I suppose reading his words as literature is a slight improvement over listening too him sing.
Presumably the committee was wasted and hadn't listened to anything after Blood on the Tracks.
3. No, I tried that. They don't work as literature. Many of them are good songs (sung by someone else if you prefer), but none of them are literature.
That is, many of those written more than 40 years ago are good songs. I'm unconvinced he's produced anything that would get him a recording contract since Blood on the Tracks.
||
NMM to Bhumibol Adulyadej.
|>
Glad I'm not Thai. It's going to be messy.
8. I made that point at the other place. It was not understood.
Winston Churchill may have been the Kissinger of the literature prize. Is Barack Obama the Bob Dylan of the peace prize? Maybe.
5: I never understood the words, so I assumed they must have been really deep for him to be that famous.
Anyway, literature had a good run, but maybe it's done.
I'll bet peep is already out celebrating!
Bob Dylan is a goddamn genius and this is well-deserved. That said, it's funny how much weight the opinion of a bunch of dudes in Sweden gets. I guess a million dollars is still real money.
The Boomer Prize in Literature. Have a bunch of dudes in Sweden heard the Christmas album?
You wonder if the Nobel committee banks a couple of silly options for years when they can't come up with anything real. "Look, if we're still tied on the next vote, let's just give it to Dylan and go get a drink."
If they like Dylan, why not give him Physics or something where nobody but a specialist would understand what an actual qualified winner would look like?
Can the literature Nobel be shared by up to 3 people, like the science prizes? If so, who should have shared it with Dylan?
Frank Zappa would have been an obvious choice if he were still alive.
You can't award a Nobel to somebody fictional.
13 was very funny.
This is of course the worst thing ever to happen, since anything that increases Boomer self-regard in even the smallest way is worse than the Holocaust.
11: Churchill was semi legit: he really was a good writer (of speeches and other things). How many other winners are as widely known? Quick, everyone name their favourite Halldor Laxness line.
They gave the Nobel Prize in Literature to Bertrand Russell in 1950, so maybe they're using a wider definition of 'literature' than 'fiction and poetry'. Still a bit of a stretch, though.
Next year, to Russell Brand for his portrayal of the Easter Bunny in Hop.
Isn't Laxness one of the more credible winners? I have met actual people who have read "Independent People," unlike most of the winners.
I went through the list of Literature winners. I only heard of 32. I've read something from less than half of them. But then "literature" appears to mean "books, but only the ones that are kind of boring".
You left out the ones that are very boring.
The implication is that I'll live to see one go to Lady Gaga, which doesn't exactly fill me with enthusiasm.
This is presumably the first literature laureate who has never written a book. I mean, Russell Brand has a more distinguished list of publications.
Enough people who are serious about music love Dylan that I have long accepted that he must be genuinely good, but in a way that I can't hear. Like bat echolocation sounds or something. Although I would rather listen to bat echolocation than Dylan, because then I wouldn't actually hear it.
A few years ago, one of the Nobel sciences prizes was awarded in my field. Because I knew the history and politics of the field well, it was this horrible Crash-wins-the Oscars moment after which I just can't take the award process seriously. So, Dylan wins for literature, sure, why not.
Or Chuck Berry, who had better music plus created new expressions using the great American tradition of furniture.
32.1: You need the self-confidence to say that everybody else is horrible.
32: I like Dylan, but you can safely think it's garbage. It's not Shakespeare.
31: Dylan did write a memoir - Chronicles. Also something called Tarantula
The break for you was Crash? I mean, you know Titanic and Braveheart both won Best Picture too?
As best I can tell, people love Dylan out of loyalty to their teenage selves. I assume they feel about Dylan how I feel about Simon & Garfunkel: nostalgia, zero literature cred, catchy and cheesy, etc.
Simon and Garfunkel are much, much worse than Dylan. Just intolerable.
38: Not exactly, I would say. You retain some sort of belief in the ideal of life that he expresses, even if it's unrealistic (which is why it's an ideal) and has been used as an excuse for untold stupidity. Sort of like communism.
Simon and Garfunkel are much, much worse than Dylan.
The narcissism of small differences.
I agree that Bob Dylan is as bad as Communism in general but slightly better than Communism under Stalin.
Glad someone who needed the million dollars and publicity got it
Papa's bankbook wasn't big enough
37 has the wrong Academy. Swedes are different. They say.
To be clear, I am not, nor have ever been, a communist, love Dylan, and think it's ridic that he just won a Nobel.
The break for you was Crash? I mean, you know Titanic and Braveheart both won Best Picture too?
Crash was much more anodyne and mediocre than either of those. Titanic and Braceheart were big dumb spectacles, and there's a pretty solid tradition of big dumb spectacles winning Best Picture. Crash was just sort of nothing.
Crash winning best picture was sort of like if Phil Collins won the Nobel prize in literature.
I like big dumb spectacles. That's why I stopped paying attention to the Oscars when Annie Hall beat Star Wars.
49: On the playground back in elementary school, the news that Chariots of Fire won Best Picture was greeted with universal outrage. Everyone knew it should have gone to Raiders of the Lost Ark that year.
Raiders is one of the best movies ever. Top ten.
While Simon and Garfunkel are clearly not Nobel material, they are also clearly better than Dylan. For example, their songs sound better when sung by them than by other people.
I know you all know the archives by heart, but this award is overdue.
Dylan might not be the best at singing, but he's the best at being Dylan, which is what his songs need.
You retain some sort of belief in the ideal of life that he expresses
Which of the many "ideals" he has espoused at different points in his career do you retain some sort of belief in?
38 is good; 47 is probably the most balanced reaction I've seen on the internet so far.
