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Bob Dylan In America (2010)

by Sean Wilentz(Favorite Author)

3.81 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0385529880 (ISBN13: 9780385529884)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Doubleday

review 1: At times Bob Dylan in America is very interesting, and at times this book just plain reaches too far. The material on Aaron Copeland, Blind Willie McTell, and Allen Ginsberg, though peripherally germane, is really interesting, and I knew next to nothing about each of these. The final third (or so)of the book, though not without its moments, puts forth a few ideas that seem, if not wrong, a bit of a strain. Sometimes a writer can't stand loose ends, and will do anything to join those up - not always the best idea. Anyway, the book is well worth reading, despite the minor misgivings I have about it.
review 2: The latest in an unending series of Dylan texts and yet this one stands out, focusing on some of the more forgotten roots and branches of the Dylan discogra... morephy: Aaron Copland and Charles Ives, the “Popular Front” of the 40’s, John and Alan Lomaxes, Group Theater, Mark Blitzein, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, and the Beat poets (especially Ginsberg - while reading this I went back and read Ginsberg’s poem “Wichita, Vortex, Sutra” which features him driving across America while thinking about the Vietnam war and responding to the white noise of the radio and highway billboards including a line about “angelic Dylan” singing about Queen Marie coming from a car radio and the power of this one song to redeem the country). The book also spends some time finding new angles on the more obvious influences: shaped note singing, Woody Guthrie, the Almanac Singers, The Weavers and Pete Seeger, Odetta, Lord Buckley, Elvis Presley, Joan Baez, etc, With sections on the live performances, the recording of Blonde on Blonde, the Rolling Thunder Review, and Blind Willie McTell. Not just for Dylan fanatics (although it helps). less

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