The news that Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his songwriting (only a few years after Evil Editor won the same prize for my blogging), has me wondering if there might be Nobel Prizes in the futures of other authors of less-conventional works. For instance, Victor Mizzy, composer of the theme songs of both The Addams Family and Green Acres. Who doesn't get one of those running through their head at least once a week? Which is a lot more often than I think about anything by John Steinbeck.
What about commercial jingles? A lot of famous musicians have written commercial jingles, including Barry Manilow, Randy Newman, and The Rolling Stones, but the Nobel Prize would have to go to Richard Trentlage for the Oscar Mayer Wiener Song. Trentlage's body of work also includes the Buckle Up for Safety jingle.
I, myself, produced a line of greeting cards that would probably be worthy of a Nobel, though I don't think they give them to people who already have them:
I'm rightfully proud of some of my tweets, and in this day of short attention spans, it could be argued that tweets are to novels as haiku are to epic poems. In other words, Nobel Prize-worthy. Just look at these excerpts from my book The History of the World in Tweets, and tell me I don't deserve another Nobel:
1809: Embargo Act of 1807 repealed in the US; the Non-Intercourse Act replaces it. Name is quickly changed to quell mass rioting.
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1814: USS Enterprise reaches Wilmington, North Carolina. Must have been one of those time travel episodes.
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1818: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein published. Anonymously, as female authors were often attacked by mobs with torches and pitchforks.
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1821: Astronomer Alexis Bouvard detects irregularities in orbit of Uranus. Hey, anytime there's irregularity in Uranus, it needs to be looked into.
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1831: Charles Darwin embarks on historic voyage aboard HMS Beagle. But only after asking God not to create a sea monster that sinks him.
Other writing forms that will one day be Nobel-worthy:
Billboards.
Bumper stickers.
Signs held up by football fans.
Tattoos.
5 comments:
Since no one can understand what Dylan is saying anyway, they gave it to him on the off chance that something profound was mumbled out.
Instruction manuals...now THERE's an under-appreciated category worthy of Nobel consideration. Particularly if written by in a language that was not the writer's native tongue (which demonstrates a very creative use of words... I'd go so far as to label many of them poetry).
Bob Dylan's body of work already covers instruction manuals. Perhaps instructions manuals that require at least three tools a common household might have in the kitchen junk drawer. I'm with you. We'll get Sweden on the phone (and we know who is going to win that one.)
As indicated in comment #1 Dylan now lives in the effects of the long term dumbing down process. What he says is as clear as a bell, and if it is not understood in these "rarified" circles it is merely a commentary regarding how every ass now writes, edits, and reviews books.
I don't give a flyin' about whether he accepts it or not. I think he'll show up and make a five minute sarcastic speech to get the $900,000 check; goofing on everyone.
Instruction manuals aren't his competition. They are that of moronic indie writers.
Obviously, the literary mavens have not yet discovered that the source of their derision, mirth, and dissatisfaction lies with the Nobel commission; not Bob.
Another censored post. I really just wanted EE to know that he-she or zie is just a low grade proof that; "From the fool's golden mouthpiece, the hollow horn plays wasted words, prove to warn, that he not busy being born is busy dying."
Look it up in your Funk and Wagnall's and stick it up your bumper.
It's never pretty when someone with no sense of humor accidentally finds himself on a humor site.
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