"I wasn't that comfortable with all the psycho polemic babble. It wasn't my particular feast of food."

"Even the current news made me nervous. I liked the old news better."

Wrote Bob Dylan in his great book "Chronicles." I don't know if the Nobel Committee included that book in its reasons for giving him their big award, but I loved "Chronicles" and blogged it in detail, chapter by chapter, back in 2004. You can find all the old posts with the "Dylan's 'Chronicles'" tag.

Ah! That tag got me to a 2013 post reacting to a NYT piece by Bill Wyman (not that Bill Wyman) about how Bob Dylan could win the Nobel Prize for Literature. I said:

It's hard to believe Bob Dylan would like the Nobel Prize. It's just a topic to write articles about and to get traffic flowing wherever they're published. Remember the backstory to the song "Day of the Locusts":

"Sara was trying to get Bob to go to Princeton University, where he was being presented with an honorary doctorate. Bob did not want to go. I said, 'C'mon, Bob it's an honor!' Sara and I both worked on him for a long time. Finally, he agreed. I had a car outside, a big limousine. That was the first thing he didn't like.... When we arrived at Princeton, they took us to a little room and Bob was asked to wear a cap and gown. He refused outright. They said, 'We won't give you the degree if you don't wear this.' Dylan said, 'Fine. I didn't ask for it in the first place.'..."

Anyway, I was thinking about that line "There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke," as we were talking about the old aphorism "Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel" (which I attributed to Racine, and a commenter said was really from Horace Walpole). Bob Dylan also sings about getting a letter in which he was asked how he was doing: "Was that some kind of joke?" But there's more to comedy than jokes, so his contempt for jokes shouldn't mark him as a nonthinker, even if we take the old Walpole saying as gospel.

But back to that Dylan quote in the title. That's from Chapter 5, the last chapter of "Chronicles," blogged here (where there are links to the posts on the earlier chapters).

How people felt about Communists in northern Minnesota: "People weren't scared of them, seemed to be a big to-do over nothing." P. 271....

Dylan's favorite politician: Barry Goldwater. P. 283.

Why: "[he] reminded me of Tom Mix."

"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke."

Sang Bob Dylan in "All Along the Watchtower," which I'm quoting because today's theme on the blog is tragedy and comedy and because I'm reading this NYT piece by Bill Wyman (not that Bill Wyman) about how it's conceivable — not that conceivable — that Bob Dylan could win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Mr. Dylan’s work remains utterly lacking in conventionality, moral sleight of hand, pop pabulum or sops to his audience. His lyricism is exquisite; his concerns and subjects are demonstrably timeless; and few poets of any era have seen their work bear more influence.

Just this morning — a propos of what I won't say — we were talking about examples of individuals who gain an audience and then see their self-expression reflected in how that audience understands them, and they reject their own expression because they don't like how it looks. Who has done that? I thought first of Dave Chappelle, and Meade thought of the Little Green Footballs blogger Charles Johnson. I came up with another name that doesn't really fit the category — Saint Paul — and Meade said Bob Dylan.

What did Bob Dylan say about Barack Obama — and what did he mean?

At the end of Alan Jackson's interview with Bob Dylan:

My time with Dylan is up and we stand in preparation for my leaving the room. As a last aside, I ask for his take on the US political situation in the run-up to November's presidential election.

“Well, you know right now America is in a state of upheaval,” he says. “Poverty is demoralising. You can't expect people to have the virtue of purity when they are poor. But we've got this guy out there now who is redefining the nature of politics from the ground up...Barack Obama. He's redefining what a politician is, so we'll have to see how things play out. Am I hopeful? Yes, I'm hopeful that things might change. Some things are going to have to.” He offers a parting handshake. “You should always take the best from the past, leave the worst back there and go forward into the future,” he notes as the door closes between us.

I've been listening to the words of Bob Dylan, taking them seriously, and trying to interpret them since the 1960s, so I'm ready to analyze this. In typical Dylan style, it's enigmatic. Let's study it line by line.

“Well, you know right now America is in a state of upheaval. Poverty is demoralising."

This is a broad statement about the problems and the mood in the country, with a focus on one thing: poverty. Poverty has not been a central issue in the campaign. Except for John Edwards, the candidates are careful to talk about economics in terms of the middle class and families.

