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Revolution In The Air

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 20:04:14 -0500

When Clinton Heylin writes about Bob Dylan, people listen. His biography Dylan: Behind the Shades, not only dug deeper than any other biographer or Dylan enthusiast, the painstaking detail of his scholarship was obvious.

So having the chance to get my hands on the first of a projected two-volume opus detailing each of the 600 songs Dylan has written thus far, I couldn’t let it go. I haven’t been disappointed. Heylin chronicles the songs in the order they were written, not the order in which they were recorded or performed (many of them have yet to be recorded, or were recorded and not released, and some of them have no known performance date), and this choice serves him well, allowing him to use his detailed knowledge of Dylan’s biography to give the songs a context that the lyrics alone might not provide.

The first volume details the first 300 songs, from “Juvenilia” in Hibbing (1957) to 1972 and the songs associated with Pat Garret and Billy the Kid. Amazingly, 207 of these 300 songs were written in the five year period of 1962-1967, what Heylin calls “a burst of creativity that dwarfs any comparable twentieth-century figure.”

The scholarship and attention to detail are, as was the case with Behind the Shades, commendable. My only complaints are that:
Heylin tends to grouse about the scholarship of others that got there before him. For instance he says of Michel Krogsgaard’s sessionography, published in nine installments in two Dylan fanzines, that it “has become, in the fullness of time, a valuable resource. But it could have been of greater value still if he had collated his own work with that of the the only other person to use Sony’s resources [Heylin], and annotated his session listing with a clear indication of which material he had actually heard (almost none of it, I’d surmise).”
There are few - very few - glaring omissions: places where Heylin seems to just simply have missed what most other folk music students know. For instance, Heylin lists Dylan’s #16 song as “Just As Long As I’m In This World,” a song written by Rev. Gary Davis, and first recorded by him as “I Am The Light Of This World” during his initial recording session for the American Recording Company in 1935. Heylin mentions Dylan’s studies of traditional blues music, and even the fact that Dylan would often borrow tunes and lyric phrases and call them his own. But he describes “Just As Long As I’m in This World” as “another early attempt at a would-be spiritual” that “tries hard to evoke a Pentecostal fervor, the singer suggesting he has ‘fiery fingers / I got fiery hands / And when I get to heaven / I’ll join the fiery band.’” All without ever mentioning Rev. Gary Davis, or the earlier recording, which have just exactly these lyrics as one verse.

But these are admittedly petty complaints, given the immensity of the task Heylin set for himself. No one else even made the attempt of a chronicle so daunting, so minor grouses and omissions do not constitute failure. Heylin has succeeded beyond my expectations.

The book contains a song index and a general index, and each song is keyed to books where the lyrics have appeared, and to published recordings where the song first appeared.

The second volume, entitled Still on the Road - The Songs of Bob Dylan 1974-2006, is due out later this year.

The Uses of the Past by Herbert J. Muller

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 22:23:18 -0500

Published in 1957, this wonderful piece of historiography has much to say about our prospects for the future. Some excerpts will reveal how relevant much of what Muller wrote 50 years ago remains:

“All peoples…have tended to assume the superiority of their culture. (Thus the Eskimos of Greenland believed that the white men came there to learn good manners and morals from them.)”

“The higher religions have commonly grown out of the failures of civilization, bringing promises of eternal life to dying societies… They are therefore always liable to conflict with the creative forces of a flourishing society, and thence to profound inconsistencies or ignoble concessions. Above all, they are invariably corrupted by their worldly success… An established church also tends to ally itself with other vested interests, and thus to become infected with the worldly pride it was born to combat.”

“The increasing wealth of the Greeks brought the familiar vices of luxury: moral disorder was aggravated by the cosmopolitanism of an uprooted people. Their specialists included professional athletes, mercenary soldiers, and unproductive dealers and speculators, who typified the increasing venality and selfish individualism.”

“The [Roman] state lived from hand to mouth. There was no annual budget, no national debt to encourage investment, no policy of national loans to spread costs over the years…”

“The trouble with America, we often hear, is all the godless skeptics among us (especially among professors)… The plainest trouble is the shortcomings and the perversions of American democracy, which are glossed over or defended by the most respectable elements in the country. In particular it stems from the rule of money. Although the moneyed men are not naturally more selfish, greedy, or unprincipled than former aristocracies, they glorify a profit system that forces men to be selfish, puts a premium on greed, and encourages socially irresponsible or unprincipled behavior.”

If you enjoy reading the broad sweep of history, well perceived and well written, you will find yourself reading and re-reading page after page of this book. It’s currently out of print, and a 50th anniversary reissue would be most welcome.

Harlem Summer by Walter Dean Myers

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 22:16:48 -0500

It’s Harlem during prohibition. Mark Purvis is 16 years old, wants to blow saxophone, and maybe play with Fats Waller. On the other hand, he’s got a summer job working at The Crisis for Jessie Fauset and W. E. B. DuBois, and thinks maybe he should strive to by one of the “New Negroes” associated with the Harlem Renaissance.

This story looks at the life of a sixteen year old black man as he navigates into his manliness, walking on both the sunny and shady sides of the street, tempted by easy money on the one hand, but desiring respectability on the other. Historic people like DuBois, Langston Hughes, Dutch Shultz, Jimmy Durante, and many others enter into and add bring added depth and historic realism to the story.

This is another book I got an advance reader’s copy of at the ALA Midwinter meeting in Seattle in January. It’s due out in April. Look for it.

Lyra’s Oxford by Philip Pullman

Fri, 9 Mar 2007 22:10:03 -0600

Right off the bat: if you haven’t read Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, then stop reading this interview and go read that. It’s three books, beginning with The Golden Compass, then on to The Subtle Knife, and finally The Amber Spyglass. Pullman’s created a world of separate and interacting universes as the basis for a young adult fantasy adventure that’s simply first rate; you’re in for a treat to the point that I’m almost envious of you, and what you’ve got to look forward to.

Okay, now that’s out of the way… Those of you who have read the longer story will delight in this little book that dips back into Lyra’s universe long enough for her to have to deal with a witch, an alchemist, and a double-cross. Without giving too much away, it takes place a couple of years or less after the events recounted in the trilogy. And it has the added fun of including “ephemera” from Lyra’s world – a map of Oxford, a page from an Alchemist’s book, that sort of stuff.

It’s fifty-five pages in all. If you’ve read the trilogy, you’ve been there; assuming you want to go back, what on Earth are you waiting for?

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman

Tue, 6 Mar 2007 00:42:32 -0600

This short book of essays on the joys of books, of being a reader, and of bookishness in general is simply a joy. Anne Fadiman is the daughter of Clifton Fadiman and Annalee Jacoby Fadiman, two literary giants in their own right, so she comes to the love of books and reading most naturally, and takes both her books and her reading seriously. Fortunately though, she doesn’t take herself too seriously, and the essays ring throughout with a lighthearted tone – as if she’s thinking, “I know some of you reading this will think I’m absolutely bonkers, but that’s okay, I’m happy with it all.”

This book went down easily on the flight back from Indianapolis to Seattle, and made the trip far more fun that it would’ve been otherwise.