Christopher Bray
Folk Hero
Bob Dylan in America
By Sean Wilentz
The Bodley Head 390pp £20
At last a study of Bob Dylan’s work that isn’t premised on his being a major-league poet. Ever since the publication of Michael Gray’s Leavisite panegyric Song and Dance Man (1972), literary Dylan fans have been keen to counsel us that their man is the new Keats or Eliot. Ezra Pound said that if modernism were to have a future there’d have to be a merger of poetry and song, but even if you believe – as Allen Ginsberg did – that Dylan was the man who pulled off the deal, you’d have to concede that he’s a rocker at least as much as he is a writer. If Professor Aidan Day gets his kicks ‘Reading the Lyrics of Bob Dylan’ (the subtitle of his 1988 book Jokerman) then good luck to him. The majority of us prefer to hear them sung to the twang of a guitar.
Sean Wilentz, a professor at Princeton and historian in residence at www.bobdylan.com, is one of that majority. Though Bob Dylan in America is marred by the odd passage of over-enthusiastic exegesis, the book largely takes it for granted that its subject is such a plain-talking writer that his
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Under its longest-serving editor, Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair was that rare thing – a New York society magazine that published serious journalism.
@PeterPeteryork looks at what Carter got right.
Peter York - Deluxe Editions
Peter York: Deluxe Editions - When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines by Graydon Carter
literaryreview.co.uk
Henry James returned to America in 1904 with three objectives: to see his brother William, to deliver a series of lectures on Balzac, and to gather material for a pair of books about modern America.
Peter Rose follows James out west.
Peter Rose - The Restless Analyst
Peter Rose: The Restless Analyst - Henry James Comes Home: Rediscovering America in the Gilded Age by Peter Brooks...
literaryreview.co.uk
Vladimir Putin served his apprenticeship in the KGB toward the end of the Cold War, a period during which Western societies were infiltrated by so-called 'illegals'.
Piers Brendon examines how the culture of Soviet spycraft shaped his thinking.
Piers Brendon - Tinker, Tailor, Sleeper, Troll
Piers Brendon: Tinker, Tailor, Sleeper, Troll - The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West by Shaun Walker
literaryreview.co.uk