Then there's the notion that poverty is demoralizing, which leads, somewhat mysteriously, to thoughts about virtue: "You can't expect people to have the virtue of purity when they are poor." And the virtue is purity. Purity! What candidate has spoken about purity?

I'm seeing a swirl of left- and right-wing thoughts here. Conservatives care about individuals taking responsibility for themselves. They stress personal initiative and — particularly if they are social conservations — "virtue." "Purity" may seem to refer to the sexual virtues. To go from purity to poverty is easy for the poet. The words loosely rhyme. Maybe Dylan is bullshitting and stalling for time. (You can sing the previous 2 sentences in your imitation Dylan voice.)

But a conservative might tie purity to poverty: If you abstain from sex until you can marry and form a stable family, you will probably not be poor — if you take personal initiative and work hard. But the left-wing theme is there too. What if people can't do that because the poverty has demoralized them? There's sympathy and not judgment for the people who haven't followed the prescription for avoiding poverty.

This prelude ends with his naming one candidate, Barack Obama: "But we've got this guy out there now who is redefining the nature of politics from the ground up...Barack Obama."

"But we've got this guy out there now" is funny. Barack Obama is supremely famous at this point, but Dylan talks about him as though he's just appeared on the horizon: "this guy out there now." I think talking like that is being cagey and distancing himself from the subject of politics. But "this guy" is "redefining the nature of politics." Dylan doesn't like politics, perhaps, and wouldn't it be cool if some guy changed what politics are? Yet "redefining the nature of politics from the ground up" is a hack phrase — something the politicians themselves would say. I sense that he's putting up a wall, being vague and unrevealing.

"He's redefining what a politician is, so we'll have to see how things play out."

He repeats the redefinition idea, then reverts to the most noncommittal statement possible. We'll see what happens.

"Am I hopeful?"

I can't tell whether the interviewer pushed him with a question here. If not, then Dylan recognized the necessity of asking this. You can "redefine" something, but does anything change in the real world? And "so we'll have to see how things play out" was specifically declining to express either optimism or pessimism.

"Yes, I'm hopeful that things might change. Some things are going to have to."

He goes with the optimism. Not too much, though. An optimist would say "Yes, I'm hopeful that things will change." The "might" is the tinge of pessimism. And then there's the added "Some things are going to have to." Which things? And if they "have to," what does any particular politician have to do with it? Again, it's enigmatic, noncommittal — we'll have to see how things play out.

He "offers a parting handshake." He doesn't really want to talk about this. He shuts the door on his interlocutor, with one last point: "You should always take the best from the past, leave the worst back there and go forward into the future."

Why talk about the past here? "Some things" must change, he just said, but then he feels the need to bring up the past, to tell us to value the past and keep what is good. That's a conservative impulse — though not terribly conservative. He's only advising us to take "the best" from the past, while a hardcore conservative would want to keep as much tradition as possible and would believe that good naturally inheres in tradition. And yet, Dylan advises us to leave "the worst" behind, which would mean that we could continue with everything but what is shown to be actively bad — and that is what a hardcore conservative would say.

Finally, "go forward into the future." That is the most banal statement in the world. It's a ridiculous hack phrase, and maybe he meant it as a joke — because he is ousting the reporter from the room. "Go forward into the future" = Now, get out of here. But "go forward into the future" is the language of progressivism. He's swirling those left and right statements together, being enigmatic and cagey. It's a way that works for him, making him sound wise, funny, different — Dylanesque.

***

The subject of Dylan and Barack Obama came up in the comments on the Hillary post yesterday, when L.E. Lee wrote:

I was even more surprised that Bob Dylan said that he supports Barack Obama this past week. I do not remember Dylan ever endorsing a candidate for political office before.

Then Meade said:

L.E.Lee, It's widely known that, like Hillary was, Bob Dylan was a supporter of Barry Goldwater in 1964.

Lee had trouble believing that, and Meade told him to look it up. It's in Dylan's book "Chronicles." This was a cue to me, because I blogged "Chronicles" chapter by chapter in 2004 — click the "Dylan's Chronicles" label — and I knew I had something on Goldwater. Yes, here:

Dylan's favorite politician: Barry Goldwater. P. 283.