It's not the Nobel Prize for singing, or for music, people.
53: I hadn't known that. If I had seen that before I started reading here, I might have become a Crooked Timber commenter instead.
I assume they feel about Dylan how I feel about Simon & Garfunkel: nostalgia, zero literature cred, catchy and cheesy, etc.
What is "literature cred"? If anyone who writes lyrics to songs is writing literature, I don't see how either Dylan or Paul Simon have zero of it. And they do not think the word "cheesy" at all.
Dylan might not be the best at singing, but he's the best at being Dylan, which is what his songs need.
I agree for the most part, but I think Roger McGuinn / The Byrds did pretty well his songs.
51: I love Raiders. I haven't changed my opinion about that year's Best Picture award since elementary school.
Maybe next year the Nobel committee can take their trolling of Unfogged to the next level and give the literature prize to Steven Spielberg.
The list of Nobel Prizes in literature alternates between "Sure, of course [Thomas Mann, TS Elliot, Halldor Laxness you morons]" "Who? [some rando Scandinavian or Italian] and "You've got to be kidding my middlebrow just broke [St John Perse, John Galsworthy, Pearl Buck]". I think Dylan for lyrics fits well enough in the third category.
The first winner was someone named Sully Prudhomme, who sounds like a Cajun relief pitcher. The second was Mommsen, a historian.
This is a good pick. Dylan's memoirs are very good too.
The 2009 Peace Prize winner just bombed Yemen.
I am surprised by the people everywhere seeing this as silly. The prize is often given to poets. This is not very different from that. If it went to, like, the Brazilian equivalent of Bob Dylan, we would say it makes total sense. It's just slightly comical to have the Nobel Prize for Literature going to a celebrity that everyone does impressions of.
Which of the many "ideals" he has espoused at different points in his career do you retain some sort of belief in?
Ah, y'know, just bein' free, man... As in
I always have respected her
For doing what she did and getting free
The whole thing quite understandably rubs some people up the wrong way:
The 2009 Peace Prize winner has been bombing all sorts of people continuously for his whole administration. I'd say he actually deserves it today, for Iran and Cuba.
A couple months ago I got into one of those YouTube link spirals and ended up listening to almost all of the early Dylan songs. I'm not sure they are Nobel Prize material (as in, "they aren't") but they were fun to listen to.
The spiral started with Leonard Cohen, who is much better but still not worth a Nobel Prize (although apparently he needs the money more than Dylan). Maybe it was intended to go to Prince or David Bowie but they inconveniently died.
How they can ignore Gene Wolfe for all these years is beyond me...
Quick, everyone name their favourite Halldor Laxness line.
The quality of a novel not being measured in memorability of lines, this is a strange demand.
Anyway, my mom will be SO THRILLED by this, I bet.
You can only be a good poet if you are dead and dead people can't win Nobels.
Yeah, Dylan is greatvand a great lyricist and insanely important for lyrics in song. Still, his lyrics don't rank in the top 50 American poets of the past 50 years (someone else can do the list) and song lyrics aren't really either poetry or prose these days. PS fuck Leonard Cohen.
The list of Nobel Prizes in literature alternates between "Sure, of course [Thomas Mann, TS Elliot, Halldor Laxness you morons]" "Who? [some rando Scandinavian or Italian] and "You've got to be kidding my middlebrow just broke [St John Perse, John Galsworthy, Pearl Buck]". I think Dylan for lyrics fits well enough in the third category.
Over the last 15 years it's been mostly the second category. Tomas Transtromer? Herta Muller? Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio? Patrick Modiano? Yet half of the response to today's news I see is like "Typical Nobel Prize for Literature, total sellouts for publicity. Start a Nobel Prize for actual literature already!" And then there is the "Sigh, always favoring the old white man over more deserving recipients". The Nobel Prize for Literature is probably last on the list of prizes that should be criticized for THAT.
If anything it has become a joke that they try to antagonize Americans every year, whether it's picking people who have never been translated into English, or picking Harold Pinter when he was serving as an anti-Bush public intellectual 24/7.
But not-that-great famous old poets are the Nobels thing. St John Perse, Sully Prudhomme, some rando Spanish poets.
Christopher Ricks will be happy, too.
He's not being rewarded for the literary character of his lyrics when removed the total context of his music. He's being rewarded for what he did to bring literary expression (especially modernist techniques and tropes) into vernacular music and songwriting.
This is the problem; as poetry, his lyrics don't quite work, but as lyrics, they're the best. Even so, I think of some of his lyrics that I like best, and can easily see why some people are like, huh? Here's one from Time Out of Mind, which I think is one of his best albums.
She wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kind
She put down in writing what was in her mind
I just don't see why I should even care
It's not dark yet, but it's getting there
I hear that and think, "my god, this man understands!" But to a lot of people that verse is totally banal, or just a big nothing.
This is the problem; as poetry, his lyrics don't quite work, but as lyrics, they're the best
IIRC you argued the opposite, against my maintenance of the above, a while back.
I don't recall that thread, but that was probably only because I hate you.
Yeah, 76 and 77 are right. I dunno, I'm coming around on this. Fuck the haters. Why not. Who else has done more to make literary-esque poetry part of the public consciousness in the past 50 years? No one.
77: I once spoke very enthusiastically about that last line to my mother, assuming that she would find it full of meaning. In hindsight, that might not have been the most sensitive thing to do. (She's still with us, though getting on.)
77: Seriously? That's like a shitty Hallmark card if they started an Emo line.
I once spoke very enthusiastically about that last line to my mother, assuming that she would find it full of meaning.
Were you thirteen at the time?
