard the news, what a disaster for bob dylan

I don't believe in Zimmerman.

Le Clezio seems a very weird choice in retrospect--I'd not read him before he got the Nobel, and have read several of his books since. Someone so into endless descriptions of animal torture doesn't seem as though he'd be the Nobel committee's bag.

Is Paul Auster im sopermarkets in France as well? I have a feeling he is. And he's also probably wondering why he isn't on the odds chart.

In supermarkets, that is. (tablet typing)

Carrefour was always a classier proposition, shopping-wise.

Le Clezio seems a very weird choice in retrospect--I'd not read him before he got the Nobel, and have read several of his books since. Someone so into endless descriptions of animal torture doesn't seem as though he'd be the Nobel committee's bag.

― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Thursday, October 9, 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

jelinek.jpg

Xxp oh yes definitely, he probably gets his own mini display too

I think jelinek supposedly got it for her plays rather than her novels, and almost none of the plays have made it into English.

Best presentation I've seen, though haven't seen many. Quotations of previous winners' citations, which article's author complains about, don't seem terminally cryptic to me. Anyway, glad to know about the forthcoming Yale collection:
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/patrick-modianos-postwar

James the Nobel quote is:

"for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power"

I would expect the plays to tread on a roughly similar terrain to her prose.

I would love to see a staging of some of Gao Xingjian's plays too.

Also this on Modiano, delving deeper:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n23/michael-wood/j-xx-drancy-13-8-42

Got a proof of three Modiano novellas which is coming out soon; read the first one, Afterimage, which was lovely if slight. Looking forward to the other 2.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/B00OBL1L84.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

By the way, why is this prize so seldom shared? The physics, chemistry and medicine prizes are typically shared.

Science tends to be more collaborative than the arts.

A couple of the lit prizes have iirc been shared but idk what that would mean today - probably give away a few too many clues as to the criteria of what they are judging.

I would guess that the main criteria for giving the prize is who published the defining work first, and in science there is typically more than one author per publication. And this isn't the case with literature

Huh, a split Nobel literature prize happened as late as 1974. Two members of the Swedish academy got it after being recommended by themselves among others, instead of the price going to Nabokov or Borges.

The sensitive Martinson found it hard to cope with the criticism following his award, and committed suicide.[2]

damn

I'm thinking of a case analogous to Physics 1983. The "theme" there was astrophysics, but Chandrasekhar and Fowler never collaborated and worked in separate sub-fields. I wondered why the prize couldn't go for, say, Indian literature one year, shared by two or three writers. Of course writers are jealous gods and might not like the idea.

It's that time of year...

https://sports.ladbrokes.com/en-gb/betting/awards/nobel-prize-in-literature/2015-nobel-prize-for-literature/220019571/

Svetlana Aleksijevitj
5/1
Haruki Murakami
6/1
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
6/1
Philip Roth
10/1
Joyce Carol Oates
12/1
John Banville
14/1
Jon Fosse
14/1
Adunis
16/1
Ismail Kadare
16/1
Ko Un
20/1
Peter Handke
20/1
Amos Oz
25/1
Cees Nooteboom
25/1
Cesar Aira
25/1
Laszlo Krasznahorka
25/1
Marilynne Robinson
25/1
Peter Nadas
25/1

Lydia Davis
33/1

Can you imagine how gobsmacked Paul Auster would be if she got there and he didn't?

Would love if Lydia won it, just for her efforts to learn Norwegian.

Go Pynchon!

I say this each year, and he'll never get it. Still, though.

I know loads of mediocrities have won this but lol @ the idea of Auster ever getting near this.

Bookies once again dutifully offering short odds on Murakami because he's the only contemporary non-English language writer they've ever heard of.

Disgusting sellouts if they choose Roth btw.

I think jelinek supposedly got it for her plays rather than her novels, and almost none of the plays have made it into English.

― ornamental cabbage (James Morrison), Saturday, October 11, 2014 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There is a volume on Seagull btw, looks really good.

Laszlo Krasznahorka
25/1

he's been my vote for a while, but i suspect his list of published works is too short for the committee to recognize (maybe five or six novels over his career, handful of short stories and essays)

Would love if Lydia won it, just for her efforts to learn Norwegian.

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, October 6, 2015 9:47 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Me too but what about Dag Solstadt, the guy who wrote the novel she read to learn Norwegian, is he in the running?

I don't think so...have read one of his books earlier this year and certainly would like to see more in translation.

Excellent piece on what those odds are, there is no long list or anything to go with apart from what ppl bet on: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/123058/who-will-win-nobel-prize-literature

So Dag Solstad could win. I am always selfish here -- want to see someone who hasn't been that translated into Eng -- so its Dag or Sergio Pitol (who is actually being translated now).

Lydia Davis is an all-round great personality, writer and translator. Perfect fit for the prize. Then again all notions of what they go for are up in the air. The article recognizes but can't help to play the game, casting writers as this or that, uncomfortably so: Vargas Llosa and Munro are quite popular (these things are so relative when it comes to literature) (and post-Marquez few thought Llosa would get the nod, so not too late for Kundera). Pynchon as weird, its more that he is v comfortable with talking and engaging with pop (conversely enough that's a reason that could discount Murakami too)

Dag would be a perfect reason not to give it to Knausgaard. That's one thing I have noticed, they will often recognise some kind of literature years after, and they'll never give it to the writer who was there 'first' or anything (Beckett for Irish modernism, Kawabata for a certain kind of Japanses lit and not Mishima, Gide instead of Proust, Jelinek instead of Bernhard). Possibly Marquez was the only time where it seemed to be at right person, right moment.

Other US writer would be Harry Mathews. Don't think an Oulipo member has won this so it would reward that tradition. Seems like a gap on Nobel's CV.

Now that last would be an interesting choice.

Every time I see this thread title I think of that one Kinks song.

Svetlana Alexievich (bookies fave) wins!

Philip Roth grumbles!

eh roth is sitting around watching alf reruns w/ mia farrow

Svetlana Alexievich, you're a winner

her books sound interesting. especially the oral history ones. dalkey archive put one of them out. i do like that they pick a lot of people i've never heard of or people i know little about. they are always keeping their eye out for the next halldor laxness.

that petered out. can anyone here tell us more about svetlana? what to read in english? i know there's a couple of soviet lit devotees around.

Has to be "Voices from Chernobyl": http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=15872&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ThreePercent-Article+%28Three+Percent%29

'has to be' as in 'only book currently in print in english'?

More or less. Complete Review has the state of play:
http://www.complete-review.com/saloon/archive/201510a.htm#sz3

This Work?

Ok the above is from Voice of Chernobyl. There is something else called Zinky Boys as well.

Should get a wider re-issue now

yeah reading about her work really made want to read it so very happy she won the nobel as it will hopefully mean some english translations coming into print

it could be the worst disappointment since that unreadable frenchman from a few years back though

le clezio? he was definitely a dud.

him, yes. yes.

