TULSA, Okla. (CBS News) — Bob Dylan apparently isn’t going to leave the Nobel Prize committee hanging.
The singer-songwriter, whose tunes have spoken to the socially conscious for more than five decades, told a reporter for The Telegraph newspaper of the United Kingdom that he probably will show up at the award ceremony in December.
“Absolutely,” he told The Telegraph. “If it’s at all possible.”
That’s good news for the Swedish Academy, which said it had given up on trying to contact him about collecting the prize.
CNN has reached out to reps for Dylan to confirm the Telegraph report, but didn’t get a response.
Dylan is on a US tour and spoke to the Telegraph while he was in Oklahoma.
He playfully told the reporter, “Well, I’m right here,” when asked why he hadn’t spoken about claiming the high honor and nice check that goes with it.
“It’s hard to believe,” he said, adding that learning he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature was “amazing, incredible. Whoever dreams about something like that?”
Dylan called the Swedish Academy this week, telling the organization’s secretary he was “speechless. I appreciate the honor so much,” according to a news release.
The statement said it had not yet been determined if Dylan would attend the events in Stockholm.
Only two people have ever turned down the Nobel Prize — existentialist philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre (literature, 1964) and Vietnamese politician Le Duc Tho (Peace Prize, 1973).
Dylan, the first songwriter to win a Nobel Prize, penned the classics “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They Are a Changin’,” “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.”
