[James Brancheau]

Didn't want to slight the 80's. Maybe the Nobel will go to Morrissey some day. A vibrant underground.

[Mark McDonnell]

Now you're talking, James..

[Roger Slater]

I'm a big Leonard Cohen fan, but I don't think he's Nobel material like Dylan.

Good Dylan/Bad Dylan?

Off the top of my head, his late-career bests for me include Trying to Get to Heaven Before They Close the Door, and Mississippi. But I also love "Standing in the Doorway." I'm sure I'm missing some others that come close. On that album, Make You Feel My Love is the weakest. And Highlands is a lot of fun, though a different sort of experience (and also shows that Dylan was indeed influenced by Burns).

His recent Sinatra covers? Not great. But unlike many, I do like his voice a lot.

Some of you may not know about his Theme Time Radio series. It's really a wonderful series of about fifty one-hour shows in which he chats about and introduces songs that he likes by others, each show involving a different theme. He's wonderfully knowledgeable about music history and brings many great anecdotes and songs you may not have heard before. He also tells some very cheesy jokes along the way.

[Don Jones]

No one can get away with expressing deep indignation the way Dylan can. He can be a haranguing prophet. Someone mentioned satire. With “Idiot Wind,” one of my favorites of his, he lets it out so clearly and so heart-breakingly that the fact he manages never to sound self-indulgent is all the more incredible for the force of his rage. But it is also quite sad. The language is bald but artful. Unforgettable lyrics. You don't want to be in this man's cross hairs.

This song could most surely apply to our contemporary From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol.

Idiot Wind

Someone's got it in for me
They're planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they'd cut it out quick
But when they will I can only guess
They say I shot a man named Gray
And took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks
And when she died it came to me
I can't help it if I'm lucky
People see me all the time
And they just can't remember how to act
Their minds are filled with big ideas
Images and distorted facts
Even you, yesterday
You had to ask me where it was at
I couldn't believe after all these years
You didn't know me better than that
Sweet lady
Idiot wind
Blowing every time you move your mouth
Blowing down the back roads headin' south
Idiot wind
Blowing every time you move your teeth
You're an idiot, babe
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe
I ran into the fortune-teller
Who said beware of lightning that might strike
I haven't known peace and quiet
For so long I can't remember what it's like
There's a lone soldier on the cross
Smoke pourin' out of a boxcar door
You didn't know it, you didn't think it could be done
In the final end he won the wars
After losin' every battle
I woke up on the roadside
Daydreamin' 'bout the way things sometimes are
Visions of your chestnut mare
Shoot through my head and are makin' me see stars
You hurt the ones that I love best
And cover up the truth with lies
One day you'll be in the ditch
Flies buzzin' around your eyes
Blood on your saddle
Idiot wind
Blowing through the flowers on your tomb
Blowing through the curtains in your room
Idiot wind
Blowing every time you move your teeth
You're an idiot, babe
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe
It was gravity which pulled us down
And destiny which broke us apart
You tamed the lion in my cage
But it just wasn't enough to change my heart
Now everything's a little upside down
As a matter of fact the wheels have stopped
What's good is bad, what's bad is good
You'll find out when you reach the top
You're on the bottom
I noticed at the ceremony
Your corrupt ways had finally made you blind
I can't remember your face anymore
Your mouth has changed
Your eyes don't look into mine
The priest wore black on the seventh day
And sat stone-faced while the building burned
I waited for you on the running boards
Near the cypress trees, while the springtime turned
Slowly into autumn
Idiot wind
Blowing like a circle around my skull,
From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol
Idiot wind
Blowing every time you move your teeth
You're an idiot, babe.
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe
I can't feel you anymore
I can't even touch the books you've read
Every time I crawl past your door
I been wishin' I was somebody else instead
Down the highway, down the tracks
Down the road to ecstasy
I followed you beneath the stars
Hounded by your memory
And all your ragin' glory
I been double-crossed now
For the very last time and now I'm finally free
I kissed goodbye the howling beast
On the borderline which separated you from me
You'll never know the hurt I suffered
Nor the pain I rise above,
And I'll never know the same about you
Your holiness or your kind of love
And it makes me feel so sorry
Idiot wind
Blowing through the buttons of our coats
Blowing through the letters that we wrote
Idiot wind
Blowing through the dust upon our shelves
We're idiots, babe
It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves.

