But this post is not about Dylan. It is about the way journalists react to such news.
FLASHBACK. October 2013. The journalists were outraged because Morrissey's „Autobiography” was published by Penguin Modern Classics. They were trully upset about Penguin Books’ choice to release it as a Penguin Classic. That’s the imprint reserved for classic classics, such as Tolstoy or Voltaire or Virginia Woolf or Albert Camus. But not for Morrissey! No way! I remember an article published by Boyd Tonkin of The Independent, with the headline “Morrissey gets what he wants, and Penguin Classics sinks in the Ship Canal”. Tonkin says the publisher has chucked “67 years of editorial rigour and learning out of the corporate window” just to “kowtow to the whims of a petulant pop icon”. Then, Brendan O’Neil of The Telegraph said that Penguin has “destroyed its own reputation”. And these are just a few examples.
BACK IN OCTOBER 2016. Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize For Literature. Though 3 years ago almost all the journalists agreed that Morrissey is not fit to be a „classic”, today the same journalists see Dylan fit for the Nobel Prize. So, it is ok for Dylan to be in the same „boat” with George Bernard Shaw, Jean-Paul Sartre, Rudyard Kipling and William Butler Yeats, but it is the end of the world if Morrissey is published by Penguin Modern Classics.
I think the right word for all this is: hypocrisy.
If anyone can explain to me how does the brain of the journalist work, I'd be grateful! Thank you!
Related articles:
Books to read in 2016: Morrissey - „List Of The Lost”
My first Morrissey concert: Bucharest (14.10.2015)
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