The Pulitzer prize, an award that usually focuses on print journalism, has been given to music icon and legend Bob Dylan.
On Monday, April 7, the Pulitzer board announced that Dylan was honored with the special citation for his “profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power,” the board said.
Pulitzer judges have long favored classical musicians and other more erudite efforts than songwriting; Dylan is the only living musician and the first rock musician ever to receive the prestigious award. He does, however, follow in the footsteps of legendary jazz musicians Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, who were given awards posthumously, in 2006 and 2007.
Dylan has claimed Chekhov, Walt Whitman and Jack Kerouac as influences. His memoir, “Chronicles, Volume One,” received a National Book Critics Circle nomination in 2005. According to publisher Simon & Schuster, Dylan is working on a second volume of memoirs. No release date has been set.
According to an article in The Huffington Post, other nominees were thrilled to be awarded their Pulitzers alongside Dylan. Juno Diaz admitted, “Bob Dylan was a problem for me. I had one part [in my book] that was 40 pages long, the entire chapter was organized around Bob Dylan’s lyrics over a two year-period (1967-69). By the end of it, I wanted to throttle my like of Bob Dylan.”
Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, a story of desire, politics and violence among Dominicans at home and in the United States, won the fiction prize.