Latest In Comics

From the Newsroom

 
Bloggery
FAQ
Archive
Advertise With Us
Columns
My Photo Life
Contact PLAYBACK:stl
confessions of a groupie

Login Form






Lost Password?
No account yet? Register
Some sections of this Web require you to login. It will also get you some nice prizes. It's painless.

In the Photo Gallery

Home arrow page by page (books) arrow Mark Polizzotti | Highway 61 Revisited (Continuum)
Mark Polizzotti | Highway 61 Revisited (Continuum) Print E-mail
Written by James McAnally   
Wednesday, 21 March 2007
Digg!

highwayMembers of the Dylan cult desire revelation, commandments brought down from the mountain. Until then, another book will have to stand in.

 

 

 

If you ask Dave Eggers, we listen to music to figure it out. If you ask Bob Dylan about his songs, you are likely to learn more about Vaudeville than Dylan. If you ask a Bob Dylan fan about a Bob Dylan song, you will get an Honest to God Opinion. Fans will read this book because Highway 61 Revisited is as unknowable an album ever laid to acetate, yet the listener understands that there is much knowledge contained in its confines still left to speculation. Members of the Dylan cult desire revelation, commandments brought down from the mountain. Until then, another book will have to stand in.

Continuum's 33 1/3 series is tailor-made for those albums riddled with mystery in equal measure to beauty, whether it be a contemporary classic (Ok Computer) or holy grail (Pet Sounds). In Highway 61 Revisited, we have the greatest songwriter delivering one of the most complex and dystopic visions ever written. Anyone who has ever listened to "Desolation Row" knows it requires Cliff's Notes as in depth as my high school copy of The Sound and the Fury.

Mark Polizzotti does his best to capture the album in its epochal glory, but falls into the same well-tread terrain as most books involving Dylan. It is penitent. It tries its best to be exhaustive in its detailed explanations, then confess that it is this very impulse to grasp and package that Dylan sneered at in lines like "something is happening here/ But you don't know what it is/ Do you, Mister Jones?" from "Ballad of a Thin Man." Dylan's critique on Highway 61 is universal.

Forty years later, we still feel his eyes staring us down and no amount of professional research will alleviate it. Yet, I read on. Partially because books about Dylan are the next best thing we can get to Dylan. Fact is, I would rather read about Dylan than listen to Conor Oberst. Or Donovan. Or the next new Dylan. Does anyone know when the 33 1/3 take on Blood on the Tracks comes out? | James McAnally




Reddit!Del.icio.us!Google!Facebook!Slashdot!Netscape!Technorati!StumbleUpon!Newsvine!Furl!Fark!Blogmarks!Yahoo!Ma.gnolia!Squidoo!BlogMemes!Free social bookmarking plugins and extensions for Joomla! websites!
Comments
Add NewSearch
positively4th - unknowable Registered | 2008-07-04 13:38:09
I think this is an interesting review and agree that Dylan is largely unknowable. That you quote from Ballad of a Thin Man is apt, I think. This said, I don't think that Dylan's sphinx-like nature and also, that he remains like the Delphic Oracle, speaking to us in riddles etc. should stand in the way of one trying to understand Dylan. The book itself is good and solid and full of useful information, to my mind - so it's as valid as any other book - Greil Marcus, Christopher Ricks (shivers) - that do or attempt to do the same thing. In this book, there is more insight and it seems that the author spoke directly with some of the key players.

The whole 33 1/3 series, however, I think is overrated, if rated at all? It seems more like an "in" game than people who are true fans writing about it. Instead you have an "academic" study series of bands and musicians who are truly moving and even changing of entire generations (as with Dylan). An academic study as such is never going to capture the true essence of what these people mean to us or their cultural context. THIS is where the editor the series fails: missing entirely the whole point of music, which is exactly that it is not academic, that it instead an emotional experience and one that resonates precisely for that reason... But that's the series on the whole.

This book is perhaps a bit of an exception? Why are you waiting for another from the same series? If they do one - (i think their blog is on blogspot, so you could email the Editor of the Series, David Barker, and find out?)

But again, I think as you say, or as Dylan said, and you use the quote well - something is happening and you don't know what it is... Yup, but I apply that to the series on the whole. This one book stands out as a beacon, if anything, as much as any academic study can -

Interesting article.
Only registered users can write comments!
 
[ Back ]
bigfatcat
Schlafly
legal advice
red gorilla
Ardent Studios
BBH
Digg!