Chronicles
I've been so busy lately, I haven't even had time to get to the store and pick up a copy of Dylan's memoir. Finally got it yesterday evening, and stayed up late last night finishing it off. What a great joy it is to read. It's exasperating at times, at times a touch strange in the writing, but overall it's an incredibly warm, generous, big-hearted, candid book. It may seem strange to say, but I was surprised, given his some of his other prose ventures, what a great writer Bob Dylan is. Sometimes it's a bit hidden or subtle in the songs, but this guy can be really funny (as Jack Nicholson said, "a riot"). He doesn't always paint himself as the good or smart or right guy, and he offers warm, yet warts-and-all portraits of a lot of others. It's those portraits that make the book so winning, but it's Bob's phrasing and sensibility that make the writing so wonderful. My old pal Charlie once said of "Visions of Johanna," that not only did it put you right in the room Bob was writing about, but it put you in all similar rooms. This book does that in spades. Plus, it has enough musical references to keep one busy scouring the bins for years. It may not be up there with The Education of Henry Adams, Bound for Glory, Speak, Memory, or Tropic of Cancer, but dang it, it just might be read for as long as those books. Very highly, unabashedly recommended; an instant classic of American literature.
8:33:51 PM Permalink
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