Why: "[he] reminded me of Tom Mix."

Bob Dylan song that mentions Goldwater: "I Shall Be Free, No. 10."

Now, I'm liberal, but to a degree
I want ev'rybody to be free
But if you think that I'll let Barry Goldwater
Move in next door and marry my daughter
You must think I'm crazy!
I wouldn't let him do it for all the farms in Cuba.

A Bob Dylan political opinion: "I wasn't that comfortable with all the psycho polemic babble. It wasn't my particular feast of food. Even the current news made me nervous. I liked the old news better." P. 283.

So, what does all this add to the analysis of his "endorsement" of Barrack Obama? I think we can say that door-closing Dylan is not that comfortable with talk about politics. In the book, that statement "I liked the old news better" got him to talking about his interest in reading history. His love of Barry Goldwater had something to do with style and cowboys. Here's Tom Mix. I can see the Goldwater resemblance. But why would Dylan say he liked Goldwater and give that as the reason? He's playing with us, hiding again, letting us know he's different from other people — he thinks with a poet's logic. Ordinary political people bother him. (So a politician who could "redefine" politics might appeal to him in a special way.)

And what do we make of the reference to Goldwater in "I Shall Be Free No. 10"? Read the lyrics. It begins:

I'm just average, common too
I'm just like him, the same as you
I'm everybody's brother and son
I ain't different from anyone
It ain't no use a-talking to me
It's just the same as talking to you.

So he's playing a character. Obviously, not Bob Dylan, who's very different from us and whom there is use in talking to, because it's not at all the same as talking to yourself. The "I" here is a comical everyman — the ultimate conformist. But then the lyrics proceed in lots of different directions, and sometimes the "I" is Dylan, but I think the Goldwater verse is not Dylan. It's a hypocritical liberal whom Dylan mocks. The liberal wants freedom for all, but is ready to discriminate against the conservative: "I want ev'rybody to be free/But if you think that I'll let Barry Goldwater/Move in next door and marry my daughter/You must think I'm crazy!"

To use "all the farms in Cuba" as the thing of great value to the character speaking these lines is to suggest that the liberal is really a Communist and to show an even darker side to his desire to repress the conservative. It's also part of the silliness and nonsense of this song, which shifts all over the place, changing points of view and flipping around absurdly.

That's just something he figured out how to do to keep us guessing what he's really talking about.

Now you're probably wondering by now
Just what this song is all about...

So if you're probably wondering by now just what his "endorsement" of Barack Obama is all about... it's nothing. It's something he said over in Denmark.

Bob's flower theme.

Bob's theme today -- on "Theme Time Radio With Bob Dylan" -- was, officially, flowers. But nearly every song was about roses. What happened? Did he start out with roses as the theme and run short? He missed plenty of rose songs, though. He did not play "Kiss From a Rose" or "The Yellow Rose of Texas" or even "some say love, it is a river that drowns the tender reed blah blah blah in the spring becomes the rose." There's "Sally Go Round the Roses" and "Roses Are Red" and "Every Rose Has Its Thorn." There must be a thousand rose songs he didn't play.

To fill in his non-rose slots, he used two grass songs. I don't think grass ought to count as a flower. Then the only other plant/flower I remember him doing was tulips. In keeping with the first syllable of the word, he played two tulip songs. Duke Ellington, "Tulip or Turnip." And Tiny Tim, "Tiptoe Through the Tulips."

I felt that "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" was the emotional high point of the show. We know from reading "Chronicles" that Bob Dylan was friends with Tiny Tim, and introducing the song, he swept aside the superficial view of Tim as just a joke. He was a great historian of music, Dylan said. He knew a lot of songs that were available only on sheet music, and when he died, he took a lot of songs with him. It's not like Tim died in a fire of burning sheet music, so I don't really understand how the music was lost, but it felt very profound and poignant when Dylan said it.

