We don’t know whether Mr. Dylan was paying attention to Court Painter sketching his presence in the Banff library. But now that he has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, he seems to be spending a lot of time in the library catching up on his reading. As he moved from stack to stack he could be heard mumbling “I am not worthy.”
Indeed, Mr. Dylan has instead of declining the prize, he has simply declined to acknowledge its existence. He hasn’t issued a statement or even returned the Swedish Academy’s phone calls. A reference to the award briefly popped up on the official Bob Dylan website and then was deleted — at his instruction or not, nobody knows. And the Swedes, who are used to a lot more gratitude from their laureates, appear to be losing their patience: One member of the Academy has called Mr. Dylan’s behavior “impolite and arrogant.”
Court Painter however is quite pleased to be able to offer these intimate views of Mr. Dylan to the highest bidder!
