Singer Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Literature Prize
- by Paula Vaughn
- in Culture
- — Oct 18, 2016
In a surprise announcement, the Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to U.S. singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, the first time the prestigious award goes to someone primarily seen as a musician. Dylan (75) was honoured "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition", the Swedish Academy said.The choice was met by gasps and a long round of applause from journalists attending the prize announcement.
Following the announcement, President Barack Obama, who presented Dylan with the Medal of Freedom in 2012, tweeted, "Congratulations to one of my favorite poets, Bob Dylan, on a well-deserved Nobel".
A Bob Dylan tribute show is planned for Thursday night at Holy Heart of Mary High School in St. John's. Dylan is the brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition.
He continued: "If you're a "music" fan, look it up in the dictionary".
Earlier Thursday, the Italian news agency ANSA reported that playwright and actor Dario Fo, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1997, died in a hospital in Milan at the age of 90.
"Rather doubt Philip Roth and Don DeLillo wish they'd written "Mr. Tambourine Man" vs".
Blowin' in the Wind, written in 1962, was considered one of the most eloquent folk songs of all time.
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Dylan's life has been a hybrid of popular and literary influences.
Some of his other famous songs include "Like a Rolling Stone" from 1965, "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" from 1973, and "Tangled Up in Blue" from 1975.
No offense to them, but we're better than fine with Bob Dylan taking the stage in Stockholm to mumble incoherently for the adoring crowd. He won an Oscar in 2001 for the song "Things Have Changed" and received a lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 1991.
Now I can say I've been in a music video of a Nobel Prize victor.
There are now more than 900 Nobel Prize winners in categories like psychics, chemistry, science, peace and literature.
The six Nobel prizes will be handed out at a ceremony on December 10, which will mark the 120th anniversary of the death of the founder of the prize, Alfred Nobel, in 1896.