Posted on 04/08/2008 8:51:40 AM PDT by Borges
Thanks to Bob Dylan, rock 'n' roll has finally broken through the Pulitzer wall. Dylan, the most acclaimed and influential songwriter of the past half century, who more than anyone brought rock from the streets to the lecture hall, received an honorary Pulitzer Prize on Monday, cited for his "profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."
It was the first time Pulitzer judges, who have long favored classical music, and, more recently, jazz, awarded an art form once dismissed as barbaric, even subversive.
"I am in disbelief," Dylan fan and fellow Pulitzer winner Junot Diaz said of Dylan's award.
Diaz's "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," a tragic but humorous story of desire, politics and violence among Dominicans at home and in the United States, won the fiction prize. Diaz, 39, worked for more than a decade on his first novel — "I spent most of the time on dead-ends and doubts," he told The Associated Press on Monday — and at one point included a section about Dylan.
"Bob Dylan was a problem for me," Diaz, who has also published a story collection, "Drown," said with a laugh. "I had one part that was 40 pages long, the entire chapter was organized around Bob Dylan's lyrics over a two year-period (1967-69). By the end of it, I wanted to throttle my like of Bob Dylan."
The Pulitzer for drama was given to Tracy Letts' "August: Osage County," which, like Diaz's novel, combines comedy and brutality. Letts calls the play "loosely autobiographical," a bruising family battle spanning several generations of unhappiness and unfulfilled dreams.
"It's a play I have been working on in my head and on paper for many years now," said Letts, reached by the AP in Chicago at the Steppenwolf Theater Company, where "August: Osage County" had its world premiere last summer.
"There were just some details from my grandmother, my grandfather's suicide (for example) that I had played over and over in my head for many, many years. I always thought, `Well, that's the stuff of drama right there.'"
Former U.S. poet laureate Robert Hass, already a National Book Award winner for "Time and Materials," won the poetry Pulitzer, as did Philip Schultz's "Failure."
"This is the book ... I have always wanted to write," Schultz told the AP. "Everyone is expert on one subject and failure seems to be mine. ... I was born into it. My father went bankrupt when I was 18 and he died soon afterward out of (a) terrible sense of shame. And we lost everything, my mother and I."
Other winners Monday: Daniel Walker Howe, for history, for "What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848"; Saul Friedlander, general nonfiction, for "The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945"; for biography, John Matteson's "Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father."
"I wrote my book in a way that is generally accessible to the curious literate reader," Howe said. "And I think that's very important, and I wish more books were written that way."
"It's a special honor because it ties me even more to the country of which I'm now a citizen," said Friedlander, who became a U.S. citizen seven years ago and won the German Booksellers Association's 2007 Peace Prize for his work on documenting the Holocaust.
"I am surprised, grateful, overjoyed — and a little embarrassed to do this with my first book," said Matteson, a professor of English at John Jay College in New York City who added that his 14-year-old daughter was an inspiration.
"Not only did I understand parenting better after writing the book, but being a parent helped me to write the book."
Dylan's victory doesn't mean that the Pulitzers have forgotten classical composers. The competitive prize for music was given to David Lang's "The Little Match Girl Passion," which opened last fall at Carnegie Hall, where Dylan has also performed.
"Bob Dylan is the most frequently played artist in my household so the idea that I am honored at the same time as Bob Dylan, that is humbling," Lang told the AP.
Long after most of his contemporaries either died, left the business or held on by the ties of nostalgia, Dylan continues to tour almost continuously and release highly regarded CDs, most recently "Modern Times." Fans, critics and academics have obsessed over his lyrics — even digging through his garbage for clues — since the mid-1960s, when such protest anthems as "Blowin' in the Wind" made Dylan a poet and prophet for a rebellious generation.
His songs include countless biblical references and he has claimed Chekhov, Walt Whitman and Jack Kerouac as influences. His memoir, "Chronicles, Volume One," received a National Book Critics Circle nomination in 2005 and is widely acknowledged as the rare celebrity book that can be treated as literature.
According to publisher Simon & Schuster, Dylan is working on a second volume of memoirs. No release date has been set.
Oh wow, wonderful. "My Back Pages" is one of my, well probably is, My Favorite Song. Favorite. I love the Byrds' version the best.
Just cool that someone would mention it. Brings a tear to my eye.
Another one on my top favorites on my list of favorites, is "Watchtower." as performed by Jimi Hendrix. I can't put into words why I love these songs so much because typically I listen to, love and prefer classical music. But wow.
Thanks for evoking some wonderful auditory memories.
Every time a recording of Bob Dylan is played, a kitten is killed.
