“You’ve got taste,” he informed me, when he saw that I was reading Wilentz’s Bob Dylan in America, an act of scholarly and reverential devotion, and another attempt to interpret and understand the enigma of Dylan and his songs. So why this one? What does Sean Wilentz’s offering tell us – about anything? Is Dylan even still relevant?Ī man in the carriage of the Glasgow-bound commuter train the other morning certainly thought so and was intrigued by the latest Dylan biography in my hands. literally.Ī quick online search for books about Bob Dylan claims that an astonishing 1532 works are currently available, and that’s most likely the tip of the iceberg.

The latest book on the legendary singer brings it all back home. Wilentz has had unprecedented access to studio tapes, recording notes, rare photographs, and other materials, all of which allow him to tell Dylan’s story and that of such masterpieces as Blonde on Blonde with an unprecedented authenticity and richness.īob Dylan in America -groundbreaking, comprehensive, totally absorbing-is the result of an author and a subject brilliantly met. Wilentz’s approach places Dylan’s music in the context of its time, including the early influences of Popular Front ideology and Beat aesthetics, and offers a larger critical appreciation of Dylan as both a songwriter and performer down to the present. Drawn in part from Wilentz’s essays as “historian in residence” of Dylan’s official website, Bob Dylan in America is a unique blend of fact, interpretation, and affinity-a book that, much like its subject, shifts gears and changes shape as the occasion warrants.īeginning with his explosion onto the scene in 1961, this book follows Dylan as he continues to develop a body of musical and literary work unique in our cultural history. Growing up in Greenwich Village, Sean Wilentz discovered the music of Bob Dylan as a young teenager almost half a century later, he revisits Dylan’s work with the skills of an eminent American historian as well as the passion of a fan.

One of America’s finest historians shows us how Bob Dylan, one of the country’s greatest and most enduring artists, still surprises and moves us after all these years.

Bob Dylan in America by Sean Wilentz