An unusual Nobel

Literature award for Bob Dylan breaks the mould

That Bob Dylan - or Robert Allen Zimmerman, to use the name he was born with in 1941 - has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature is nothing short of a miracle. This is because, in doing so, the Nobel committee has thrown the template it has used for decades out of the window. For one, Dylan is American. While few can deny that literary output in the United States is thriving, the Nobel committee has tended to ignore this fact. No American has won since Toni Morrison in 1993. Most Literature Nobels have been awarded to authors from France - 16 of them - which sets the Literature Nobel apart from all the other prizes, since in no other category have Americans not won the maximum awards. Citizens of the United States comprise 60 per cent of Nobel laureates in economics, for instance. Even the 12 Americans who have won the literature Nobel include many whose life-work and inspiration are drawn from places elsewhere in the world. The three literature laureates from the US before Morrison are Joseph Brodsky, Czeslaw Milosz and Isaac Bashevis Singer - three men who looked to the lands of the Russian empire of the tsars for inspiration. They all won during the height of the Cold War, between 1978 and 1987. Even Saul Bellow, who won in 1976, was born in Canada.

To be sure, some have vigorously argued why Dylan did not deserve the award. The argument being that his lyrics cannot be seen as separate from his music and that by giving him the honour the Nobel committee has missed out on recognising talent in literature - the field in question. Add to that the fact between popular music and literature, it is the latter that needs recognition. So what could have caused the Nobel committee to break this long streak of ignoring American literature and making this unusual choice? Perhaps it is related to the other unusual fact about Dylan's award - namely, that no other popular entertainer has won the Nobel Prize. It is fair to say that the last literature laureate who was a bona fide pop-culture celebrity before being awarded was Ernest Hemingway in 1956, or perhaps Jean-Paul Sartre in 1964. Yet Dylan's influence on popular culture is of a different quality. In dumping tradition in this manner, the Nobel committee is making the point that the United States' culture is, primarily, pop culture. And it is also making the point that its pop culture is, at its best, equivalent in artistry to the highest of high culture.

Indeed, few can argue with the depth of Dylan's artistry, or the extent of his influence. Beginning as a straightforward singer of American folk music, he created a sensation in the mid-1960s by replacing the acoustic guitar he was supposed to use as a folk-singer with an electric instrument. His songs, thoughtful and elliptic, inspired almost every major writer and performer of the 1960s - and through them every major pop act in the subsequent decades. They have been deeply political - no literature Nobel is ever awarded without politics - but also intensely personal and human. And throughout, while becoming the patron saint of thoughtful musicians and poets everywhere, Dylan was careful to maintain the attitude of an outsider, of an observer. Perhaps the most incisive comment on this comes from another American Nobel laureate, President Barack Obama, about the occasion when Dylan performed at the White House: "He wouldn't come to the rehearsal. He didn't want to take a picture with me... [He] tips his head, gives me just a little grin and leaves. That's how you want Bob Dylan, right? You want him to be a little sceptical about the enterprise." Dylan's scepticism has served him, the US, and the world well.