We’re also celebrating Dylan’s epic resilience. We live in times where everyone jostles for attention, for approval, for applause. Conversely, Dylan’s attitude of supreme indifference to the press, or to public opinion, or even towards the Nobel prize committee, seems somehow stirring, comforting almost. It’s not so much that he annoys his critics every few years, it’s more that he simply doesn’t think about them. He follows his muse. Down the decades he has been Little Richard electric, Woodie Guthrie folk, his own folk, his own electric, imperious, stoned, quasi-biblical, country, crooning, pastoral, comeback, Gypsy, despairing, Christian, biblical-biblical, Jewish, nowhere, drunk, back again, lost, finger-picking, back again, mighty and unbowed, Santa, Sinatra, and at the last … transcendent. And you feel when you listen to his work as though you are partaking in some part of his extraordinary endurance. Like he’s sharing some form of heroic tenacity or stoicism. Quite literally, you are given strength.
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