And may you stay forever young—Bob Dylan
Nobel Prize-winning Bob Dylan recently published a book, The Philosophy of Modern Song. The categories that the Nobel committee presents awards in are physics, chemistry, medicine, economics, peace, and literature. Seems that Alfred Nobel, in addition to being a chemist and engineer, was a frustrated writer, which explains the literature category in his bequest to fund the prizes that carry his name and the medal with his likeness. Economics had not been one of his categories. It was added in 1968, 67 years late, thanks to funding by Sveriges Riksbank, or the central bank of Sweden.
There are several missing categories, like engineering, math. . .and music. Dylan received his Nobel in literature in 2016. In 2015 the recipient was Svetlana Alexievich, a journalist who was born in Ukraine and lives in Belarus; in her work she has criticized the regimes in the then-Soviet Union and Belarus. In 2017 the recipient was Kazuo Ishiguro, who was born in Japan, raised in the U.K.; the novelist received the prize because, according to the committee, his work “uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.”
Dylan? “[F]or having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”
The Philosophy of Modern Song is not Dylan’s first book. There were Tarantula, a book of poetry, in 1993 and Chronicles: Volume One, a book of personal reflections, in 2004. There have also been a number of books carrying his name, whether children’s books that illustrators have adapted his lyrics in, or collections of his lyrics.
The Philosophy of Modern Song has become controversial of late not because of, well, the philosophy, but because publisher Simon & Schuster offered 900 limited-edition versions of the book that were said to be hand-autographed by Dylan. The signed versions of the $45.00 book were marked up to $599. Turns out that Dylan didn’t sign them. Which brings to mind that existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre was named the 1964 Nobel recipient in literature in 1964. Being the good philosopher of existence that he was, he didn’t accept the prize.*
Simon & Schuster fessed up and is refunding the monies to those who paid.