[Max Goodman]

Anyone know how to find the Academy's citation the news reports refer to and quote? I've done a web search and visited nobelprize.org, but I haven't found it.

[David Rosenthal]

Originally Posted by Tim Murphy

I was born in Hibbing and Mom once told me "A nice little boy named Bobby Zimmerman sang to you when he pushed your stroller." She didn't know. Mom! I don't regard Dylan as a mere poet but as the greatest artist of our times. I am thrilled!

At least one of the greatest of our times. It is hard to think of a creative writer of words in the last 50-100 years who has had more impact and influence on people in general, other artists in particular, and our society at large.

David R.

[David Rosenthal]

Originally Posted by Quincy Lehr

...I am a poet because of small-ensemble guitar music. Not so much direct influence, though it is a frequent source of allusion, but more actually turning me on to things...

Thanks for that formulation, Quincy. I identify a lot with it. Though I will say also that I have also been directly influenced by Dylan, John Prine, Paul Simon, and others. And I will add that many of my favorite current creative writers of words (call them poets, songwriters, whatever) are from "the small-ensemble guitar music" category -- Jason Isbell and Gillian Welch jump straight to mind.

Another indirect influence for me has the result of direct influence of songwriters in general. As a kid, hearing words by Dylan, Simon, Taupin, Townshend, the Beatles (Harrison for me as much as L-Mc), and indeed reading them on lyric sheets, had a huge impact on my understanding of the power, pleasure, and impact craftily written words. That has stuck with me my whole life and extended to many, many other songwriters from all genres as I have become aware of them throughout my life.

I appreciate that the Nobel Committee specifically connected Dylan to a tradition of American songwriting. It is, whatever else it also is, a literary tradition, and Dylan is an absolutely important figure in it.

David R.

[R. S. Gwynn]

I have a few mixed feelings about this award, but I generally applaud it. Dylan is a composer (lyricist and musician) and a performer (singer and musician). In such cases is is hard to separate the three roles; most song lyrics fall rather flat on the page, but we can still appreciate the verbal dexterity of Gershwin, Berlin, Porter, Fields, Hart, Sondheim, and many others. As a performer, vocally and instrumentally, he has been a tremendous influence. As a musical composer he has written many songs that "stick" after many years; if you gave me the title of any of the songs in something early like "The Freewheeling Bob Dylan" I could still passably hum you the melodies of most of them and recite the lyrics of a few. The problem is that there is no Nobel Prize in the Arts. Are his lyrics "literature" at all, poetry specifically? I think so. If "literature" is something to be read, then all of Dylan's lyrics are in print for those who choose to read instead of listen. Many of them are memorable, and they have reached millions more people than the words of any poet of the last century. Because the Nobel so often goes, justly or unjustly, to writers with humanitarian concerns (Pearl Buck?) I would argue that Dylan's long career has been consistent in many of these concerns and that they have moved many, many people to action. Maybe the Civil Rights Movement or the Anti-Vietnam War protests would have still happened without "Blowin' in the Wind" or "Masters of War," but Dylan's songs were at the forefront as anthems, as rallying cries. His work has had a huge impact on the world of the last half-century, mostly for good, I think. I have no serious objections to his receiving the prize. I congratulate him on it. After all, I came to poetry through song lyrics, listening to them and performing them, and they were the first "lyrical" words to make an impression on me in spite of my English teachers' attempts to make me appreciate Famous Poetry. I did that later, on my own.

[Roger Slater]

By the criteria of the Nobel Prize itself, artists with an "idealistic tendency" are to be favored, so the factors that Sam mentioned indeed ought to carry a good deal of weight.

[John Whitworth]

But I repeat. It ain't literature unles the words can stand by themselves. And they can't. As I said before, Cole Porter wrote much better words. And so did W.S. Gilbert.

As for commitment and all. Balls to that.