At the end of the show last week, when this week's theme was announced, I tried to guess which songs he'd play. The first flower song that sprang to my mind was that atrocious song about going to San Francisco and making sure you show up already besprigged with flowers. Then I thought of the song that deeply enchanted me when I was a young girl: "Sweet Violets." I wrote about it back here, embedded in a long simulblog of an episode of "American Idol" where the contestants had to sing songs from the year they were born:

I start thinking about what songs would be available to me, if I could be on the show. I'm way too old and I'm a horrible singer, but still ... Here's the list from my year, and my song from that list is "Sweet Violets." I remember hearing it once. I was in bed and overheard my parents playing it. I loved it deeply and the next day asked my parents about it. They told me, it was not for children and I couldn't hear it. Was it about sex? Death? Oddly, though I've always remembered it, I have never bothered to find the song and listen to it. I can still hear it in my head from that one listen, but I've never heard it again. I rush over to iTunes. The Dinah Shore hit is not there (only a Mitch Miller version). Ah! here are the lyrics. It's a bizarrely veiled filthy song from the past! Good thing my parents protected me, or protected themselves from having to deal with my questions.

That's an unusual old song, and it has a flower other that rose, tulip, or grass. Too bad he missed it.

Next week the theme is cars. If I had to bet on one song -- taking into account that Bob likes to tell the life story of the singer -- I'd bet on "Rocket 88." But that wasn't the first car song that popped into my head when I heard the theme. (What was yours?) That was "Little GTO." Looking up the lyrics, I land right on a page of "Muscle Car Songs." Nice! I should have thought of "409" first. My office number was 409 for a long time, and I thought it was really cool that my room number was a Beach Boys song. Students would ask me what my office number was, and I liked to say "It's a Beach Boys song." No one ever said, "409!" But it would have made me happy if they had. I would have picked up good vibrations.

Having found a page of muscle car songs, I think of looking for a page of death car songs. That fateful night the car was stalled upon the railroad track... I couldn't stop, so I swerved to the right... We were buggin' each other while we sat out the light/We both popped the clutch when the light turned green/You shoulda heard the whine from my screamin' machine!... Look out! Look out! Look out! Look out!...

Wait. That last one's a motorcycle. Can motorcycles get in on the car theme -- the way grass got in on the flower theme? Or it motorcycle crashing a very special theme for Bob, due for it's own show some day.

Dylan's "Chronicles": Chapter 5.

Finally, I got around to finishing the last chapter of Dylan's autobiography. I was blogging at the blistering pace of a chapter a day for a while. Chapter 1 is here (and here's the text of Chapter 1 on the publisher's website (via Metafilter)). Chapter 2 is here, and Chapter 3 is here. I kept up at a post a day but not a chapter a day with the first part of Chapter 4 here, and the second part of Chapter 4 here. Now, I've let four days go by, only reading a few pages a day. But this post covers all of Chapter 5.

Why Dylan liked Neil Sedaka more than other big New York songwriters: he performed his own songs. P. 227.

Dylan seems to have gotten some ideas from Harry Truman, whom his parents took him to see when he was a kid: "Truman was gray hatted, a slight figure, spoke in the same kind of nasal twang and tone like a country singer. I was mesmerized by his slow drawl and sense of seriousness and how people hung on every word he was saying." Pp. 230-231.

Dylan and guns: "As kids, we shot air guns, BB guns and the real thing--.22s--shot at tin cans, bottles or overfed rats in the town garbage dump." P. 232. He explains "rubberguns" and how the introduction of synthetic rubber ruined all the fun. Pp. 232-233.

Description of folk music: "It was life magnified." P. 236.

What Woody Guthrie's voice was like: "a stiletto." P. 244.

How Woody Guthrie writes: "like the whirlwind." P. 245.

Goal Dylan set: "to be Guthrie's greatest disciple." 246.

How the goal was thwarted: he found out Jack Elliot had already done it. P. 250.

What Dylan thought of asking John Wayne when he met him, but didn't because it "would have been crazy": "why some of his cowboy films were better than others." P. 250.

Description of Joan Baez: "Both Scot and Mex, she looked like a religious icon, like somebody you'd sacrifice yourself for and she sang in a voice straight to God ..." P. 255.

Interesting talent possessed by Noel Stookey: "He could imitate just about anything--clogged water pipes and toilets flushing, steamships and sawmills, traffic, violins and trombones. He could imitate singers imitating other singers ... [for example] Dean Martin imitating Little Richard." P. 259.