23: "Remember that every day you quicken into motion waves that undulate on to the very confines of existence; you stir up waves that break upon the shores of eternity itself. And it is of much importance whether they are waves of brightness that are radiated, bearing light and fragrance far and wide, or whether they are waves of gloom, carrying misery and misfortune to loosen pent-up glaciers that will create an Ice Age of the national heart."
81: to which she responded, "it's alright son, it's life, and life only"
The Noble committee is just loosening everybody up so they can give the award to ABBA
Well, you look so pretty in it
Honey, can I jump on it sometime ?
Yes, I just wanna see
If it's really that expensive kind
You know it balances on your head
Just like a mattress balances
On a bottle of wine
Your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat.
Maybe that's more your kind of thing, Moby.
Not celebrating -- I love Bob Dylan, but I don't think he needed any more honors. Jeet Heer suggested Lynda Barry, and I was kind of rooting for her.
Were you thirteen at the time?
Didn't have that excuse, I'm afraid. (Actually, she liked the song, but I worried afterwards.)
(If the issue is that the line's a cliche, well, yes, but one of Dylan's talents as a lyricist is re-purposing cliches, e.g. "if you see her, say hello", inventively.)
89: I like vintage leopard-skin pill-box hats.
Not Dark Yet is one of my favorites too.
91: It was brand-new then, but it's vintage now.
Dylan is a great writer of lyrics, and yet . . . It hurts that this happened the same year that Guy Clark died. Because Guy Clark was better.
Tomas Transtromer? Herta Muller? Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio? Patrick Modiano?
V.S.Naipaul? John Coetzee? Orhan Pamuk? Harold Pinter? Doris Lessing? Mario Vargas Llosa? Alice Munro?
Somebody pointed out that it would have been nice if one woman had won a Nobel this year, so in the spirit of giving them to singer/songwriters for the boomer generation, I'm going to propose Joni Mitchell.
Second and third paras shouldn't be italic, obvs.
Doesn't involve the literary side but stumbled on this brief tape of Hendrix working on "Watchtower." I think from the day described here.
94: But will you stand on Dylan's coffee table in your cowboy boots while defecating and say that? /steve-earle /chuck-berry
Just taking it back won't clean the table.
This was rather a long night. Seldom had he recited so much poetry in a single night; he had recited all his father's poetry, all the ballads he could remember, all his own palindromes backwards and forwards in forty-eight different ways, whole processions of dirty poems, one hymn that he had learned from his mother and all the lampoons that had been known in the Fourthing since time immemorial about bailiffs, merchants and sheriffs.
I think Chuck Berry was the defecator, but I'm not sure I get that reference.
100: Depends on what you took back.
Google his name plus "table" and see.
98: I thought of that, in that one of the moments for me of coming to appreciate Guy Clark was listening to the tribute album that came out a couple of years ago and thinking, "I have to admit, he's clearly surpassed Townes Van Zandt."
I say to people that it took me a while to appreciate Guy Clark because (a) he wasn't a great performer early in his career so there was no moment of him exploding as a figure and (b) there is no definitive era of Guy Clark -- a string of albums over a few years that clearly represents his best work. He wasn't prolific, but he just kept writing consistently good stuff for 30+ years. When you look at his body of work it's amazing.
94 was completely serious, actually. I respect the heck out of Dylan but seeing the news this morning my thought was, "Oh shit. Guy Clark."
4, 6: I pretty much prefer the Time Out of Mind => Modern Times trilogy to Blood. Indeed, the absolutist veneration for that album at the expense of the '97-'06 run strikes me as precisely the sort of nostalgia of which the Nobel Committee is being accused.
As best I can tell, people love Dylan out of loyalty to their teenage selves.
I was meh on Dylan in my 20s, let alone my teens.
I guess if one of the Traveling Wilburys had to win a Nobel, it ought to be him. Also: Bob Dylan is still alive?!
I haven't listened properly to Guy Clark - I should remedy that.
I haven't listened properly to Guy Clark - I should remedy that.
I don't know that this is the right thread (maybe it is) but if you want some recommendations let me know. I could give you 10-15 songs which are all great.
105: "The Last Gunfighter Ballad" is one of those songs for me that I almost literally wish was endless. I'll often skip it right back to the beginning as soon as it ends.
I made a Pandora station around James McMurtry, and I love how much of it is Guy Clark and John Prine.
I'm going to be away from the computer for a couple hours, but will get back to you after that.
I'd forgotten about the Soy Bomb incident.
113: Cheers - I'll be away for a bit too.
The Nobel Prize literature committee are indeed masters of intermittent reinforcement. It's really something. They're better at it than the Academy Awards... uh... committee.
I've given up looking for the rewards, in part because no one will ever give a better acceptance speech than Coetzee.
Category 2 Nobelist Dario Fo has died. Coincidence?
I haven't yet read Independent People despite prompting from folks various, but I just looked at the opening, and come on, not only is it Nobel Prize in Literature-caliber, it's also a contender for the Nobel Prize in Metal.
The Sheriff himself both saw and heard the sundry unnatural happenings that took place there, as is shown in his well-known Account of the Albogastathir Fiend. The ghost was heard chanting aloud in the bigging from Mid-Thorri to well past Whitsuntide, when the folk fled; twice he named is name in the Sheriff's ear, but answered all other questions with "odious Latin verses and shameless obscenities."
[...]
But as the mistress Gunnvor grew older in years, says the story, she began to thirst greatly for human blood. And she hungered for human marrow.
64 is fair. If they had actually given it to Caetano Veloso, I'd be grinning wide instead of making the same pukey grimace that Dylan himself appears to be making in the New York Times video clip.
