Woo-hoo! Nobel Prize for Literature!

They’re selling postcards of the hanging
They’re painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They’ve got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they’re restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row

Cinderella, she seems so easy
“It takes one to know one,” she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he’s moaning
“You Belong to Me I Believe”
And someone says,
“You’re in the wrong place my friend
You better leave”
And the only sound that’s left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row

Ivanhoe and Red Riding Hood

Holding hands in Kathmandu

"What's in that basket," he says. "Is it me or is it you."

Lightning on the old oak tree

A flash and then ghosts fly

The queen astride her stallion

The baker and his pie

jerseyjack said:

author said:

DaveSchmidt said:

I'm so unhip, I thought they were talking about Dylan Thomas.

He took the name Dylan from the writer. Rumor around here when I was college age was that he bought the

song "Blowing in the wind" from a Senior at Columbia High

Real name Bob Zimmerman. Hails from Minnesota

It was supposed to be Laurie Wyatt from Millburn H.S., not Columbia.

My source attended Columbia so her conclusion has its genesis there

Had I spoken to anyone from Barringer High School..............The song would have been written and purchased

in Newark

Ok..............delving deep down into what memory cells I have left., at the time there was someone named Larry Y

attending Columbia. He was legendary for excelling in pranks and harmless mayhem. He was also supposed to

be quite good at music writing. If you mentioned Columbia at that time, you were automatically asked "Did you know

Larry Y". In rumor circles there was more or less an understanding that he had collaborated with Dylan on the

song. This is totally unsubstantiated but at the time was a second tier Urban Legend

Lorre Wyatt, not Larry Y. Read the link I posted, Author. It isn't true. And it was Millburn.

imonlysleeping said:

Lorre Wyatt, not Larry Y. Read the link I posted, Author. It isn't true. And it was Millburn.

A rumor is just that...................it is an assumed fact that has no substance..................Millburn might have made a

claim to the song and the song writer but so did Maplewood. No court in the land would try to adjudicate

Only Dylan knows the truth and he ain't going to admit he bought the song from anywhere

Some where in Chilicothee Ohio this same conversation is taking place

You are ridiculous. You just have the story wrong. Why can't you just accept that? This is not a rumor, it's an established real thing that happened: A real person in Millburn with a real name made up a story and then confessed years later in the media. You have the facts wrong. Unsurprisingly.

imonlysleeping said:

You are ridiculous. You just have the story wrong. Why can't you just accept that? This is not a rumor, it's an established real thing that happened: A real person in Millburn with a real name made up a story and then confessed years later in the media. You have the facts wrong. Unsurprisingly.

I am telling you what the rumor was something like too many years ago to remember

Maybe years later some one from Millburn "confessed" to the media..............now that is a convincing argument.

I guess I could confess and claim that I wrote just about anything.

You are so rigid I am surprised you have not broken in half in a strong wind

As usual, you know something's happening, but you don't know what it is.

author said:

Ok..............delving deep down into what memory cells I have left., at the time there was someone named Larry Y

attending Columbia. He was legendary for excelling in pranks and harmless mayhem. He was also supposed to

be quite good at music writing. If you mentioned Columbia at that time, you were automatically asked "Did you know

Larry Y". In rumor circles there was more or less an understanding that he had collaborated with Dylan on the

song. This is totally unsubstantiated but at the time was a second tier Urban Legend

Thanks for the rumor's details, author -- something like that was just what I was hoping to hear.

If I ever encounter someone from Chillicothe, I'll ask for his or her story, too.

imonlysleeping said:

Ivanhoe and Red Riding Hood

Holding hands in Kathmandu

"What's in that basket," he says. "Is it me or is it you."

Lightning on the old oak tree

A flash and then ghosts fly

The queen astride her stallion

The baker and his pie

OK, I give up. Did you write this yourself? If so, I'm sending your name to Oslo next year.

You caught me. This kind of stuff is ludicrously easy to crank out. Historical and literary references matched with poetic-sounding blah blah blah and moon/june-level rhymes. Nobody would've taken this stuff seriously if he weren't such a great singer and all around cool dude. He's of course written tons of memorable lines and when he sings the stuff it comes to life like little other music I've ever heard, but on the page--as literature--it's mostly drivel.

DaveSchmidt said:

imonlysleeping said:

Ivanhoe and Red Riding Hood

Holding hands in Kathmandu

"What's in that basket," he says. "Is it me or is it you."

