Like a Channel-Surfing Stone: Bob Dylan?s 1965 song ?Like a Rolling Stone? debuted this year as a music video directed by the Israeli Vania Heymann. Image by Getty Images

For at least a moment or two, Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize for Literature set the world of Twitter abuzz. The announcement inspired a bevy of reactions.

Some welcomed the choice as an acknowledgment that Dylan redefined what literature means in the late 20th and early 21st centuries:

Putting aside world & will now listen to Bob Dylan—The Bootleg Series, Vols 1-3/ And a personal fave, Someone’s Got a Hold of My Heart

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

— Katrina vandenHeuvel (@KatrinaNation) October 13, 2016

From Orpheus to Faiz,song & poetry have been closely linked. Dylan is the brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition.Great choice. #Nobel

— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) October 13, 2016

Finally the world gets something right: Mazel Tov to my beauty, Bob Dylan. #NobelPrize

— Jennifer Gilmore (@jenwgilmore) October 13, 2016

Some purists scoffed at the idea that the Nobel would go to someone who wrote songs, not novels, and only one memoir and a mystifying collection of poetry.

I totally get the Nobel committee. Reading books is hard.

— Gary Shteyngart (@Shteyngart) October 13, 2016

Have they inducted Don De Lillo into the Rock n Roll hall of fame alongside Def Leppard and Slayer yet?

— Irvine Welsh (@IrvineWelsh) October 13, 2016

I am almost as despairing about #Dylan winning the #NobelPrize for lit as I was abt CRASH winning the Oscar for best picture. But not quite.

— Meghan Daum (@meghan_daum) October 13, 2016

Some took it as an opportunity to comment on the current political campaign:

Bob Dylan a very welcome respite/ interregnum interrupting cascade of T***p grotesquerie. the Dylan of 1960s would’ve been scathing of T***p

— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) October 13, 2016

If only young #BobDylan voted pic.twitter.com/UImx1UxLMG

— Chris Steller (@chris_steller) October 13, 2016

Some people took this to be bad news for Philip Roth:

We can only imagine the great novelist Philip Roth’s delight at the news that Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. #Dylan

— Allison Pearson (@allisonpearson) October 13, 2016

Some took the Nobel Committee’s decision as a personal slight:

Bob Dylan is NOT The Greatest Living American Writer. See you in hell, Zimmerman!

— Neal Werepollack (@nealpollack) October 13, 2016

Here at the Forward, we see the good and the bad but mostly the good.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

$36 $500

$120 $180 Other amount