The question now becomes about defining your terms. What is literature? Unless we allow it to encompass the … - David Bennun

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In my neighborhood in Springfield, Ohio, there were a lot of young kids. We all played tackle football after school, but I knew very early on that I was not an athlete.

David Bennun

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 means taking it back to Homer and beyond, it demands the written word - poetry and prose. [Bob] Dylan is no slouch at the written word, both in its own right, and transcribed from his lyrics, which have often been acclaimed as poetry and may well stand up as such. But that is not his métier.

Defining, Mean, Oral, Oral Tradition, Unless, Written

Same Author Quotes

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 near a Ken Loach film unless you're trying to sleep with a socialist. If you are, however, Land And Freedom should do the trick.

Cinema, Know, Land, Long, Polemical, Sleep

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 instant reaction; so divisive, it makes Brexit, the Labour leadership and the US Presidential election seem lesser ruptures.

Facts, Labour, Leadership, Presidential, Senses, Years

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 elusive ever to confine itself to one or the other.

Doctrine, Elusive, Joy, Light, Serious, Varied

[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 why. Not in itself. What bothers me is the perceived status of the categories. If pop lyricists were routinely considered for the prize as are authors and poets, I'd still think it mistaken, but I wouldn't much care. But I am quite certain that Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, for example, both at the very least Dylan's equals as writers, have never been in the running and never will be.

Errors, Poets, Pop, Running, Think, Thinking

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 it a lollipop. An act of beaming condescension whose transparent message is: "This one guy, and just this one guy, he's so good, he transcends his trivial idiom and elevates himself into our significant one. "

Act, Awards, Guy, Hair, Nobel