The NYT has a few excerpts from Bob Dylan's forthcoming book “The Philosophy of Modern Song."

The first paragraph of the NYT article is: 

The title of Bob Dylan’s latest book, “The Philosophy of Modern Song,” is, in a sense, misleading. A collection of brief essays on 65 songs (and one poem), it is less a rigorous study of craft than a series of rhapsodic observations on what gives great songs their power to fascinate us.

Who's writing that? The article has the byline Bob Dylan, so you might be deceived into thinking that's Bob using the third person for fun and calling his own title "misleading." But after the first 6 paragraphs, you'll see the named of the NYT writer Ben Sisario. 

Only after that point are we reading Bob Dylan, in what are excerpts from the book, which is, apparently, what he wants to say about this and that song and not a treatise on "philosophy." 

The use of "philosophy" calls to mind "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again." It's not really philosophy.

It sounds a bit like the narrative parts of Bob's old "Theme Time" radio show. I will definitely read this book when it comes out on November 1st. You can buy it here (and by using that link make a contribution to this blog).

Click on the link to the NYT article to read much more from Bob and to listen to some audio. For example, from the essay on "Strangers in the Night":

Intruders, oddballs, kooks, and villains, in this gloomy lifeless dark, fight for space. Two rootless alienated people, withdrawn and isolated, opened the door to each other, said Aloha, Howdy, How you doing, and Good Evening. How could you have known that the smooching and petting, eros and adoration was just one break down mambo hustle away — one far sided google eyed look and a lusty leer — that ever since then, that moment of truth, you’ve been steamed up, head over heels, each other’s hearts’ desire. Sweethearts and honeys right from the beginning. Right from the inaugural sidelong sneak peek, the origin — the starting point. Now you’re yoked together, one flesh in perpetuity — into the vast eternity — immortalized.