Dylan's Nobel Lecture transcript
 

The video and transcript of Bob Dylan’s Nobel Lecture can be found here. There are some minor inaccuracies in the transcript, so here’s my edited version.

Duncan

Thanks for this, Duncan.

I haven’t listened to much Dylan in my life, so maybe I shouldn't comment, but I found his choice of books surprising and interesting. In particular, Moby Dick is IMHO a work of miraculous genius, and Dylan made some astute observations on it, I thought.

I revere Dylan and think he's a genius, but it seems to me he phoned his lecture in and didn't have much to say. He basically wrote a book report about three famous books and told us that the books had themes that inspired him, though he didn't give us examples of songs he wrote that were connected in any way to the books. The book reports themselves were solid undergraduate English major stuff offering no unique insights. I think ultimately he was trying to show that his songs count as "literature" because he is a literary type who found inspiration in great books, but he ultimately didn't deliver the goods on that. I forgive him, though. As I said, he's a genius.

Rogerbob, I confess I had a similar suspicion about ‘trying to show that his songs count as "literature"’, and I agree with you about the book report aspect. And, not really knowing his songs, I was left wondering how these books related to his work, but I feared that was just my ignorance.

On Melville, Dylan does hit on two of the biggest themes: the ‘mask’ of the world / being, and the problem of evil, which Melville approached from every direction and could neither solve nor leave. It may be my almost limitless admiration for Melville that’s talking above, but anyway I was surprised.

I did find this comment on All Quiet on the Western Front interesting: 'I put this book down and closed it up. I never wanted to read another war novel again, and I never did.' I couldn’t make it through that book; it disgusted me. I can't say I never read another war novel -- I've read Hemingway's more than once.

Fyi
 

Wow, Greg. So maybe I should have been surprised. I do hope he at least read the book.

I'm sure he read the books. That's not really an issue. I just wish he had accepted the fact that the Nobel committee regarded his work with songs as "literature" and that he therefore didn't have to try to prove that point by invoking traditional literary sources that ultimately were not the greatest influences on his career. I think the lecture came from a defensive posture. He should have just told us about songs, songwriting, the tradition his work springs from, and given us insight into his creative process and the importance of the kind of "literature" he has excelled at.

In interviews and radio shows and songs, the poets he has mentioned most (to my limited recollection) are Poe, Rimbaud and Dante. If he felt he had to legitimize himself by reference to non-song literature, these are the types of sources I would have expected him to be talking about.

That makes a lot of sense, Rogerbob.