Lightning on the old oak tree

A flash and then ghosts fly

The queen astride her stallion

The baker and his pie

OK, I give up. Did you write this yourself? If so, I'm sending your name to Oslo next year.

I was hoping this would be more convincing:

Bob Dylan 101: A Harvard Professor Has the Coolest Class on Campus

Read this earlier and thought it was super silly. Makes a strong case that Dylan has referenced a few classics. Makes no kind of case that Dylan is himself a literary giant. Didn't everyone read Homer in school? So what?

DaveSchmidt said:

I was hoping this would be more convincing:

Bob Dylan 101: A Harvard Professor Has the Coolest Class on Campus

imonlysleeping said:

If you read the lyrics to "Just Like a Woman" on the page they are laughably bad. They are song lyrics, not literature. They only reveal their power when they are sung.

Power when sung, that's why.

.

imonlysleeping said:

Read this earlier and thought it was super silly.

Wouldn't go that far myself, but it did seem rather thin.

Back to my Sigrid Undset. Next up after that: "A Spaniard in the Works."

imonlysleeping said:

You caught me. This kind of stuff is ludicrously easy to crank out. Historical and literary references matched with poetic-sounding blah blah blah and moon/june-level rhymes. Nobody would've taken this stuff seriously if he weren't such a great singer and all around cool dude. He's of course written tons of memorable lines and when he sings the stuff it comes to life like little other music I've ever heard, but on the page--as literature--it's mostly drivel.

DaveSchmidt said:

imonlysleeping said:

Ivanhoe and Red Riding Hood

Holding hands in Kathmandu

"What's in that basket," he says. "Is it me or is it you."

Lightning on the old oak tree

A flash and then ghosts fly

The queen astride her stallion

The baker and his pie

OK, I give up. Did you write this yourself? If so, I'm sending your name to Oslo next year.

This is a bit like painting like Rothko or an Ellsworth Kelly and saying because you can immitate their work easily, it's not really art. The point is to do it first and have it resonate and define a generation. That's not easy. It's about the furthest thing from easy.

I'm certainly not saying it isn't art. He's an amazing songwriter and one of the great singers. But what he just isn't great at writing in the words-on-a-page sense. Why do we have to force him into a box he doesn't fit in (literature) in order to somehow validate what he does? As "poetry," his stuff is junk. As music, it's unbeatable. Let's appreciate it for what it is and not try to "elevate" it in some misguided attempt to validate something that doesn't need that kind of validation to be great. Dylan isn't a poet, and that's okay.

I don't think the members of the academy thought, "well his poetry is junk, but if you sing it to a 12-bar blues tune, it's great!"

I was only in my early teens when "Like A Rolling Stone" came out. It was about two years -- 1965 -- before the 1967 riots in Newark where my family lived. My siblings and I were floored when we heard this song. We had never heard anyone get told off as thoroughly as Dylan did to "Miss Lonely." However, I thought that there was a bit of compassion and maybe even sadness when Dylan seems to change the tone of his voice at the lyrics "now you don't talk so loud; now you don't seem so proud." As we got older the song became a warning: you never wanted to wind up like Miss Lonely. The shadow of the wolf might be at the door any time; nothing could ever be taken for granted. From time to time when an acquaintance got their comeuppance, we'd sing out: "How does it feel?!"

And then, in the upheaval of the civil rights movement Dylan was in the thick of it. Dylan's songs became anthems for the movement. He was a true friend who did not flee into an ivory tower when the going got tough.

http://faculty.wagner.edu/lori-weintrob/bob-dylan-more-than-just-a-singer/

Like a Rolling Stone
Bob Dylan

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
People call say 'beware doll, you're bound to fall'
You thought they were all kidding you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hanging out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging your next meal
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone

Ahh you've gone to the finest schools, alright Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
Nobody's ever taught you how to live out on the street
And now you're gonna have to get used to it
You say you never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And say do you want to make a deal?
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
A complete unknown, like a rolling stone
Ah you never turned around to see the frowns
On the jugglers and the clowns when they all did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain't no good
You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you
You used to ride on a chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain't it hard when you discovered that
He really wasn't where it's at
After he took from you everything he could steal
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To have on your own, with no direction home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone
Ahh princess on a steeple and all the pretty people
They're all drinking, thinking that they've got it made
Exchanging all precious gifts
But you better take your diamond ring, you better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him he calls you, you can't refuse
When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you've got no secrets to conceal
How does it feel, ah how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone

Songwriters: Bob Dylan
Like a Rolling Stone lyrics © Bob Dylan Music Co.

