STOCKHOLM (AP) — There's no question about Bob Dylan's genius as a songwriter or his profound impact on popular culture in America and beyond. Welsh, the author of "Trainspotting," said although he's a Dylan fan, he found the prize this year an "ill-conceived nostalgia award wrenched from the rancid prostates of senile, gibbering hippies." The Swedish Academy, however, said it wasn't opening the prize to a new genre, noting that poetry has often been put to music, including the works of ancient Greek writers like Homer and Sappho. People thought I was crazy or really out of line to suggest that Dylan should be awarded such a prize, said Ball, who teaches at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. "[...] he has changed the world for the better, I feel," Ball said. In his will, prize founder Alfred Nobel wrote that the literature award should go "to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction."
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