The internet is abuzz with the news of Bob Dylan's Nobel prize win, but the award has
already become controversial for the fact that one the world's most prestigious literary
honors has been given to a singer-songwriter instead of a novelist.
The Swedish Academy's citation said Dylan deserves the award "for having created new
poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."
Critic Stephen Metcalf of Slate praised Dylan as a genius, but says he does not think that
a musician should have been awarded the highest prize in literature.
Metcalf says a literary prize should not go to an economist or a political saint -- and
it should not go to Dylan.
Others disagree, with Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone writing that "He won for inventing ways
to make songs do what they hadn't done before."