Anyone for Vasil Bykaŭ? http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1618606.ece

Excellent piece at the nyrb: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/oct/12/svetlana-alexievich-truth-many-voices/

Her speech is p/good.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2015/alexievich-lecture_en.html

Here we go again, mostly the same front-runners as ever.

http://www.nicerodds.co.uk/nobel-prize-in-literature

Bonnefoy passed away a couple of months ago.

Feel like I read something recently about some country or someone thinking their nominee was the favorite because they saw a list of candidates and didn't realize it was in alphabetical order.

E.L. James, lol

Would die if it were Le Guin, but no chance really.

Lol Murakami every single year. Do they ever learn?

They're like the Bob Dylan people. Every year I get really angry when people start going on about how Murakami should win.

Which Bob Dylan people?

all of them.

:) No, every year people put money on Bob Dylan to win the Literature Nobel, because they are morons

Somehow I doubt they are wagering more money on Mr. Zimmerman's chances than they can afford to lose. Which would make their wagers a bit less moronic and more a matter of enthusiastic advocacy, however misguided.

But it's advocacy which makes no difference since I doubt that the Nobel committee takes their instructions from unibet. And he won't ever win since he's a rubbish "writer". Hence: morons.

Sorry. Just that the cultural adulation of both Bob Dylan and Murakami makes me very cross.

Dylan deserves the Nobel Prize just for his painting

Well, fuck me, i'm going to go live in a box

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

Young Thug was robbed.

Lol.

Go live and your tiny second bookshop, and we'll come visit when we can.

But stay out of your tiny record shop.

America's greatest living poet, Bill "Smokey" Robinson, was robbed.

(Fingers in ears) I CANT HEAR YOU! I CANT HEAR YOU!

Time to start the Tarantula ILB book club.

Excellent

What will the next 3 signs of the apocalypse be?

Stephen King for 2017

I hope somebody returns their award in protest

he wrote some pretty class songs imo

lol grouchies

Look, dylan to me is like clinton to you

Orhan Pamuk: I am returning this in protest of the latest recipient and because Turkey is slipping down the charts.

philip roth on his agent's sofa, sadly watching the liver going cold for the last time

if a Nobel Prize for Song existed, Dylan would deserve it, I guess.

Watching the Liver Flow

lol

good

My wife has asked me to stop shouting BOB FUCKING DYLAN angrily every couple of minutes, so i think i should best close this thread and go to bed

At least we have bonkers acceptance speech to look forward to, in which he will insult all and sundry.

i actually have no problem with this. one of the most influential writers of the last century. for literary and extra-literary reasons.

Morrissey is fuming whatdoyowannabet

A thousand think pieces about white male songwriters and I am a millennial and I don't like Bob Dylan being pitched right now

My biggest fear is that the people who has lobbied for a songwriter to be considered a great poet will move on to try and get a scriptwriter recognized as a great dramatis. Woody Allen 2020, people. It's coming.

if you asked most of the people who are on those nobel-wannabe lists and people who are living who have one a nobel if he deserved to win one they would probably say: hell yeah!

especially poets of a certain age.

braced for the incoming hot takes drawing parallels between obama's nobel and dylan's

Look, dylan to me is like clinton to you

peaked in the early '70s? challopsy

Dylan's would be like Obamas if he won it in 1962

hot take #1, keep 'em coming

man the Hillary campaign will stop at nothing when it comes to defeating Trump, eh?

Dylan's lyrics are poor as poesy. The Nobel should have gone to Caetano Veloso.

first nobel laureate to star in a superbowl halftime commercial!

waving_flag.gif

not to mention victoria's secret

oh wait that was prob it

that one yes, also chrysler and pepsi.

there really isn't anything more american than america.

yep Dylan shoulda got it before he bombed weddings in Pakistan too

or at least before the christmas album

i haven't seen this victoria's secret ad but i choose to believe it involves a lingerie-clad dylan provocatively reclining on a big brass bed

morbs gets hot take #2

I heard he was pretty good at those Afghan weddings

But yeah the ones in Pakistan he was under the weather

Obama shoulda bombed at Budokan

"Dylan's lyrics are poor as poesy. The Nobel should have gone to Caetano Veloso."

they are songs though, not poems. his lyrics work great as song lyrics. and caetano hearts dylan so hard!

this is bullshit - books get little enough exposure as it is without giving this award to dylan. i like his music but the entire idea of lyrics as poetry or literature is a fallacy.

if books meed more exposure their writers should set them to music tbh

*need

next year an app is going to win

Orhan Pamuk: I am returning this in protest of the latest recipient and because Turkey is slipping down the charts.

― LL Cantante (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, October 13, 2016 11:20 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Quality post imo

a signed cassingle of 'de doo doo doo, de da da da' is even now winging its way toward stockholm

Lol

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CupV2LxW8AA82E3.jpg

"Brownsville Girl" didn't top Pearl Buck? pish tosh

That would look great printed on toilet paper

xpost

If they were going to give it to an American poet why couldn't they give it to Billy Collins? Oh wait.

lol James, that was perfect <3

so not gonna happen

^^^now in the running

Next time an advertising firm for their slogans. (j/k, I think it's fine that it went to Dylan)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSdsTkqerOw

And Dario Fo died. A mere coincidence?

Good point. Better ask The Widow Gray.

i like a few bob dylan albums

but a man of letters he is not

thanks nobel prize for firmly cementing your place in some back alley trash bin

cuck

without ideas or violence?

http://media3.giphy.com/media/oR5LcCn6pimI/giphy.gif

Don't you tell Henry James.

Nobel's got your prize

I like Bob Dylan. The Nobel committee made a strong choice imo. I hope they continue to award prizes to people I like.

Obama shoulda bombed at Budokan

― The Hon. J. Piedmont Mumblethunder (Dr Morbius), Thursday, October 13, 2016 8:43 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Bob Dylan at Budokan rules btw.

I'm really excited about this. Bob Dylan deserves it.

Expanding the definition of "literature" is a good thing imo. Dylan certainly writes good words.

otm. The idea that "real" poetry is something written rather than performed is super ahistorical as well.

Otm. Just ask Homer and Jethro.

if people can't see the many parallels of homer and mr zimmerman humanity really has no chance

books get little enough exposure as it is without giving this award to dylan
I don't think "serious literature" or any of the possible nominees are in need of pity

entire idea of lyrics as poetry or literature is a fallacy
believe it's the other way around

anyway, I'm sure Bob is cheered up by this and it's the most popular Nobel prize in my time which is great - some people are complaining that next year it might as well be Stephen King, but that would be a great thing! pretentious modernist aesthetics are way done

The Homer comparison obviously isn't meant to elevate Dylan. The point is that sung poetry and poetry with musical accompaniment are way older than written poetry, and it's only a narrow definition of literature that would exclude the traditions of oral narrative poetry. So why exclude songwriters?

