The first musician to ever receive the Nobel Prize in literature was serene and composed as he took to the stage on his first concert after winning the coveted prize, barely speaking to the audience during the show, reports the Guardian.
Besides being the first musician to receive the award in the field of literature, Dylan is also the first American to win it after novelist Toni Morrison of the Song of Solomon and Beloved who won the prize back in 1993.
Not everyone approved of Dylan winning the prize. Lebanese novelist Rabih Alameddine tweeted that “Bob Dylan winning a Nobel in Literature is like Mrs Fields being awarded 3 Michelin stars,” adding: “This is almost as silly as Winston Churchill,” referring to the literature award given to Britain's wartime prime minister in 1953.
“Basically, if I wanted to give Nobel Prize in Literature to a poet, I'd give it to a poet, Alameddine added later. “And I do think Dylan is a wonderful songwriter.”
Outside the Chelsea theatre, fans lined up to see their Nobel-winning hero sing.
Corey Wright, a Dylan fan since 1965, was seeing him play live for the first time. Wright said: “The message he gives in the songs, the young people related to it, especially with the Vietnam war.”
“Dylan had a real rapport with the youth,” Wright added as he said he still listens to Dylan everyday.
Ron Morgan, from Benton, Kentucky, first heard Dylan way back in 1961, but admitted he could not remember more in details. “I was drunk,” he told the Guardian. In reply to when asked what Dylan's music meant to him today, he chuckled: “It takes me back to 1961.”
“Besides, you don't get to hear a Nobel Prize winner [sing] very often.”
Thursday, June 04, 2026