117: Can't be. He was the other odd selection that wasn't best known for the written word. (that's my impression based on memories of what people said when he won the Nobel Prize. I have no actual knowledge of his work)
In what universe was Dario Fo "some random Italian"? The funniest and most humane playwright of the second half of the 20th century. exc. possibly Beckett. And certainly the most politically engaged one in any first world country.
Also too, Wikipedia: "However, in September 1983, U.S. authorities again refused them permission to enter, and, to Fo's bewilderment, accused them of "belonging to organisations supporting terrorist groups." At this time Fo was the foreign writer whose plays were most widely produced in that country.
In what universe was Dario Fo "some random Italian"?
Mine, if he has a phone.
91: It was brand-new then, but it's vintage now.
Oh, but it was so much vintage then. It's brand-newer than that now.
Anyway the whole institution is now tarnished beyond repair and we have to take them all away and re-award them. 1901 is easy; you take it away from Sully Prudhomme and give it to Tolstoy. For 1902, I'll say take it away from Theodor Mommsen and give it to Machado de Assis.
You know who should get the Nobel Price for Literature is Bill Watterson.
You know sucks donkey balls in a bad way? Tolstoy.
68: "this novel is so terrific that I cannot remember anything about it", eh?
Braveheart was definitely worse than Crash (ugh, I didn't actually know it won Best Picture, jesus) and I'm thrilled to say I never saw Titanic but I think the Crash win had such an effect because there was an embarrassment of riches in the category that year that the contrast was particularly striking.
I'm pleased to hear I'm allowed to hate Dylan although griping about him in the presence of fans is likely to prompt really earnest efforts to make me understand why he's so great, which I'd rather avoid (it's sad when you still have to disappoint them in the end).
I dunno, I really don't care about lyrics in music. Bad lyrics can ruin a musically good song, but good ones don't make them much better.
"for having created new poetic expressions within the great American snowman tradition"
131: you're trolling like mad, right? neb (as well as others) has cited that book multiple times in the archives here. Go look! More seriously it is interesting that memory (e.g. of particular individual lines) and aesthetic appreciation seem to be so closely linked for you. I'm not sure they are for me.
89, 91: I got a (faux-)leopard-skin pillbox hat for my 16th birthday because of that song, but it never properly fit my giant head and didn't get a lot of use. It being the mid-'90s, I mostly wore it with peasant blouses and giant skirts and looked like some sort of early-20th-c Balkan freedom fighter in a fez.
Stephen King
@StephenKing
I am ecstatic that Bob Dylan has won the Nobel. A great and good thing in a season of sleaze and sadness.
You should read it, lur key. I have another of his books downstairs, World Light, and it may be the next thing I read.
I am currently unboxing my books and putting them on shelves in the living room after they'd lived on the third floor where even I never went through all my time with Lee. This may be the part of the whole move that makes me the most happy, I think.
68: "this novel is so terrific that I cannot remember anything about it", eh?
I can remember lots about it, and the thing that I would have cited specifically as a nice (albeit uncharacteristic) "line" is the description of the odor of coffee that comes early in the second part. Or for that matter this, which I recently posted to facebook, or the part where Bjartur goes searching for a lost sheep.
137: Hurrah, that's truly the best part of moving. Every time we move house I think of this and it always makes me happy.
137.2 You are in good company.
Now why did I think of that? It hasn't croosed my mind for decades.
That was particularly amazing pwnage. Nice work. (And speaking of nice work, huge thanks are due to Stranded in Lubbock and his AFAIK pseudless but wonderful wife, who got the books into boxes and down three flights of the stairs for the movers, which I couldn't do on my stupid ankle. Unfogged people are the best people!)
I'll just repurpose this "quip" from the other place, from when I moved to my present apartment: 'I propose to define "unpacking one's books" as that process whereby the thought "something's wrong, can this really be all my books?" gradually yields to the thought "something's wrong, can these really be all my bookcases?".'
I am solving that problem by only having bought half the bookcases I intend to have in that room. If things are cramped, well, there's more space coming. If not, then I have a future to look forward to here! Plus a shelf by the door for the girls' bike helmets, of course.
142: Stranded in Lubbok and pseudless spouse should get Nobel Prize for Literature! Maybe next year!
I have one very large and very nice bookshelf, in arguably a "library" setting that is my favorite thing about the house (it has scotch, books, and exactly ONE chair -- the best). And a bunch of stuff in boxes. Still it's crazy how many of the books are either half-read or purely aspirational.
My conceptual-art project "80s-90s humanities grad" will be a 200 foot high bookshelf stocked with nothing but the red paperback "Marx-Engels Reader."
A lot of my fantasies about moving someplace where a square foot costs less than a bachelor party have to do with finding more room for bookcases. We max out really fast here, plus you have to take earthquakes into account.
red paperback "Marx-Engels Reader."
I have two of them, one of which has been so lightened by the sun that its spine is pale yellow now.
122: Fo was great and certainly more deserving of recognition as a literary artist than Dylan. His getting a Nobel just reinforced the arbitrariness of that particular prize, which I think I first fully appreciated when I read something by Claude Simon.
Thorn, I did the same after my divorce. The books really tied the room together.
I don't know what book we're talking about.
Scientific Progress Goes 'Boink'?
I'm pretty sure bats are bugs.
Bill Watterson burned out after 10 years. It's an award for a lifetime of achievement. The Nobel Prize should also not go to J.D. Salinger.
There could be a newspaper cartoonist who would be qualified -- maybe the late Walt Kelly?
149. There is a certain red dye pigment, much favoured by publishers of all political persuasions and none, that reliably fades to yellow. The chemistry of this is beyond me.
