Dear Nobel Prize Selection Committee Members:

I gave it some time. I read. I considered perspectives. I drank heavily and sobered up. Finally, I arrived at my conclusion: It was wrong, nay, fucked up as a soup sandwich, to award Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize for Literature.

My conclusion is based on three factors:

   1)    Song lyrics are not literature

   2)    Bob doesn't need the recognition

   3)    Reading is hard

Let me preface this all by saying I agree that Dylan is a musical genius and hugely influential. What I take issue with is the categorization of what he does as literature. Literature affects a reader through narrative, imagery, and rhythm created with words. Traditionally, words are the sole arrow in the writer's quiver. (Yes, I'm aware of the historical connection between poetry and music, but poetry in a more modern sense is experienced most often on the page. And yes, I understand that spoken word artists intend their work to be performed and often blur lines between song and verse. If you committee folks felt like stirring things up, pushing boundaries and definitions, someone like poet Kate Tempest would actually have been a far more interesting choice.)

In literature, language does the work. A songwriter certainly needs to be skillful and creative with language. Songwriters also employ imagery and narrative. But the impact of the words comes from their marriage with music (voice, instrumentation) and performance. Together they make a powerful whole intended as an auditory experience. Do Dylan's words have merit without the addition of music and performance? Of course. But they don't have the impact (and I suspect they wouldn't have had the worldwide influence) without the other components. What's more, creating a literary work of art wasn't what Bob had in mind when he wrote the words. Some may argue that they find Dylan's words to have literary merit, to be wholly artistically satisfying, on their own. Fine. If you want to pore over Dylan lyrics, that's great. But it's not how he intended the words to be experienced. Separating the lyrics from the other components is like eating a basil leaf, taking a bite of mozzarella cheese, popping a bit of bread in your mouth, chasing it all with a tablespoon of tomato sauce and claiming you just ate a margherita pizza. All those individual ingredients might taste great on their own, but that's certainly not how the chef intended them to be experienced.

Giving the literature prize to a songwriter is akin to Major League Baseball awarding the MVP to a tennis star because both sports use a ball. Song lyrics are not literature just because words are involved. A sculpture might have an elaborately painted surface, but that doesn't make it a painting. The sculpture's impact is derived, in part, from its form. The painted surface is a component of the sculpture just like Dylan's words are a component of the song. Moving on.

The Nobel Prize is world recognition of the recipient's contribution and influence in a designated category. In the case of literature, the recipient likely has already achieved a level of fame within the literary world. But the awarding of the Nobel guarantees exposure to a much greater general audience. There is the opportunity for a new group of people to explore and be affected by the work. Dylan doesn't need the help. His work is ubiquitous: radio, TV, soundtracks, any college common room—opportunities abound for people to hear and be influenced by his work. There is also ample opportunity to ponder the genius and influence of Bob Dylan: numerous documentaries, MTV, VH1, Rolling Stone's lists of the most influential rockers. This just isn't the case with literature, and it needs an annual opportunity to be widely considered.

Reading is hard. It takes time and deep concentration. Poems, short stories, and novels demand a level of focus that many are not willing to give. It is solitary work. It can't (at least it shouldn't) happen speeding along the open road with the windows down. Music is amazing in part because of its immediate and profound impact. In moments, a song can change us forever and it can happen in a wide variety of contexts, many of them social. There are so many ways for people to be affected by music and lyrics every day. Many of us are plugged into it almost constantly. This isn't the case with books.

The Nobel Prize in Literature shines a brief but very bright light on a medium that is becoming increasingly marginalized. Even a successful writer is not going to spend much (okay, any) time in stadiums filled with their screaming fans. Let the pasty writers of the world have a moment in the sun. The deeply tanned rock stars won't mind if you leave them off the list of candidates for the Nobel Prize. If the committee really feels obliged to help out musicians and songwriters, add a category or two and let them actually be recognized for the amazing things that they do rather than for the things that they don't.

Respectfully,

Jason M. Marak

  

The School of Embellishments

I have lied to you for years. Some subtle. Some whoppers. Sometimes you manage to recover the truth. But what does this game of loss and recovery accomplish? Light and shadow will always follow the rules, bending or lengthening as required. Candles will go on dying atop 2 a.m. tables around the world, the perpetual flickering, that uneven light, convincing couples of possibility. We are constantly cheated by the wavering. You said that, remember? Heat and light require care. But consider this: You want to believe. You want to believe that the white rabbit has vanished, but there's no magic — just flourish and imagination. She's always there, in the darkness, trembling below the hatstand, waiting for you to reach down and bring her up into the light.

The Goldberg Deviations

Johann, I want you to have these. They're important.

Is this all of them? This isn't much. Listen, I appreciate the gift. Not this gift. I mean my talent. My music. That gift. But this? This is just a handful of notes. I don't think I can do anything with these.

Trust me. You can. These are the ones.

I'm sure they're some of the ones. You've heard my work — you hear everything, right? So, you know I usually use a lot more. What you're giving me here…does it have to be in G major? I'm just saying it's kind of, you know, ordinary?

These are the ones.