I did, and you just proved my point. I have NO idea what he said before “He’s just one man”. It’s totally incomprehensible and might as well be Ukranian.
Oh, man, that just maid my day. That’s frigging AMAZING.
The best part is that he had to use cue cards so people could tell what he’s singing. :D
I’ve heard far more Dylan than I ever wanted to hear. Guess what my parents had a huge collection of and played often?
_____
That ‘splains much. You weren’t listening to Dylan, you were hearing him. Way different.
It was a little different growing up in my house. I borrowed all of my mom’s ‘great folk scare’ records from the early ‘60s, and mom snagged my Grateful Dead and Allman brothers records - which she listened to while doing the dishes.
Do it again with the lyrics in front of you. There are few R&R songs as powerful.
Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man,
His enemies say he’s on their land.
They got him outnumbered about a million to one,
He got no place to escape to, no place to run.
He’s the neighborhood bully.
The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He’s criticized and condemned for being alive.
He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin,
He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He’s the neighborhood bully.
The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land,
He’s wandered the earth an exiled man.
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn,
He’s always on trial for just being born.
He’s the neighborhood bully.
Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized,
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad.
The bombs were meant for him.
He was supposed to feel bad.
He’s the neighborhood bully.
Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him,
‘Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac.
He’s the neighborhood bully.
He got no allies to really speak of.
What he gets he must pay for, he don’t get it out of love.
He buys obsolete weapons and he won’t be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side.
He’s the neighborhood bully.
Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace,
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease.
Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly.
To hurt one they would weep.
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep.
He’s the neighborhood bully.
Every empire that’s enslaved him is gone,
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon.
He’s made a garden of paradise in the desert sand,
In bed with nobody, under no one’s command.
He’s the neighborhood bully.
Now his holiest books have been trampled upon,
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on.
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth,
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health.
He’s the neighborhood bully.
What’s anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin’, they say.
He just likes to cause war.
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed,
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed.
He’s the neighborhood bully.
What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers?
Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill,
Running out the clock, time standing still,
Neighborhood bully.
One of the best Dylan take off’s hilarious!!
LOL! You are bad, ha ha ha ha. Good link, good video and I like him, too. He's cool.
Again, I’ll make the point. Why am I supposed to need a lyric sheet to understand a song?
Would it have killed Bob to take some enuciation lessons?
If you do not listen to him much, you will not understand his words. If you listen often enough, you catch on. This is not McCartney talk-singing Penny Lane
His show on XM is brilliant. Too bad it isn't syndicated on terrestrial radio.
OK, so what you’re saying is that in order to understand his singing, you must already be a Dylan fan. Otherwise, his singing is incomprehensible.
Um... yeah.... I’ll pass, thanks.
Spktyr, you’re just teasing, right? Of course a lyric sheet is not needed. Neighborhood Bully’s clear and easy to understand.
I’m sorry, no, I’m not kidding. I literally could not understand what he was saying there without a lyric sheet.
Thank you, for posting the link, Pissant. Nice! Very nice. Two of my favorite of all favorite songs "My Back Pages" as performed by the Byrds, and "Watchtower" as performed by Jimi Hendrix were penned by Dylan. I became a fan of Dylan fairly recently. Maybe he's an acquired taste, I don't know but I really like him.
Side comment here, not one taking issue with Sting, but just another aspect of song writing, if I may:
I have no way of knowing if you have children, I have two myself. For me, one of the greatest moments in my life was the first time I held my first son. The love, the feelings, the joy were all feelings welling up inside of me.
How many people over the ions have felt the same? A countless number I am sure.
Dylan did the same, he held his son for the first time and turned those feelings into a song, "Forever Young", he wrote it in about 90 seconds, the words going straight from mind to paper. It is apowerful song that captures that moment quite well.
My personal favorite version of that song is Rod Stewart's. Listen to that version and then I would welcome to hear back from you on your thoughts imagery and the expression of love from a father to a son in song.
No, what I’m saying is that you have to listen more than in passing to understand.
Just like the first time you had oysters or a beer. Didn’t taste all that good until you acclimated your taste buds. You need to acclimate your ears.
I’ve seen it happen many, many times over. My wife was the same way until I made her listen more than in passing. Now she ‘gets it’
Celine Dion may sing in a melodious crystal clear voice, but she still is nothing more than cotton candy. In other words, worthless.
I’ll agree with you on Celine Dion, but I am afraid I cannot agree with you on Dylan. Great songwriter, horrible singer. I’ve made the attempt to try to like him repeatedly but cannot. Sorry.
Oh, and most beer *still* tastes awful to me. Which is why on the rare occasions I drink, I drink Guinness or vodka. :D
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