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Christian Dittus
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English

FOLK MUSIC

Greil Marcus

A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs

Across seven decades, Bob Dylan has been the first singer of American song. As an artist, he has opened up the territory where Tony Bennett's “Once Upon a Time” can be sung as if it is as much a folk song as his own “Blowin' in the Wind,” as recited by a fictional Malcolm X. As a writer and performer, he has rewritten the songbook until the traditional and credited sources that might have been printed on the title pages fell away, and it is only a matter of who we are listening to.

Here Greil Marcus tells Dylan's story through seven of his most transformative songs. Marcus's point of departure is Dylan's ability to “see myself in others.” The motor of his music is empathy: as at the beginning of his career in New York he spoke of writing a song about Emmett Till in the first person, nearly sixty years later he circled the globe as John F. Kennedy arguing with infinity as he waited between life and death.

Like Dylan's songs, this book is a work of implicit patriotism and creative skepticism. It illuminates Dylan's continuing presence in cultures, especially where such capacious imaginative identification with the other is in short supply. This is not only a deeply felt telling of the life and times of Bob Dylan, but a rich history of American folk songs and the new life they were given as Dylan sat down to write his own.

Greil Marcus is the author of numerous books, including More Real Life Rock, Under the Red White and Blue, and The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs.

(Illustrations by Max Clarke)
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Published 2022-10-01 by Yale University Press

Comments

Czech Republic: Prostor;

"Marcus not only tells a Bob Dylan biography through the study of seven songs, he also creates an autobiography of his own long career as a writer on music and America — as well as a rich history of American folk songs and the new life they engendered as Dylan sat down to write his own. How does Marcus do it? I've often wondered as I've read him in the past. This time, I have no answers at all, only admiration and respect. (...) But 1Marcus ranges more widely [then other biographers], and his in-depth analysis of the songs themselves is unmatched." Read more...

“Decade after decade, Greil Marcus has proven himself to be not only a brilliant cultural critic about the music, lives, and stories that have helped shape contemporary American consciousness; he has also done much to articulate why our music has always stood at the axis of sound, and politics. This book is not only a valuable addition to the canon, it further elevates Marcus to what he has always been: a supreme artist-critic.” —Hilton Als “Here is Greil Marcus at his most brilliantly insightful, eloquent, persuasive, brimming with information about Bob Dylan and his music, unique in his ability to combine the most candid sort of memoirist prose with truly inspired commentary. As Dylan 'sees himself' in his subjects, so Greil Marcus 'sees himself' in Dylan, the most original musical genius of our time, the perfect subject for the most original music critic of our time." —Joyce Carol Oates “Greil Marcus's writing on Dylan constitutes one of the great living bodies of work by one mold-breaking creative mind interpreting the art and meaning of another. Dylan's multitudes ?nd their champion in Marcus's critical exuberance.” —Todd Haynes “Marcus is unsurpassed in showing how Dylan reflected the cultural moment even as he changed it. This moving, personal, compelling book traces Dylan's complex relationship to American culture through some of Dylan's most iconic songs, enabling us to understand these songs in fresh ways while also giving us a profound history of how we understand ourselves.” —Dana Spiotta “Greil Marcus' writing on Bob Dylan is as essential as Dylan himself. Through the prism of Dylan's visionary genius, Marcus unveils a fascinating history of the soul of modern America.” —Olivier Assayas