Thursday 13 October 2016

subterranean home-sick blues

Rather surprisingly (but not undeservedly) it was announced that activist and song-writer Bob Dylan will be awarded the Nobel prize for literature.
Aside from praise and excitement, this news is inspiring a small measure of disbelief, and perhaps the committee wanted to make some amends to a year so horrendously cruel to the music world, but the selection of laureates has always been an inscrutable process—often refraining from giving out prizes in certain categories when no one was up to muster that particular year and has a history of being rather flexible with the definitions, say by awarding all EU citizens the peace prize or honouring the doubtless worthy and encouraging speeches of Winston Churchill as literature. What do you think? I wonder if Dylan will accept an honour funded with the legacy of violence and destruction—albeit they are trying to make amends for that as well.