Onofframp: Elliptical Orbits

The news is now over a week old that Bob Dylan has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Dylan, being Dylan has only just now acknowledged that he's received the award, and is not yet committing to telling anyone he'll be at the award ceremony in Sweden.

Despite never being a huge Dylan fan, even though nearly contemporary in age, I do have to say I'm excited. Someone I'm familiar with won the prize, and it's someone I've come to certainly like more than when he first started. The saying is right: stick around long enough and you gain respect.

I never really liked the people who liked Bob Dylan when he started to come to fame in the 60s. I was not a protester, and I was not a disaffected teenager full of angst and rage, even though I was very eligible for the draft.

I find it incredibly ironic that back then I liked Frank Sinatra, (still do) and that Dylan now puts out a CD of Frank Sinatra songs. It's almost as if we've been traveling through the same ozone layer in elliptical orbits, only just now converging as we have each passed the Medicare milestone, and then some.

In several papers reporters wrote about the news of the October 13th announcement and offered some background and analysis of his work, and why it might fit under the Swedish Academy's now stretched definition of literature. It is exciting to have a near-contemporary and an American now be awarded the prize. It is someone I've heard of, and whose records I have some of.

Reading all the accounts and analyses I was struck that no one reiterated what I thought was gospel, that Robert Zimmerman named himself Bob Dylan in recognition of the poet Dylan Thomas, the great Welsh poet who basically drank himself to death, and died in 1953. Dylan Thomas's works were cascading waterfalls of words, much like Zimmerman's, so I always believed in the association.

One of the two NYT reporters who I wrote to about what I thought was a major omission sent me a link to a refutation that Dylan made that he didn't choose the name Dylan based on the Welsh poet, despite the similarities in spelling. Bob Dylan claimed not to have even read much Dylan Thomas. He claims the name came from his mother's maiden name, which is not Dillon, or, it came from Marshall Dillion on the show 'Gunsmoke.' I wrote back that of course, Dylan's being Dylan.

The "Dylan being Dylan" is pretty much the reaction to his so far ignoring the Swedish Academy's award, and not yet getting in touch with them that he plans to attend the award ceremony on December 10. Or not attend. What he hasn't said is that he is going to refuse the prize. So, he probably isn't going to.

This year's ceremony will be the 120th anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death. Alfred Nobel, noted most famously for inventing dynamite, was also a noted philanthropist. You'd have to say, that's one explosive that keeps on giving and giving.

The Swedish Academy, for the most part, has taken a rather sanguine view of the lack of response. Except for one member who spoke for themselves and called Dylan "impolite and arrogant," the Academy has stated that attendance is not required for the recognition. And, given that there are 1,300 people in attendance at the ward banquet, it is quite understandable that Mr. Dylan might not feel too comfortable in the company of that many people who didn't come to hear him perform. He has always been publicity shy and somewhat of a recluse. Just not as bad as J.D. Salinger.

Bob Dylan of course is not the only one who can be cryptic. Don McLean's famous love song to Buddy Holly, wrapped in an elegy to his rock and roll, 'American Pie,' refers to Bob Dylan several times, once as the "jester who sang for the king and queen, in a coat he borrowed from James Dean." Again, "while the king (Elvis) was looking down, the jester stole his thorny crown." And finally, in recognition of Dylan's motorcycle accident, "with the jester on the sidelines in a cast."

Rosanne Cash, in her NYPL interview with Paul Holdengraber in April acknowledged that Dylan was who made it possible for all the singer/songwriter's who have come after him.

We're in the process of painting the living room in advance of new carpeting. Anyone who has done this for themselves will no doubt share the experience of the unexpected things you find when you move furniture around. At least a dozen catnip toys that went under the furniture have been recovered and discarded.

Not discarded is the LP that fell behind a stereo cabinet of Richard Burton reading 15 poems of Dylan Thomas.