Chronicles, Volume 1
by Bob Dylan
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Book Reviews of Chronicles, Volume 1
Book Review: Sitting at the bar listening to Dylan
Summary: 5 Stars
It probably helps to be a Dylan fan to read this book, although at times it reads like fiction stories. Ray Davies attempted the same writing approach in his pseudo-autobiography ("X-Rays"), which is basically telling stories of specific incidents. Sure, Robert Shelton did a good job earlier with "No Direction Home," but it's different seeing it through Dylan's eyes. Hearing how he got dropped off at the George Washington bridge in January '61, and ended up in the Village, eating free burgers with Tiny Tim in the kitchen of Cafe Wha?, before Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen or Richard Pryor came on at night. Getting interviewed by some clean-cut publicity boy at Columbia Records for his bio, and basic life in the Village from his point of view, and told in a story-telling fashion. His '50s influences shaped his life to a much greater extent than some suspect, for example, how he loved Ricky Nelson, and even briefly played with, and became a fan of Bobby Vee. How he thought Johnny Rivers covered his songs as well as anyone, and how he once snuck into the audience of a Frank Sinatra Junior (!) concert, and enjoyed himself, because he was a fan of show tunes as well. There are stories from Bob about sitting in his kitchen drinking coffee with his mother and aunt, and watching Joe Tex on the Johnny Carson show on TV, and thinking if he was on, he probably wouldn't have much to say to Johnny either. In other words, just stories, and interesting stories at that, because no other biographer really ever had open access to inside Dylan's head. And of course, his negative feelings toward the counterculture and Dylan fanatics who hounded his family in Woodstock are here. As well as his dismay at constantly being referred to as a "generation's voice," or "political spokesman," such as when he received an honorary degree in '70 from Princeton. This book helps make sense as to why he released "Nashville Skyline" in '69 and "Self-Portrait" in '70. Of course, it may take Chronicles 2 or Chronicles 3 to help explain how he ever wrote "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" or "Subterranean Homesick Blues" or "Times they are a-Changing" or "Visions of Johanna."Book Review: What do you want?
Summary: 2 Stars
Bob Dylan has long been considered elusive; a secretive soul not willing to accept and bask in his importance in American Music History. Even more so is Dylan's unwillingness to welcome the fact that he is essentially "The Voice of a Generation." His new book, Chronicles, Vol. 1, spends a great deal of time discussing how he does not want to be regarded as the holder of this title. The problem with this is that we already know that Dylan bought a house in Woodstock to escape from it, but fame followed him and forced him back to New York.
Dylan is a great writer, an exceptional poet, no one can take that from him. But, just as other greats are cursed by their accomplishments and abilities, many believe that Dylan should be writing prose with the proficiency of his poetry and lyrics. This is something that cannot happen, and we see it in Chronicles. Not only is his grammar often off, but his sentences don't always make complete sense and we get lost in his rambles about trivial events and facts. His writings on Pete Maravich are nice and respectful, but it has nothing to do with the ensuing events of his life.
What I enjoy most about Chronicles is his vignettes on the cities and environments. Greenwich Village in the sixties, Minneapolis before anyone knew what happened in Minneapolis, a midwesterner's observations of New Orleans - all of his writings on the places and people are interesting because Bob Dylan paints a beautiful picture, and we've known this since Blood on the Tracks and Freewheelin'.
In the end though, Dylan appears to be looking for a quick sell, using his name as a catalyst for publication and front shelves of Waldenbooks. His autobiography is spotty and unclear. The timing is skewed and often times unknown. It's difficult to frown on the writings from the same man who scripted some of the greatest anthems of a generation (and no matter how many ways he says he's not, Bob Dylan is still the voice of a culture dead or moved on), but Chronicles is not the American force of Highway 61. It does not move the soul the way The Thin Man can in his music.
