Full Description
Taking readers behind Bob Dylan's familiar image as the enigmatic rebel of the 1960s, this book reveals a different view--that of a careful craftsman and student of the art of songwriting. Drawing on revelations from Dylan's memoir Chronicles and a variety of other sources, the author arrives at a radically new interpretation of his body of work, which revolutionized American music and won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. Dylan's songs are viewed as collages, ingeniously combining themes and images from American popular culture and European high culture.
Contents
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
"Songs for Passersby" by James M. Curtis
Preface
Introduction
Section I: Theories and Practices
1. Bob Dylan: His Biography and His Career
2. The Early Years in New York
3. Affinities with Franz Kafka, T.S. Eliot and Pablo Picasso
Section II: Songs and Songwriting
4. Songs of Transcendence—Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde
Table 1. Chronology of Songs
Table 2. Night Songs
5. Songs of Assimilation—John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline
6. "Putting a Certain Orderliness to the Chaos"
Table 3. Rhyme Forms in Dylan's Songs of the Early 1960s
Table 4. Rhyme Forms in Dylan's Songs of the Late 1960s
Table 5. Examples of Triple Rhymes in Tin Pan Alley Songs
Table 6. Triple Rhymes or More in Some American Songs (1968-1984)
7. Dylan and Springsteen
8. The Real Revolution of the 1960s
Table 7. Chronologies of Early Successes of Dylan, Barbra Streisand and Woody Allen by Approximate Age
Conclusion: Dylan's Paradoxes
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index
