Bob Dylan In America is the new book from usual history writer Sean Wilentz discussing the sourcing and history behind bits and pieces of Bob Dylan’s career. Wilentz’s childhood took place in the same area the folk explosion happened in NYC and family members were somewhat connected to or friends with people in the scene, so he comes to this story in a somewhat personal way. The crux of the book is not really to be an exhaustive companion piece to Dylan’s career or to necessarily point out completely novel takes on Dylan’s material, but rather to try and put a lot of Dylan’s work and influences into some sort of cohesive historical context and to explore in some ways how we got to the point of Dylan becoming Dylan in the first place.
Where the book is at its most interesting is when it debates and researches this last point. Wilentz goes through much effort and detail to try and express how seemingly dissimilar artists (Aaron Copland) are related to Dylan and also to lay some historical framework for how music and society kind of got to that point in time where it was when Dylan hit New York and started a musical revolution. There is much discussed in the way of influences, both musically and otherwise, as well as much discussed around the kind of back and forth with underground music and the Communist party in the early part of the 20th century and how certain expressionism developed in America over that time. This whole discussion sometimes seems maybe a tad bit contrived but it is always interesting and provides some interesting commentary and background on a time period preceeding the musically dense 60s that isn’t too often really dealt with, being times before the 1950s. Often discussions of music history around this time revolve exclusively around the blues and Elvis and what happened in the 50s leading to the 60s, but Wilentz takes a broader view and a broader stroke to try and give us some more fleshing out of what the world was like at the time, and for the most part he is successful and it makes for a compelling read.
The latter half of the book mainly gets into the latter career of Dylan, basically from Blood On The Tracks through his Christian phase and then through some not well thought of albums and finally a bit of a resurgence with some covers/reinterpretations albums more recently. This section largely tries to kind of put each stage of his career into some kind of context, mainly based on Dylan’s ideas about music and kind of how Dylan has seen his own career, and doesn’t contain the kind of sweeping, more novel contexts that we see with the early/pre-Dylan sections of the book. While the second half of Dylan’s career does provide some interesting fodder and certainly Wilentz again meticulously examines his subject, but part of this second half of the book comes off a little bit overly enamored with Dylan and seems to have some trouble letting go of a subjective and positive view of what Dylan has done over his career. Some of the commentary can take on a bit of a ‘misunderstood genius’ slant for some things that Dylan has done that have not played so well with the public at large. I don’t really have any problem with the author letting us know where he stands on the subject, but it does seem as if the back half of the book could have possibly been bolstered by a bit more two-sided commentary on a lot of Dylan’s later work.
That being said, Dylan is a penultimate artist in our country and he is certainly one of a kind in terms of his past work and his current persona and level of notoriety. He has certainly tried a few different things along the way in his career, some successful, some not, but he has continued trying to find new ways of expression along the way and has certainly evolved from being the folk prodigy that he was when he hit it big. Certainly for anyone wanting to read about Dylan in kind of a new light or in a bit of a different take than just as historical document, then this is a good read and is worth checking out. It won’t probably satisfy you in terms of being a broad encyclopedic account of his career, but the novel approaches and solid research and writing in the book make it a good read whether you already know everything about Dylan or you don’t.
