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This is Stockholm calling: Where are you, Bob Dylan?

The Local Sweden
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This is Stockholm calling: Where are you, Bob Dylan?
A sign in Las Vegas congratulating Bob Dylan on his Nobel Prize win. Photo: AP Photo/John Locher

Almost the whole world was talking about Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize win when it was announced in Stockholm. Everyone, but the legendary songwriter and artist himself.

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President Barack Obama congratulated him. So did Bruce Springsteen.

Others thought it was ill-deserved. Author Irvine Welsh called it an “ill conceived nostalgia award wrenched from the rancid prostates of senile, gibbering hippies” (don't hold back how you really feel, Irvine).

The Local even spoke to former New Yorker Izzy Young (today a Stockholm resident), who helped discover Dylan back in the 1960s. He told us he thought it was about time.

The only one who has yet to comment on his award… appears to be Dylan himself.

A tweet was published on Dylan's official Twitter account on Thursday saying “Bob Dylan was awarded the 2016 #NobelPrizeLiterature 'for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition',” quoting the Swedish Academy's words, but without commenting on them.

“It's been a crazy day, there have been calls nonstop from around the world,” Dylan's agent Brian Greenbaum told Swedish tabloid Expressen, but said he had had no word from the artist.

His publicist Elliot Mintz said he had not been able to get a comment from Dylan either.

According to media reports, Dylan did not mention the award at a concert in Las Vegas just hours after the announcement. At the end of the gig he is said to have faced the audience without saying a word, then leaving the stage before returning for a rendition of his famous tune 'Blowin' in the Wind'.

AS-IT-HAPPENED: The Local's live report from the Nobel Prize in Literature

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