It’s Bob Dylan’s party, and he’ll skip it if he wants to. Though the musician was recently awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, it doesn’t appear he’s all that interested in celebrating the occasion—or even acknowledging it at all. The Swedish Academy has reached out to the freewheelin’ folk star several times since his win last Thursday, but hasn’t heard back from him. Now, they’re giving up. 
 
 “Right now we are doing nothing. I have called and sent e-mails to his closest collaborator and received very friendly replies. For now, that is certainly enough,” the academy’s permanent secretary, Sara Danius, said in a radio interview on Monday, according to The Guardian. His silence also makes it unclear whether he will attend the annual Nobel celebration on December 10. At the ceremony, winners typically accept a diploma and medal from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. 
 
 Dylan also has yet to say anything publicly about his win, despite playing a show in Las Vegas the same day as the announcement. There, he didn’t mention or allude to his new Nobel status at all. 
 
 But don’t think twice about the Academy’s feelings. It’s all right, Danius says. “I am not at all worried,” Danius said. “I think he will show up. 
 
 “If he doesn’t want to come, he won’t come. It will be a big party in any case and the honor belongs to him,” Danius added. 
 
 Though Dylan has remained silent, the world quickly weighed in on his award. While many have made a strong case for his unorthodox win (he’s the first singer to be given the literature prize), others have argued against the Academy’s choice. 
 
 “He is a musician, and his relationship with words is as a lyricist, someone whose prose exists inexorably with music,” Matthew Schnipper writes in Pitchfork. “To read his lyrics flatly, without the sound delivering them, is to experience his art reduced.” 
 
 “[Popular music] already receives the recognition it deserves. And apart from a few spoken-word awards, no one would expect the highest honors in music to go to a writer,” Anna North writes in The New York Times. 
 
 High-profile stars have also voiced some thoughts on the surprising choice. Leonard Cohen, the poetic singer-songwriter who might also one day claim a Nobel Prize, made a funny comparison when asked about Dylan’s win, saying it’s “like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain.” 
 
 Perhaps one day we’ll also hear what Bob Dylan thinks about Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize. But in typical Dylan fashion, he’s keeping things a touch mysterious. The times, they are a-stayin’ the same. ||||| FILE - In this Feb. 6, 2015 file photo, Bob Dylan accepts the 2015 MusiCares Person of the Year award at the 2015 MusiCares Person of the Year show in Los Angeles. The Swedish Academy says it has received... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Feb. 6, 2015 file photo, Bob Dylan accepts the 2015 MusiCares Person of the Year award at the 2015 MusiCares Person of the Year show in Los Angeles. The Swedish Academy says it has received... (Associated Press) 
 
 NEW YORK (AP) — Bob Dylan has completed his Nobel course requirements. 
 
 The Swedish Academy announced Monday that it has received the mandatory lecture from the 2016 literature winner, enabling Dylan to collect 8 million Swedish kronor ($922,000) in prize money. Spokeswoman Sara Danius described Dylan's talk in a news release as "extraordinary" and "eloquent." Nobel Prize officials said the 26-minute talk was recorded on Sunday in Los Angeles and an audio clip is posted on the academy's website, www.nobelprize.org. 
 
 Danius said its delivery to the academy meant that "the Dylan adventure is coming to a close." Dylan, widely regarded as the most influential songwriter of his time, received the Nobel Literature diploma and medal in April but was still required to give a speech to receive the money. Dylan took weeks to publicly acknowledge even winning the prize, announced in October and greeted with both joy and dismay that a rock star had received an honor previously given to William Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Alice Munro among others. He did not attend December's Nobel ceremony in Stockholm and his acceptance remarks were read by the United States Ambassador to Sweden, Azita Raji. 
 
 Dylan's songs have drawn on literary influences from Beat poetry to Anton Chekhov and his recording was a celebration of books and music and of the common language among art forms. In a warm, raspy delivery, with lounge-style piano in the background, he called Buddy Holly his first musical hero, praised his "imaginative verses" and remembered seeing him in concert not long before Holly died in a 1959 plane crash. 
 
 "Something about him seemed permanent and he filled me with conviction," Dylan said of seeing Holly on stage. "Then out of the blue, the most uncanny thing happened, he looked at me right straight there in the eye and he transmitted something, something I didn't know what. It gave me the chills." 
 
 Dylan said that folk songs were his earliest musical vocabulary, but that books such as "Ivanhoe" and "Don Quixote" helped shape his view of the world and inspire him to write songs "unlike anything anybody had ever heard." From the start, he believed in absorbing classical texts and the vernacular of the day. 
 
 He discussed three works at length: "Moby Dick," (a reminder we "see only the surface of things"), "All Quiet On the Western Front" (in which "death is everywhere, nothing else is possible") and "The Odyssey," a "strange, adventurous tale" he likened to such modern pop songs as Simon & Garfunkel's "Homeward Bound." He concluded by noting that Shakespeare's words were meant to be spoken, "Just as lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on a page." 
 
 "And I hope some of you get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way they were intended to be heard: in concert or on record or however people are listening to songs these days," he said. "I return once again to Homer, who says, 'Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story.'" 
 
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 This story has been corrected to say that the academy did say where and when the lecture was recorded and fixes the web address.
– On Thursday, the Swedish Academy dropped a culture bomb in the form of a Nobel in Literature for Bob Dylan for his "poetic expressions." It is now Monday, and Dylan has yet to respond, poetically or otherwise, and the Nobel Committee is somewhat publicly throwing up its hands. "Right now we are doing nothing," the academy's permanent secretary, Sara Danius, tells the Guardian. "I have called and sent emails to his closest collaborator and received very friendly replies. For now, that is certainly enough." It's not like Dylan has disappeared, though, as CBS News reported that he played a show in Las Vegas on the night of his win; he simply didn't bring the matter up, and hasn't contacted the committee or indicated whether he might show up in December to collect his shiny trinket. Says Danius: "I am not at all worried. I think he will show up." But, she says, "If he doesn’t want to come, he won’t come. It will be a big party in any case and the honor belongs to him." The Guardian notes that Dylan's current tour wraps up in late November, so he'll be free for the Dec. 10 ceremony in Stockholm. "But in typical Dylan fashion, he’s keeping things a touch mysterious," writes Yohana Desta at Vanity Fair. "The times, they are a-stayin’ the same." (Dylan might have inadvertently coined a phrase you use all the time.)