Cipherdom (deprecated)

Dylan's Chronicles, Vol. 1, Take 1

Having finished Dylan's Chronicles, Vol. 1, I must report that the boy can write prose. I still haven't gotten 'round to Tarantula, which didn't seem to convince anyone that Dylan's genius extended beyond songwriting. What a pleasant surprise that his new book captures a quirky, distinctive voice that is recognizable to anyone who loves his songs.

This is about the least self-serving autobiography I've read. Sometimes its openness is shocking, as when he conveys in excruciating but ultimately liberating detail the self-doubt he experienced while creating Oh Mercy. Other times, it is more sly and inscrutable. At first glance, he doesn't resolve any puzzles in the lyrics; you wouldn't expect him to telegraph who inspired "Ballad of a Thin Man," and he doesn't. In fact, it's hard to find references to any of the songs, and the book is no worse for it: Dylan is nothing if not respectful of the role that mystery plays in art. But he does drop some understated clues, as when he mentions off-handedly that he and girlfriend Suze Rotolo lived on 4th Street, which I suppose hardcore Dylanologists always knew.

Dylan's eye for detail and character development are impressive, and there's a near-total absence of score-settling passages. (One notable exception is the depiction of Robbie Robertson as a starfucker, which is too unflattering to have been accidental.) For someone with a reputation of irascibility, he has only praise for contemporaries and, especially, the performers from whom he borrowed to build his own persona. Dave Van Ronk comes across as a giant; you can sense Dylan's awe, even as he acknowledges the lack of ambition that kept Van Ronk from the big time. He describes lovingly how John Hammond exposed him to Robert Johnson, whose recordings at the time were virtually unknown. Hammond passed Dylan an advance copy of King of the Delta Blues Singers, which had an influence on him that tends to be understated, evidently, in spite of the major hint he dropped on the cover of Bringing It All Back Home. Decades later, Dylan saw the film footage that surfaced several years ago, purportedly showing Johnson in performance on a Mississippi street; Dylan has no doubt it was the Man, though experts claim it wasn't. In writing about Johnson's songs, he stresses their deep poetics, which tend to get overshadowed by their guitar playing.

More to come . . .