- "Inside the Gates of Eden":Bob Dylan and The Nobel Prize
When asked if he thought of himself as a poet, Bob Dylan once said with a smirk, "I consider myself more of a song and dance man." Nevertheless, when I was little kid, I used to open up books and sing out the words in a nasally Bob Dylan voice, like I was speak-singing a song, because that's what I thought Dylan did: He was the guy who sang books.
Even when I was very young, I knew he was something special. His voice was wild and free, delightfully unconventional. "How did he get away with singing like that?" I wondered.
I remember being seven or eight and driving in my dad's car while my older brother played Bringing It All Back Home on the tape deck and being transported by the words of "Gates of Eden":
The motorcycle black MadonnaTwo-wheeled gypsy queenAnd her silver-studded phantomCause the gray flannel dwarf to screamAs he weeps to wicked birds of preyWho pick up on his bread crumb sins—And there are no sins inside the Gates of Eden
It was mysterious. It was world-creating. It was totally different than anything else I had heard up until that point.
These early experiences sparked a lifelong fascination with Dylan and his work. I'm almost embarrassed by how obsessed I am with him. Now a poet and professor, I owe my first love of literature to Bob Dylan. [End Page 266]
Obviously, I'm far from the only person to think of Dylan as a literary figure. From early on in his career, he was labeled a poet and lavished with attention by academics, most (but not all) of them focusing on his achievements as a lyricist. Dylan has been the subject of college courses, biographies, and critical studies for decades, and he is the recipient of honorary degrees from Princeton and St. Andrews. His lyrics also have been included in numerous poetry anthologies. "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Desolation Row," for example, are in the Norton Introduction to Literature and the Oxford Book of American Poetry, respectively. Furthermore, Dylan has won just about every arts and culture honor there is. Perhaps most notable, though, is the fact that Dylan has been nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature every year since 1997. And in 2016, he finally won for "having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."
In some respects, this should not have been a surprise given the extraordinary amount of acclaim he has received over the years. One could even argue that giving Dylan the Nobel is anticlimactic. Did he really need yet another honor? But still, the announcement was greeted with shock and horror by many commentators. Lovers of literature are much divided.
To be sure, Dylan has always had his detractors. In the '60s, disagreement about the worth of Dylan seemed like a manifestation of the cultural/generational divide. But even today, when most of The Establishment is made of people who grew up listening to and revering Dylan, he is still seen by many as a trespasser, a threat, a fraud. The idea of a popular songwriter winning a major literary honor still strikes us as scandalous.
In 1992, during a discussion of popular culture on the BBC Two's The Late Show, playwright David Hare summed up the conflict between so-called high and low culture with the phrase "Keats vs. Dylan." Hare's formulation became something of a catch phrase, at least in the UK, but I think that it is a false dichotomy. [End Page 267]
Saying that Keats is a more accomplished writer than Dylan is a fair assessment, but Hare's comment was meant to draw a line between the complexity of Romantic poetry on one hand, and what he saw as the insipidness of popular song on the other. But singling out Dylan as a representative of shallow pop culture is wrongheaded. Although he is a popular singer, Dylan is by no means a representative songsmith. He has expanded the possibility of popular song and...