Om Bob Dylan

Reading a book on the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature, by the woman ultimately (if not solely) responsible for handing it to Bob Dylan, you might expect some juicy gossip. No less so since the Swedish Academy has since crashed and burned very spectacularly, had to cancel at least one Nobel Prize, and doesn't look likely to ever recover.

But of course, Danius can't write anything about the deliberations that led to Dylan getting the prize, since they're all secret for another 48 years. And she can't write about the scandal that forced her and several other members to quit the Academy and leave it a pointless husk of fragile wounded masculinity, since the book was originally written in 2017, before all that happened. So while I'm sure her publisher is happy to capitalize on the hubbub surrounding the Academy, you won't find any of that in this book without doing the sort of between-the-lines readings that Dylanologists do to uncover biblical references in "Wiggle Wiggle".

So what we're left with is a short, souvenir-sized book, barely 100 pages with a lot of photographs, in three chapters: A brief, and not very detailed, hagiography of Dylan and his place in poetry, namechecking both Ovid and Greil Marcus; a somewhat longer report on Dylan's first visit to Stockholm in 1966 as the first stop on his European tour (y'know, "JUDAS!") and the baffled reactions of journalists and critics at the time; and finally the hows and whys of the actual Nobel announcement, aftermath, and the private award ceremony.

The last bit is definitely the most interesting, but even that seems slight. Danius grumbles about being misquoted in the media, about Beckett taking his sweet time to acknowledge the award too, and about how it was no big deal that it took 12 days to get an actual phone conversation with Dylan where he apparently was very gracious and humbled. Then the actual award ceremony, where the Academy got to meet Dylan shortly before a gig, and Danius' lasting memory is that Dylan was very shy and uncomfortable around people, that he wore handmade shoes (which, arguably, would only have been notable if that had been ALL he wore), and that she for some reason had to inform Dylan that Academy member Klas Östergren is "a real cool guy". And that's basically it.

Östergren's breakthrough novel Gentlemen starts off with the narrator going to see Dylan in 1978. Presumably this was a big deal for him.

On Bob Dylan is... well, slight. There have been a lot better books written on Dylan's works, however you want to categorize them, and to the extent that Danius is well-versed in them, it barely shows. But there is a charming simplicity to her description of those weird weeks surrounding Dylan's prize - that to someone who's worked with excentric authors since she was literally in her mother's womb, you can't expect everyone to be a sharp, media-trained Professional Celebrity when they've spent 60 years trying on different masks on the run. Let the artist be the artist. Whether or not I agree with her, the book - like the award itself - is what it is.