The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano has expressed misgivings about the award of a Nobel Prize in Literature to American songwriter Bob Dylan.While praising Dylan for his “great talent” and his determination “not to conform, and to think with his own mind,” L’Osservatore observed in a short notice that Dylan was, after all, only a songwriter, rather than the author of works of literature.
Offering a glimpse into its own suggestions for an appropriate prize winner, L’Osservatore said that the honor for Dylan “must not have pleased real writers, such as potential winners Don De Lillo, Philip Roth, or Haruki Murakami, who know the enormous work that goes into writing a novel.”