Bob Dylan is now a Nobel Prize winner

Bob Dylan is the first American since 1993 to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Minnesota folk singing legend Bob Dylan has been many things in his career. A counterculture hero, a sellout, an anti-establishment icon and Grammy winner. We can now add Nobel Prize winner to his long list of eclectic accolades. It was announced on Thursday that Dylan was being honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature, something that acts almost as a career retrospective honor as well as another giant feather for his cap.

The justification behind selecting Dylan lies within his “poetic expressions” in his songwriting over the years that often exercised protest. He never supported the principles behind money. He certainly never approved of government. His overall disappointment in society was hinted at numerous times in tracks like Blowin’ in the Wind and The Times, They are a-Changin’.

A super unlikely candidate for the award, Dylan had a 50-to-1 chance of snagging it from fellow nominees, according to New Republic. Other dark horses in the race for the Nobel Prize included Philip Roth (The Great American Novel), Marilynne Robinson (Housekeeping) and Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow). Of those three, Roth and Robinson are past recipients of the Pulitzer Prize. Dylan, on the other hand, has zero.

That brings up the debate: Why Dylan? He doesn’t have the credentials of a writer, but the Swedish Academy declared his style of work as poetry.

“If you look back, far back, 2,500 years or so, you discover Homer and Sappho and they wrote poetic texts that were meant to be listened to, that were meant to be performed, often with instruments,” Swedish Academy’s permanent secretary, Sara Danius, said. “It’s the same way with Bob Dylan.”

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Bob Dylan’s laureate status continues to suggest a turning point for the music industry. The argument has been made over the year that music is literature and this reinforces that notion. Some musicians have a way of condensing a story into three or so minutes. That’s what Bob Dylan has been doing since his first album in 1962.

Whether or not you’re a fan of Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, it’s a new direction that shouldn’t be dismissed. His Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and Blood on the Tracks (1975) albums inspired and provoked a lot of thought. Regardless of the mixed reactions, Dylan remains the voice of a generation. Dylan turned his despise for government into musical greatness and Nobel Prize winning poetic expression.