₦airaland Forum

The saga of Bob Dylan and the Nobel Prize continues.

Mr. Dylan became the first musician to win the Nobel Prize in Literature this month, setting off a debate about whether song lyrics had the same artistic value as novels and poetry. But no one knows how Mr. Dylan feels about the honor. He has made no public statements, and a brief reference added to his website (“Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature”) was quickly removed after the news media caught wind of it.

Mr. Dylan’s ambivalence to one of the world’s most prestigious honors, and the uncertainty about whether he will accept it, appears to have begun to wear on the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize. On Saturday, an academy member called Mr. Dylan “impolite and arrogant.”

“One can say that it is impolite and arrogant,” the member, Per Wastberg, a writer, told the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, according to a translation by The Associated Press. “He is who he is.”

After Mr. Dylan’s 2016 Nobel Prize was announced, Sara Danius, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said she did not know if Mr. Dylan would attend the award ceremony in December because she had not been able to get in touch with him. Mr. Wastberg told the newspaper that the committee would not try to contact him again.

“We have agreed not to lift a finger. The ball lies entirely on his half,” he said. “You can speculate as much as you want but we don’t.”

The Swedish Academy moved quickly on Saturday to distance itself from Mr. Wastberg’s remarks. Ms. Danius said in a statement that every person awarded a Nobel Prize can make his or her own decision about how to respond.

“The Swedish Academy has never held a view on a prizewinner’s decision in this context, neither will it now, regardless of the decision reached,” the statement said. “A member of the academy, Per Wastberg, has publicly expressed his disappointment at Bob Dylan’s omitted response. This is Mr. Wastberg’s private opinion and is not to be taken as the official standpoint of the Swedish Academy.”

Mr. Wastberg’s criticisms, however, were met with amusement — some of it bitter. Some cheered the spectacle of a musical icon thumbing his nose at the Nobel Prize, while others seemed to share Mr. Wastberg’s frustration with a musician known for his aloofness. Mr. Dylan rarely gives interviews or interacts with audiences at concerts.

“Nobel’s fan crush on Dylan seems to be turning sour,” the novelist Hari Kunzru posted on Twitter. “Soon they’ll be stalking him and send weird stuff in the mail.”

James Wolcott, a columnist for Vanity Fair, noted that Mr. Dylan’s lack of response was not the same as actively turning down the prize as some laureates, like Jean Paul Sartre, have done. Mr. Wolcott said it was a mistake to celebrate the musician’s reticence.

“‘That’s just Dylan being Dylan.’ You could substitute any egotist’s name in that formulation,” he said on Twitter. “Trump being Trump. Kanye being Kanye.”

When the award was announced, some in the literary world criticized the decision to give it to one of the 20th century’s most well-known musicians. Those early murmurs of dissent have only grown amid Mr. Dylan’s apparent indifference to an honor that can transform the career of a lesser-known writer.

“Bob Dylan now has a chance to do something truly great for literature: reject the Nobel Prize for Literature,” the poet Amy King wrote on PEN America’s website after the organization asked writers and publishers to respond to the award. “Great literature is not easily consumed like pop songs that rhyme.”

Source: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/arts/music/bob-dylan-nobel-prize-arrogant-impolite.html?referer=https://www.google.com.ng/