Seems as if there are two camps regarding Dylan’s receiving of the Nobel Prize. The so-called “fustians” and the so-called “loyalists.” The former are allegedly pretentious and literary mossbacks stuck on the assumption that the award should only go to someone whose life’s work has been considered “literary” while the latter believe that his lyrics alone would qualify him/her to be, as Nobel himself had written, given: “…to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction ..."
There is no sustainable argument that Dylan’s lyrics don’t reflect what Nobel may have had in mind in the broad sense and the committee awarded it to him "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition". Nothing there about literature. Fair enough. But as Dylan “loyalists” and “fustians” continue to argue about why or why not Dylan was selected to receive the award, I think they’re missing one major thing: It wasn’t awarded to an American writer of either prose or poetry. That in itself is worthy of dissection.
Between 1930 and 1962, the United States had garnered 6 Nobel Prizes in Literature: Sinclair Lewis, 1930; Eugene O’Neill, 1936; Pearl Buck, 1938; William Faulkner, 1948; Ernest Hemingway, 1954; John Steinbeck, 1962. Between 1976 and 2015, the United States had garnered five Nobel Prizes: Saul Bellow (Canada), 1976; Isaac Bashevis Singer, (Poland) 1978; Josef Brodsky, (Soviet Union) 1987; Toni Morrison, (African-American) 1993. What’s curious about those selections is that while the former winners were all American born, four of the five latter winners were not born in the United States and Ohioan Morrison was the first African-American (and first woman) to receive it since 1938. Which brings one back to the question: Why Dylan?
There are certainly well-qualified literary candidates to choose from: Thomas Pynchon, Cormac McCarthy, Joan Didion, Philip Roth, John Barth, Robert Coover, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, just to name a few. But none of them won and since there’s no short-list, none of them may have been considered. So, after almost a quarter of a century the Prize was awarded not to a “literary” person per se, but to an American song writer. It’s really moot to argue whether Dylan’s lyrics are literary or not, though he certainly admired the poetry of the 15th century French troubadour outlaw, François Villon and, arguably, may have first changed his name from Zimmerman to Dillon because of that admiration and not that for American gunslinger, Matt Dillon, but that’s irrelevant. What’s more relevant is why the others were have been excluded.
In 2008, Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Nobel prize jury opined: "There is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world...not the United States" and "The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature...That ignorance is restraining." Of course, that pissed off a lot of people, fustians included, but, alas I think he may have been partially right. Six years later, Engdahl “doubled down” on American writers when he decried the "professionalization" of the Western writer, arguing that “[p]reviously, writers would work as taxi drivers, clerks, secretaries and waiters to make a living. Samuel Beckett and many others lived like this. It was hard — but they fed themselves, from a literary perspective.” Clearly, no argument there. The lack of American translations from other literatures is mainly done by small presses unless, of course, the writers are already well known and publishing them might increase profits. One only needs to recall that if it weren’t for what Bob Wyatt was doing with Latin American authors at Avon in the 70s, perhaps many of those authors might still be scavenging for outlets and many of them may still be.
I’m not sure one can dismiss Engdahl’s suggestions out of hand when it comes to the worthiness of American writers and American writing. Clearly, based on his global appeal and relevance to the ideals of the Prize, Dylan is certainly worthy of it. The larger question is why the committee (which, as one knows, has made some questionable decisions in the past) continues to overlook some of those American writers who, as Engdahl himself might suggest, continue to write even though they may be writing in the cubicles of the academy or the back end of beyond such as Otmetka Osterzhen or Marcello Ejevarilla. But even beyond that, one would be hard-pressed to argue that writers like Pynchon or Roth or McCarthy don’t participate in “the big dialogue of literature.” With all due respect to Dylan, that would exclude him. Regardless, one must give Dylan his due and as for someone who’s attended the Nobel Award ceremony, I hope Dylan isn’t a no show.
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