Excellent news! Long overdue.
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.
The memoir he wrote was really enlightening because that’s probably as close to knowing Bob as he’s going to let you get. People don’t understand how much stuff he’s done over the years that’s been a “work,” to use some pro rasslin’ lingo.
Dylan is also an underrated melody writer. It’s not all about the lyrics.
Will the Soy Bomb dude be up onstage with him to collect his prize ?
If it had been Pete Townshend on stage that night, he’d probably have brained that lunatic with his guitar. :)
There are many who would argue with that, as their voices are as raspy as 30 grit and with their limited range are not always up to everyones cup of tea. Both though happen to be personal favorites of mine, along with Dylan, Waits and Van Morrison.
OK, let me put it to you this way.
Cash and Stewart could/can carry a tune AND you can understand them when they sing.
I have yet to find a Dylan song where what he’s saying is 100% clear. Most of it sounds like “bleh bleah blah BLAH!”
Don't you love it!
Why post a pic of Vincent Price?
OK, and why should I need a programme to tell me what the guy’s saying, especially if he’s ostensibly using English?
In his 60s and 70s prime you can understand everything.
Actually, many of my favorite 'Dylan' songs are those performed by others.
Johnny Cash with 'Wanted Man', Hendrix with 'Watchtower', the Byrds with several.
Dylan's greatness is certainly not his vocal skills (or lack there of)
No, you can’t. I’ve heard recordings, even remastered and cleaned up ones.
He *always* mumbles at least three words or more per song!
Dah Do Do Do Dah Dah Dah Dah (is all I have to say to you).
LOL
His skill is writing, not singing.
But like I said, I don’t understand why this makes him greater than his contemporaries who possessed equal skill at writing and could actually sing intelligibly.
Could you ever understand Little Richard, Jerry Lee lewis or even Mick Jagger? How about J.J.Cale or David Byrne? I can’t understand a word of what the R.E.M. singer sings. A genre is a genre. On Broadway you’re supposed to understand everything, in rock and roll you won’t! Live with it.
Check out Cash's rendition (w/Bob Dylan, of all people) of Girl from the North Country (on Nashville Skyline) if you're so confident he can carry a tune.
And Rod Stewart? Gay.
You can understand American Idol singers plainly, and guess what? They all suck.
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