From a CNN piece on the Pulitzer announcements, which includes this about Bob:
Long after most of his contemporaries either died, left the business or held on by the ties of nostalgia, Dylan continues to tour almost continuously and release highly regarded CDs, most recently "Modern Times." Fans, critics and academics have obsessed over his lyrics -- even digging through his garbage for clues -- since the mid-1960s, when such protest anthems as "Blowin' in the Wind" made Dylan a poet and prophet for a rebellious generation.
His songs include countless biblical references and he has claimed Chekhov, Walt Whitman and Jack Kerouac as influences. His memoir, "Chronicles, Volume One," received a National Book Critics Circle nomination in 2005 and is widely acknowledged as the rare celebrity book that can be treated as literature.
According to publisher Simon & Schuster, Dylan is working on a second volume of memoirs. No release date has been set.
Why reporters persist with that "prophet for a rebellious generation" nonsense I don't know. Maybe it's to put the guy in a box with a label. Of course, he is not the corporate guy in the grey flannel suit, but if that's rebellious, then bring it on.
I'd call him a prodigious and ambitiously truth-telling singer-songwriter whose work, over 45 years, covers everything from love to God to war, from joy to despair, and which borrows - or steals - heavily from the Great American Songbook using folk, blues, country blues, country, ditties, jazz, nursery rhymes, rock, and love ballads...not to mention the Great Irish and Great Scottish Songbooks - and from movies, books, and especially from the Bible.
Many folks don't seem to realize that most of Dylan's best stuff is post-60s. We do get a kick out of olde Maggie's Farm though, because all of us have learned to dislike working for other people (what's with the headdresses? Pure loony frivolity, methinks):
