What is the point of the Nobel Prize in Literature? Is it to recognize lifetime achievement? If so, then A) Dylan has certainly achieved a lot—whether that achievement is in Literature is up for debate, but it’s an interesting debate, and maybe awards that really matter should occasionally cause controversy rather than just always going to the most popular/commercially successful/picked-by-old-white-men-who-make-up-the-majority-of-many-award-selecting-bodies choice, which leads to my second point, B) If [insert your pick here, probably DeLillo, right? I bet it’s DeLillo] is so popular and has so clearly affected so many brilliant writers, do they need an(other) award? Obviously Dylan doesn’t either, but the thing with lifetime achievement awards is that there are probably more brilliant people in one field with similar ranges to their lifespan than there are years in that span, meaning it would be impossible to recognize every single person who deserves the award before, you know, they die. So maybe just use this as an opportunity to celebrate the winner and have a friendly conversation about what Literature is.
If the award isn’t about lifetime achievement but about selecting someone with a recent achievement in order to support them and encourage their further success, then yeah, Dylan shouldn’t get it (his recent albums of Sinatra covers are actually quite good, but he didn’t write them), but neither should, say, DeLillo, who probably has all the support he needs and, let’s face it, might not have a lot time left for further success.
But really, I think my earlier point was maybe the most important one: there are only so many awards to go around, and someone will always be left out. So let’s just celebrate the winners we like and ignore the ones we don’t, and keep supporting and talking about all the artists we love.
(For the record, I haven’t actually read any DeLillo yet, and all of my favorite authors who might be up for a Nobel are dead, so I don’t really have a horse in this race. Also, every year I say “Awards don’t matter” and then get pissed off anyway, but I don’t yell about it on social media (do I? I don’t think I do…) so there’s that.)
Certain of Eventual Failure 