[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.

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.

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 on the page but soars in song.

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 surely his [Bob Dylan] due.

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

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, doesn't need the Nobel committee to damn it with the faint praise of such an award to its sole chosen representative.

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 if they are afflicted with the kind of contrarianism inevitably bred by cultural orthodoxy - Dylan is overwhelmingly rated a giant and a marvel, the acclamation of whom they feel to be de rigueur; and rather than judge for themselves, they embrace the opposite view.