I suspect a certain gaggle of self-important Swedes would never see him as a worthy recipient

well cover me with icing and call me a cake, he won!

I'm sure Bob is cheered up by this and it's the most popular Nobel prize in my time which is great

Pinteresque silence.

weird to think the swedish academy thinks america's best writer is someone who dedicated his life to writing limerick-like verses with alternating rhyme schemes purely for music

sounds like exoticization of american culture

anyway, I'm sure Bob is cheered up by this and it's the most popular Nobel prize in my time which is great - some people are complaining that next year it might as well be Stephen King, but that would be a great thing! pretentious modernist aesthetics are way done

Stephen King is a better writer than Bob Dylan and would have been a better choice

he hasn't got as great tunes, though

http://static.oprah.com/images/obc/201004/slideshow/20100414-rock-bottom-remainders-stephen-king-band-600x411.jpg

hmm will have to look into that

Rock Bottom Remainders, right?

so what you're saying is woody allen might be inducted into the rock n roll hall of fame afterall

i don't care who wins any award but the idea that lyrics can't be "real" poetry or literature is some reactionary nonsense

stephen king is actually a really bad writer. i checked and everything.

mark e smith should get it next btw

Stephen King is a better writer than Bob Dylan and would have been a better choice

craziest thing ever said on this website?

he may have better penmanship

"He’s the heir, the unlikely offspring of Arthur Rimbaud and Walt Whitman. But he’s neither Rimbaud nor Whitman. He’s Bob Dylan. Is he a poet or a songwriter? The same answer applies: He’s Bob Dylan. I find myself falling back (again!) on Emily Dickinson’s remark: “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” Dylan’s songs can make us feel that pleasurable shock of being partially decapitated by beauty."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/books/review/bob-dylan-musician-or-poet.html?_r=0

I tried to make sense of it: http://www.mtv.com/news/2943039/bob-dylan-deserves-that-nobel-prize/?curator=MusicREDEF

basically, he inspires people as much as - or more than - great poetry does and in similar ways. cuzza the poetic nature of his lyrics. he really is massive world-wide too. you can't really underestimate the effect he had on the world. even if you hate him.

has lex heard any of bob dylan's literature yet

I will admit dylan is a better writer than stephen king. Of course, so is my dog's vomit.

yeah: https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2012/sep/13/bob-dylan-tempest-lyrics xp

A he was given such a mediocre record for review

This idea that giving the prize to a bad beat poet modeling himself on Rimbaud and Whitman is somehow fresh because modernism is dead is insane. Yeah, Joyce was nearly hundreds of years ago, but Dylan's lyrics are still some oldfashioned/reactionary bullshit.

Well, not 'hundreds', but...

xp A shame he was***

reactionary?

or old fashioned?

He probably is a fascist tho'.

Nobody feels any pain
Tonight as I stand inside the rain
Everybody knows
That Baby’s got new clothes
But lately I see her ribbons and her bows
Have fallen from her curls
She takes just like a woman, yes, she does
She makes love just like a woman, yes, she does
And she aches just like a woman
But she breaks just like a little girl

Queen Mary, she’s my friend
Yes, I believe I’ll go see her again
Nobody has to guess
That Baby can’t be blessed
Till she sees finally that she’s like all the rest
With her fog, her amphetamine and her pearls
She takes just like a woman, yes, she does
She makes love just like a woman, yes, she does
And she aches just like a woman
But she breaks just like a little girl

It was raining from the first
And I was dying here of thirst
So I came in here
And your long-time curse hurts
But what’s worse
Is this pain in here
I can’t stay in here
Ain’t it clear that

I just can’t fit
Yes, I believe it’s time for us to quit
When we meet again
Introduced as friends
Please don’t let on that you knew me when
I was hungry and it was your world
Ah, you fake just like a woman, yes, you do
You make love just like a woman, yes, you do
Then you ache just like a woman
But you break just like a little girl

transplendent!

Its not like T S Eliot does any better than this.

lex was pretty otm

I wish Frederik had just said Dylan sucked

i don't care who wins any award but the idea that lyrics can't be "real" poetry or literature is some reactionary nonsense

Dylan sucks! Especially his 'electric' period, which is what I assume the committee referenced in their statement.

lex was pretty otm

Why are you being wrong about his electric period (and it was electric no need of scare quotes)

I already miss Morbz, at least he would've gotten my joek

what happened to Morbz?!

51'd

Over the US elections?

I guess? Admin Log thread says it was a "slow accumulation". I didn't see anything particularly egregious, just his usual crap.

I just sometimes use scare quotes around terms. His acoustic songs from his electric period suck as well.

we are talking about Morbz now

"morbz"

also all this discussion should be on the de lillo thread, to annoy philip roth

wtf this is permanent?!

yeah you get to keep them iirc

Dylan sucks! Especially his 'electric' period, which is what I assume the committee referenced in their statement.

Wooden poetry > electric poetry

glad fred is as sensible about poetry as he is about u.s. politics

fred is sub-hongro at best.

his sanctimonious schtick is almost Morbzian maybe we can make him nu-Morbz

I'll continue til I'm seventy, and then my posts will win the Nobel, and won't you all feel stupid.

No one will take the Nobel seriously by then we would have all grown-up

Also the Swedes are wellknown Danophobes, complicating my plan further.

wtf this is permanent?!

― xyzzzz__, Thursday, October 13, 2016 4:01 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah you get to keep them iirc

― Har-@-Iago (wins), Thursday, October 13, 2016 4:03 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i lol'd

Mookie I want you to know that I only fpd u itt because I know you are never gonna approach 51 and we're still cool ok

I think the Nobel Prize Committee was just feeling kinda irrelevant, marginalized and down in the dumps and they needed something to cheer themselves up, so they made a pick where no one would say "huh, who's that?", a pick that would get people talking, a pick that provoked passion. Just watch, next year they'll pick whoever is the national poet of Kyrgyzstan.

Still, weird for them to lower themselves to the level of Q Magazine

Being associated with Dylan elevates the Nobel Prize

if anything in my opinion he is underrated and should get this prize again next year (for his painting)

finally, alfred has truly atoned

everyone must get atoned

Any other known plagiarists won the Nobel before?

"Good writers borrow, great writers steal." - Nobel Prize winner T.S. Eliot

if anything in my opinion he is underrated and should get this prize again next year (for his painting)

Lifetime Achievement Award for contribution to the motion pictures industry at next Oscars, gotta happen.

Fred has warmed me to Dylan winning this tbh

as long as my favourite poster LUMBAGO MUJO is still around i'm happy

everyone must get atoned

if thomas pynchon doesn't win a grammy next year i will be soooo mad

lotion can collect it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH2ResrRr_A

If Shakespeare had been sung by Dylan I spose I'd hate it too so maybe, maybe

Girl From North Country is halfway there.

so no American is going to win this for 20 years, so let's meet back here in 2036 to complain about Lin Manuel Miranda.