I don't want to be disrespectful, but you're not a musician. I'm not saying you're not creative. Heavens, no! I mean you're The Creator. I'm a fan. I think my top three would have to be, in no particular order: Light, Eve, and trout. But music is different.

Trout? Really? I've always felt like I didn't get the color quite right. And the size. I should have made them bigger. A lot bigger. Or else really, really small. Anyway, we're getting off track. You just need to put these notes together the right way, and everything will fall into place.

For the tune?

For everything. Humanity will have answers to all the big questions if you can accomplish this task.

Okay. If it's that important to you I'll noodle around for a while and see what happens, but I'm sure I'm not going to be able to come up with anything complete.

Don't worry so much about complete. Just make a moment, a spark, a little machine that thumps along and lets folks feel like there's something.

Something?

See that wino across the courtyard?

Sure. That's Timothy. He's a real turd.

He sits there because that west-facing wall at sunset turns a color that makes him feel like there is something more than his own shitty life to wake up for. Compose that. I've given you everything you need.

Can I add a few notes?

No.

No?

No.

Okay. No. Got it…I might add a couple, though. Just to kind of put my own spin on it. That's cool, right?

Congenital Failure

Genital heart disease. That’s how I heard it when I was ten. My parents were in the kitchen refilling each other’s drinks and whispering about Uncle Steve. That’s when they said it — that he’d died of genital heart disease. I was sitting around the corner in my C-3PO pajamas, listening like I often did to their recounting of the day’s events. Now, I knew what genital meant. I’d looked it up in the big dictionary in Dad’s office after I heard my fourth grade teacher tell the nurse that I’d been hit in the genitals. It had troubled me because I was absolutely sure the baseball had hit me square in the nuts, but who was I to argue. I was ten. So, to find out that this area, which I had already gleaned held a great deal of mysterious potential, could lead to my demise really knocked me for a loop. I lay in bed that night switching my silver flashlight on and off trying to see the beam travel between the instrument and the illuminated circle that appeared on the ceiling with each click. I figured the disease must manifest as some kind of problem between the genitals and the heart. I knew the heart was in charge of love. I’d eaten my fair share of candy hearts: I’m Yours, Be Mine, et cetera, et cetera. I figured that, perhaps, the afflicted genitals kept the heart from functioning properly, or vice-versa, leading to either a bursting heart, or balls, or both. I imagined my testicles exploding like miniature Death Stars: first the left, then the right, and then my heart.

Equal To Or Less Than

Johnny ate paste and failed spelling tests but nobody cared. When he brought home his first F, his father told him, without looking up from cleaning his gun, that numbers were all that mattered. Spelling, he said, was for pussies. Johnny did well in math.

Johnny liked to play alone. When he played with other children, phone calls had to be made. His favorite place was the marsh. It stayed muddy all year and there was no one. Johnny liked the smell, equal parts growth and decay, and he liked birds. He would watch them for hours, herons mostly, standing in the shallows. He liked the way they moved, scanning the water for food. They had purpose. They were precise. They were probably, he thought, good at math.

For his birthday, Johnny got a slingshot. He took it with him to the marsh and watched the birds until the scene became unbalanced: There were 4 where there should only be three.

rock  +  slingshot  -  bird   =   balance

Johnny walked to where it fell. It was dazed but not dead—a purple heron nearly as big as the boy. He stood watching it struggle to stand, then reached down and wrung its neck. Holding the dead bird, he was surprised by the weight of it. He dropped it, knelt down and began to cry. He cried for a long time and then stopped. Johnny carried the bird to dryer ground and with his hands dug a shallow grave. He walked home. That night, as he lay in bed, he could feel the bird's neck, the warmth of it in his hands, the texture of the feathers. Even now, just before sleep he feels it: something in him reaching to balance the twitch of life against the weight of the dead.

American Paint

On the morning of the day that he died, Jenny's grandfather took her across the road to feed the neighbor's horses. On the way, they gathered windfalls from below the apple trees. He showed Jenny, as he did each time, to keep her hand flat, to let the horse take the apple from her palm. She knew, of course, but listened.

When the apples were gone, they headed home. Crossing the road, he stopped and looked down at Jenny with the same expression he had letting her sneak sips of his Piels when Mother turned her back.

   — Next time, I'm going to steal one. I'm   

going to take one and ride away.  

Probably the Paint.

   — Grandpa, we don't steal.

   — Perhaps we do? Perhaps we should start?

As they crossed the yard, he reached up, picked an apple and held it out in his palm. She smiled and took it with her teeth.

           

That night there was no story. The room was too warm for sleep. Jenny went to the window hoping to see one less horse asleep in the field, but it was a moonless night. A line storm was approaching from the west and gathering clouds hid the stars. She couldn't see apple trees or fence or field. It had all become part of the darkness. She opened the window as far as she could reach. Pre-storm gusts came across the field filling her room with the scent of apples, lilac, the horses. She closed her eyes, feeling again the warm breath in her palm. When she opened her eyes, expecting the black window framing a black world, she witnessed instead fireflies, startled to flight by the wind — thousands of tiny victories illuminating the void. That night, she slept beneath the open window. She awoke in the morning, fearless.