Bob Dylan was born as Robert Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota in 1941. There is scant mention of his childhood, before he took up the bohemian lifestyle of a 60s folk singer in Greenwich Village, among other places. He only briefly attended the University of Minnesota.
The 82 page analysis of the song Blowin’ in the Wind, published in 1963, and its lasting impact, becomes a bit tiresome with the many versions and many singers who sang the protest song over many years in many countries.
The second chapter supposedly on The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carol (32 pages) has almost nothing to do with that song and a lot about a host of other singers and songwriters many of whom I was unfamiliar with. That includes the nonsensical Dan Tucker who “died with a toothache in his heel.” Thankfully the following chapter, Ain’t Talkin’ is shorter. But the Jim Jones (not the cult leader nor the rapper/songwriter) chapter, at 47 pages, mentions Bob Dylan only in the last 11 pages when he discovers old poem about a perhaps mythical murderer exiled to Australia, which he then plays and discusses. This chapter is contains run on sentences going for half a page and hundreds of names, most of whom I had never heard of.
To call this book by the American music critic, a biography at all is a stretch. There is no discussion of Dylan’s lovers and wives, his drug use, his family, either parents, siblings or children or his critics, of whom there are many. I have rarely been as disappointed in a book.
Thanks, but no thanks , The New Yorker.
No rating.
The Passionate Reader 