<\/p>\n
2016.12.15<\/p>\n
I am not much of a Dylan fan but I was intrigued that he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. As it happens, I had been thinking of him the day before announcement because I had been listening to some Irish folk music on YouTube. I had been looking up songs by Dominic Behan and went from \u201cLiverpool Lou\u201d (a beautiful, sad song on the unpromising theme of a man in love with a prostitute) to \u201cMcAlpine’s Fusiliers\u201d (a semi-comical song about the harsh lives of the Irish labourers who \u201cbuilt\u201d Britain) to his classic \u201cThe Patriot Game\u201d (sung from the point of view of a young Irish rebel as he is dying). I thought for the first time that \u201cPatriot Game\u201d sounded a bit like Dylan’s masterpiece \u201cWith God on Our Side\u201d. Sure enough, it turned out that there was a controversy about it and Behan accused Dylan of plagiarism.<\/p>\n
I am not wading in on the debate, I just mention it because it then reminded me of an interesting incident in 2003 when it was suggested that Dylan lifted words from the English version of a book by a Japanese author Junichi Saga and used them as lyrics. (The book, Confessions of a Yakuza<\/span>, is well-regarded by foreigners with an interest in Japan.) I had the good fortune to interview Dr Saga by phone around that time and, if I remember correctly, he said he was flattered if his words were used by Dylan and he thought it was a good thing that they would appear in a new medium where they would reach more people. His was a very charming response and I hope it brought more readers to Dr Saga’s work (I strongly recommend his Memories of Silk and Straw<\/span>). After all, he is a man who inspired a Nobel Prize winner.<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Quick Thoughts on Bob Dylan 2016.12.15 I am not much of a Dylan fan but I was intrigued that he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. As it happens, I had been thinking of him the day before announcement because I had been listening to some Irish folk music on YouTube. I had been looking up songs by Dominic Behan and went from \u201cLiverpool Lou\u201d (a beautiful, sad song on the unpromising theme of a man in love with a prostitute) to \u201cMcAlpine’s Fusiliers\u201d (a semi-comical song about the harsh lives of the Irish labourers who \u201cbuilt\u201d Britain) to his classic \u201cThe Patriot Game\u201d (sung from the point of view of a young Irish rebel as he is dying). I[\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colinjoyce","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sankenbook.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sankenbook.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sankenbook.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sankenbook.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sankenbook.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.sankenbook.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":662,"href":"https:\/\/www.sankenbook.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions\/662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sankenbook.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sankenbook.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sankenbook.co.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}