DYLAN WINS
NOBEL PRIZE

Bob Dylan was named this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature recipient today for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” He is the first American in 23 years to win the prize from the Swedish Academy.

Now 75, Dylan has long been mentioned as an outside candidate for the prize, which generally goes to novelists, playwrights, biographers and poets. The last American to receive the honor was Toni Morrison.

"If you look back, far back, 2,500 years or so, you discover Homer and Sappho and they wrote poetic texts that were meant to be listened to, that were meant to be performed, often with instruments—and it's the same way with Bob Dylan," the Swedish Academy's permanent secretary Sara Danius said.

Salman Rushdie was among the literary types to promptly salute the choice. “From Orpheus to Faiz, song & poetry have been closely linked. Dylan is the brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition. Great choice,” he tweeted.

The singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock tweeted, “Congratulations to Bob Dylan on the Nobel Prize for Literature. He launched me and many others on oceans of which we'd never dreamed...”