Have many dozens of bookcases, spread through almost every room in the house. Some bought, some rescued from alleys and dumpsters, some built. Somebody, whether it was one of us or a visitor, once described our decor as "Early Powell's." I can remember seeing a shelf carried across a transom in the movie of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and thinking "I'm going to have one of those someday."
I must admit I was vaguely hoping for Ursula LeGuin, since she recently announced that she was through writing fiction.
155: That's a good run. I can think of a whole raft load of other cartoonists who should quit. And not a tiny raft like you can just inflate and go paddle a bit on. A real raft, at least 20' x 10' made to the highest level of quality that contemporary raft making produce for a reasonable cost.
158: Also more deserving than Dylan! Plus, that would make her letter to my daughter even more special.
159: For most of the ones who should quit, I would prefer a raft of lesser quality, specifically vis-a-vis seaworthiness.
If they drown, then by definition the number was more than a "raft load".
Have there ever been any good cartoonists other than Watterson and Gary Larson? I know people hold Schultz and Trudeau in high regard, but I've never been charmed.
163.last: Read the stuff from their first ten years.
163: Big fan of the former two. I also like Bill Amend's Foxtrot, which he still does on Sundays. Seems like a nice nerdy guy.
The late Walt Kelly or the late George Herriman, maybe.
164 is correct. The first 10 years of Bloom County are also quite good.
I also like Bill Amend's Foxtrot
Seconded.
166 is correct and I'd add E.C. Segar.
George Herriman, Will Eisner, Jean Giraud.
If Larsen, what about Steinberg or Gahan Wilson?
Seconding 167.1. I'm actually trying at the moment (like the file is literally open in Gimp in another window) to get the Deathtongue logo out of this comic
to turn into a custom bumber sticker for my car. But my Gimp skills are weak, so this may not actually happen.
Bill Watterson burned out after 10 years. It's an award for a lifetime of achievement.
So did Sandy Koufax. He's still in the Hall of Fame.
134: no, I'm arguing that you can't really claim lasting artistic and world historical importance for stuff that has so little impact on the reader that he can't remember anything about it later. I'm sure neb can remember lots of it. And the Nobel isn't or shouldn't be just for aesthetic merit, it should be for effect, betterment of mankind etc and I think that is a good measure of impact. Also it is not a case of "how easy is it to remember" but "how many people are familiar with it".
142/5: Hey, our pleasure. Glad to help, whether it wins us a Nobel or not. I think we even chatted about Laxness briefly as he went into his box.
should be for effect, betterment of mankind etc
Clearly, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature should be Bono.
as he went into his box
...which reminds me of this surely Nobel-worthy piece of Twitter genius, incidentally, for those that haven't seen it already.
Speaking of Lubbock and great songwriters, me and sixty other people are very excited about this deluxe reissue of Terry Allen's Lubbock (On Everything):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3zf15UVths
http://www.paradiseofbachelors.com/pob-27/
170: In HS, I painstakingly copied that onto a piece of paper somewhere, and stuck it up in my locker or something. Because color copies were unattainably expensive, or because I was ridiculous. Or both.
Drum's hot take on the subject is that this is an intentional snub of DeLillo, Pynchon, et al.
If it's the former, I couldn't commend it more highly. In fact, I'd kind of like to see Scott Adams get one in hopes that it would cause DeLillo to literally perish.
I also like Bill Amend's Foxtrot
Oh my fucking God. Could you have embarrassed yourselves aesthetically any more? What other kinds of mediocrities are you into? Shall we put on America's greatest hits together and listen to "Horse With No Name."
Scott Adams' Dilbert is actually better than Foxtrot, which is saying something because Dilbert sucks.
Guy Clark (set of 5, I'll add more later).
"Last Gunfighter Ballad" -- JRoth mentioned this one, and, while it isn't one of my absolute favorites (I loved it at first, but eventually decided that it had just a whiff of kitsch) it's a good place to start. The thing I'd highlight about the writing is the rhythms of the consonant sounds. So many pop songs emphasize vowels, which singers can stretch out, but in this song it's all about the hiss of the "s" and the punch of the "p", "t", and "k"s. For example
And he's hit by the smell of the black powder smoke
And the stand in the street at the turn of a joke
That's not an accident.
"Hemmingway's Whiskey" -- It's a metaphor dude -- I say poking fun at myself. It took me a while to appreciate the full measure of this song. I'd originally listened to it and thought about the obvious association with the title "Hemmingway's Whisky" as signifying a slightly macho tribute to the parts of life which are bracing and unpleasant but satisfying. And then, after a couple of listens I realized that misunderstood the song. I started to think that the key verse was this one:
Ah, it's tough out there, a good muse is hard to find
Living one word to the next, one line at a time
There's more to life than whiskey, there's more to words than rhyme
Sometimes nothing works, sometimes nothing shines
That the song is about living life with a certain grace; being able to get through tough times, and come back with a clearer eye the next day.
"Stuff That Works" -- Simple, but it works because it avoids being pretentious. The language never calls attention to itself, but there isn't a word out of place. I've said (about a different song) that it takes real skill to write a song consisting of nothing more than short, declarative sentences. The sentences are longer in this case, but it never reaches for effect.
"Cold Dog Soup" -- Proving that he can also be flashy and clever (and serious at the same time).
"My Favorite Picture Of You" -- From his final album; as good as anything he's written.
Speaking of Lubbock and great songwriters, me and sixty other people are very excited about this deluxe reissue of Terry Allen's Lubbock (On Everything):
Thanks for letting me know. That's an album that I first heard about here, and completely feel in love with -- not only is the songwriting great it's a damn-near perfect album. It works so well as a specific collection of songs.
