The Bob Dylan Literature Appreciation Thread

Zaktly, Thad. I feel about Dylan a bit like I feel about Tom Waits; he writes excellent songs for other people to sing.

 

Actually, I like his voice. I don't mind growling, I mind whining!

(Raindogs is an occasional favourite of mine. I love the way he tells stories that, when I come to think of it, are sometimes just nonsense. And his voice is just right for those sad love songs. And could anybody else realy capture that intense seediness? Hmmm.... must listen again soon)

 

I always think his voice reminds me of "one note bass" on dodgy headphones.. possibly heresy. However, a good cover can work wonders:

 

Where's Kanye West's Nobel Prize?

 

I loved the Andre The Giant story @Kattefjaes. I watched him wrestle as a kid.
On the topic of others whom I would love to see get the recognition - Phillip K. Dick. I don't think any graphic novelists have won - talk about neglect. Alan Moore for starters...

 

I must now raise you Charles Bukowski because if you insist on Cobain, well Bukowski had a typewriter and guts. Nirvana became a thing because MTV while Bukowski moved the world with written stories about being lucky or a drifter in a time his work was absolutely not politically correct.

Shall I add N.I.N. and quote the song "The Hand That Feeds" for comic effect, yeah why not?

 

How about Brian Molko of Placebo:

A friend in need's a friend indeed
A friend with weed is better
A friend with breasts and all the rest
A friend who's dressed in leather

Pretty solid life advice right there

 

Philip K Dick, or Kurt Vonnegut, would have been very deserving winner's of the Nobel Prize for literature. Unfortunately, the prize is never awarded posthumously. One of my favourite authors, W G Sebald, was going to be awarded the prize and then he died in a car crash. Very sad.

If the committee, or however these awards are decided, wanted to recognise an American author, what about Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth?

I think there are two separate issues. One, does Dylan deserve it? I do not think so but that is a matter of taste.

The most important issue is whether the prize is for anyone who highlights the beauty of the written word, or specifically someone involved in writing great literature.

I think it should be the second, but I am not deciding these things.

Cheers.

 

Hah, for me, Andre is always Fezzik in "The Princess Bride".

Ok, now I scowl, buckle up..

Sorry, but Alan fscking Moore can die in a fire, twice. In his dotage, he has turned into a pretentious, self-satisfied psuedo-science pontificator on stage and in broadcast media. I'm starting to suspect that he died years ago, and his parasitic unhygenic beard is running the show. I've no issue with his old writing, some of which was great, but for the love of the second god co-efficient, please don't fuel his tediously rampant self-regard any more! (END OF RANT)

(Also, Warren Ellis is every bit as good in the pantheon of comic book writers, and has yet to vanish up his own arse.. yet )

PKD's a funny one too- he had a disorder whereby he wrote compulsively.. some of it was incredible, a lot of it was near-unpublishable crap, it was a hell of an editor's job to drink from that particular firehose. That said, when he was on form, he was pretty stunning- some of the lesser-known short stories like "The Mold Of Yancy" or "Autofac" (my personal favourite) are spookily prescient, too.

Also, if you're going to go in a scifi-ish direction, what about dear old Kurt Vonnegut, in his lifetime?

"And so it goes.."

 

Dude's a freaking genius and you're all lame.

Poetry like this stands up against anything.


Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you

Though I know that evenin’s empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you

Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship
My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip
My toes too numb to step
Wait only for my boot heels to be wanderin’
I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way
I promise to go under it

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you

Though you might hear laughin’, spinnin’, swingin’ madly across the sun
It’s not aimed at anyone, it’s just escapin’ on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin’
And if you hear vague traces of skippin’ reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it’s just a ragged clown behind
I wouldn’t pay it any mind
It’s just a shadow you’re seein’ that he’s chasing

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you

Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you

 

Terribly sixties! Oh wait...



OK, seriously, yes, it is good, and so was the music. A great song.

If there was a Nobel Prize for words soaked into blotting paper that we cut up in small squares and ate: Robert Hunter.

If there was a Nobel Prize for poetry of the heart: Joni Mitchell.

 

Or a Nobel Prize for killer first lines:

Harry locked his mother in the closet. Hubert Selby Jr.

 

Depends on how we listen. Just now I am paying so much attention to Tom Waits' poetry that I can hardly even see the internet!

 

Or...Kanye West...I mean what a can of worms this has opened...I vote for the late John Lennon but it definitely will not count

Edit: Darn @Madaboutaudio beat me to it on Kanye West

 

Ah, but it can see you, number six...