With all of the Sturm und Drang about Dylan winning the Nobel, the thing is that Dylan himself likely hasn’t given a thought to it. And that, as President Obama noted, is part of what makes Dylan extraordinary.

http://www.businessinsider.com/president-obama-bob-dylan-great-quote-2016-10

Currently re-watching Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home. Amazing biopic. My gut feeling is that he doesn't think he deserves the award.

I would be remiss if I did not mention Mr. Dylan's homage to Mr. Springsteen.

Tweeter and the Monkey Man were hard up for cash
They stayed up all night selling cocaine and hash
To an undercover cop who had a sister named Jan
For reasons unexplained she loved the Monkey Man

Tweeter was a boy scout before she went to Vietnam
And found out the hard way nobody gives a damn
They knew that they found freedom just across the Jersey Line
So they hopped into a stolen car, took Highway 99

And the walls came down, all the way to hell
Never saw them when they're standing, never saw them when they fell

The undercover cop never liked the Monkey Man
Even back in childhood he wanted to see him in the can
Jan got married at fourteen to a racketeer named Bill
She made secret calls to the Monkey Man from a mansion on the hill

It was out on Thunder Road, Tweeter at the wheel
They crashed into paradise, they could hear them tires squeal
The undercover cop pulled up and said "Everyone of you's a liar
If you don't surrender now, it's gonna go down to the wire

And the walls came down, all the way to hell
Never saw them when they're standing, never saw them when they fell

An ambulance rolled up, a state trooper close behind
Tweeter took his gun away and messed up his mind
The undercover cop was left tied up to a tree
Near the souvenir stand by the old abandoned factory

Next day the undercover cop was hot in pursuit
He was taking the whole thing personal, he didn't care about the loot
Jan had told him many times it was you to me who taught
In Jersey anything's legal as long as you don't get caught

And the walls came down, all the way to hell
Never saw them when they're standing, never saw them when they fell

Someplace by Rahway Prison they ran out of gas
The undercover cop had cornered them said "Boy, you didn't think that this could last"
Jan jumped out of the bed, said "There's someplace I gotta go"
She took a gun out of the drawer and said "It's best if you don't know"

The undercover cop was found face down in a field
The monkey man was on the river bridge using Tweeter as a shield
Jan said to the Monkey Man, "I'm not fooled by Tweeter's curl
I knew him long before he ever became a Jersey girl"

And the walls came down, all the way to hell
Never saw them when they're standing, never saw them when they fell

Now the town of Jersey City is quieting down again
I'm sitting in a gambling club called the Lion's Den
The TV set been blown up, every bit of it is gone
Ever since the nightly news show that the Monkey Man was on

I guess I'll go to Florida and get myself some sun
There ain't no more opportunity here, everything's been done
Sometime I think of Tweeter, sometime I think of Jan
Sometime I don't think about nothing but the Monkey Man

And the walls came down, all the way to hell
Never saw them when they're standing, never saw them when they fell

And the walls came down, all the way to hell
Never saw them when they're standing, never saw them when they fell

Do I remember correctly that the doc basically attributes his golden-age lyrical output to a gush of muddled amphetamine-speak?

dave said:

Currently re-watching Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home. Amazing biopic. My gut feeling is that he doesn't think he deserves the award.

imonlysleeping said:

Do I remember correctly that the doc basically attributes his golden-age lyrical output to a gush of muddled amphetamine-speak?

dave said:

Currently re-watching Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home. Amazing biopic. My gut feeling is that he doesn't think he deserves the award.

If you've seen it you know it's told in first person.

Right, in the doc, Dylan attributes his golden-age lyrical output to... Haven't seen it since it came out, so foggy on the details. But that did stick in my mind.

dave said:

imonlysleeping said:

Do I remember correctly that the doc basically attributes his golden-age lyrical output to a gush of muddled amphetamine-speak?

dave said:

Currently re-watching Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home. Amazing biopic. My gut feeling is that he doesn't think he deserves the award.

If you've seen it you know it's told in first person.

Half way thru and it hasn't come up. Even if it did, would it change the appreciation of his lyrical output?