As one who once loudly proclaimed my Dylan hatred, I thought it was wonderfully apt. A pleasant surprise from the Nobel committee rather than a cause for the usual mystifying Googling of an author I’ll never read. Here is a writer who actually means something to the lives of people all over the world in a way no novelist could. To those who complain he’s not a real writer—meaning, I guess, that his medium isn’t uncoated paper bound between boards—I point to the playwrights who have been received the award. Their work also comes to life when performed. To say nothing of the bardic tradition going back to Homer. To those who dismiss it as boomer nostalgia, I say, grow up and open your ears—like I did.
But discussions of merit and the Swedish Academy are pointless. I’m more interested in the timing of the choice. I think it is no accident that at this fraught moment in the republic’s history, the Swedes chose to remind the world—to remind us—of this unique, prophetic, utterly democratic artist who could only have emerged here. It is a distinctly political choice, just as Obama’s award was—one that is as much a challenge to our nation as it is a recognition of a man. Yesterday I felt—for the first time in this queasy, dispiriting year—proud, patriotic, and delighted.
– Tom Fredrickson is the proprietor of the unparalleled music blog, Lost Wax Method.
