All doctrine is ultimately the death of joy - even when the doctrine is the elevation of the light above the serious, because joy is too varied and e….

Bob Dylan, Nobel laureate. A new fact so shocking that even the year's most notable deaths have not outdone it for the volume (in both senses) of ins….

The point is not that [Bob] Dylan doesn't need a Nobel to attest to how good he is (although he doesn't.) It's that pop music, pop music of any kind,….

The same is true of ranking him thus against any work of literature. [Bob Dylan] has been made, through no fault of his own, the object of odious tok….

Look, dear! How adorable. When pop music tries its very hardest, it can be almost as good as Sven Hassel..

The question now becomes about defining your terms. What is literature? Unless we allow it to encompass the oral tradition from which it grew, which ….

The [Nobel] award [of Bob Dylan] is no affront to literature; it is an insult to pop music. It is a condescending ruffle of pop's hair while handing ….

There's no reason - not yet, anyway - to believe [Bob] Dylan himself endorses such an attitude; or that he would think of himself as a more profound ….

Pop music, across its countless iterations, is a vast, amazing, thrilling art form. All life is in it. It stands for itself. The same is true of lite….

[I have] my own view about [Bob] Dylan's Nobel prize. Which is, I'm firmly in the Nay camp. I do think the award is a category error, but that's not ….

On another front of the category-error argument are the insufferable fogeys who think the [Nobel] award is an outrage upon literature itself. That th….

How heartening it is to know that Ken Loach is still out there making committed, polemical cinema, so long as you don't have to watch it. Never go ne….

[Bob Dylan] is principally a recording artist, and if he weren't, it is unthinkable he would have had such an impact. He is to be heard first and rea….

Plenty more of the Nays sound perfectly sincere, though. They may genuinely dislike [Bob] Dylan; they may even enjoy or admire him, but just don't th….

[Bob] Dylan may, for whatever reasons of his own, do nothing of the sort with the Nobel committee. Up there on Parnassus, that is his unquestionable ….

Lyrics should not need to stand on their own; many of [Bob] Dylan's do, but in common with other great lyricists, he has written plenty that falters ….

I have seen quite a few folk whom I know to be both fair minded and, as it happens,[Bob] Dylan fans, take up cudgels for this position. To them, it's….

The [Nobel] prize is for literature.[Bob] Dylan is a songwriter. Here is where the argument starts to get interesting, because here is where it is no….

First of all, there are those who simply don't care for [Bob] Dylan, or at least, don't think he's that great. Some of the former sound very much as ….

The general sentiment among the Yeas is, no accolade is too high for their man; and the Nobel being, literally, the gold standard among prizes, it is….

The Yeas are relatively uniform. They view [Bob] Dylan as one of the greatest artists of his or any era, who deserves to be taken as seriously as any….