The Bob Dylan Literature Appreciation Thread

1) This is a very narrow definition of literature.

2) Can you honestly read the lyrics above and tell me that they aren't difficult or that they don't require work to analyze? How many college classes do you think could be filled discussing the lyrics above? The amazing depth and layers that you would discover when trying to break these lyrics down is no small task. And this is just one song from a gargantuan body of work. Yes, yes...some of his stuff is fluff. But, there is so much substantial work in his massive catalog that would be considered extremely complex, difficult, challenging, and ultimately...rewarding.

The fact that this literature is packaged inside a song is irrelevant.

To me, at least.

Your statement above that his words without the chords aren't that great blows my mind. But alas, that's what makes art fun.

 

Actually, I'd f'ing love Chuck D to get something like this... The boomer rage would be delicious.

 

To me, the greatest songs are good stand-alone poetry.

(This thread got me listening to Waits... Now I'm on to Joni Mitchell)

What shall we give Zappa the Nobel prize for?

 

Medicine, for warning us about the yellow snow.

 

Wonderful! I never heard it!

The Zappa album with which I am most familiar is We're Only In It For The Money, the whole of which is probably worth a Nobel prize and which might also have been his response to getting one.

 

Oh goodness, it's not often that you get to introduce someone to that one

 

@ultrabike

If that's what it takes I can recite Bob Dylan to Ali Larter all night long, problem solved.

The opposite is less enticing.

 

Definitely worthy and I would ask the same regarding Isaac Asimov. He penned over 400 books including "I, Robot", "The Naked Sun", "The Caves of Steel" and "Foundation".

BTW - if anyone happens to be a sci-fi fan and you haven't read "The Foundation Trilogy". Well... you now have homework to do.

 

I have to weigh in and agree with marv. Dylan's good, great even, but its the wrong award. Literature demands and rewards engagement, it makes you think during and beyond the initial consumption. Music can certainly do this, but it isn't the same as when literature does this. Great works of literature often contain or subsume great poetry and great prose. Go read Lolita and pay attention; Nabokov is literally playing with the English language for 300+ pages.

 

Also, sorry, but have you ever read Arthur C. Clarke's attempts to do characters? It's like cardboard cutouts in space. It's the scifi stereotype, which gave it a bad name. I am scarred by his attempts to do sex scenes, too...

Luckily, modern SF writers like Anne Leckie and Charles Stross can do characters, of all and no gender.. maybe if they'd been around before, maybe SF wouldn't have such a socially awkward rep...

 

I feel the same way. Dylan is a musical giant and all, worthy of praise. But he's no Frost, Walt, Emily or Poe.

Example:

You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day
In a vision, or in none
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream

- Edgar A. Poe

Compared to that Dylan is a whiny hippie. All due respect etc.

 

They are missing out on Douglas Adams then. f**k them for being so "above" science fiction. "The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy" makes more sense than most works and even addresses the problem with religion effectively. Look at the world today and the hippies still have not enlightened the world with their revelations.

The research good science fiction writers have to do is enormous. Making a science fiction story work is difficult because the reader already knows the narrative is not probable yet it has to be believable enough to keep the reader interested. To underestimate that effort is a loss for literature as a whole...

 

HHGTTG isn't really scifi, mind you. It's social satire thinly disguised as SF. It's as much SF as "Animal Farm" is a story about animals