[lit-ideas] Re: Dylan's Implicature
- From: "Donal McEvoy" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "donalmcevoyuk" for DMARC)
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2016 22:38:55 +0000 (UTC)
So I would suggest that while Dylan is explicit (rather than implicatural)
about he never once have had "the time to ask" himself (ii) -- never mind
answering it! -- it is less clear that the committee did take the time. It
seems that the if (ii) "Is the Pope Catholic?" is used to mean "Next.,"
similarly, (iii) "Are Dylan's songs literature?" -- and notably its
affirmative answer -- was taken for GRANTED by the committee.>
It's amazing how many posts I write when avoiding other work, but it seems to
me Dylan neatly side-steps whether the Nobel Committee pondered, debated, or
took for granted that his work was literature - by awarding him a Nobel Prize
for Literature they answered whether his work was literature, without answering
what was the basis for this answer beyond "having created new poetic
expressions within the great American song tradition", which some would say is
no proper basis at all.
Personally, I think the award merited and that almost the only sustainable
objection to giving it to Dylan is that his work is not "literature" - that is,
if it is literature then he's produced enough of such quality to merit the
prize. The objection that it is not "literature" can really only be sustained
by adopting a narrow criterion of literature - but this surely went out the
window with the Committee when Churchill got the award, and even when Russell
did. Most of the people who object to Dylan getting the prize don't really
understand his work or its achievement using words.
Having watched a documentary on Leonard Cohen, it seems obvious to me that
Dylan at his best has achieved much more, even if Cohen's is a more perfected
kind of writing. Dylan would never write "the sun poured down like honey on Our
Lady of the Harbour" (and would be right not to, except in a way where its
banality was undercut); while Dylan might write that love was learning "how to
shoot at someone who outdrew you" this would be lesser Dylan unless in some
context that lifted it from facile cleverness. When Dylan writes something like
"Simple Twist Of Fate" the point of the song - made clear in his recorded
version - is that he is processing some real experience and pain by creating a
neat compressed fiction. It's the truth of that process - as a reflection of
how bitter-sweet romantic experiences get processed and retold - that raises
the song, which appears otherwise mostly an abject set of sub-cinematic cliches
["They sat together in the park/They sat together after dark/ She looked at
him/He looked at her/They felt a spark" - euugh, even Paul McCartney would
scrap that for tweeness]. Part of that kind of song is that it is not bothered
with word perfection and will trade in cliche and clumsiness - it's not even
bothered what you think of it, it's there as balm to the afflicted who wrote
it. There's high art in this.
[This is not an attack on the merits of Cohen: and there are ways Cohen would
have an advantage - if Cohen wrote and sang "No Time To Think" it could be
quite fun whereas with Dylan its litany is close to witless, musically and
lyrically; Cohen could have done a great version of "Lenny Bruce" but Dylan
would probably slaughter "Hallelujah"; but Cohen could not bring what Dylan
brings to a host of very different songs "Thunder On The Mountain", "'Cross The
Green Mountain" "My Mountain's Got A Hole In It"]. Mike once said that Dylan is
like sex in that even bad Dylan is still good: certainly even bad Dylan holds a
kind of fascination that is not true of bad Billy Joel or bad Paul McCartney.
Dylan has gone of a trajectory where his songwriting is word perfect for most
of the sixties but becomes something rougher-hewn much of the time thereafter -
often deliberately and purposefully so - then returns to a level of word
perfect for "Time Out Of Mind" "'Love and Theft'" and "Modern Times", but with
the rider that the perfect words are now often a reworking or direct lifting of
someone else's. It works though and is thoroughly Dylan. "Nettie Moore" is a
song of genius - and no one really compares or has this level of facility.
Wow. I really do want to avoid that other work.
DL
From: "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sunday, 11 December 2016, 21:24
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Dylan's Implicature
It's all in the italics, as it were: _literature_ vs. literature.
McEvoy writes:
"From the site referenced by Torgeir: "Not once have I [as Shakespeare never
either] ever had the time to ask myself, "Are my songs literature?" [Or
Shakespeare's "Hamlet" -- we having our mundane tasks to mind]. So, I do thank
the Swedish Academy, both for taking the time to considerthat very question,
and, ultimately, for providing such a wonderful answer." The emphasis, missing
from [Speranza's plain-text] version, may be important to the _sense_ [or
implicature -- Speranza] here. ... Dylan treds a very Dylan line. I think an
implication [or implicature? -- Speranza] of that line is that maybe the issue
of whether or not his songs are "literature" is, in many ways, not very
important - even though on this occasion he finds the positive answer given
wonderful."
Aha. Let's consider the issue (or question) propositionally:
McEvoy, slightly rephrasing the McEvoy's words in Dylan's first person: "Maybe
the issue [or question as to] whether ["or not" -- as McEvoy adds, perhaps
otiosely -- but cfr. critiques of Aristotle's tertium exclusum] my songs are
_literature_ is not important."
This reminds me again of Dodgson:
i. Important, unimportant, important -- The King of Hearts.
Another implication of that line maybe that Dylan read, or was referred to,
certain pieces written or spread after the award was announced. The NYT boldly
stressed that this gave a new 'conceptual analysis' to "literature," as it were
-- and those who opposed the committee were considered to be acting in an
uglily reactionary way. Consider:
ii. Is the Pope Catholic?
That's another "question". Is Dylan implicating that the committee actually
faced itself with the question:
iii. Are my songs _literature_?
Indeed, Dylan's implicature seems to be that he don't [sic] care [much, if you
must]. But questions usually arise in the context -- of something -- or
'presupposition', alla Collingwood, as Helm might prefer. And it seems that the
question WAS posed after Dylan's being nominated. A conceptual analyst alla
Grice would possibly take "_literature_" (for surely it's the CONCEPT of
literature which is at stake, figuratively) seriously. Do we have necessary and
sufficient conditions for the analysis of the concept? Does the committee need
to? It's not a committee of Griceians, after all. So I would suggest that while
Dylan is explicit (rather than implicatural) about he never once have had "the
time to ask" himself (ii) -- never mind answering it! -- it is less clear that
the committee did take the time. It seems that the if (ii) "Is the Pope
Catholic?" is used to mean "Next.," similarly, (iii) "Are Dylan's songs
literature?" -- and notably its affirmative answer -- was taken for GRANTED by
the committee. When the Queen knights someone, as she once knighted Strawson,
she has to justify that, "services to the philosophical profession," say. The
committee in Dylan's case was clear. He is awarded the prize of literature
"for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song
tradition."
So it seems in that justification, both the question and its affirmative answer
("Are my songs _literature_?") is PRESUPPOSED, rather than implicated, implied,
entailed, or what have you. Or not of course!
McEvoy is right too that
iv. Dylan's reference to Pearl Buck is important.
She was the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature -- and
allows Dylan a nice turn of phrase when he uses "men and women": "I don't know
if these men and women ever thought of the Nobel honour for themselves" -- or
'their selves,' as the vernacular goes.
Etc.
Cheers,
Speranza
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