Book Review: Enigmatic Yet Strangely Interesting
Summary: 3 Stars
Bob Dylan is one of the most enigmatic figures in the history of popular music. For a man with such a canon of work and so many decades of fame, surprisingly little is known about him. Little or nothing is known about his feelings, his own views of things etc. Actions of his life are always studied meticulously by "Dylanologists." There is a hunger to learn the views and memories of one of the crown princes of the rock and roll era. Now Dylan has written volume one of an "autobiography". Fans expecting a chronicle of Bob Dylan's life are bound to be disappointed by this book for it is hardly that. It is not a chronicle of his life but rather a limited chronicle of his impressions during two key points in his life, his arrival in and first year in New York and a planned comeback at some point during the eighties. (The years are never stated. I believe he arrived in New York in 1960 or 1961.) The section in which he discusses the planned comeback album and tour comes smack in the middle of the book and is sandwiched by two sections dealing with the year of his arrival. I found the first and third parts of the book interesting and disjointed. Dylan's prose style is humorously overwrought and dramatic. He often riffs and goes off on tangents, which are sometimes enjoyable and sometimes frustrating. We learn a good deal about such disparate characters as Woodie Guthrie, Tiny Tim, Pete Maravich, Archibald Macleish and others. We learn very little about his personal life. He mentions his wife in the book's middle section but never mentions either her name or the name of any of his children. He just refers to her as "my wife." It will certainly be impossible to enjoy this book without a working knowledge of Dylan's life and career. Again, I think the book is interesting and many will enjoy it. But it lacks a linear structure and could have used massive editing. I don't know why Dylan chose to write in this way. His life and his thoughts are certainly interesting enough that a traditional memoir would have been quite riveting. I recommend it but with the reservations noted above.Book Review: "Twas in another lifetime ...
Summary: 3 Stars
...one of toil and blood." How different the world was in 1962. Mr. Dylan did not invent rock'n'roll hipness from talking too much, but from saying so little, and this impressionistic memoir is proof he's still not revealing too much. Bobby Vee, Frank Sinatra Jr. and Tiny Tim are not necessarily the first characters Mr. Dylan's audience associate with the legend, which leads many disappointed readers to assume that this is an attempt to obscure rather than to clarify. But so what? At this late date, a straightfoward memoir would cover some very well-known facts. Mr. Dylan has his biographers to set the story straight -- let's assume his own words still mean just what they say and that the created legend was a confusing mix of false starts and stops, confidence and insecurities, and extemporized recording sessions.
Why not? No one creates their own legend out of whole cloth -- it depends on the willing suspension of belief in his audience, and it's helped along by a publicity department that values Mr. Dylan's own unwillingness to open his mouth about what the words mean. That's what the lyrics are for in the first place.
Still, that doesn't mean that "Chronicles" isn't a put-on, a put-down or intentionally arcane. "Bob Dylan" is still his own best character. The book succeeds best in conveying the singer's own doubts about himself. Mr. Dylan's selective memory is certainly not a generation's collective one, and why should it be? The book reads like an overheard monologue, a man on the porch remembering bits and pieces of the past: this happened, oh yes, and then this. Mr. Dylan can be a sly dissembler, but there is truth in the telling. Are there great stories waiting in volume two? Probably not the ones his fans remember. Reading "Chronicles" is akin to discovering one's hero still puts his pants on one leg at a time -- disappointing, but what does one expect? Ambrose Bierce defines the imagination as "a warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership." I'll bet Mr. Bierce never had anyone yell out "Judas!" after him, though.
Book Review: Dylan and the Unemployed Baker
Summary: 4 Stars
Reading "Chronicles, Vol. 1" is a lot like visiting Duluth, Minnesota, where Bobby Zimmerman (a.k.a., Bob Dylan) grew up for the first eight years of his life before moving up to Hibbing on the Iron Range.
Duluth is beautiful and harsh at the same time. Looking over the vastness of Lake Superior from its high hills, you get a sense of unlimited possibility and cold inner dread. Something amazing is about to happen...or maybe it's just winter coming to strangle everyone for the next 8 months. Hard to tell in the "Zenith City" of Dylan's childhood. I've traveled to about 26 countries now and there's no place quite like it.
Many years ago, when I was a journalist in Duluth, the last story I wrote for the Duluth News-Tribune was about Dylan's boyhood home in that city -- actually a ragged clapboard duplex in a working class neighborhood overlooking downtown and the big lake. I searched down the address from some old city records, with help from a librarian. When I drove over to the place one cold October afternoon, I noticed a light on in the upstairs unit, so I walked up the stairs and knocked on the door. (This was 1983.)
A grizzly looking, tired man answered the door and invited me in. His 8-year-old son was watching TV nearby. I asked him about the neighborhood and about himself. He said he was an out-of-work baker trying to scrape by on unemployment (about $120 a week). It was a horrible time in Duluth, in terms of the economy -- the unemployment rate was close to 20% and half the stores downtown were closed. Not unlike the Great Depression, in fact. On my way to work each morning, I used to pass people hitchhiking into town to sell their blood plasma for a few bucks.
At the end of my short interview with the unemployed baker, I asked him if he knew that he was living in Bob Dylan's childhood home. He replied: "Who is Bob Dylan?"
"Chronicles, Vol. 1" is the answer. Read it and then go visit Duluth and Hibbing some day. You'll understand the book a whole lot better then, I guarantee it. And Bob, too.