David Lang won too, he is incredible, he composed Elevated, the piece that was performed at Bang on A can last year, the one where there were old NYC movies in the back.

why is he so awesome?

why is bob dylan so awesome?

what the fuck - i knew this blog was culturally nearsighted, but my god, we can't even agree that bob fucking dylan "kills/killed it"

i'm pretty sure 12:42 agrees that dylan is awesome... if i'm wrong then he or she is indeed a fool

David Lang kills.

Dan Deacon > Bob Dylan

what time does Daft Punk win a Pulitzer?

I read "Why is he so awesome?" to be "How is possible for one man to be that awesome?"

Maybe I just read into it that way because everybody loves Bob Dylan, but it would have never occurred to me that that person was bashing him if it wasn't for the following comment.

that's ma nigga Bob Dylan, getting a Pulitzer and shit.

daft punk won a pulitzer for amazing advances in the field of robot engineering, like, 900 years in the future.

i guess you guys aren't able to transcend the space/time continuum. bummer.

Culture War officially over.
Everyone lost.

he should have turned it down like sinclair lewis did. then he'd be even more awesome.

Sirs:--I wish to acknowledge your choice of my novel Arrowsmith for the Pulitzer Prize. That prize I must refuse, and my refusal would be meaningless unless I explained the reasons.

All prizes, like all titles, are dangerous. The seekers for prizes tend to labor not for inherent excellence but for alien rewards: they tend to write this, or timorously to avoid writing that, in order to tickle the prejudices of a haphazard committee. And the Pulitzer Prize for novels is peculiarly objectionable because the terms of it have been constantly and grievously misrepresented.

Those terms are that the prize shall be given "for the American novel published during the year which shall best present the wholesome atmosphere of American life, and the highest standard of American manners and manhood." This phrase, if it means anything whatever, would appear to mean that the appraisal of the novels shall be made not according to their actual literary merit but in obedience to whatever code of Good Form may chance to be popular at the moment.

That there is such a limitation of the award is little understood. Because of the condensed manner in which the announcement is usually reported, and because certain publishers have trumpeted that any novel which has received the Pulitzer Prize has thus been established without qualification as the best novel, the public has come to believe that the prize is the highest honor which an American novelist can receive.

The Pulitzer Prize for novels signifies, already, much more than a convenient thousand dollars to be accepted even by such writers as smile secretly at the actual wording of the terms. It is tending to become a sanctified tradition. There is a general belief that the administrators of the prize are a pontifical body with the discern­ment and power to grant the prize as the ultimate proof of merit. It is believed that they are always guided by a committee of responsible critics, though in the case both of this and other Pulitzer Prizes, the administrators can, and sometimes do, quite arbitrarily reject the recommendations of their supposed advisers.

If already the Pulitzer Prize is so important, it is not absurd to suggest that in another generation it may, with the actual terms of the award ignored, become the one thing for which any am­bitious novelist will strive; and the administrators of the prize may become a supreme court, a college of cardinals, so rooted and so sacred that to challenge them will be to commit blasphemy. Such is the French Academy, and we have had the spectacle of even an Anatole France intriguing for election.

Only by regularly refusing the Pulitzer Prize can novelists keep such a power from being permanently set up over them.

Between the Pulitzer Prizes, the American Academy of Arts and Letters and its training-school, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, amateur boards of censorship, and the inquisi­tion of earnest literary ladies, every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I de­clined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize.

I invite other writers to consider the fact that by accepting the prizes and approval of these vague institutions we are admitting their authority, publicly confirming them as the final judges of literary excellence, and I inquire whether any prize is worth that subservience.

I am, Sirs,

Yours sincerely,

Sinclair Lewis

sinclair lewis is in aerosmith?

BOB FUCKING DYLAN IS OUR MUSICAL SHAKESPEARE. OUR EARTH WILL BE LESSENED BY HIS PASSING AWAY

I WILL SURVIVE

you will survive, but you will be the lesser for it.

DAFT PUNK!

I was totally taken aback by this announcement regarding Dylan and Pulitzer. But certainly well deserved.

I don't know if you were reporting on the news (and good news it is) or are actually a fan, but if you are then I thought I'd introduce you to my new novel, BLOOD ON THE TRACKS, which I think you'd enjoy.

It's a murder-mystery. But not just any rock superstar is knocking on heaven's door. The murdered rock legend is none other than Bob Dorian, an enigmatic, obtuse, inscrutable, well, you get the picture...

Suspects? Tons of them. The only problem is they're all characters in Bob's songs.

You can get a copy on Amazon.com or go "behind the tracks" at www.bloodonthetracksnovel.com to learn more about the book.