Bob Dylan writes amazing songs, but they are not literature.

[Mark Kohut]

Backstory about ME:
I like"'high literature and poetry" as might be clear from my posts
so I did not think, nor much want compared to 'real' writers, Bob Dylan
should win the Nobel much as
 I like what I know of his music. And books.

As I watched the announcement Live however, when his name was said in
Swedish, I could not believe it but I guess
that he was American, that he was Bob Dylan, that the choice was so
....unusual per the Academy's
history and words, I was overjoyed......and ended up peeking thru the
keyhole down upon my news
while I shouted "Play it F*cking Louder, Academy" (Dylan, going electric,
turning to his band after boos at Newport '65)


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey, I thank Ish for this...and I like the authentic voice of this guy in
this essay.
I trust him and like his writing persona.

But I have to disagree with a couple aspects of his argument, one so very
personal to him, the other
a too glib generalization in my opinion.

HIM:
When I read, I’m taken outside of myself. Reading shows us things we don’t
know, whereas pop music finds sounds for the feelings already inside us.
When we read, we visit corners of the world we’ll never see, including the
psyches of others. When we listen to the songs we love, we retreat inside
ourselves.

I think there is a deep tradition of words on a page revealing 'feelings
already inside us" but ne'er so well expressed. From Shakespeare, Emerson
on how a great writer says things we always knew but never saw before
(paraphrase), thru the
growth of poetry and fiction as the best has (often) been deeper and
psychologically more self-revealing of those inner lives we do lead. Woolf,
Joyce, Lawrence, Prouse and Romantic poets on.

One can also nitpick with the 'visit corners of the world we'll never see"
by citing Dylan's story songs, talking blues songs: songs of a different
time and place from the pop music nowness of most pop music.

And, sad but informative to hear of his deafness, but from an historical
objective perspective, the Prize has been given to
others whom he can't hear, and in similar (albeit different) ways is 'flat
on the page"...some dramatists. We got O'Neill, who might rise to
poetry-like soliloquies
in some plays, but because dialogue of real people is mostly...nothing like
a writer 'with a fancy prose style"
it is the characters on stage and the performances which earned him his
Nobel. Maybe more so with Harold Pinter?...ain't much lyricism there....and
they hardly talk TO EACH OTHER a lot of the plays....a deaf person might
not be able to comprehend his best plays (without signing), I daresay
(unless as Edward Albee has declared, he could envisage them by
reading---the ideal production in his dramatic head.) Then Beckett....with
a strict way of performing EVERY play, even if you imagine a different
way....I mean Godot?
The poetry is in the flatness, so to speak...yet it is genius, high
genius....

And as others  have pointed out that Rabindranith Tagore (1913 winner I
think) wrote a lot of songs, as well as poems as well as other things...

And as Jochen has said, Chronicles alone is great.



On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 7:43 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:

> POETRY, APPROXIMATELY
>
> Bob Dylan writes amazing songs, but they are not literature.
>
> BY JOHN COTTER
> http://thesmartset.com/poetry-approximately/
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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