If Shakespeare had been sung by Dylan I spose I'd hate it too so maybe, maybe

― the kids are alt right (darraghmac)

otoh shakespeare sung by jerry lee lewis fucking rules

Could see that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJIpp2Jj8AQ

the more i read about this the more it's starting to annoy me, not least because it's caused a deluged of literary people writing about music, specifically about dylan, and they all have terrible music taste, boring hackneyed ideas, and are very happy to reduce music to being somehow the same as literature, or to amalgamate great art into some great man theory.

i just read in the irish times where somebody said, about dylan, "as a storyteller, he has no equal".

i like his music but this kind of cretinous overstatement is the exact reason the award should never have gone to dylan... we don't need to encourage those for whom massively canonical artists can never be feted enough.

my experience is that I got to delete a bunch of FB friends complaining about Dylan being white and male and not publishing his songs as chapbooks.

Dylan's worldwide impact on several generations of not just songwriters, but literary artists of all types, dwarfs that most people who could have the prize yesterday. If you don't think the nobel is for canonical artists idk

Yeah, because he was only relevant fifty years ago, he has impacted artists for a longer period of time. Yeah.

don't think an award for literature is for songwriters. don't think music is poetry or literary. it belittles both music and literature to claim otherwise.

like if we can give it to dylan why not give it to moritz von oswald

i don't expect they'll be giving music awards to halldor laxness or elias canetti anytime soon either. this is little more than encroachment of a famous figure into a less celebrated medium, and encroachment of a more popular medium into the territory of a less popular one.

If you don't think the nobel is for canonical artists idk

and i do think it is, but if you look back at the literary figures who've won it, they're not necessarily famous celebrity writers.

It's an honorary Nobel prize like giving idk Donald Sutherland a politics degree from trinity cos you liked his cameo in jfk

this is all territorial pissing

I would award Donald Sutherland a Nobel for his cameo on JFK.

"the more i read about this the more it's starting to annoy me, not least because it's caused a deluged of literary people writing about music, specifically about dylan, and they all have terrible music taste, boring hackneyed ideas, and are very happy to reduce music to being somehow the same as literature, or to amalgamate great art into some great man theory."

dude, yeah, avoid all hornby-esque writing about dylan. just pretend it doesn't exist. plus, novelists and poets are the most cringeworthy people on earth when they write about music. it's not their fault. they have other strengths.

That's is in general very true although I feel like I have come across a rare exception every once in a while.

VOTE SWIFT IN '36

scott is otm, I find it much easier to think of novelists who have been absolutely horrible writing about music (Salman Rushdie and Don DeLillo spring to mind) than the opposite

How many lyrics has Dylan actually written? 36 albums, some instrumental songs, in periods he didn't write the lyrics himself. It's not even that big of an oeuvre. And how many of them are actually good and not 'Wiggle Wiggle'?

lol are you for real

do you want a word count or something

agree this prize should go to the writer with the biggest oeuvre

How many lyrics has Dylan actually written? 36 albums, some instrumental songs, in periods he didn't write the lyrics himself. It's not even that big of an oeuvre. And how many of them are actually good and not 'Wiggle Wiggle'?

― Frederik B, Friday, October 14, 2016

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Straitjacket-rear.jpg

srsly Fredrik you sound like a Benghazi conspiracist.

Last time I checked, I liked the way Elizabeth Hand wrote about music or used musical subcultures, although I am worried one of her latest two books may change that. As far as I know no other ilx0r has read anything by her so I guess I am safe to say anything I want. I also don't mind discussion of musical matters when it appears in anything by M. John Harrison.

that reminds me that Moorcock is p good writing about music (the Hawkwind book is bad for other reasons - but he's always fun when writing about SONIC ATTACKS or whatever)

Scott or except also avoid all Dylan and also everyone is cringeworthy who writes about music

Or=otm

"Wiggle Wiggle" is obv Dylan's upping his word-count through repetition in attempt to win prolific Nobel

How many lyrics has Dylan actually written? 36 albums, some instrumental songs, in periods he didn't write the lyrics himself. It's not even that big of an oeuvre. And how many of them are actually good and not 'Wiggle Wiggle'?

- Frederik B

Pulapaka Susheela Mohan was robbed

even greil's thing on dylan in the NYT yesterday wasn't great and i have definitely heard him be great on dylan.

trying to sell me on that old roman kings song so i go listen to it and read the lyrics and oof....no thanks.

I'm completely serious, and I did not imply that the prize should go to the one with the biggest oeuvre, that's just straw man bullshit discussing. He has definitely written more than Inger Christensen, for instance, who was a frontrunner for several years, and who should have won the nobel prize for the single sonnet corona Butterfly Valley. But my problem is that so few people are actually taking his writings seriously as writings, and defending the nobel on the basis of what he has written. So I ask, how much has he written anyway? And what of that is the basis for the nobel? How big is the book of Dylan's lyrics? Because 36 albums sound like a lot, but with ca 10 lyrics per album, it's really not that much.

Citing Dylan's sillier lyrics such as 'Wiggle Wiggle' in this context is about as pointless as making fun of T.S. Eliot's Nobel prize by citing his book of light verse about cats.

"I'm completely serious"

Sadly you indeed seem to be.

How big is the book of Dylan's lyrics? Because 36 albums sound like a lot, but with ca 10 lyrics per album

lol don't worry this is exactly the insane quantitative argument we all assumed you were making

Has this been posted here? Best takedown I've read yet: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/10/nobel-prize-literature-long-last-awarded-complete-idiot/

No it's not, wins. I'm saying it's tough to get a handle on what Dylan has done, not that quantity trumps quality. The Nobel committee was vague just citing new 'poetic expressions'. What earned Dylan the nobel?

I think Dylan's total lyrical and literary output is somewhat comparable in size to that of Q. Horatius Flaccus (aka 'Horace'), who is generally considered to be a noteworthy writer.

I don't give a shit about this debate but that is not a good takedown.

What earned Dylan the nobel?

being a good writer

If you want an argument that's based on quantitative analysis, how about this one: Dylan's worldwide impact on several generations of not just songwriters, but literary artists of all types, dwarfs that most people who could have the prize yesterday.

SEVERAL generations. ALL types. Someone get the paddy wagon!!!

And there are quite a few good writers who don't have a nobel...

Are there really? I don't see any evidence for that

Good Christ, Frederik, is this your elaborate scheme to try and get us against Dylan winning this defending him anyway?

It's quite undeniable he had a major influence with his lyrics in the 60s, perhaps for a whole generation. What he has done for me lately is mostly annoying, and handing baby boomers a get out of jail card to ramble on about how today's music sucks and doesn't care because DYLAN. And *still* I will acknowledge his lyrics had a profound effect on loads of people. Kudos to him.

