The Singer-Songwriter Nobel Laureate: Discussing Bob Dylan with Duncan Bartlett

Duncan Bartlett is a rock musician journalist who has written about Bob Dylan in the Wall Street Journal, a current affairs journalist and editor of Asian Affairs magazine, as well as a research associate at SOAS. As an observer and great fan of Dylan, Bartlett has been listening to Dylan since the age of 13, has every single one of his albums and has attended numerous concerts.

Dylan’s initial apparent reluctance to accept the Nobel prize may stem from a number of factors. He was honoured and flattered and it is not as though he doesn’t accept prizes and recognitions. For example he was awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 and the Légion d’Honneur in 2013 and has received numerous Grammys, a Golden Globe and an Oscar. But he only wants to accept honours that judge him on the records he releases and his concerts. The Nobel is for literature but he is a singer-songwriter, so this may have contributed to his hesitancy. But more importantly, Dylan didn’t want to go through the rituals and make a speech.

In 1963 he was awarded the Tom Paine Civil Liberties prize. He was quite inebriated when he gave his speech at the formal ceremony. He most inappropriately identified with Lee Harvey Oswald. This earned him booing by the audience and subsequently slamming by the media. The Nobel prize giving ceremony is heavy in pomp and circumstance: the laureate has to make a speech, there are press conferences and media attention. As this was not an environment Dylan is comfortable in he avoided being there. He recorded his speech and picked up his prize a few days later in private. Any public performance has to be on his terms.

Each year the Nobel committee gives a specific reason for their choice. The interpretation of literature has expanded over the years beyond just novelists and poets. For example in 1953 Winston Churchill was awarded the literature prize for ‘his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values’. Dylan was for ‘having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition’. 

Bartlett’s criticism of considering Dylan’s work as just poetry would mean separating the lyrics from the music and thereby not being able to appreciate what he is doing artistically. The New York Times claimed him to be a brilliant lyricist, he also writes poetry, but his writing is inseparable from his music. The Nobel committee would probably encourage people to listen to his songs.

Dylan’s Nobel speech is interesting. He discussed books that inspired him such as Moby Dick and Homer’s Odyssey. He mentions Buddy Holly who set the template for rock n’ roll. Buddy Holly’s lyrics are simple and not really poetic but are marvellous together with the music in songs. There is a danger of elevating the fun side of rock n’ roll to the level of high brow literature and talk about Dylan in the same language as one would a novelist or poet. This will make Dylan’s material seem inaccessible, even irrelevant. Dylan has songs for all occasions, such as falling in love, sadness or loss, growing old – facets of life that people understand and relate to.

Bartlett is not sure if the Nobel prize raises the winner to celebrity status. For example, Abdulrazak Gurnah, the 2021 literature laurate is hardly a household name. In the 1960s Dylan wasn’t praised as part of the literary canon. In fact students who listened to Dylan felt rebellious and Dylan himself was raising the finger to literature. He was then, and still is, working within a tradition. A problem with the prize is that the work may be too technical, too high brow for the average student, and instead of stimulating an interest in the subject, it will be off-putting. Educators need to encourage students to study literature rather than make the task daunting. Some of Dylan’s work can be quite difficult to understand, especially those that touch on religion, but others are very simple.

Is Dylan a literary genius? In almost all Dylan’s songs over the past 50 years there is the ‘I’. The ‘I’ is a literary device to create a persona. But how much of this ‘I’ relates to him? He tours, writes songs, writes books, but very little is known about him as a person. He doesn’t talk about his family, where he lives, he’s a very private person. Therefore people project onto him these magical qualities that turn him into a genius. That is a burden. In studying Dylan as literature, it is worth spending time in seeing how songs progress, how narrative is expressed in songs, the tropes in rhymes. With Dylan there is an appreciation of lyric writing that reflects the times.

If the Academy’s objective was to expand the definition of literature to include song writing, was this the reason why Dylan won? Other contemporary music contenders could have been Joni Mitchell or Leonard Cohen. But Dylan is the most literary – he quotes from Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, uses surrealism, incorporates other traditions – balladeering, country, gospel etc. And he is still very active in not only singing and song writing, but also is writing books and organising art exhibitions. Therefore he was the obvious choice. Sara Danius, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, who announced Dylan as the 2016 winner didn’t have a great knowledge of his works. She should have prepared better. Maybe this hints at a disconnect – did the Academy really appreciate his works or were they using him for some other purpose, like to extend the definition of literature? The Nobel cannot be the arbiter of global excellence in literature, therefore it must have other functions.

Since winning the Nobel in 2016, Dylan recorded several albums of Sinatra songs, perhaps as a reminder that he works in the great American song tradition. The only original album was the 2020 Rough and Rowdy Ways, a very creative work that shows how energised he is. The literary style draws on many different sources and fuses them together. There is a song about the murder of JFK, perhaps as a way of making amends for his inappropriate remarks during his 1963 speech? Maybe the concept of receiving the Nobel and giving a speech brought back the 1963 speech and fed into his song writing imagination? In a way the Nobel prize gave him the credibility to be more academic. He is writing a book ‘The Philosophy of Modern Song’ that will come out in November 2022. It is ‘academic’ in that it analyses pop songs. His last book was Chronicles, an autobiography, published in 2004. It received good reviews. It is a rarity to write something so reflective.

Bartlett likes the idea of universities offering courses in Dylan or other singer song writers, if these are fun and enjoyable. Rock n’ roll stars don’t stand in front of an audience and deliver a speech. The experience of rock n’ roll cannot be divorced from learning about it. The course must be real and make people feel they can pick up a guitar and sing while thinking about the lyrics. There is always a worry about putting people off, as such a course could be quite difficult with an in-depth study of both music and lyrics. Rather than burden Dylan, people must be encouraged to listen, to let his music speak to their hearts.