Why Bob Dylan Shouldn't Have Gotten the Nobel Prize for Literature
Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago
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Bob Dylan
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The article argues that Bob Dylan shouldn't have received the Nobel Prize for Literature, sparking a discussion on the definition of literature and the prize's criteria.
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Oct 3, 2025 at 8:35 AM EDT
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The first poem that the author points to as a masterpiece is a tortured exercise in formal meter. I had to read it out loud, very deliberately leaning into the meter to hear any musicality. It is difficult not because the feeling communicated are necessarily hard to communicate, but because the author enjoys the puzzle.
The second piece just flowed effortlessly. The rythym and meaning were immediately grasped, in complete silence, while still rewarding someone who sat with it a little longer.
I'm not sure their examples are really the best but for me you could cut out the examples and I think the argument would still stand. Maybe put differently, I'm not sure anyone would be talking about Bob Dylan's work if it were not for the music; that's a counterfactual that's impossible to determine but I suspect it is true. Given that, you have to ask yourself about the role of the music and whether or not you're comparing apples and oranges at some level when you compare poetry with and without music. There's lots of examples throughout history of written poetry and other works that would probably be forgotten were they not integrated into more famous musical works (Schiller's Ode to Joy is a good example, being part of Beethoven's 9th Symphony).
I can see why someone would disagree though. For me the decision always seemed off, and this rationale put into words for me why. I think there was a pattern around that time with major awards but that pertains to several slightly different issues.
You could look it up, at least if you have an NY Times subscription.
The author's argument seems to be "literature equals words," which I, and evidently the Nobel committee, think is a naive way of viewing literature. Music has always been tied to poetry, and the advent of recorded audio made sound people's primary way of experiencing poetry again, as it was before mass literacy. In my opinion, Dylan brought music back to poetry, not poetry to music (which is how many like to characterize his work).