How Wavy Gravy dressed when he was still Hugh Romney: "he was the straightest looking cat you'd ever seen--always smartly dressed, usually in Brooks Brothers light gray suits." P. 259.

What Dave Van Ronk's wife Terri talked about: "highfalutin' theological ideas behind political systems. Nietzschean politics. Politics with a hanging heaviness." P. 263.

What Terri couldn't believe anyone would be stupid enough to buy: an electric can opener. P. 263.

What Dylan drank between sets in his early days in New York City: "shooters of Wild Turkey and iced Schlitz." P. 264.

How Dylan felt when he met Suze Rotolo: "The air was suddenly filled with banana leaves." P. 265.

Why Suze was just his type: "She reminded me of a libertine heroine." P. 265.

Movies Dylan went to see to try to get Suze off his mind for a while: "Atlantis, Lost Continent" and "King of Kings." P. 265.

Song name I wrote in the margin of page 266, where Dylan describes Suze's mother and sister: "Ballad in Plain D."

What Suze's mother said to Dylan: "Do me a favor, don't think when I'm around." P. 267.

Suze's age: 17.

How Dylan furnished his first apartment in NY: he borrowed tools and built furniture. He even made his own mirrors with plate glass, mercury and tin foil. P. 267-268.

What Suze taught Dylan about: artists! Pp. 268-269.

Favorite artist that seemed to express what folk music expresses: Red Grooms. P. 269-270.

Anti-fallout shelter song he wrote early on at his handmade table: "Let Me Die in My Footsteps." P. 270-272. That reminds me, obvious as it is now, when I was an adolescent in the early 60s, I couldn't understand why my parents weren't building a fallout shelter.

How people felt about Communists in northern Minnesota: "People weren't scared of them, seemed to be a big to-do over nothing." P. 271.

Kurt Weill/Bertholt Brecht song that made Dylan think of Duluth: "Pirate Jenny." P. 273-276.

Dylan's description of himself as a child in Duluth, listening to foghorns: "slight, introverted and asthma stricken." P. 274.

Dylan song I'm reminded of by his description of trying to learn a lot about songwriting from "Pirate Jenny": "When the Ship Comes In."
Singer Dylan thought was great--he was right--but couldn't get other folksingers--like Dave Van Ronk--to care about: Robert Johnson. Pp. 282-283.

Dylan's favorite politician: Barry Goldwater. P. 283.

Why: "[he] reminded me of Tom Mix."

Bob Dylan song that mentions Goldwater: "I Shall Be Free, No. 10."

Now, I'm liberal, but to a degree
I want ev'rybody to be free
But if you think that I'll let Barry Goldwater
Move in next door and marry my daughter
You must think I'm crazy!
I wouldn't let him do it for all the farms in Cuba.

A Bob Dylan political opinion: "I wasn't that comfortable with all the psycho polemic babble. It wasn't my particular feast of food. Even the current news made me nervous. I liked the old news better." P. 283.

Description of Robert Johnson's lyrics that shows what Dylan learned about songwriting from him: "old style lines and ... free-association ... sparkling allegories, big-ass truths wrapped in the hard shell of nonsensical abstraction." P. 285.

What the second to the last paragraph of the book is devoted to: Minnesotans.

Dylan's "Chronicles": Chapter 4 (Part 2).

I continue with my reading of the Dylan autobiography. Scroll down to find four earlier posts.

Man whose politics are described, surprisingly uncritically, and who is said to look like a movie star: David Duke. P. 184.

Movie with a title that was the title of a Bob Dylan song, which Dylan drops in to see and concludes has a lead character just like the guy in the song: "The Mighty Quinn." P. 187.

What Dylan orders at Antoine's in New Orleans when he needs to go record later and doesn't want anything to "bog [him] down": turtle soup. P.193.

Why you need to see Tennessee Williams's plays live: "to get the full freak effect." P.196.

One thing Dylan always loved about his wife: "She's always had her own built-in happiness." P. 201. (You figure out the implication there!)

What Dylan liked about the Beatles: "They offered intimacy and companionship like no other group." P. 204.

Dylan's prayer: "I pray that I can be a kinder person." P. 206.

Actor "nobody could hold a candle to": Mickey Rourke. P. 213.

