Mr. Dylan’s ambivalence to one of the world’s most prestigious honors, and the uncertainty about whether he will accept it, appears to have begun to wear on the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize. On Saturday, an academy member called Mr. Dylan “impolite and arrogant.”
“One can say that it is impolite and arrogant,” the member, Per Wastberg, a writer, told the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, according to a translation by The Associated Press. “He is who he is.”
After Mr. Dylan’s 2016 Nobel Prize was announced, Sara Danius, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said she did not know if Mr. Dylan would attend the award ceremony in December because she had not been able to get in touch with him. Mr. Wastberg told the newspaper that the committee would not try to contact him again.
“We have agreed not to lift a finger. The ball lies entirely on his half,” he said. “You can speculate as much as you want but we don’t.”
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