Dylan seems like a Peter Englund pick. He's a bit middlebrow by the standards of the academy, wants to make them more approachabble, and is popular historian, not a literary writer or critic.
Come to think of it, Aleeksivich also seems like an Englund pick, since hes a historian with literary prétensions himself and very angrily anti-communist.
OK Weman, you're on. Give us the breakdown of Nobel committee members and what their biases/politics are. Interesting!
OK, I looked it up. There are 18 members of the committee.
One, amazingly, is named Lotta Lotass. Lotta Lotass should win the Nobel Prize for names.
There could be a newspaper cartoonist who would be qualified
If they can give a Nobel to a guy whose songs are only good when someone else sings them, they can certainly give the prize to a cartoonist whose cartoons are only good when someone else deletes the cat's word balloons. One Nobel for Jim Davis, please.
One Nobel for Jim Davis, please.
As Terry Pratchett said: "I was in the audience at some literary awards ceremony or other with J. K. Rowling one time, and she was lamenting how they'd never give her one, so I turned to her and I said, Jo, me neither: we'll just have to cry ourselves to sleep on top of our mattresses stuffed with £20 notes."
That's only true for very specialized values of "never."
(I'm still about 1/3rd of the way through "Mort" and should try to pick it up again.)
Tranströmer is actually fucking brilliant, and richly deserved the prize (and another Swedish winner widely mocked, Harry Martinsson, wrote some excellent poems) but he is also almost entirely impossible to translate.
Count me in on the team that thinks it's ridiculous to give Dylan the literature prize. Much as I love him. If I had to give it to a songwriter it would be Elvis Costello.
"What songwriter would you prefer have received the Nobel" is a fun exercise, maybe, or possibly an intolerable, terrible one.
The trouble is that "hypothetical Nobel Prize" has pretty much no content at all, as we've demonstrated, so it will be "who's most literary," "who is the bestest," or "Bono".
Sonny died of gravitational complications. He can't win now.
Little known fact: Tupac and Biggie died vying for the 1997 Nobel prize.
146: I also have two of them. We should start a club.
Lotass means lynx paw. It's a real name.
She writes experimental novels in hexameter that have print runs of 300-400 copies. One of her novels were published in the form of folded notes in a box. Her latest novel is some sort of science fiction. She describes herself as anxious and a loner and had never met anyone in the Academy before she was invited to join. Her favorite writer is Beckett.
191: After receiving an OBE, Pratchett commented, "I suspect the 'services to literature' consisted of refraining from trying to write any,"
. She describes herself as anxious and a loner and had never met anyone in the Academy before she was invited to join.
OK, but some random lawyer in Los Angeles making fun of her name based on how it sounds in American English should make her feel good, right? Lotass!
So, my thing is: Go Sweden and Norway! The world bowing down, at least momentarily, to the judgement of some opinion-making elites in Scandinavia is the world bending, at least momentarily, in the right (which is to say, left-ish) direction.
Do I honestly believe that Bob Dylan was the best possible choice for a Nobel prize in literature? Eh, probably not. But I'm willing to defer to the Scandinavians on this one, because, after all, they're not the ones who are running Trump as a major (not to say serious) candidate.
Tonight, I read from a book where the main character can talk to crows and is named "Caw". Literature is extra dead.
Anyway, I kept thinking of Jack Handey's "The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."
5 more Guy Clark songs -- covers this time.
I mentioned that the tribute album ("This One's For Him") helped me realize just how good Guy Clark was -- 30 tracks, and while they aren't all equally good, there isn't a dud on there. So here are a couple from that.
"Anyhow I Love You" -- Lyle Lovett -- One of my favorites, with the confident opening lines, "I wish I had a dime for every bad time / But the bad times always seem to keep the change" which looks too clever on paper but works great in the song.
"Instant Coffee Blues" -- Suzy Bogguss -- "Time was of the essence so they both did their best, / to meet up in the kitchen feelin fully dressed. / She just had to go to work, and he just had to go. "
"The Cape -- Patty Griffin -- "Eight years old with a flour sack cape tied all around his neck / He climbed up on the garage, he's figurin' what the heck" A classic of his (through, I admit, not one of the songs that most resonates with me personally -- my personality is just too risk averse to completely connect with the song) .
Part of what's impressive about those three is that the performers are all country music royalty (as are many of the people on the album) and they aren't showing off at all. I don't get the sense that any of the three of them have picked the song trying to make themselves look good; they all really care about the songs and seem committed to making Guy Clark look good (and, as a note, in this video Lyle Lovett credits Guy Clark for making his music career possible).
Also, two Townes Van Zandt covers of Guy Clark songs:
"Dublin Blues -- There are two things that have always impressed me about this song. (1) The verse in which he name checks Doc Watson in the same breath as the David and Mona Lisa. (2) That if I were making a list of my 10 favorite Townes Van Zandt songs, this would be on it, and it was written by Clark. It fits his style remarkably well. Listening to it now, and having written about the sounds in "Last Gunfighter Ballad" I just noticed something new about the opening lines:
"I wish I was in Austin
In a chilly parlor bar
Drinkin' Mad Dog Margaritas
And not carin' where you are"
There's a repeated sound going on there (and, now that I think about it, I've never heard the phrase "parlour bar" before, but it always seemed natural in the song). If you leave out all of that and try saying to yourself, "I wish I wasn't caring where you are." It feels completely unnatural to end the sentence on "are." But it feels just right, and weighty at the end of the line in the song, and I'm convinced that the fact that the sound is being repeated (I wouldn't call it a rhyme exactly), is part of setting up the ear for that work.
"Don't Let The Sunshine Fool Ya. -- Another song that I think of as a Van Zandt classic.
