Dylan gets his Nobel Prize

Singer-songwriter Bod Dylan will receive his Nobel Literature Prize in Stockholm in the next few days. The 75-year-old Dylan is due to give concerts in Stockholm on April 1 and the following day and then another in the southern Swedish city of Lund on April 9. Why was there controversy? The Academy’s decision to give Dylan the literature prize caused controversy. This was deepened by Dylan’s silence about the award for weeks afterward and his no-show at t he annual banquet in December. Have there been unexpected decisions in the past? Yes. The Academy has a tradition of stepping outside the traditional boundaries of literary form. It awarded the 1953 prize to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in part for his “brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values.” The decision to award the prize to Dylan, whom the Academy said had “created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,” was seen by some as a slap-in-the-face to mainstream writers of poetry and prose. What they are saying? “The good news is that the Swedish Academy and Bob Dylan have decided to meet this weekend. The Academy will hand over Dylan’s Nobel diploma and medal and congratulate him on the Nobel Prize in Literature.” – Nobel Academy spokesperson Sarah Danius.