Chronicles, Volume 1
by Bob Dylan
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Book Reviews of Chronicles, Volume 1
Book Review: He Makes Me An Eyewitness
Summary: 5 Stars
I like the way CHRONICLES starts in 1961 and then leaves there abruptly after the 1st chapter, fast-forwarding decades and coming back at the very end to provide at least *some* closure. This form leaves the reader with a sense of the relativity of time, an almost Joycean sense--to name a writer Dylan mentions at one point as having rather squandered his gifts.
At certain points in this book, such as when Bob is being signed to his first recording contract by the legendary John Hammond, I felt like an eye-witness to more than history--to that, yes, but with the added sense of experiencing things as they really felt in Bob's consciousness. I feel Dylan shares his epiphanies straight and true and with generousity. That sense persisted through much of the book which *is* a chronicle, of a few stories from a life that could surely produce at least a dozen sequels as thick as this one.
There were some places, though, where I just didn't get it. Dylan sometimes strings together adjectives or descriptions that remain completely opaque to me, or don't make sense in the context. For example, describes New Orleans in very positive images at some length, then says "After awhile you start to feel like a ghost from one of the tombs, like you're in a wax museum below crimson clouds." That doesn't sound so great to me!
A little later, Dylan devotes a number of pages to a conversation with an old man named Sun Pie who runs a souveneir shop in the bayou country. Sun Pie spouts a lot of stuff about how the Chinese are going to take over, and other things that make him sound like a complete crackpot. Dylan, though, asides near the end of their encounter, "Sun Pie was inspiring...the right guy to run into at the right time, a guy who grooved on his own head." About as inspiring as a dag barking, I thought.
But that's ok. I was sitting outside at a Burger King on this hot summer day drinking diet coke as I read, and this guy with silver reflecting shades on, who's been walking back and forth between here and the big gas station next door, noticed the cover asked me, "Is that Bob Dylan's new book?"
"It's been out a year or two," I answered, "But I never read it till now."
"How is it?" he inquired, and trembling with the living presence of mysteries about to be revealed on the very page I was reading there near the book's end, I replied in a voice of conviction and without a moment's hesitation: "It's a great book!"
Book Review: He's Older Than That Now
Summary: 5 Stars
I read "Chronicles" from start to finish the day I brought it home. Actually, I started it out at lunch. This is no great feat as it's only 293 pages, but it's been a long time since I got so caught up in a book. Like many of it's readers, to judge from other reviews, I am a long-time admirer of Dylan's work and have sometimes been amazed at the peculiar decisions he's made in his career. This book explained away much of my uncertainty. He tells us right up front that Jack Kerouac is a major influence on his writing and thinking, so it's with no surprise to me that Dylan chose an indirect method of examining his life. His voice in the book is both beautiful and genuine. He writes as he would speak. Any attempt by an editor to change that would have curtailed much of the books poetry. What emerges is the portrait of a man obsessed with making music at a very young age. He writes extensively about the people, books, paintings, plays, and recordings that influenced him. What he explains peels away the layers of mystery and speculation that has surrounded his song writing style; a style which changed the sound of popular music right up to the present day. Dylan's adulation, you can't call it fame, is a much greater burden for him than one might expect. In most other biographies of Dylan, the man emerges as a clever, calculating, and often manipulative and self-serving character. If his autobiography is designed to favorably revise that image, it certainly worked on me. Dylan draws clearly for us his rural childhood, and the collision of ideas that brought him to New York City. A combination of writing style, performance skill, and youth pushed his career ahead of his peers, creating in them, as one might guess, envy and ill-will. The difficulty of balancing two different sets of inputs, people he doesn't know who adore him and won't leave him alone, and people he knows well who are furious at him for succeeding, set up very conflicting emotions for a person well under thirty, who had been living in an unheated room over a store. This is volume one. Many of the legends of his life I guess, and hope, will be left to other volumes. Perhaps "Chronicles" will be Dylan's "Leaves of Grass," growing larger with each new edition. I absolutely loved it. If you're interested in Dylan, it's a must-read. If you're contemplating becoming a part of the American Star System, it would be prudent to read it before you make too many in-roads in that direction.Book Review: Absolutely Fascinating Insights into Dylan
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book from start to finish on a 9 hour trans-atlantic flight, and was absolutely unable to put it down until I was finished. Dylan essentially serves up 3 snapshots of his life in this 300 page first volume of a reputed three volumes: his early days in Minneapolis and New York, prior to making it big; his disenchantment with fame and fortune era-1971; and his recording of the Daniel Lanois-produced "Oh Mercy" album in 1987-88.
Couple of things that struck me while reading this: first and foremost, Dylan must have a memory of steel. I mean, he recounts his early days in New York (era-1961) with simply an incredible amount of detail and color, and yes, even name-dropping. It's like a painting coming to life in your mind, and like you are right then and there. Second, it's hard for some to accept (see reviews below), but Dylan makes it perfectly clear he never wanted to be the 'spokesman for a generation' and in fact flat-out refuses it, going to extreme lengths in the early 70s to try and change his image. Third, for anyone expecting personal stuff, forget about it! Dylan will refer once in a while to "my wife" in the various chapters, and that's it. Good for him. Finally, the "Oh Mercy" chapter gives great insight on how Dylan and Lanois struggled through their disagreements to deliver a pretty good (but not classic) album. Dylan must've been pleased as he asked Lanois to produce "Time Out of Mind" in 1997. This book covers such much, yet so little. Just imagine how much more is yet to come!
