Here's Why Bob Dylan Won the Nobel Prize in Literature Today

[David Morris]

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/10/heres-why-bob-dylan-won-nobel-prize-literature-today

*Alex Shepard at New Republic:*

No American has won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 23 years, not since
Toni Morrison. *And it’s easy to presume that the game is rigged against
the United States:* In 2008, Horace Engdahl, then the permanent secretary
of the Swedish Academy, went out of his way to dis American literature as a
whole....The backlash to Engdahl’s comments was severe....But the criticism
changed nothing: Seven Nobel Prizes in Literature have been awarded since
then, and none of them went to Americans. *Many in the U.S...think that the
Swedish Academy has blackballed American writers.*

*Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:*

Call me cynical, but this is the lens through which I judge Bob Dylan's
Nobel win. The Academy did indeed feel like their boycott of American
literature was starting to look silly, but they still didn't want to award
a prize to an actual American writer. So they chose Dylan. No matter what
you think of his work, I view this as practically the ultimate snub of
American novelists. *You think Pynchon and DeLillo and Roth and Oates are
great writers? Hah! They're not even up to the standards of a good pop
singer.*

And now they can spend another two decades ignoring American writers.
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