Hardship Dylan endured while recording "Oh, Mercy" in New Orleans: no air conditioning. P. 213. Why?? He doesn't like air conditioning.

Adjective describing all records not recorded by Sam Phillips: "fruity." P. 214. (Chilling discovery made on finding that Sam Phillips link: "Originally Phillips wanted to study law, but because of circumstances decided to go into radio." Thank God for circumstances.)

Description of bad records: "padded and schmaltzy odes to flunky-ism." P. 220.

Quote: "Sometimes you say things in songs even if there's a small chance of them being true." P. 220.

Dylan's "Chronicles": Chapter 4 (part 1).

Continuing with my reading of Dylan's autobiography. (I do Chapter 1 here and Chapter 2 here, and Chapter 3 here.)

How Dylan felt in 1987, coming off a tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers:

I felt done for, an empty burned-out wreck. ... Wherever I am, I'm a 60's troubadour, a folk-rock relic, a wordsmith from bygone days, a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows. [P. 147.]

How he felt about his old songs then:

It was like carrying a package of rotting meat. [P. 148.]

Line on p. 147 that foreshadows the role the Grateful Dead would play in his revival:

It's nice to be known as a legend, and people will pay to see one, but for most people, once is enough.

Obviously, the Grateful Dead, who show up on p.149, knew how to do live shows that stoked a hunger to see multiple shows. The Dead challenge him to do much more with his old songs than Tom Petty ever had, and he runs off, has a drink in a bar, and feels transformed by the singer of a jazz combo in the bar. Then he's able to go back and sing again with the Dead. He seems to enjoy giving credit to the unnamed jazz combo in the bar and unwilling to credit the Dead. Somehow, I suspect it was the Dead that shocked him out of his complacency, that their ability to inspire people to come back to see them over and over made him jealous, and that the drink and the mellow music only allowed him to calm down and meet the challenge the Dead had laid in front of him.

Most grandiose statement in the book so far:

If I didn't exist, someone would have to have invented me. [P. 153.]

Dylan's attitude toward his fans from the 60s (like me):

[T]his audience was past its prime and its reflexes were shot. [P. 155.]

Secret to a system of playing the guitar taught by aging blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson:

[T]he number 3 is more metaphysically powerful than the number 2. [P. 159]

Second reference in the chapter to songs as meat:

I had been leaving a lot of my songs on the floor like shot rabbits for a long time. [P. 162.]

Thing on TV that bums Dylan out: Johnny Carson does not ask soul singer Joe Tex to come sit on the couch after his song. P. 163. He seems to view this as a specific rejection of Joe Tex--did Johnny invite the singers over generally?--and he identifies with Joe Tex. Outsider.

Great play that just seemed like a big drag: "A Long Day's Journey Into Night." P. 167.

What spending time with Bono is like: "eating dinner on a train." [P. 174.]

Dylan's "Chronicles": Chapter 3.

Continuing with my reading of Dylan's autobiography. (I do Chapter 1 here and Chapter 2 here.)

Poet Dylan is excited to meet who turns out to be (a) a windbag and (b) depressing as hell: Archibald MacLeish.

What MacLeish says about Michelangelo that sounds more like he was talking about himself: he "had no friends of any kind and didn't want any, spoke to no one." P. 112.

Dylan's "deepest dream" at the time the counterculture was exploding and looking to him to lead the way: "a nine-to five existence, a house on a tree-lined block with a white picket fence, pink roses in the backyard." P. 117.

Dylan's favorite of all the strange labels applied to him during the period when he was trying to stay out of the public eye: "Buddha in European Clothes." P. 124.

Adjective used to describe the NYT's interpretation of his songs: "quacky." P. 119.

Reason, in addition to the fact that he didn't want to go places where people might bug him, that he went to see Frank Sinatra, Jr. perform at the Rainbow Room: he really likes show tunes. P. 126.

How David Crosby, who accompanied Dylan to Princeton to accept his honorary degree, described the people who handed out the degree: "Bunch of dickheads on auto-stroke." P. 134.

Dylan's advice to Al Kooper, which was not taken, leaving Kooper "in eternal musical limbo": "All he needed was a dynamo chick singer." P. 137.

Album that I listened to a lot when I was in college that the end of this chapter is about recording: "New Morning."

