An appreciation: Bob Dylan’s work truly is literature
You’ve likely heard by now that Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday. And it was not an uncontroversial decision.
I’ll admit to having reservations. I’m an English professor by trade, and there’s a part of me that wondered at the thought of literature’s highest honor being bestowed on a songwriter.
It wasn’t only that. There are a lot of women and people of color – such as Prince, Chuck D, Joni Mitchell, Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder, Bjork, Nina Simone – who might credibly have been given the award and for whom it might have made a profound difference.
For the prize to go to Dylan feels like yesterday’s news, like the Nobel committee threw its weight behind a decision made long ago.
But what if the Nobel folk did it on purpose? To remind us that song is literature – as life-changing and culturally defining as any book or poem – and to challenge us to return to a body of work we know so well we’ve forgotten it.
The last thing you might feel you need right now is another appreciation of Dylan, some hipster droning on about how Dylan defined his generation and about some show when Dylan was just super real. I’m not that person. It’s not my generation, and I definitely wasn’t at that show. I probably wasn’t even alive.
Hearing the news with the rest of the world, I went back to the songs. I’d like to say I dusted off the vinyl. Actually, I called up the songs on Spotify.
I began with his eponymous first album and his version of the folk song “A Man of Constant Sorrow.” Dylan started off by steeping himself in the traditions and language of American folk music. This is where he begins, and maybe also remains, as a writer. The poetry that ties his work together emerges from an elemental and uniquely American place.
Next for me was “A Hard Rains A-Gonna Fall.” It sounds like a folk song, like music that has existed forever. It’s a Dylan composition, which is another way of saying that at some point, somehow, the tradition to which he has apprenticed himself begins to speak through him. Give it a listen. Hear the desperation and urgency behind this song of dead oceans, sad forests and tongue-broken talkers.
Soon I was listening to Dylan in the ’80s, to the weirdness of “Jokerman” and the diversion into the Traveling Wilburys, his refusal to become a watered-down distant echo of himself.
Try it yourself. Put on some Dylan and hear the uncompromising humanity, the urgency of his early work, the freshness of the live recordings when he went electric, his repudiation of reputation and the experiments of the ’80s, the remarkable return to his earliest inspirations in his later works.
Go on and tell me it’s not literature. A line from Dylan reads, “The same thing I wanted yesterday I will want again tomorrow.” The Nobel committee reminds us of that.
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Hayward is the National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Professor at Colorado College.
Illustration by Nichole Montanez, The Gazette
Legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan performs at the Newport Folk Festival, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2002, in Newport, R.I. Dylan last played Newport in July 1965, when he appeared onstage with an electric guitar for the first time, smashing barriers between folk and rock, and was booed by folk-music purists. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer)
President Barack Obama presents rock legend Bob Dylan with a Medal of Freedom, Tuesday, May 29, 2012, during a ceremony at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan is seen at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, Feb. 28, 1984. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)
Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan gives his first concert in Israel after his 20-year career in music, Sept. 6, 1987, in Tel Aviv. As many as 40,000 fans jammed the fairgrounds to hear him and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. (AP Photo/Anat Givon)
American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan eyes the crowd while performing at the Live Aid famine relief concert at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia Pa., July 13, 1985. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)
American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, left, is joined onstage by Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards during Live Aid famine relief concert at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia on July 13,1985. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)
Bob Dylan and Tom Petty, right, opened their “True Confessions Tour” in the San Diego Sports Arena, June 10 1986 to a crowd of about 13,000. (AP Photo/Howard Lipin)
Bob Dylan in concert, Aug 3, 1986. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
FILE–American pop legend Bob Dylan sings “Knocking on Heavens doors” in front of Pope John Paul II during a concert in honour of the Pontiff in Bologna Saturday, September 27, 1997. An estimated crowd of 300,000 youths attended the concert. (AP Photo/Gianni Schicchi)