So we now live in a post-Dylan world, a world where Bob Dylan won literature’s highest award. Maybe Buchi Emecheta didn’t do enough Chrysler commercials? Read Björn’s excellent appreciation if you want to see why Dylan might have won it. The overwhelming whiteness of Mr. Zimmermann might have contributed (or else, why not award Caetano Veloso, who truly revolutionized a country’s music, who was jailed, exiled and is still a respected voice in the political conversation of his country. Read his excellent memoir for details), it wouldn’t have been the first time. After all, the last black winner of the Nobel Prize was Toni Morrison, and the last black African winner was Wole Soyinka. The last winner for engaging with oral tradition was Dario Fo, a writer, like Veloso, who was politically active, powerful and a significant voice. Fo died the day of the award, and one wonders how soon after his burial he started spinning in his grave*. Anyway. Because I’m probably not doing the Nobel Picks next year (here is this year’s edition), given that WHO KNOWS what Danius and company will do next, here are already my picks. As Björn has pointed out – with this award, how can the Academy refuse an award to any art form that involves writing of some kind? The picks are all excellent artists who, in a post-Dylan world, might receive the award, which should more honestly be called The Nobel Prize for Writing Things.
1. Michael Haneke. Haneke, narrowly beating out Tarantino and Malick, is cinema’s best living writer-director. You could argue this with me but you’d be wrong. Sure, there are others, but Haneke’s movies are finely crafted, complex, brilliant pieces of writing, politically, emotionally, philosophically resonant. They don’t hold up on the page, because they are written by one of the finest living cinematic minds, with the cinematic resolution in mind, but neither do Dylan’s songs, so that’s clearly not a criterion.
2. William Michael Griffin, Jr., better known under his stage name Rakim. So there is some argument that Dylan invented something truly novel in the American tradition, but no new musical invention has been as transformative as rap, which allowed black artists to fully reap the fruits of their own musical inventions. Rakim’s work with the art form is historically significant: he is something of a link between the classic beginnings and the more fluid, broadly skilled shape of the art form today. Rakim’s influence on the shape of rap – and the shape of music in general cannot be overstated. It would have been silly to give the award to any musician, but Rakim would have been a better, more interesting choice than Bob Dylan. In the post-Dylan years to come, when the academy looks for worthy candidates, Rakim should be hard to overlook, although, with black candidates, the Academy has a history of being truly, uniquely, dazzlingly talented at overlooking black people. So who knows
3. Goichi Suda, better known as Suda51. Suda51 is a video game creator of genius. A true master of the art. In a post-Dylan world, it would be stupid to overlook video game writing, as this art form will be one of the most valuable and important contributions to the creative arts in the near future. Jesse Singal recently wrote about how video game writing appears to be graded on a curve, and he’s not wrong. However, the achievements of the greats of the genre, though you couldn’t really print them, are standout achievements. They are made with the medium in mind -there is no way to pin Suda51’s creative energies to the printed page. But the Nobel Prize in Writing Things has liberated itself from mere books. Suda51, however, is very young, despite the size and excellence of his work. He has also not been as influential on the genre as some older writers. Tim Schafer, creator of Grim Fandango and Psychonauts is brilliant and influential, as is Sid Meier, inventor of Civilization, not to forget Ron Gilbert, who was involved in the creation not just of some of the most important adventure games (Secret of Monkey Island, Zak McKracken) but also scripted the software that was used for many of them. I picked Suda51 because I think he is one of the most brilliant people working in video games, period, a creator of lesser influence but more genius than any other creator I mentioned here.
4. Should Coding count as writing? Because, really, if we’re past the event horizon here, why not? I honestly see no reason why not. So as choice #4 I propose Linus Torvalds. It would give the Swedish minority in Finland a Nobel Prize, which is politically interesting, and would stress the global nature of the Nobel Prize in Writing Things. It would also award the prize to yet another white Western man, which, I mean, clearly, is a priority for this generation of the academy. This is what I think went down last year when they postponed the award:
“Oh God I think we have to give it to Ngugi this year.” “Really?” “Yeah I see no way out. Or do you want to give it to that Syrian fellow? We have enough refugees in Sweden as is!” “Shit.” “OH OH Hang on! Dylan!” “What?” “Yeah, let’s give it to Dylan, it’ll make us look unconventional and look how white he is! He’s even wearing a Clark Gable mustache!”
Jokes aside, apart from luminaries like Jean Sammet (ETA: she died in the meantime.), Torvald’s achievement is truly remarkable and hard to ignore when you hand out the Nobel Prize in Writing Things. In an interview with tech crunch, Torvalds said that most of his work today involves integrating other people’s code, and only 2% of the Linux kernel was written by him personally (which, snark aside, is actually quite a lot), so he’s a truly worthy successor to Bob Dylan.
Looking forward to a bright and lovely future for the Nobel Prize in Writing Things, kind of.
*Yes, yes, I know Fo was actually a supporter of the award going to Dylan. Though I wonder how much of this was a rhetorical stance targeted at an institution, and how much of it a literary appreciation.
ETA: But of course.
shigekuni. 