Bob Dylan Vs. William Shakespeare

Posted on January 29, 2005

In the running for this year's U.S. Book Critics' Award include Dylan's memoir Chronicles, Vol. 1 and Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, a bestselling biography of Shakespeare by author Stephen Greenblatt. Greenblatt was honored to be up against Dylan for the prize. Greenblatt told USA Today that he was "of Dylan's generation, so it's a thrill for me ... I had never thought I would be competing for an award with him."

Other nonfiction nominees include John Guy's Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart and De Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan. In fiction the nominees include some popular fiction novels like The Plot Against America by Philip Roth.

The Christian Science Monitor noted that this year's NBCC fiction list "is a stark contrast to the slate put up in November by the National Book Foundation, which nominated five mostly experimental novels that few people had heard of."