When it was announced that Bob Dylan won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, it was, to say the least, a surprising choice. Not nearly as surprising as Barack Obama winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, given that Dylan actually did something, but surprising nonetheless. After all, this was Dylan. He was a musician, a singer of last resort, a songwriter.

Controversial? Sure. Why not? There is often some controversy when someone unexpected, or outside the box, wins something big like this. Dylan was a poet of a generation (actually, a few), but he wasn’t strictly a writer or a poet. Those who were kinda felt miffed. After all, it’s not like they could win Grammys, so why should Dylan get to win their prize?

Rolling Stone, sticking to its sole area of competency, applauded the selection:

This is easily the most controversial award since they gave it to the guy who wrote Lord of the Flies, which was controversial only because it came next after the immensely popular 1982 prize for Gabriel García Márquez. Nobody can read the minds of the Nobel committee – it’s not that kind of award. You can’t argue that Dylan jumped the line in front of more deserving candidates, because there’s no internal logic to the process. Like most literary Nobels, except much more so, it comes out of the blue, giving Dylan fans a whole new glorious enigma to battle over. So settle in. This argument will take us years. If you’re looking to get silly, you better go back to from where you came.

And when someone feels a need to argue that a winner deserved a prize, there will invariably be someone to argue the opposite. Anna North starred in that role at the New York Times:

Bob Dylan does not deserve the Nobel Prize in Literature.

He does deserve the many Grammys he has received, including a lifetime achievement award, which he won in 1991. He unquestionably belongs in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, into which he was inducted in 1988 along with the Supremes, the Beatles and the Beach Boys. He is a wonderful musician, a world-class songwriter and an enormously influential figure in American culture.

But by awarding the prize to him, the Nobel committee is choosing not to award it to a writer, and that is a disappointing choice.

Not only does North question Dylan’s worthiness to win, but she goes on the attack. He’s not a writer? That’s a peculiar claim. He writes. He’s a writer. Is that what you were trying to say, albeit ineptly?

Yes, Mr. Dylan is a brilliant lyricist. Yes, he has written a book of prose poetry and an autobiography. Yes, it is possible to analyze his lyrics as poetry. But Mr. Dylan’s writing is inseparable from his music. He is great because he is a great musician, and when the Nobel committee gives the literature prize to a musician, it misses the opportunity to honor a writer.

Aha! So if one puts writing to music, perhaps even music written by the same writer, he is magically transformed from a writer to not a writer. Or was her point that he was a musician, and musician and writer are mutually exclusive?

No, her point is that there are writers out there who do nothing but write. They can’t write music. They can’t sing or dance. They don’t play golf, football or basketball well, but they can write up a story. And Dylan stole their prize.

Popular music is such an endeavor too, but, for the most part, it already receives the recognition it deserves. And apart from a few spoken-word awards, no one would expect the highest honors in music to go to a writer — we won’t be seeing Zadie Smith or Mary Gaitskill in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

The committee probably did not mean to slight fiction or poetry with its choice. By honoring a musical icon, the committee members may have wanted to bring new cultural currency to the prize and make it feel relevant to a younger generation.

North does the two things that one would expect of her. She expressed the butthurt of the neglected and she rationalized the choice in that passive-aggressive way that allows those who didn’t win to maintain their dignity at the expense of the person who did win.

Whether Bob Dylan was the “right” choice is up to the nice folks on the Nobel Prize committee. I’ve seen a Nobel Prize, the actual gold medal, and it’s pretty darn cool. I want one too, but don’t plan to clear a space on the shelf for it anytime soon. But just because it went to Dylan, rather than me, or whomever Anna North might have found acceptable, it’s a prize.

No one owes you a prize. Here’s an idea that might hurt North’s feelings, but maybe those people who are creating literature she finds valuable aren’t as worthwhile as she would like them to be. Maybe, just maybe, the fact that their literature isn’t relevant to a “younger generation” (Dylan, relevant to a “younger generation”? Like Jay-Z, except nothing at all like Jay-Z?) is a big thing that North’s preferred poets aren’t getting. Maybe they didn’t win a Nobel Prize because they will all be forgotten soon enough.

But North, at least, speaks to the hurt of the literature community, left out when a rocker snags their Nobel. Via Legal Insurrection, an antagonist in a Guardian op-ed by someone who will win no prize ever, Natalie Kon-yu:

As soon after the award was announced, the permanent secretary of the Swedish academy, Sara Danius, said it had “not been a difficult decision”, and she hoped the academy would not be criticised.

But of course it will be criticised, and it should be. Giving the award to any white male writer, no matter what form he writes in, is in no way innovative or inspired. It is simply a return to the status quo – albeit in a different genre….

Giving the award to yet another white, distinguished male over more qualified women is exactly the status quo. It proves, once again, how the times just aren’t a-changin’.

Yup, that pretty much sums up Dylan, just “another white distinguished male.” It’s exhausting.

Lesley Gore, old school feminist and openly lesbian, after millions of her records were sold to teenyboppers but before everybody was a lesbian.