Let’s Interpret the Lack of a Nobel Prize for Literature this Year as a Tribute to Leonard Cohen

While We're At It, Could Someone Bring a Trust Enforcement Action Against the Nobel Committee?

When the Swedish Academy announced on Friday, May 4, that there would be no Nobel Prize for literature awarded this year, it struck me that an entire 18 months had gone by since we lost Leonard Cohen. I rejoiced in Dylan’s receipt of the Prize in 2016 (for his songs of rebellion and romanticism, of course, not his spiritual contrition or whiskey), because his works played a memorable role in a very happy era in my life.

I also yearned for Cohen to get the Prize as well, for much the same reason. However, Cohen was a very different creature from Dylan, of course (although they worked in the same genre and locations and were contemporaries). For one thing, Cohen’s work in his youth was never sarcastic or bitter, and Cohen’s work is more consistently mysterious and full of tenderly romantic spirituality.

I don’t mean to be a Shiite about it (although I love partisanship in general), but Cohen deserved the Nobel Prize for literature for his songs every bit as much as Dylan did.

The Academy can chalk it up to scandal and “the currently diminished Academy and the reduced public confidence in the Academy" if they want to; they may even believe it.

However, I can’t conceive how something the Academy allegedly did wrong could entitle them to withhold all that money for another year. As far as I can see, old man Nobel told them to give the prize to the artist who created the greatest work “in an idealish direction” in the preceding year, and gave them no discretion to withhold the prize and the money based on their own behavior. In fact, that would have been fraught with moral hazard, as it would have presented an incentive toward wrong-doing on the Academy’s part.

So the Academy can explain the lack of an award this year however they’d like; as for you and I, let’s rest in peace in the knowledge that this year’s lack of a Nobel Prize for Literature award is a silent tribute to the late, great Leonard Cohen- in my opinion, one of the greatest English language artists of the last hundred years.

Kudos, Leonard!