Details
Synopsis
The first volume of the long-awaited Bob Dylan autobiography, CHRONICLES, is a first-person journey through three decades. Dylan travels in time from his Minnesota youth to his 1960s Greenwich Village early years--a period of cultural upheaval whose idiosyncrasies and charming eccentricities he describes in stunning detail--and the equally rich atmosphere of 1980s New Orleans, where he records with producer Daniel Lanois. With genuine enthusiasm, Dylan relates the thrill of meeting his early heroes, like the pioneering folk singers Cisco Houston and the awe-inspiring Dave Van Ronk, and poignantly depicts his visits to the legendary, ailing Woody Guthrie. Flashing forward, Dylan also describes his outraged reaction to the continual invasion of his privacy at his Woodstock home, characterizing himself as having "very little in common with and knowing less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of," and adding, "I was more a cowpuncher than a Pied Piper." CHRONICLES emphasizes Dylan's humanity--there's a genuine shock in reading the anguished reactions of an ordinary mortal to the unrelenting public analysis of his life and work. Ultimately, the biggest revelation here for hardcore Dylan fans is that the iconic object of their dissection is a living, breathing, feeling individual, often badly in need of a little down time.
| Size | | Length: | 293 pages | | Height: | 8.8 in | | Width: | 6.5 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 17.6 oz |
Industry Reviews
"[F]labbergasting....[T]he Sphinx holds forth with what is, to put it mildly, atypical frankness....This book recaptures its author's first stirrings of creativity with amazing urgency. Mr. Dylan is fully present in re-experiencing the dawn of his songwriting career....And he is just as vital about the sensations of his later years....[L]ucid without being linear, swirling through time without losing its strong storytelling thread....[t]he author's literary opinions are riveting....CHRONICLES: VOLUME ONE leaves much to be said in future installments, and much good reason to look forward to them."
New York Times - Janet Maslin (10/05/2004)
"If 'What is Bob thinking?' is the catechism of Bob Dylan fanatics, this first installment of his memoirs is a kind of Holy Grail--Dylan telling us what he thinks he thought while he did what he did."
New Yorker (10/25/2004)
"[W]e're inside Dylan's head like we've never been before, and it's a mesmerizing place....Dylan tells these stories unflinchingly, from an internal vantage that few, if any, ever expected from him....[A] story that opens up the times that it portrays, and then reveals the possibilities of the human spirit."
Rolling Stone - Mikal Gilmore (10/28/2004)
"...[T]he major surprise...is its literary cunning....[T]he real literary achievement...is the voice Dylan has devised for his youthful self, which is spellbinding in its hokum....The book is an act, but a splendid one...it's a zesty, nugget-filled read."
New York Times Book Review - Tom Carson (10/24/2004)
"[A] fine piece of writing, remarkable in its clarity....surprisingly self-revelatory....Unputdownable."
"[F]inally learning how he views himself is, like the man's greatest songs, a truly mind-blowing experience."
Entertainment Weekly (01/07/2005)
"[S]hockingly lucid and brilliantly counterintuitive."
Nation (04/25/2005)
"Dylan writes beautifully, in a wry, muscular bop-prosody, rich in metaphor and hipsterese--laconic and wide-eyed with wonder at the same time."
Literary Review (01/31/2005)
"The book's gentle, straightforward tone atrophies the poular conception of Dylan as an eccentric genius incapable of communicating with anyone but the demons and muses."
Bloomsbury Review (04/30/2005)
"Readers...might have expected [Dylan's] memoir to be variously inscrutable, gnomic, bilious, confused...or even ghost-written. Instead Dylan had to outflank them by exercising candor, warmth...and vulnerability."
New York Review of Books - Luc Sante (03/10/2005)
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