They just shouldn't have handed him the Nobel for lit. Not because of the size of his oeuvre, but because he's a song writer, not a book writer.

Best takedown I've read yet

The opening, which addresses the natural unity of poetry and music, is quite good, but as soon as it addresses Bob Dylan's work directly it devolves into the worst sort of challopy nonsense.

Hey Fred, Dylan also wrote a couple of books so you can add the pages of those into the total

Aimless, I agree, didn't say it's great but he touches on what vexes me about this. Shame he goes off the rails in the end.

What earned Dylan the nobel?

well I'm not the guy to explain that, I'm not really familiar with his stuff. Anyone else know what's worth checking out?

being a good writer

he isn't a writer. not of literature. it's easy to say "awards mean nothing" and this decision is obviously symptomatic of most of the traits that prompt that view, but the truth is the nobel prize for literature tends to award lesser known writers. even in its own world it doesn't pander. that's why this is so pathetic. along with the fact it justifies the opinions of a bunch of people whose view of both music and literature is pathetically narrow.

I'm pretty sure if we include his books the quality goes way down. The committee explicitly said he got it for his songwriting, so I'm asking how many song lyrics he has written.

And I dislike the influence argument, which also is quantitative. Yeah, he influenced a lot of people, so has a lot of writers. How many across the arab world find influence in Adonis? The nobel has gone to ONE black African (and four white Africans, shamefully), how many generations of influence has been neglected? Dylan inspired a lot because he wrote in English and was a key part of boomer culture. If it was always based on the breadth of influence the prize would be even more western-centric than it already is.

"and who should have won the nobel prize for the single sonnet corona Butterfly Valley"

http://img.mota.ru/upload/wallpapers/source/2013/06/18/16/00/36301/JJmKgdok0S.jpg

and what should have won the nobel prize

The collected poems of Tomas Tranströmer runs 295 pages, and though I've only read one of his collection, I'm fully supportive of his nobel, though it's probably quantitatively less than Dylan's lyrics. Qualitatively I got way more out of the collection I read than I've ever gotten out of any Dylan lyric.

https://m.popkey.co/395efa/WxRaK.gif

I remember one of my English tutors very pointedly had a book of Dylan lyrics sitting on his shelf in a prominent place
Even at the age of 18 I could tell he was trying too hard.

not of literature

this is what it really all comes down to. And apparently I and the Nobel committee have a broader definition of literature than you do.

The Nobel committee was vague just citing new 'poetic expressions'. What earned Dylan the nobel? What earned Dylan the nobel?

Bob Dylan's lyrics irritate a lot of people (leaving aside his voice which is a whole different source of profound irritation to many). He often appears to be very lazy, lets his rhymes do his writing for him, and it can be difficult to tell when he's trying to be silly or not. I have often enjoyed making fun of his flaws and excesses. But he was a genius at quickly absorbing the essence of a style or a genre, then entering it, playing with it, creating with it, and recreating it as his own.

He did this repeatedly, whether his influence was Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, or Mallarme and Rimbaud, or Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. He didn't necessarily improve on the originals, but he remade them in a new guise that connected with millions of people who would never have read or listened to the originals. A fact which also irritates some of his critics, who say he's overrated because his fanboys don't know who Mallarme or Rimbaud are and don't appreciate how much Dylan borrowed. But that's beside the point really, because the saying about "great artists steal" applies here. Dylan didn't slavishly mimic his sources; he absorbed them and used them to create his own work.

What makes this prize less than perfect in my eyes is that much of Dylan's effectiveness as an artist is grounded in his music, including his singing (which is a different matter from his voice) and his collaboration with other musicians. Omit these and his work is greatly diminished. But you really have to take his work as a package deal and listen to it, not just read it.

The collected poems of Tomas Tranströmer runs 295 pages, and though I've only read one of his collection, I'm fully supportive of his nobel, though it's probably quantitatively less than Dylan's lyrics. Qualitatively I got way more out of the collection I read than I've ever gotten out of any Dylan lyric.

― Frederik B, Friday, October 14, 2016 11:45 AM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so why have you been going on about the quantity of dylan's lyrics, you insufferable dingus?

I've explained that several times already...

Apparently not

Or perhaps jim is an idiot?

i mean, repeating several times "I'm not saying it matters how many words he's written, i'm just saying how many words has he written?" doesn't feel very explicatory but maybe it is a Dylanesque koan

how many words must a nobel prize winner write, before they call him a nobel prize winner?

Fred B posts run to several dozen pages but are qualitatively of zero worth tbf

the parameters for what literature is as set by the swedish academy are not real parameters, but rather a dissolution of all parameters, which confuses those unfamiliar with bob dylan. i don't think it was done intentionally, but "literature" is no longer a category, but a superlative that is synonymous with "great." obviously this is increasingly difficult because now any written word can be literature, in a sea of competing aesthetics. medium seemingly does not matter and neither does reputation

i remember in some first year university class we discussed what prose was and what poetry was. it was a useless exercise and what i got out of it is that it was about reputation. that is, such-and-such had a reputation for writing poems, or short stories, or essays, etc. reputation was based mostly on where the writer was publishing. of course there were some experimental writers who would deny the author's intention and tried to create this contextless work of postmodernism, and they reveled in environments that caused confusion and uncertainty

i don't know whether bob dylan revels in breaking the confines of literature, because it's difficult to assume dylan considered his work as pushing the boundaries of literature. maybe this is the modernist in me, but the context he was working in was simply not literature -- it was music

sure, any written word can have qualities of literature or of prose or of poetry. and some of dylan's songs certainly have some of these qualities. but what is so glaringly obvious to me, as someone who loves a few of his albums, is that his lyrics were more prosaic. his singing style backs this up. there is no real flow. he is, to quote him, a rambling man. and this is something he probably took from his folk beginnings

in my mind, i still strongly associate his music with folk aesthetics, which do not jibe with literary, high-brow, academic texts that most past nobel prize winners in literature were so preoccupied with. there is no strong or constant literary conceit in the songs of dylan. this inconsistency from the swedish academy and their lack to publish more details (as far as i looked) about their rationale confuse me

i'm not trying to write a takedown or even a good argument against his winning. frankly, i couldn't care less. there are other writer-musicians that come to mind, but bob dylan was never one of them. this choice sounds bizarre and, to me, it does appear that the swedish academy is severely out of touch

but dudes here are probably way more versed in literature and dylan than i so there you go

Or perhaps jim is an idiot?

― Frederik B, vrijdag 14 oktober 2016 21:00 (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fp'd you for this tbrh

id support a nobel for dylannn instead - my serialized travel book about china

Or perhaps jim is an idiot?

― Frederik B, vrijdag 14 oktober 2016 21:00 (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fp'd you for this tbrh

― the tightening is plateauing (Le Bateau Ivre), Friday, October 14, 2016 12:18 PM (forty-seven seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

＼(^_^ )

^^ his hotel desk clerk memoires are a joy to behold, too. xp

Well fuck me if I let a fine ilxor be insulted this way.

yes, dylann's travelogues are intriguing.

but has he written enough?

