"...many a year has passed and gone and many a gamble has been lost and won..."

The Guardian reports today that the "Nobel Prize odds a-changin' for Bob Dylan", with the chances of his winning the Nobel Prize for Literature dropping dramatically from 100-1 to 10-1. Bettors generally know more than I do, after all they're risking actual pounds sterling. I assume they received some sort of information from shady Scandinavian sources before rushing to their local betting shops.

I've tweeted on a number of occasions that I think this prize should go to Philip Roth, but I might -- no, I would -- be even more excited if Bob Dylan were recognized. His words and music have been part of the fabric of my life for more than forty years.

Here's a song of his that you may or may not know well, but which shows why Bob might deserve more than Grammys and Oscars. In Dylan's Visions of Sin, Christopher Ricks (also the author of books on Keats and Tennyson and editor of the most recent edition of the Oxford Book of English Verse) spends 15 pages comparing Dylan's "Not Dark Yet" to Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale". Hear the similarities?



Good Luck Bob!

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UPDATE October 5 @ 9:45am EST:
The Guardian is now reporting that Bob is the favorite to win the Literature Nobel in the UK betting shops, with odds of 5/1!
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UPDATE October 6 @ 8:00am EST:
The award from the Swedish Academy went this year to the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer.