Bobbing for prizes

Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize in literature. I have so many thoughts about this. No, well, actually they are all the same thought: What. The. Fuck.

In a way, itโ€™s perfect because Dylan is the archetypal American: half-talented, fairly boring, emblematic of a bygone age never to return, and arrogant but at the same time not all that good.

If they had to choose an American, Iโ€™d recommend Kelly Link. Her stories are some phantasmagorical blend of Shirley Jackson, Flannery Oโ€™Connor, Edgar Alan Poe and Jorge Luis Borges.

I know, I know โ€” the Nobel Prize committee would never choose anyone who is associated with any โ€œgenreโ€ works so strongly as Link (though they did choose Doris Lessing), but Kelly Link is the best American author qua author that I know now writing โ€” her stories are haunting, evocative, thoughtful and never take a false step.

Bob Dylan. What a putz.