As of press time, there was one thing that nearly everybody in America knew and another that only one person did.
What everybody knew was that the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to an American-born Jewish singer-songwriter, memoirist, poet and occasional filmmaker who has served as the voice of his era. What only one person knew was whether Bob Dylan would actually show up in Stockholm on December 10 to accept that honor
Dylan’s only response has been to tell a reporter from the Daily Telegraph that he’ll be there “if it’s at all possible.” Whether that’s a sign of reluctance or “rudeness,” as one member of the Nobel academy put it, this mystery is consistent with the gnomic image of the Hibbing, Minnesota-born Mr. Dylan, née Zimmerman, who has both embraced and shunned the spotlight during a career that has spanned 37 albums, a protest-singer phase, an electric phase, a country phase, a born-again gospel phase, a born-again Lubavitch phase, an Internet radio host phrase, a Frank Sinatra phase, and garnered such honors as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, 12 Grammy Awards, one Emmy Award, one Golden Globe Award, and now, the Nobel.
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