After a few weeks of casual silence and some incredibly boring analyses of the body text on his website, Bob Dylan has finally acknowledged that, yes, he was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature and, sure, he'll turn up to the award ceremony if he can.In an interview at The Telegraph yesterday, Dylan told Enda Gundersen that it was "hard to believe" he'd been awarded the prize and even went on to sound sort of honored. The news, he said, was "amazing, incredible. Whoever dreams about something like that?"Look, it's an interview with Bob Dylan. The man didn't exactly clear up every question that you might have wanted answered in plain terms; he didn't explicitly address his silence after the shock announcement earlier this month, one that led to one Nobel committee member to call him "impolite and arrogant." In fact, he suggested that all they had to do was call him if they wanted some sort of acknowledgement. "Well," he said, "I'm right here."He did, however, talk about the status of his songs as poetry, responding to the conception of his lyrics as "Homeric." "I suppose so, in some way," he said. "Some [of my own] songs–"Blind Willie," "The Ballad of Hollis Brown," "Joey," "A Hard Rain," "Hurricane," and some others–definitely are Homeric in value."And on the matter of whether or not he'll turn up to his award ceremony in December to collect his $750,000 check? "Absolutely… If it's at all possible.I for one look forward to three more months of loudly guessing whether or not Bob Dylan will actually fly to Stockholm to collect a check. Maybe we can all gather together weekly and do a close reading of his website. I'm sure it's essential that everyone's ill-informed hot takes on this are heard and pored over.In the meantime, here is his demo version of "When I Paint My Masterpiece" from The Bootleg Tapes Vol. 10.Photo via Wikimedia Commons.Alex Robert Ross got me a date with a pretty little girl from Greece. Follow him on Twitter.
Advertisement