Aimless, thanks for actually giving an explanation. And I do like it. His chameleonic qualities were also what Todd Haynes focused on in I'm Not There, one of my more liked Dylan-related artworks. It makes him into almost a postmodern writer, creating his poetry through a mishmash of different voices. Which might place him in an actual American literary tradition - as opposed to 'the great American song tradition' mentioned by the committee which is a pretty bad expression imo - a middle step in the encyclopedic style placed between the classically infused epics of Elliott and Pound, and the pop-ephemeral libraries of Pynchon and Wallace.

But there's the same-old same-old problem. I just don't think he's THAT good as a chameleonic writer as well. His influences such as Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Whitman, Ginsberg, are too iconoclastic, too heroic, too boring for me. My problem isn't that people are reading other things than Rimbaud and Whitman, it's that Dylan has helped them becoming reduced to biographic clichés. And while I like that he absorbs and steals, I think the work he ends up producing with them is too narrow and insipid. Once he turned away from the folksong into the beat poetry of his electric period, his work became an encyclopedia mostly of himself. Which might align him with Whitman, but Whitman saw himself as America, and America as himself. Dylan's interest in this period mostly stretched out to 'the room' where 'something is happening' that Mr Jones couldn't understand.

Le Bateau Ivre, did you also fp jim for calling me an 'insufferable dingus'? And if not, why not?

"this choice sounds bizarre and, to me, it does appear that the swedish academy is severely out of touch"

in a way it almost makes sense for him to win the peace prize. just cuz he's alive and was such a huge figure in the protest world.

"literature" is no longer a category, but a superlative that is synonymous with "great."

fine so they've made it some bullshit award for the massively famous, a total departure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Literature

as i say, i don't expect samuel beckett to win a grammy, or halldor laxness, even though their prose is rhythmic. it's reductive crap.

xp to Fred: I did not. Insufferable you were, going on and on about the size of one's oeuvre even mattering one bit while also contradicting yourself about this very same thing. A dingus, you were too in this thread. We are all that person at times, it's ok. But calling Jim an idiot is just silly, even if it was a reference to the Spectator-article - which on careful consideration I judged it not to be. It was a half-assed insult at best.

sure, any written word can have qualities of literature or of prose or of poetry. and some of dylan's songs certainly have some of these qualities

songs are not written word.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMzcwlmhfws

Imo the only good thing about Nobel Prize is that normal ppl get to read one or two articles per year about chemists, physicists etc. with successful research programs, successful or notable activists, and writers perhaps famous in their own countries but perhaps unknown or even largely un-translated. every decade or so you have to give it to intellectuals who broke through into popular consciousness like Einstein or Friedman or Marquez thereby spoiling the value of the prize, but that's the exception and, while it would be efficient not to award it to them, it would be too great a blow to the integrity of the prize. so giving it to Dylan, who p much everyone in the world already knows, and isn't even really, like, I mean the songs are good imo don't get me wrong, but no one would be rioting in the streets of Stockholm if he never got one, just totally upends everything I like about the ritual

The word “idiot” here alludes to Shakespeare’s famous “Tomorrow” soliloquy in Act V, Scene V of Macbeth: Life “is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury / Signifying nothing”

The song “Idiot Wind” is indeed filled with “sound and fury” and concerned with language losing meaning.
The word “Idiot” is an insult and also refers to a person who is mentally disabled or mentally ill. An idiot is unable hide their suffering using social conventions or polite language. The word “babe” however is a term of affection usually reserved for a lover. This twists the meaning of the word “idiot”. Perhaps it is not an insult, for the idiot, being outside the confines of social conventions and nicities, is able to speak the truth. This truth-telling idiot may be similar to Myshkin in Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot.

flopson that's the closest expression of my own objection

flopson otm.

And don't overlook the prize money. Dylan doesn't need it, these other recipients do.

Yep. xp

also this win gives me the same vibe as when during ILX polls people stretch the definition of the poll to something ridiculous just so they can bang on about the same thing they bang on about in a hundred other threads

otoh stunt awarding is funny and literary prizes are unimportant, no offense to those round here who have won them obv <3

also this win gives me the same vibe as when during ILX polls people stretch the definition of the poll to something ridiculous just so they can bang on about the same thing they bang on about in a hundred other threads

exactly. and if this award was a "say something interesting about bob dylan" then god it failed. the least interesting thing about dylan is the cult of his lyrics.

Has anyone read Tarantula? Dylan might not want this baby reissued:

https://twitter.com/tmbg/status/786761172955467776

if you think about it tho maybe Bob Dylan really is the best action movie of the 1980s

I'm looking forward to reading it #goodLiterature xp

sure, any written word can have qualities of literature or of prose or of poetry. and some of dylan's songs certainly have some of these qualities

songs are not written word.

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Friday, October 14, 2016 12:47 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dylan wrote lyrics and they were published

https://www.amazon.com/Lyrics-1961-2012-Bob-Dylan/dp/1476797706

Has Christopher Ricks made a comment yet? He has been quiet which suggests he is in a bunker somewhere screaming "what have I done?!"

he didn't win the award for that published collection xpost

Jumping into a thread you aren't participating in to personally insult a poster is trolling behaviour, plan and simple. No matter if it's correct, it's turning an argument into a pileup. Everybody, including me, understood that people disagreed with me, jim gave nothing new to this discussion except a personal insult. Fuck him, and fuck you for trying to get me banned for responding, LBI.

you're nitpicking

he was awarded the prize based on his "work," which include lyrics he wrote and were published in some way or another

xp

Fuck him, and fuck you for trying to get me banned for responding

If an angel like Morbz can get banned for sorting out some libs every now and then I think we should all be watching our backs.

Be safe everybody x

it's not nitpicking to criticise the nobel literature prize going to a guy who had a book published as a byproduct of his work "in some way or other".

"just so they can bang on about the same thing they bang on about in a hundred other threads"

new board description...

A dingus, you were too in this thread.

shout out to the yoda-like form of this sentence + bonus lol at dingus hyperlinked

it's funny when you're not really caught up with a thread and have no idea ppl were beefing in it, come in, make some post, and then get xp'd by, like, "Fuck me, Fuck Him, Fuck you and fuck the horse you rode in" lmao

it's not nitpicking to criticise the nobel literature prize going to a guy who had a book published as a byproduct of his work "in some way or other".

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Friday, October 14, 2016 1:24 PM (twenty-seven seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

okay, fair enough. i suggested this type of criticism was contentious in my original post

i sympathize with both sides though

Lol flopson

"Jumping into a thread you aren't participating in to personally insult a poster is trolling behaviour, plan and simple. No matter if it's correct, it's turning an argument into a pileup. Everybody, including me, understood that people disagreed with me, jim gave nothing new to this discussion except a personal insult. Fuck him, and fuck you for trying to get me banned for responding, LBI.

