Really? I did a search to see what else folks had written and I didn’t see a review. Mucho apologies if I missed a thread - but it was published in 2004 and I couldn’t find “the official” review thread on it.
Well, I just got around to reading it. Context: I have never been much of a Dylan fan, but I knew I “had to respect him” - I went through a phase as a young music listener where I offhandedly dismissed stuff I didn’t like - “Neil Young’s voice is too screechy” or whatever - but some musicians keep rising to the surface so I have had to give them a listen. Dylan was like that - so I have kept at it, trying to figure out what folks heard in Mr. Nasal Voice, Aren’t I Special dude who didn’t seem to be much of a guitar player. Over time - after really listening to his music, seeing Don’t Look Back and No Direction Home (both amazing movies) I had gotten to a place where I had my own place of respect for Bobby Zimmerman.
But reading this book - JAY-sus, can this guy write. This book is without question one of the greatest books written by an artist commonly thought of as a genius where the main thread of the book is his journey, culminating in his genius. As one review stated:
Dylan is a matter-of-fact writer - he uses visual writing, but is so straightforward about it that it never comes across as flowery. “Everything in New Orleans is a good idea.” Could you come up with a shorter way to summarize the gumbo melting pot that is the Big Easy? I found myself every page or two just shaking my head at the concise accuracy of a particularly well-wrought line. The man, on a sentence-by-sentence basis, writes better than your average bear.
And the topic is fascinating - the journey to find his voice as an artist. He bounces around in time and subject matter, but the narrative is easy to follow as you can tell he is trying to lay out, in a very plain-spoken way, the “recipe” of influences and life experiences that contributed his unique voice. But this isn’t some magical experience - he grinds into us all of the reading and listening he took on, and he explains, in technical detail, how he broke down what he was absorbing and how he added it to his learnings. Thucydides, 100-year-old newspaper articles, Pirate Jenny from Kurt Weill, Robert Johnson, and more - he makes it seem so straightforward, but I found myself blown back by the choices that he made. He had a sense that seems obvious now, in hindsight, but no one has done it before or since.
The people and situations now famous - his coming out East, his connection with Woody Guthrie, his appearance in the Village folks scene, his relationship with Joan Baez, Dave Van Ronk, etc. - all get touched upon, but only in service to his quest for his voice. Let someone else note the dates and linear events - Dylan has a higher purpose in mind.
All in all, I can’t think of a better memoir written by the artist themselves. Clapton’s autobiography is really quite sad in comparison. He spends his entire book running from his central impulse and figure out how to live and thrive in spite of it - Dylan embraces his fully and completely, and spends his book chipping it out of the stone in his unformed mind. The only book that comes close that I have read recently is Andy Summers’ book, One Train Later - but that book is about a craftsman’s quest as a journeyman guitarist - who happens to strike it big. Dylan’s sense of craft is profound - this book makes it clear that he believes art emerges from the mastery of craft - but his ultimate goal is so much bigger than Summers’ - but the writing in both books set them apart.
I read it in about a day - a brilliantly written page turner filled with artistic insight. If I had approached Dylan somewhat from the outside before, now I want to dive in feet first. It doesn’t get much better and I can hardly wait to re-experience all of the songs of his I have come to love armed with this new insight…