And, as a bonus
Cold Dog Soup, performed on the tribute album by James McMurtry is another highlight track.
So thanks to this thread, I just found out that a friend is closely related to a Nobel laureate!
https://archive.org/download/rhitchcock2003-11-25.flacf/rhitchcock2003-11-25d2t06.flac
Here's a fun blast from the past, same concert as that last one:https://archive.org/download/rhitchcock2003-11-25.flacf/rhitchcock2003-11-25d2t08.flac
I'll confess to not having really understood the cruelty of mice.
This thread is probably the best illustration of how much this place is dominated by Gen-Xers.
Sit down and I'll tell you a story about when Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson ran the world.
Anyway, I liked Josh Marshall's take on it. (Yes, the fact that he's a Gen-Xer undermines my claim above. Noted.)
I've never heard the phrase "parlour bar" before, but it always seemed natural in the song)
Fairly certain the line is about the Texas Chili Parlor in Austin, not a "chilly parlour bar."
Thanks. I almost looked that up, but decided that it didn't matter for the point I was making. But I was curious.
181, 206: You win the Nobel for your services to Guy Clark curation.
I don't know if it's exactly the same thing, but effect of the percussive consonant line in Last Gunfighter Ballad reminds me of the sort of rap-like rhythm Dylan gives to the verses in Like a Rolling Stone. Or the "...gonna pin this triple mur-dur on him, he ain't no Gentleman Jim" in Hurricane.
But My Favorite Picture of You is the one that hit me first, for some reason with the line "The camera loves you, and so do I". I guess it's that idea of your personal fascination with someone seeming utterly objective in the moment. And there's another one of the consonant things you were talking about in the "click... pic..." combination. Nice echoes of Blue Bayou in there somewhere in the tune, as well.
The carpenter who is in our charge of our kitchen redo told me he just back from Dublin. And I said, "Dublin? what?" and he said, "Ah no, darling, not Ireland: I meant Dublin, North Carolina." I should maybe be offended? but I am not.
My main association with Foxtrot is that, during the dreary slow-motion end of a college relationship, I was living as an increasingly unwanted guest at the family home of my girlfriend. She decided it was a good time to revisit the vast Foxtrot library on the family bookshelf, and we would sit around, she reading "Foxtrot Volume VI" or whatever, I trying awkwardly to make conversation and figure out if I could scoot any closer to her. I think I moved out before she got to the end of the series. So yeah, "thrown over for Foxtrot" is part of my life history, AMA.
I have a sense that it's time to call a wrap on the Nobels. The peace prize has been discredited for decades; the rules for the three scientific ones no longer really reflect how scientific research is carried out any more, which leaves literature and economics. (I know the economics one is kinda fake, but as dsquared once pointed out, nobody cares.)
Whatever you think about Dylan specifically, the award represents a worthy effort by the committee to update the thing and make it more in tune with the arts that people generally pay attention to in 2016, rather than 1901. But it's a kludge, and everybody can see it's a kludge.
Solution? Let the economics prize stand as the prestigious "Swedish National Bank's Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel", to keep the memory of the old arms dealer alive, and fold the funds for the rest into a new set of prizes which recognise 21st century reality, and are given a time limit, say 100 years, at the outset. Otherwise, very soon nobody is going to be bothered about them except for the money.
I just talked to my mom on the phone. She's thrilled about Dylan's Nobel and actually happens to be going to see him on Tuesday. Take that, haters.
My mom is thrilled too! Just as I predicted!
207: You know Jenny Lotass too?!
I don't have a favorite Laxness sentence but just the first chapter of World Light has yielded "He hated people, and wrote about them." and (about a different he) "He wept as children only weep when they suffer injustice at the hands of those stronger than themselves." and both appeal to me.
217:
Nobel Prize In Social Media
Nobel Prize In Drones
Nobel Prize In Choosing Between Neoliberals and Fascists
221: sounds like this is a better book than the previous one you were reading.
223: It is! There was actually one in between about parenting that I'd be happy to recommend to you. (I only had 20 pages left after the one I didn't like.) I'm also reading a 700-page book about abolitionism, plus a few others. I'm not very good at doing just one thing.
I bet NickS would like this. He oughta, anyway.
I have a sense that it's time to call a wrap on the Nobels. The peace prize has been discredited for decades
The Peace Prizes have been dodgy from the start. I mean, we mock them for giving a prize to Obama because apparently he drones too many people, but Teddy Roosevelt? This is a guy who said that San Juan Hill was the best day of his life! Woodrow Wilson we've dealt with already on the Tooze thread. Gustav Stresemann, who supported the German war effort, including unrestricted submarine warfare. George Marshall.
Kissinger is obvious , but he shared it with Le Duc Tho, whose job for twenty years had been waging a peculiarly ruthless and brutal war against his own people.
Left the lounge for beer nearer the gate. The last beers for some time.
Except for those on the plane. The plane beers. Those shall be the last.
Do they give a last call before you enter Arrakeen airspace?
And run up and down the aisles prying the glasses from your clutching fingers?
226: The problem is that it's a misnomer. If we just called it the Least Warlike Warmonger MVP of the Year Award everyone would know exactly what it's for. (With Obama getting the special Most Not George W. Bush Award.)
Yes. What bothered me about Obama's award was that he got it before he'd even finished a year.
They also named a local school after him at about the same time. I think they shouldn't name things after officials still in office because of Robert Byrd's nearly successful attempt to put his name on every sign post in West Virginia.
Occasionally I see sports headlines about how "Obama beat [whomever]." Disconcerting.
When he does get around to revealing his true evil nature, the Obama Eagles is a good name for his fascist youth league.
