Welcome to the New York Times Popcast, your American pastoral of music news and criticism.

I'm your host, Joe Koskerelli. with a word in mind one in front of me and nothing behind

there's a woman on my lap and she's

drinking champagne

that white skis. campaign. I'm here here today. I'm here today with John Pirellis, chief music critic at the New York Times.

And Dwight Garner, book critic here at the New York Times.

It's good to be here Joe.

And we're here with the big news of the day which is that Bob Dylan is the

Nobel Prize winner this year in literature.

How shocked were you guys by this

when we were woken early this morning

by the breaking news alert from our fine newspaper?

Well, I was pretty surprised.

I mean, he's, I've always thought he should have one, but you never believe it's going to happen.

What do you think, Dwight? You know, I sort of bounced out of bed. It may be so happy. I think it was just, well, a simple twist of fate wasn't it but you know the

political news has been so dire and somehow this just felt like a fresh bit of

wind a little ray of sunshine yeah it's also an affirmation that America has

contributed something that America is not this

hellhole of bad politics.

Right, exactly.

And it's been more than what, two decades since an American has won this prize?

Yeah, since Tony Morrison.

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