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Chronicles:
Volume I
by Bob Dylan
Book Review by Kennedy Weible
Someone invented a stupid word
once. "Bildungsroman." Even spell-check doesn't know
it, and you're unlikely to bump into it anywhere outside of this
review. It applies to a book or a work that relates the tale
of the author's life via his or her art and influences. Bob Dylan's
Chronicles: Volume I is one of these bildungsromans. The
book is a scatter chronologically, but it does follow some semblance
of structure, beginning with diatribes on Dylan's early influences
and what they meant for him musically.
The best of these is his comment on Roy Orbison, "With him,
it was all about fat and blood." There are takes on some
of the lesser know musicians who contributed to him in one way
or another as well. Some let him play in their clubs, others
sent him traipsing through frozen swamps on Coney Island for
a box of records that would later end up in the hands of Wilco.
The former of these was Woodie Guthrie, whose name is mentioned
so much that it probably comes in a close second to Dylan's own,
first-person "I." Guthrie is a clear figurehead for
Dylan. The patriarch and mentor at the top of the influence family
tree, starting off the lineage of descendants.
The middle of the book gets a bit deep into the actual writing
of songs and the studio process. Readers who are musicians themselves
will appreciate it, but the average non-musical reader might
get a little exasperated wading through it. But since Dylan no
longer speaks coherently, this and whatever waits in Volume
2 are your best chances at gleaning an understanding of how
he managed to create, as he himself says of Billie Holiday, Teddy
Wilson, Cab Calloway, and a few others, "music that resonated
through American life."
The last third of the book goes back the earliest date-wise.
We sit with Dylan the first time he hears Woodie Guthrie playing
alone. We also get a quick tour of a few other major inspirations
and a look at the first contract he signed with Columbia.
Though there is this three-part structure, the book is loose.
The narrative weaves in and out of times and places, one thing
inspiring a tangent on another. We're taken back to Dylan's hometown
and his childhood, introduced to John Wayne, sit in on a dinner
at Johnny Cash's house, eat hamburgers with Tiny Tim, and even
visit a conversation with Bono. There is a rambling reminiscence
about the book, deliberately so. It's Dylan's story in exactly
his own words. The grammar is overlooked, and he wanders back
and forth from past to present tense. Occasionally starting a
sentence with the latter of the two, dipping briefly into the
former, then finishing up with an unexpected future tense. A
sentence like that will leave you rereading it four and five
times wondering how in the hell Dylan managed to get the thing
out of his brain, and how differently wired that wrinkled sponge
must be to allow him to reread it later and leave it that way.
The most exquisite pleasure of the book though, is essentially
the same thing that elevated his lyrics and made his songs endure.
When talking about the Civil War, which he spent some time researching,
he points out that Northerners lived their life by the physical
clock (1:23 a.m., 5:18 p.m.), and Southerners lived by the clock
of nature (sun up, midday, sun down). "In some ways,"
he writes, "the Civil Way would be a battle between two
kinds of time." It's this inimitable ability to take a large
concept idea, condense it into a little package, and throw some
real weight to it that marked his songs, and the same thing marks
this book.
We're left just short of the most anticipated looks at Dylan's
history. We get a pretty thorough tour of everything before he
was famous, and an equally in depth look at the time post-fame
when his legend began to resemble an albatross swinging from
his neck. But the book stops just short of what was going through
his head though when he wrote, for instance "Like a Rolling
Stone." The years people think of as being quintessentially
Dylan the ones that anchor that legend status that caused
him so much angst are presumably left for Volume 2.
Though it would be no surprise if he just left that part of it
out all together. After all, this is the story of what got him
to the that point, and what he felt he was missing when he slipped
from his perch. It's the humanization of a legend, and the relief
of that legend finally explaining how he's human. There are some
funny surprises in the mix as well, as you read and the enigma
unravels. Namely, "My favorite politician was Arizona senator
Barry Goldwater." Barry Goldwater? What the fuck?
As I was reading, the man himself came up in the shuffle of songs
playing on my iPod across the room. The song was "Like a
Rolling Stone," recently voted best song ever by Rolling
Stone magazine. It's probably just a name thing, I think, then
realize that this is actually what I imagine Dylan himself would
say about the situation. At least, that's what I imagine the
younger version of himself that Dylan describes would say. The
young man who seemed to be aware that great things would rise
on his horizon, and could maybe even already see them as tiny
specks. Dots that someone unaccustomed to looking into the future
would have missed entirely.
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