He's sure taking his own time with destroying democracy.
Why aren't I living in a totalitarian state controlled by the UN?
It's written on the back of road signs.
Not what I heard.
"But on the other side
It didn't say nothing.
That side belongs to you and me."
233: They shouldn't even name things after people who are still alive. I live near a street named Hassert Blvd. Earlier this year they put up a "No Relation to Dennis Hastert" sign.
The solution in 242.1 won't fix the problem in 242.2.
Yeah, Kissinger, Begin, Arafat, etc weren't exactly paragons of peacefulness, but at least they got it for doing something. With Obama, it seemed that gave him the prize because they had high hopes.
Or they gave him the prize to try to trap him into being peaceful, like the way charities used to send you a bunch of mailing labels so that you'd feel inclined to return the "free gift."
245: Yeah, that was the other possibility and I think it backfired. Obama accepted the prize and made a speech defending war. I knew he wasn't any peacenik from when I read the part of Dreams from my Father about how awesome he thought his stepfather was for slaughtering the chicken.
As I've mentioned before, I'm in favor of legalizing non-metaphorical cock fighting.
Mainly I'm pandering to Latino voters, but also I figure I'm going to be eating a fair number of chickens anyway.
I remain opposed to dog fights and bear baiting.
I tried slug jousting but couldn't get them to slide in the right direction.
OT: Peter Thiel is making a huge donation to Trump. Can I change my mind about Gawker?
I tried slug jousting
IYKWIMAITYD
250: see previous confusion about someone "hunting deer with slugs".
The problem is that it's a misnomer.
True. It sounds like it should be awarded to the person with the highest value of peacefulness (P) when in fact it's awarded for the highest value of dP/dt. The Nobel First Derivative of Peace Prize.
231 is right. Mostly it's just a crapshoot though. eg. Thabo Mbeki (although a generally despicable character) negotiated the end of most fighting and international involvement in a war that killed upwards of 3 million people. And the prize went instead to Wangari Maathai for...planting trees?
Le Duc Tho is a particularly egregious winner since he got the Peace Prize for his involvement in negotiating a peace agreement which his government fully intended to break as soon as possible and was, in fact, cheerfully breaking on a large scale even as the prize committee made the decision. (He then refused to accept it on the grounds that the other side weren't abiding by the agreement, which they weren't.)
243: Oh right. I skipped to the funny part of 242 and left out the boring part.
They shouldn't even name things after people who are still alive. For example, Wheaton College had to take Dennis Hastert's name off one of its departments. Speaking of whom, I live near a street named Hassert Blvd. Earlier this year they put up a "No Relation to Dennis Hastert" sign.
"The Dennis Hastert Department of Statues of Limitations at the Wheaton College Law School" would be appropriate, maybe.
Some of the awards are hilarious:
Barack Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."
While still essentially president-elect. Best is:
1905 Bertha von Suttner "For writing Lay Down Your Arms and contributing to the creation of the Prize"
Obviously worth a million dollars! Nothing dubious there at all! Especially embarrassing compared with the next year:
1906 Theodore Roosevelt United States "[F]or his successful mediation to end the Russo-Japanese war and for his interest in arbitration, having provided the Hague arbitration court with its very first case"
One that actually makes sense:
2012 European Union "for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe."
By any reasonable standard the Union should actually win every year by default.
I bet NickS would like this. He oughta, anyway.
I do like that. I'm not sure what prompted you to share it in this thread, but it made me smile.
Interesting, they used to give 'no award' quite regularly. 19 times before 1972, never since then. 10 times, excluding the world wars. If they want to restore any credibility they could start doing that again.
The problem is that if they give no award, the prize money now goes Peter Theil.
Because if he did I don't think a million kroner here or there will make much difference.
I'm not sure what prompted you to share it in this thread, but it made me smile.
You've been posting country-oid recs in this thread, so ...
You've been posting country-oid recs in this thread, so ...
How is the tango country-oid? Am I being dense?
My cousin, the one who played on Blood on the Tracks, posted this at the other place: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/24/the-definitive-ranking-of-bob-dylan-studio-albums-from-worst-to-best.html
I'd have moved both Pat Garrett and Desire up on the list, but not that far for either.
I've just got back from Italy, and I was quite impressed to see that crowds literally filled a piazza in Milan in the rain in Dario Fo's honour.
Meanwhile, on the Nobel internals subthread, Swedish dance teacher recently said to us:
"Now, that's like nitroglycerine! You know what happened to Alfred Nobel?
[silence, waiting for a punchline]
Well, he blew up his own brother and they made him leave Stockholm!
[silence, moving from suitable reverence to bafflement and maybe even dumb insolence in the ranks]
...doesn't everyone here learn about Alfred Nobel in primary school?"
No, dear heart, everyone here does not learn about Alfred Nobel in primary school, and half the gang seem to be French. Also, can we mark that again?
268 is great. Also, the text says it is an effort to "rank each album, from best to worst". Wow, a superfan of Christmas In The Heart and Down In The Groove!
I had a boss once who put "Nobel Peace Prize" on her resume. Really, she was on the board of the Pugwash Conference the year they shared it with Joseph Rotblat. Still, looks good on a resume.
I know Dylan like to cultivate an image of eccentricity, but this is plain rude.
He said I could have the money. Who should I talk with?
The King of Norway. I don't know his phone number, but I'm sure you can google it.
He's probably just nervous about having to give a speech.
Maybe he could just redo this one.
I have dined with kings,
Been offered wings
And I've never been too impressed
Did he try the wings with the blue cheese dressing? Because it really makes a difference.
It's the nitroglycerin that really makes it memorable.
280: I'll need to consult the hadith on that.
