This morning I woke up to the news that Bob Dylan had won the Nobel prize in literature. What’s even more galling than the fact that a singer has won an award for a literary prize is that people are calling this radical, a breath of fresh air from an otherwise stuffy institution, inspired, unconventional. Dylan has been awarded the prize for “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.

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.

The poetry of Bob Dylan - from the Guardian archive, April 1965 Read more

In his article for the Conversation, Richard Brown wrote: “It’s hard to imagine a more prominent living figure in American culture – perhaps even world culture – than Bob Dylan, or one whose work combines a more richly poetic and surreal artistry in its vision of the contemporary world, a more iconoclastic sense of social justice, more notes of personal intimacy or such a dry and acute sense of humour.” It makes me wonder if Brown has heard of Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood or Elena Ferrante.

The Nobel prize in literature is infamous for its conventionality and the limits of its imagination. In its 115-year history, only 14 women have been awarded the prize, and only four of those women have been writers of colour. The Nobel prize has one of the worst gender ratios in any major literary award, which is troubling given that its internationality means that it is viewed as the most prestigious literary award around. Prizes are subjective measures, but they are important: they reinforce the standards of great writing in our culture, with a focus on quality rather than popularity.

The Guardian listed Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Don DeLillo and Haruki Murakami as favourites to win the prize this year – and all of those would have been a better choice than Dylan. There are also plenty of women, accomplished novelists, essayists and memoirists who could have won.

What about Atwood, who has written poetry, fiction and non-fiction, and whose work has been endlessly republished, studied around the world, and awarded major prizes for decades? Or Joyce Carol Oates, who has published more than 40 books of fiction as well as novellas, plays, poetry collections, short stories and non-fiction?

Or, if the Nobel committee really wanted to be radical, it might have given the award to Ferrante, who has achieved incredible commercial appeal for books that examine the sexism and classism of Italy in the 20th century.

Why Bob Dylan deserves his Nobel literature win Read more

It is particularly infuriating that the last American author to receive the Nobel prize in literature was Morrison, whose work enlarges all the possible definitions of literature and who stretches language and narrative to breaking points. That Dylan should be the next American to win after Morrison is an enormous step backward.

The New York Times reported: “In choosing a popular musician for the literary world’s highest honour, the Swedish academy, which awards the prize, dramatically redefined the boundaries of literature.”

It’s interesting to wonder whether a female songwriter would ever be elevated to Dylan’s height; whether we would “dramatically redefine the boundaries of literature” to celebrate a woman who could so eloquently sing about the issues that plagued a generation.

Dylan wins his Nobel in the same year that the prize is not awarded to any women across any of its fields, which seems hardly believable. But what is particularly frustrating about Dylan’s win is that it is being packaged as revolutionary, as a means of breaking from tradition, when it is anything but.

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’.