― Frederik B

Relax, dude.. "Fp'd you for that" doesn't actually mean one actually fp'd you. Most here prefer fp'ing in silence, as it's supposed to be. Your bell isn't even close to tolling, trust me. Keep it up with the "fuck you'd" tho tbf

i really liked dylan's autobio. he's really smart. i don't usually read bios/autobios.

I fpd Fred for that and for being unable to ilx

LBI normally I would take it easy, but just yesterday a prominent poster got thread banned, so I don't think it's funny today. I think it's threatening. Sorry for being a relatively new poster, but I was shocked at Morbs just all of a sudden being thrown off the board without anyone knowing why, and I think your 'joke' was in poor taste today.

no, I'm Spartacus

mores was banned for accumulation of fps. he regularly, albeit with no criminal intent, wishes death or physical violence on other posters, and, being really charitable here, occasionally comes off as misogynistic and anti-semitic.

Fpartacus

xp. being banal at length is unlikely to garner the same reaction

xp loool gutted i missed that

It's all u man u know that

I'm pretty sure if we include his books the quality goes way down.

― Frederik B, Friday, October 14, 2016 6:31 PM (two hours ago)

dylan's autobio received p much universally positive reviews, fyi

Morbs wasn't "suddenly" thrown off the board. Poor bastard is ilx silverware, with a long standing record of borderline anti-Semitic remarks and trolling. He was raking up the fp's as he went along. He'll be back in 30 days, not changed a bit, and will repeat the same cycle ad infinitum, something we've grown to hate and love him for. You are flattering yourself if you think you are fp-worthy tbh. Tag det roligt. And learn to ilx ffs.

fp'd all of you just for good measure

YOU'RE ON NOTICE

i think maybe five posters ever have been 51'd? something like that

to my knowledge they were all richly deserved

I'm in the politics threads, I know his drill. He wrote he hoped a horse would trample me recently. But the way the fp system works, it seemed WAY sudden, and came as quite a shock.

JD, there's an area between getting universally positive reviews for a celebrity biography, and deserving the nobel...

Anyways the next American to win should be Pynchon. And if it's 20 years to the next one, I'm guessing Ta-nehisi Coates. For his essays and comics work.

Let's have an American win every year.

Pynchon is unreadable beatnik garbage.

groovy, man, pass that reefer...

“I am the twentieth century. I am the ragtime and the tango; sans-serif, clean geometry. I am the virgin's-hair whip and the cunningly detailed shackles of decadent passion. I am every lonely railway station in every capital of Europe. I am the Street, the fanciless buildings of government. the cafe-dansant, the clockwork figure, the jazz saxophone, the tourist-lady's hairpiece, the fairy's rubber breasts, the travelling clock which always tells the wrong time and chimes in different keys. I am the dead palm tree, the Negro's dancing pumps, the dried fountain after tourist season. I am all the appurtenances of night.”

That's a parody of beat poetry, Scott. Quite well made, imo.

Two lines later it says 'She made a paper airplane out of the poem and sailed it across the room on strata of her own smoke.'

Its like a parody of what someone thinks Beat writing is.

Still Pynchon should win the Nobel and send Dylan to accept it. xp

JD, there's an area between getting universally positive reviews for a celebrity biography, and deserving the nobel...

― Frederik B, Friday, October 14, 2016 9:14 PM (fifty-nine minutes ago)

good grief, i was responding to your statement that including dylan's books would reduce the overall "quality" of his work. do you ever respond to any criticism of anything you say without trying to change the subject?

I responded to what you said. People think his lyrics deserved the nobel. I said there's an area between good reviews and deserving the nobel. Ergo a well reviewed book could still reduce the quality of his work compared to the lyrics.

good grief

How about this song from a lovelorn wittgensteinian? A better lyric than anything Dylan ever wrote!

It is something less than heaven
To be quoted Thesis 1.7
Every time I make an advance;
If the world is all that the case is
That’s a pretty discouraging basis
On which to pursue
Any sort of romance.
I’ve got a proposition for you;
Logical, positive and brief.
And at least it could serve as a kind of comic relief:

[Refrain]
Let P equal me,
With my heart in command;
Let Q equal you
With Tractatus in hand;
And R could stand for a lifetime of love,
Filled with music to fondle and purr to.
We’ll define love as anything lovely you’d care to infer to.
On the right, put that bright,
Hypothetical case;
On the left, our uncleft,
Parenthetical chase.
And that horseshoe there in the middle
Could be lucky; we’ve nothing to lose,
If in these parentheses
We just mind our little P’s
And Q’s.

If P [Mafia sang in reply] thinks of me
As a girl hard to make,
Then Q wishes you
Would go jump in the lake.
For R is a meaningless concept,
Having nothing to do with pleasure:
I prefer the hard and tangible things I can measure.
Man, you chase in the face
Of impossible odds;
I’m a lass in the class
Of unbossable broads.
If you’ll promise no more sticky phrases,
Half a mo while I kick off my shoes.
There are birds, there are bees,
And to hell with all your P’s
And Q’s.

And B's

did you read the book?

normally I would take it easy, but just yesterday a prominent poster got thread banned, so I don't think it's funny today

btw ur gonna be the next dane to win the Nobel Prize, for this post

Which one JD?

the one i mean is "chronicles." (i haven't read "tarantula.")

Okay, I was confused because I was just quoting V. No, I haven't read Chronicles, and in all honesty, it's probably better than Wiggle Wiggle. The standard for nobel winning autobiography is pretty darn high, though, and nothing I've heard about Chronicles suggest it's up there.

Imo the only good thing about Nobel Prize is that normal ppl get to read one or two articles per year about chemists, physicists etc. with successful research programs, successful or notable activists, and writers perhaps famous in their own countries but perhaps unknown or even largely un-translated. every decade or so you have to give it to intellectuals who broke through into popular consciousness like Einstein or Friedman or Marquez thereby spoiling the value of the prize, but that's the exception and, while it would be efficient not to award it to them, it would be too great a blow to the integrity of the prize. so giving it to Dylan, who p much everyone in the world already knows, and isn't even really, like, I mean the songs are good imo don't get me wrong, but no one would be rioting in the streets of Stockholm if he never got one, just totally upends everything I like about the ritual

― flopson, Friday, October 14, 2016 7:52 PM (two hours ago)

as much as i love dylan i think i p much agree with this take. i like that nobels tend to highlight ppl who wouldn't otherwise get wide recognition, so i'm a little disappointed that a lot of the responses to this were "why didn't delillo/roth/pynchon/murakami get it?" when all of those ppl already get plenty of attention. (it would be kind of cool to see how pynchon would collect his award, admittedly.)

