Bob Dylan - book

[KenElevenShadows]

Has anyone read this book yet? Got it for my birthday a short while ago, just started reading it, and so far am really enjoying it. I chuckled a little at the very first page:

 

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Lou introduced me to Jack Dempsey, the great boxer. Jack shook his fist at me.

 

"You look too light for a heavyweight kid, you'll have to put on a few pounds. You're gonna have to dress a little finer, look a little sharper--not that you'll need much in the way of clothes when you're in the ring--don't be afraid of hitting somebody too hard."

 

"He's not a boxer, Jack, he's a songwriter and we'll be publishing his songs." .

 

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And so far, his description of the characters he meets around NY and Greenwich Village is fascinating. Seems like a really great read so far.

 

I should also mention that in a different kind of way, Anthony Kiedis' "Scar Tissues" was also a really interesting read. Yeah, I guess I'm doing the celebrity bio read. But between these, I've devoured some travel books and magazine articles about RealTraps by Lee Flier and other things, so it's still varied.

[kylen]

Sounds interesting - I'm thinking it might be a little scary wandering around in Dylans' mind without a musical guide

[Mats Olsson.]

I've just started listening to "Chronicles" (read by Sean Penn). Still at the first half of the book, So far it's been great!

[KenElevenShadows]

He has access to one of his friend's rooms. It's a dark windowless room, but it's filled with shelves of these really awesome older books. So he's reading, reading, reading, really getting a lot out of it...

 

So far, it's an interesting book. Some passages have this sort of "'40s detective noir" sort of feel to me, for some reason. Here, read this passage, picturing a P.I. from a detective film from the '40s narrating, kinda talking out the side of his mouth, and you'll see what I mean as he's describing someone named Fred:

 

"He did fierce versions of hybrid chain gang songs and whomped the audience into a frenzy. I'd heard stuff about him, that he was an errant sailor, harbored a skiff in Florida, was an underground cop, had hooker friends and a shadowy past. He'd come up to Nashville, drop off songs that he wrote and then head for New York where he'd lay low, wait for something to blow over and fill up his pockets with wampum.".

[KenElevenShadows]

Mats, didn't know that this was released on an audio book.

 

Kendrix, funny! But of course, as you undoubtedly suspect, it's not really scary. It reads like some guy - almost from another era, as I intimated in the post above - who stops in, sits himself down, and tells you these insightful, fantastic stories and observations while sipping whiskey. It's a cool book. It's a book that almost anyone could learn things from.

 

I'm actually not even the biggest Dylan fan. I like him, appreciate him, but am not fanatical by any means. But nevertheless, I am quite enamoured of this book.

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The Kiedis book, "Scar Tissues", is good in a different way. It's not literary, but why would it be? But you get the idea that the guy is such a big fan of his bandmates. He really exudes a lot of love of music and his friends. It seems genuine. Brutally so. His insights into the harrowing world of extreme drug addition seem brutally honest. And he lays it right on the line when he goes over the time that he's been a prick or has screwed someone over. It's also a good book.

 

But next, I will probably read a fiction book, just to get further out from reality. Although, that said, aspects of Dylan's book reads almost like a fiction book. I'm not saying it doesn't seem real, but that there's this quality to it that conjures up this whole Greenwich Village life that doesn't exist anymore, and that the characters he describes are so utterly fantastic, characters I suspect many of us would not be able to meet in this abundance.