Some retailers provided a (free) accompanying "Chronicles Volume One Limited Edition" CD. The CD (6 tracks, 18 min.) is notable for including a previously unavailable track, "The Cuckoo", recorded live at the Gaslight in NY in 1962. The audio quality is surprisingly good (coughs from the audience are clearly heard at one point, though). Also included is a previously unreleased demo of "Dignity", which Dylan discusses in the book. The other 4 tracks are 2 songs each from the "New Morning" and "Dignity" albums which songs Dylan also discusses in the book. In all, a terrific CD for the inclusion of the previously unavailable tracks. And the book is a must, not just for Dylan fans, but for anyone wanting to understand better the beginnings of one of rock's great legends. And when he comes to your town this year or next, please go see him! Who knows how long the "never-ending tour" will really go on?
Book Review: Still one heck of a writer
Summary: 5 Stars
1st off, let me concur with those of you who read it - how can anyone put their thoughts to paper after only having read EXCERPTS. Geesh, these are the people Bob at whom Bob directs his anger!
OK, now then, Bob Dylan has delivered, in my mind, some of the best writing in his 5-decade career. This memoir flows with some of the most stylish metaphors and anecdtoes I have ever read. The descriptions are so vivid and compelling, from Roy Orbison as someone who sang "like a professional criminal", to Davd Crosby as someone who was flirting with death even "back then", (1970), to his belief that if Bono had come to America at the turn of the century, he would have been a cop, Dylan draws pictures in the same Piccasoesque fashion in which he writes songs. The detail in his memory is striking and surprising, as even he has mentioned. This only adds to the pictures he creates, and it all seems so effortless. Furthermore, the memoir is peppered with one-liners that could easily have ended up on a lyric sheet, and still might knowing bob's propensity to search previous writings for help with song lyrics ;-).
Bob is a very well read person, as has always been suggested in his lyrics. But here we learn in great detail what it is that he has read. And he treats many actual living beings he has met throughout his travles as characters in the books he has read - Gorgeous George, Archibald MacLeish, Jack Dempsey, Frank Sinatra, Jr., Daniel Lanois, Aaron Neville, Woody Guthrie, Izzy Young (one of my favs!) - the list goes on & on, capped off by perhaps the most lucid character in Bob's memory, The Village circa early 1960s.
Grammatically, Bob needs some work. But I look at it more as a conversation, matter of fact. Bob is writing as if he were just sitting around talking to us. The dangling participle here & there, meshed with a run-on sentence might drive the editor crazy, but this is his way of retelling the stories, and it makes us, the reader, feel more relaxed, really inside and on top of what he is saying.
If vols. 2 & 3 are an actuality, we have much to look forward to and much to be thankful for. Critics may desire more gossip, more juice, like his divorces, conversion to Christianity, change to electric music, etc. But Bob should just keep speaking what is on his mind. This memoir could not have turned out any better, even if he wanted us to "get juiced in it."
Book Review: The Year's Most Welcome Surprise
Summary: 5 Stars
That one of America's most elusive icons has penned one of its most revealing self-portraits is surprising enough. That the book teems with the ferocity, distinctiveness and wisdom of an American literary classic is beyond the expectations of even some of his most devoted students. That word "student" becomes especially appropriate as the first volume of Dylan's memoirs unfolds with a litany of literary allusions, historical references and insight, and an amount of experience reserved for ten lifetimes. While some of that may not necessarily be unexpected, the vividness of Dylan's many character studies, the precision and clarity of his illuminating bursts of historical reflections, and the breadth of his rich reading experience, make for a life whose unique fullness is only partially revealed in the man's music. As with any autobiography, Dylan conveniently selects the fragments of his life he is willing to discuss. His tumultuous early relationships with Suze Rotolo and Joan Baez, for example, are quickly shrugged off, while even less is said of Dylan's most lauded works, from all those classic early songs to Blood on the Tracks and beyond. Similarly, the book itself is arranged into a series of prolonged recollections that jump over whole decades and retreat back again, avoiding the kind of linear narrative one might expect of a memoir. But from a man who infuriates as easily as he satisfies, such idiosyncrasy is hardly surprising. It is in the few windows of his life through which Dylan chooses to gaze that the book's intensity explodes. From an extended examination of the sessions that led to 1989's Oh Mercy to a vulnerable look at the disillusionment that nearly derailed his creative and personal life, Dylan's candor leaves little to the imagination. Most appealing of all is his ability to maintain throughout the book a sense of something larger than himself, a modesty that makes for a particularly refreshing and fascinating read. Some of the best parts of the book have nothing to do with the man himself, and read like stretches of lost prose from some of the many literary masters to which he so frequently alludes. At turns a great American road novel, landmark historical document and professorial lecture, Chronicles, Vol. 1 is as colorful an addition to American letters as Woody Guthrie's Bound for Glory or Kerouac's On the Road.
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