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.
I get that impression also.
Wow. I hadn’t heard Ramirez got a Pulitzer! He’s the best political cartoonist in America today. I hope the prize comes with a pile of money for the guy. (BTW, he must drive the loons at the LA Times absolutely crazy.)
“Darling of the American Left ala Woody Guthrie. He promoted class warfare.”
Dylan was asked about the absence of any song about the current war on his own latest album, Modern Times.
“Didn’t Neil Young do that?” he jokes . . . “What’s funny about the Neil record, when I heard ‘Let’s Impeach the President,’ I thought it was something old that had been lying around. I said, ‘That’s crazy, he’s doing a song about Clinton?’”
Weekly Standard, Sean Curnyn:
“Somehow, after over 40 years of evidence to the contrary, much of the world seems to continue to expect the man who is arguably America’s greatest songwriter to sign on to left/liberal causes at the first opportunity. If nothing else, it is proof that in attempting to kidnap Dylan’s songs (in Dylan’s own words, his songs were “subverted into polemics” in the 1960s), the left succeeded in convincing the average person that both the work and the man did, indeed, belong to them.”
Read the rest of the Weekly Standard article “ What Dylan is Not” at;
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Protected/Articles/000/000/012/727xwxao.asp
Add to that: Johnny Cash, Rod Stewart.
Yet I have records/Cd's by all of them. Why?
Because it takes a lot more talent then just a good singing voice to become a popular recording artist. Things like: Song writing skills and ability to emote feelings.
I would rather it have been Sting. More intelligible, more *intelligent* lyrics, far more versatile at writing, etc., etc.
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Yup. You can read Sting’s lyrics and know exactly what he’s talking about. Dylan is more challenging in that regard.
I think of it like looking at portraits versus looking at something abstract.
Facts are facts. He revolutionized pop music and therefore pop culture. He knocked down the door of the musical pop mainstream to people whod idn’t really have a beautiful voice but ‘had something to say’. You can even trace gangsta rap back to him.
Way to go, Bob!
Excellent!!!
The percentage of his songs that are overtly political is tiny.
Excellent. Often times those who think they now Dylan usually know him the least.
Jakob is a competent musician but he’s not in his dad’s solar system ... several years ago, when the Wallflowers hit, I recall seeing a clip of them on some show where Bruce Springsteen came up and sang “One Headlight” with them, and he just sucked all the air off the stage, it was like a grown man singing with a little kid, Jakob was completely overshadowed. There’s a difference between a competent musician and a musical giant.
Except Johnny Cash and Rod Stewart can actually sing.
Once upon a time you threw the bums a dime in your prime
Now didn’t youuuuuu.
Joan Baez to this day holds a grudge against Dylan because he abandoned the left.
Many of Bob’s contemporaries can or could sing in addition to their other talents.
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Precious few of them could put pen to paper the way Dylan can and still does.
You can actually understand what Louis Armstrong is saying. You can’t with Mumbles Dylan.
Not too many people talk about his rhythmic phrasing - which is impeccable and his timing - same.
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