Sweet song on that album I love: "Winterlude."

Dylan's "Chronicles": Chapter 2.

Continuing my reading of the new Dylan autobiography from yesterday.

Dylan describes the characters he met in New York and the books that he read in the well-stocked library in one of the places where he crashed in those early days. You sense the material is being gathered for songs like "Desolation Row," where arty New Yorkers mingle with historical and literary figures. He seems to learn to do the mingling from Chloe Kiel (pp. 26-27) who wore black fingernail polish and said wild things like "Dracula ruled the world and he's the son of Gutenberg."

He tells of growing up during and just after WWII. I cringe at the passage that clumps "Hitler, Churchill, Mussolini, Stalin, Roosevelt" together and describes them in undifferentiated language. I write "Masters of War" in the margin. Yet at one point he pictured himself going to West Point: "I wanted to be a general with my own battalion." P. 41. His father said he lacked the connections to get in, and his uncle told him "A soldier is a housewife, a guinea pig. Go to work in the mines." P. 42. Later, he became very engrossed in studying the Civil War. Pp. 84-86.

His only childhood confidante was his grandmother, p. 42, a one-legged seamstress who had immigrated from Turkey, p. 93. She had darker skin than the rest of his family, and she smoked a pipe. P. 92.

Cliché that should have been edited out, p. 100: "March was coming in like a lion ..."
Musical artists he writes about admiringly:

• Roy Orbison. Pp. 32-33. "Next to Roy the [radio] playlist was strictly dullsville ... gutless and flabby."

• Johnny Rivers. Pp. 60-61. "Of all the versions of my recorded songs, the Johnny Rivers one was my favorite." Rivers, in his version of "Positively 4th Street," understood the attitude, Dylan writes. Immediately after reading this, I go to Amazon and find and order "Rewind/Realization." The double album not only has "Positively 4th Street," it begins with "The Tracks of My Tears," the song that inspired Dylan to call Smokey Robinson "the greatest American living poet."

• Bobby Vee. Pp. 79-81. "I'd always thought of him as a brother."

• Hank Williams. Pp. 95-96. "When I hear Hank sing, all movement ceases. The slightest whisper seems a sacrilege." He tried to follow rules for songwriting that he perceived in Williams's songs.

An author he loved: Balzac! P. 46:

You can learn a lot from Mr. B. It's funny to have him as a companion. He wears a monk's robe and drinks endless cups of coffee. Too much sleep clogs up his mind. One of his teeth falls out, and he says, "What does this mean?" He questions everything. His clothes catch fire on a candle. He wonders if fire is a good sign. Balzac is hilarious.

He makes Balzac sound like a guy in a Dylan song: "And you say, 'What does this mean?'"

Dylan repeatedly expresses the instinctive feeling he had that music was about to change and that he knew where to take it:

The On the Road, Howl and Gasoline street ideologies that were signaling a new type of human existence weren't there [on the radio]. P. 34.

I just thought mainstream culture was lame as hell and a big trick. P. 35.

I knew what I was doing ... and wasn't going to take a step back or retreat for anybody. P. 67.

I had a vivid idea of where everything was. The future was nothing to worry about. It was awfully close. P. 104.

Dylan's "Chronicles"--Chapter 1.

Bob Dylan begins his story with a scene where he meets Jack Dempsey, who, assuming this happened at all, thinks or acts like he thinks Bob Dylan is another boxer, and that scene sets the tone for the rest of the first chapter, where we see Dylan arrive in New York, interested in music, but even more interested in fighting his way to success. The first action we see him take is signing a contract with a music publishing company.

First song mentioned in the book: "Rock Around the Clock."


Most distinctive good friend in his early days in New York: Tiny Tim. "I gave the rest of my French fries to Tiny Tim."

Reason given for being outraged that Pete Seeger was blacklisted during the McCarthy Era: his ancestors came over on the Mayflower. Page 6.

Indication that the book could have been better edited: "What I did was come across the country from the Midwest ... straight out of Chicago ... eastbound through the state lines, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania ..." Page 8.

First long passage of praise for a fellow music artist: pages 13-14. The artist is Ricky Nelson. "I felt we had a lot in common." But Ricky's days were numbered--unlike Dylan's.

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