Inspiration for this blogging project, which will involve listening chronologically to all 38 of Bob Dylan's studio albums during 2017 (at a rate of approx. 3 per month), came via two sources in 2016. First was the realisation last summer (while studying Shakespeare and writing this other blog) that Dylan's output in terms of studio albums matches almost identically with the number of plays that Shakespeare wrote or co-wrote during his lifetime (commonly accepted to be 37, or arguably 38 including Two Noble Kinsmen, or even 40 including the two lost plays, Cardenio and Love Labour's Won). I tend to favour the view of Shakespeare expert Jonathan Bate that those who like to argue that Shakespeare couldn't have physically written all those plays are either suffering from artistic envy or are just crackpot conspiracy theorists.
The other inspiration was Dylan winning the Nobel Prize in 2016 and the realisation that – in a year when great musicians like Bowie, Prince and Cohen all passed away – the greatest songwriter of them all might not be around for much longer. In his Nobel Prize banquet speech, Dylan actually referenced the Bard in a very thoughtful passage: "I was out on the road when I received this surprising news, and it took me more than a few minutes to properly process it. I began to think about William Shakespeare, the great literary figure. I would reckon he thought of himself as a dramatist. The thought that he was writing literature couldn't have entered his head. His words were written for the stage. Meant to be spoken not read. When he was writing Hamlet, I'm sure he was thinking about a lot of different things: "Who're the right actors for these roles?" "How should this be staged?" "Do I really want to set this in Denmark?" His creative vision and ambitions were no doubt at the forefront of his mind, but there were also more mundane matters to consider and deal with. "Is the financing in place?" "Are there enough good seats for my patrons?" "Where am I going to get a human skull?" I would bet that the farthest thing from Shakespeare's mind was the question "Is this literature?"
Like Shakespeare and James Joyce, one of the greatest accolades you can give to Dylan is that he changed the English language we all speak, coining a wide variety of phrases and lyrics that are part of common usage today, so for me he's unquestionably worthy of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The other inspiration was Dylan winning the Nobel Prize in 2016 and the realisation that – in a year when great musicians like Bowie, Prince and Cohen all passed away – the greatest songwriter of them all might not be around for much longer. In his Nobel Prize banquet speech, Dylan actually referenced the Bard in a very thoughtful passage: "I was out on the road when I received this surprising news, and it took me more than a few minutes to properly process it. I began to think about William Shakespeare, the great literary figure. I would reckon he thought of himself as a dramatist. The thought that he was writing literature couldn't have entered his head. His words were written for the stage. Meant to be spoken not read. When he was writing Hamlet, I'm sure he was thinking about a lot of different things: "Who're the right actors for these roles?" "How should this be staged?" "Do I really want to set this in Denmark?" His creative vision and ambitions were no doubt at the forefront of his mind, but there were also more mundane matters to consider and deal with. "Is the financing in place?" "Are there enough good seats for my patrons?" "Where am I going to get a human skull?" I would bet that the farthest thing from Shakespeare's mind was the question "Is this literature?"
Like Shakespeare and James Joyce, one of the greatest accolades you can give to Dylan is that he changed the English language we all speak, coining a wide variety of phrases and lyrics that are part of common usage today, so for me he's unquestionably worthy of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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