Review -- Chronicles: Volume I (Bob Dylan)

I've not a terribly lot to say that isn't masterfully prosed in the dozens of pages of wonderful reviews preceding Dylan's text, but I would like, for my own sake more than anything else, to lift a few quotes, present a few observations, and discuss, briefly, my personal responsive to the evasive but refreshing autobiography of the man himself.

I am not surprised, though warmly pleased, to discover Dylan the author as much of a well-read, serenely thoughtful, anti-icon as Dylan the poet. The book is dappled with simple, invasive phrases: "I'd never seen a robin weep, but could imagine it and it made me sad," and the primary concern of my notation, reading through the book, was to catalog the many, many references to authors and literature, and songwriters and albums, which seems to represent a sort of Bob Dylan cultural influence record. He brushes through analysis of Voltaire, Shelley, Dostoevsky, Freud without a stutter, all the while demonstrating an impressive understanding of history, philosophy, and a over-developed though exhilarating style of human and cultural observation.

An interesting reoccurring theme, a sort of through line in the middle movements of the autobiography, is a constant reanalysis of the Civil War:

"There was a difference in the concept of time, too. In the South, people lived their lives with sun-up, high noon, sunset, spring, summer. In the North, people lived by the clock. The factory stroke, whistles and bells. Northerners had to "be on time." In some ways the Civil War would be a battle of two kinds of time. Abolition of slavery didn't even seem to be an issue when the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter."

And earlier:

"I was beginning to feel that maybe the language had something to do with the causes of the causes and ideals that were tied to the circumstances and blood of what happened over a hundred years ago over secession from the Union -- at least to those generations who were caught in it. All of a sudden, it didn't seem that far back."

It makes me think about World War II and how, though it was less than twenty years before Bob Dylan was having the conversations that led to his Civil War-thoughts, he avoids the subject altogether. Maybe World War II was a simple war, nothing too dense too wade through, not much to linger on for Dylan. He also mentions, in passing, Picasso, in such a way that floored me. It never occurred to me that Picasso lived until 1979 and that he drove in cars and saw past the Vietnam War. I always thought of him as much more distant memory than that. He talks about Picasso in the terms of a modern revolutionary. This was the 1960s, of course. I guess my knowledge of art history is incomplete.

And, certainly, no analysis of a text by Bob Dylan, orchestrated by a current resident of Greenwich Village would be complete without noting, at least, the many passing, poignant references to little spots in the village. Dylan says, loosely quoting Alan Lomax,"if you want to get out of America, go to Greenwich Village." The phrase hits me hard and fast, and I can't help but jot it down, wondering, as I sit in Washington Square Park, who sat on this bench before me?

I eagerly await Volume II.