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Dylan, Tracy Letts Win Pulitzer Nods


By HILLEL ITALIE Associated Press Writer

Apr 7th, 2008 | NEW YORK -- Thanks to Bob Dylan, rock 'n' roll has finally broken through the Pulitzer wall.

Dylan, the most acclaimed and influential songwriter of the past half century, who more than anyone brought rock from the streets to the lecture hall, received an honorary Pulitzer Prize on Monday, cited for his "profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."

It was the first time Pulitzer judges, who have long favored classical music, and, more recently, jazz, awarded an art form once dismissed as barbaric, even subversive.

"I am in disbelief," Dylan fan and fellow Pulitzer winner Junot Diaz said of Dylan's award.

Diaz's "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," a tragic but humorous story of desire, politics and violence among Dominicans at home and in the United States, won the fiction prize. Diaz, 39, worked for more than a decade on his first novel — "I spent most of the time on dead-ends and doubts," he told The Associated Press on Monday — and at one point included a section about Dylan.