Chronicles also contains chunks of stolen writing, ie plagiarism

he is the best stealer! he stole from mezz mezzrow, jack london, and time magazine. that is SO dylan. #PoMo #KathyAcker4ever

Bob Dylan winning Nobel is like when fine arts museums have an exhibit on ``The Art of Walt Disney'' or ``The Beatles''

I'm a pretty big believer in 'give the unthinking hordes what they want' but ffs

Or 'The Art of Bob Dylan'. Denmark's biggest art film festival is devoting it's yearly retrospective to the films of Neil Young this year.

Where's the idea that the Nobel prize is for the ilx contrarian antipopulist cabal coming from?

Fuck giving it to Dylan but also fuck the above too imo

If you had read my post carefully, you'll see that I said it's important that the Nobel is not restricted to the obscure (and of course I only mean obscure to the general population, not within their fields, within which they should be stars) to preserve its integrity. Dylan is bad because he is known to the general population AND hurts the integrity of the prize (not actually well-regard within field of literature)

The above in my post refers to my own first line fwiw. Coming across a little aggressive on rereading.

Wasn't a direct response to any one post flopson, but to an opinion offered repeatedly in the general discussion

ok punk

;-)

Where's the idea that the Nobel prize is for the ilx contrarian antipopulist cabal coming from?

ignoring that wording - i like populist books just fine, the idea that less popular writers win it comes from... the winners.

Where's the idea that the Nobel prize is for the ilx contrarian antipopulist cabal coming from?

oops

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Literature

nearest analogue in the list so far is winston churchill imo, then maybe kipling? (obv* i have not read all of them)

*i say obv even tho it hurts my ilx branding a bit

ps i have read all of kipling except some of his many many poems probably and his novel the light that failed

pps also i expect he wrote op eds that began "why oh why have we not colonised GREENLAND yet it is past time" i haven't read them

I only learned today about THE POLAR PRIZE FOR MUSIC which is apparently regarded as like a Nobel for music (though I don't know its exact relation to the Nobels).

Dylan has already won it.

Did the mention of Greenland remind you of it?

(xp) Surely the only time Paul McCartney and the Baltic States have shared a prize?

Pleasantland also referenced in a joint offensive manouvre

People keep saying its a category error but how many warmongers have been awarded the Nobel Peace prize?

if it's a category error, the busting probably already happened: there are several playwrights on the list and plays like songs are written to be performed (unless you think pinter got it for his poems, which is… possible)

(obviously if yr an arnoldian -- ?do i mean him? -- then you argue that the REAL shakespeare is on the PAGE and being acted merely degrades or distorts it)

an interesting test wd be whether a stand-up is allowed to be awarded it (i'm a derridean when it comes to drawing the hard line between writing and speech = it can't be done)

(sorry the connection between the last two thoughts is super-compressed -- what i'm getting at is that the refining of a joke as delivered on-stage to its most effective form squares more with why writing is considered writing than why speech is considered speech) (tbh if i decompress the the thinking much more i am going to rewrite of grammatology except abt gags)

too bad russell brand is only on for the peace prize

(unless you think pinter got it for his poems, which is… possible)

LOLz. Or his novel.

Where's the idea that the Nobel prize is for the ilx contrarian antipopulist cabal coming from?

To be honest, what I love about the Nobel Prize is the number of truly great books I've read that I would never have heard of if not for the prize. So yeah, to be honest, for me, the value of the prize is precisely in its uplifting of the obscure or obscure-outside-their-own-country. I love Alice Munro and I think she deserves every bit of her Nobel Prize but it means way more to me that they gave it to Svetlana Alexievich.

LOL I'd forgotten plays to be written as performed on stage (possibly because I have never formed a theatre going habit, they only live on the page for me)

Idly wondering where people would have drawn this line - like would there be as much protest if at some point it had gone to, say, Gil Scott-Heron or John Cooper Clarke.

(NB giving it to JCC would be fucking glorious).

Plays have always been considered literature, every literature course includes Shakespeare, Chekhov, Brecht, Ibsen, etc. What would be new would be giving it to a filmwriter, for example. The difference is that plays are distributed in writing, and is meant to survive being performed by others. While many has covered Dylan, and while he originally worked in a folk idiom, my argument against him goes that his writings simply aren't that good on the written page. Take a verse like 'Now you see this one-eyed midget / Shouting the word "NOW" / And you say, "For what reason?" / And he says, "How ?" / And you say, "What does this mean?" / And he screams back, "You're a cow / Give me some milk / Or else go home" Without a very specific performance of it, it's simply crap. Take his breakthrough chorus, Rolling Stones favorite song of all time: 'How does it feel? / How does it feel? / To be on your own / With no direction home / A complete unknown / Like a rolling stone?' It's just not that good without the melody.

Otm

To be honest, what I love about the Nobel Prize is the number of truly great books I've read that I would never have heard of if not for the prize. So yeah, to be honest, for me, the value of the prize is precisely in its uplifting of the obscure or obscure-outside-their-own-country. I love Alice Munro and I think she deserves every bit of her Nobel Prize but it means way more to me that they gave it to Svetlana Alexievich.

exactly. as if deems even knew the list of previous winners anyway.

Idly wondering where people would have drawn this line - like would there be as much protest if at some point it had gone to, say, Gil Scott-Heron or John Cooper Clarke.

it just wouldn't happen. the only reason bob dylan was allowed to transcend this boundary is fame.

I'm questioning whether it's a boundary given those two artists self-identified as poets and Dylan doesn't really.

Dylan uses the term figuratively but literally stoning is a form of capital punishment for committing a crime. Among other places, it is described in the Old Testament of the Bible. For example, Deut. 13:10, “So you shall stone him to death because he has sought to seduce you from the LORD your God…”

The double meaning for “getting stoned”, meaning getting drunk or high, comes in later in the song.

seems a bit harsh going after deems for not knowing the previous winners, i only have a vague idea of them because of an old FT project which never got anywhere: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/wedge/2005/10/freaky-trigger-best-of-lists-forlorn-idea-dept/

the missing picture is poor old unread sully prudhomme

yeah i don't expect him to know them off by heart, but given his comment.

I'm not hugely invested here it's quite OK I object to Dylan in general and this seemed like a fun puddle to jump in

You should listen to "Blood on the tracks", deems

in honor of bob dylan and mark s. i bought some books today:

https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/14718862_1679367702376875_4612234056667266000_n.jpg?oh=f795f3c4510da5dd7838e010f72cc545&oe=5866CFC8

https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/14642258_1679367892376856_3789853582198621489_n.jpg?oh=7de721dc435c72dde4ff5e17d7d61a76&oe=58643746s

haha half my kiplings were my gran's -- so they come from before the 30s and still have his swastika design on the spine (he stopped using it when the nazis started, he detested germans)

i kinda don't ever read those ones on the bus

How about this song from a lovelorn wittgensteinian? A better lyric than anything Dylan ever wrote!

this edition has the swastika on the inside. so that it's a secret between you and kip.