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Critical Conversation: Colette Bancroft and Jay Cridlin on Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize (with video)

 
Bob Dylan before being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in the East Room of the White House in Washington, on May 29, 2012. Dylan, one of the world's most influential rock musicians, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Oct. 13, 2016, for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition, in the words of the Swedish Academy. (Luke Sharrett/The New York Times)
Bob Dylan before being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in the East Room of the White House in Washington, on May 29, 2012. Dylan, one of the world's most influential rock musicians, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Oct. 13, 2016, for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition, in the words of the Swedish Academy. (Luke Sharrett/The New York Times)
Published Oct. 13, 2016

What does it mean that Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature? Times Book Critic Colette Bancroft and Pop Music/Culture Critic Jay Cridlin weigh in.

Jay: I can honestly say I didn't have a horse in this race. Were you surprised? Were you rooting for anybody?

Colette: I was surprised. Dylan shows up almost every year as a possibility for the Nobel in Literature. Betting shops in England take bets on who is likely to win, and in the last two years, it's been people like Philip Roth, Haruki Murakami, and a number of other international writers, some of which very few Americans have heard of. Dylan shows up on the list, and this year his odds were 50 to 1. There are a lot of contenders who are more traditional literary figures — great novelists, great poets — but for a long time, he's been perceived as a more literary writer than a lot of singer-songwriters.

Jay: He's the archetype of the modern songwriter, and in that sense the archetype of a popular poet in the latter half of the 20th century. Not only does it make sense that he won, but realistically, he's the only musician who ever could have won, right?

Colette: I think so. The Nobel for Literature — and most of the Nobels — are sort of lifetime achievement awards. It's hard for me to think of anyone who achieves both his accomplishment and his level of influence. And he was taken seriously poetically for the beginning of his career. I taught literature in college in the '70s, and it was very common for people to teach Bob Dylan songs in poetry classes.

Jay: Only a couple of American poets have won the Nobel for Literature. T.S. Eliot was one. But no Langston Hughes, no Maya Angelou, no Robert Frost. Is Dylan in that pantheon?

Colette: The permanent secretary of the Nobel Prize Committee called him "a great poet in the English speaking tradition" and another member of the committee called him the "greatest living poet." Not even the greatest living American poet, but the greatest living poet. I'm sure there are a lot of poets out there grinding their teeth over that. But a case can be made. He used language in a way that other songwriters before him had not — that kind of surrealist, stream-of-consciousness style that so many other songwriters have been influenced by. He's been accused sometimes of appropriation: Oh, well, this is just a folk song, or This is the blues, or This is tin pan alley. Yeah, he does use all those things, but he makes something new out of them.

Jay: I was heartened to see him win, because I've had this growing feeling that we've been starting to underappreciate Bob Dylan just a little bit. He's out on the road all the time, but he's not playing these massive, three-hour concerts full of hits, like Paul McCartney or Bruce Springsteen. He's got a show coming up at Ruth Eckerd Hall next month, and as of this morning, it was not sold out. That should tell you something about where Dylan is in the culture right now, and that's unfortunate. But after we've lost people like David Bowie and Prince and Merle Haggard and Muhammad Ali, maybe there's a renewed desire to honor our legends while they're still among us.

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Do you have a favorite Bob Dylan song?

Colette: Oh, boy. That's tough. Probably the ones that I listened to as a kid. I'm the key Dylan demographic, and to me, things like Blowin' In the Wind and The Times They Are A-Changin', they're classic. Those are the ones that still play in my head.

Jay: A song like Subterranean Homesick Blues still sounds fresh in the right setting. Even when people cover Dylan today, it can sound completely reinvented. At the Billboard Music Awards, Kesha, who's been embattled in this sexual assault lawsuit with her producer, did this very plaintive piano cover of It Ain't Me Babe. It was one of the most beautiful television performances I've seen this year, really heartwarming and moving. That just shows how Dylan's work can be reinterpreted in ways that he probably didn't foresee.

Colette: That richness, that complexity, that timelessness — I think that's one of the reasons why he's gotten this award. A lot of people are going to be mad about it or flummoxed by it. But overall, I'm happy.

Jay: Who would you like to see win the Nobel Prize, if not Dylan? Where does this leave the Philip Roths and Don DeLillos of the world?

Colette: Those are certainly people that I would love to see win the Nobel. I would love to see Margaret Atwood win the Nobel. But there are more to come. And I think this is a good one. Unlike the last three or four years, when the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Literature led many Americans to go, "Who?," this year, everybody's going to know who that winner is.

Jay: The times, they are a-changin', huh?

Colette: You couldn't resist.