The Lyrics, 1961-2012

by Bob Dylan

A major publishing event--for the first time, a beautiful, comprehensive collection of lyrics of music legend and poet Bob Dylan, complete with in-depth annotations by Christopher Ricks.
This definitive collection brings together the entire catalogue of lyrics by Bob Dylan, one of the most legendary songwriters in history. From his early protest songs, like "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a Changing" to his revolutionary "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and "Like a Rolling Stone," Dylan's music has entertained and inspired generations and influenced such artists as John Lennon, Paul Simon, and Neil Young. This is the ultimate volume for any Dylan fan, containing the entire Dylan canon, a wide array of original album art, and in-depth commentary and annotations from literary critic and acclaimed Dylan expert Christopher Ricks.
"The Complete Annotated Lyrics" marks a major publishing event, perfect for Dylan devotees of course, but also a unique gift for anyone interested in poetry or visually stunning books.

Genres: Poetry, Music, Nonfiction, Nobel Prize, Reference, Politics, Philosophy

679 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2016

About the author

Bob Dylan (born Robert Allen Zimmerman) is an American singer-songwriter, author, musician, poet, and, of late, disc jockey who has been a major figure in popular music for five decades. Much of Dylan's most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when he became an informal chronicler and a reluctant figurehead of American unrest. A number of his songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'", became anthems of the anti-war and civil rights movements. His most recent studio album, Modern Times, released on August 29, 2006, entered the U.S. album charts at #1, making him, at age sixty five, the oldest living person to top those charts.

Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature (2016).

Reviews

[Paul Bryant]

BOB’S TERRIBLE LYRICS

OR, CHANNELING MY INNER ALEXANDER THEROUX

Defenders of Bob Dylan say – as I do to my profoundly sceptical daughter – well, okay, he does have a funny way of singing (“it’s not singing, it’s talking in a singsong voice – maybe that was singing in the 1960s but people have improved since then” says Georgia) – yes, well, let’s not argue – but he wrote these great songs – listen to the words!

Well, don’t listen to ALL the words, please, because Bob’s internal quality checker quite often goes on the blink - you can be enjoying a great song and suddenly a real cringer of a line whaps you when you least expect it.

We’re not going to wag a digit at Bob’s early ultra-earnest stuff, which he didn’t even officially record:

If you can’t speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that’s so unjust
Your eyes are filled with dead men’s dirt, your mind is filled with dust
Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood it must refuse to flow
For you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!


- it would be in poor taste, Bob was just the same as any other high school poet until 1962 when he started to be able to write social commentary which didn’t sound embarrassing, and he was on a roll for two straight years, but he couldn’t keep up with the finger-pointin’, his finger just got so tired, so he decided his great subject was the phoniness of American life, the chaos of modernity (to give it a non-Holden Caulfield gloss) and this led him to become Very Poetical – ditching the reportage (“Hattie Carroll was a maid in the kitchen, she was 51 years old and gave birth to ten children”) for something a whole lot more significant with a big S

Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rollin’ high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
“We’ll meet on edges, soon,” said I
Proud ’neath heated brow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

or, the following year

The lamppost stands with folded arms
Its iron claws attached
To curbs ’neath holes where babies wail
Though it shadows metal badge
All and all can only fall
With a crashing but meaningless blow
No sound ever comes from the Gates of Eden

I think we’re back to the Promising High School Student again, but these horrible lapses come on albums which also contained To Ramona, Subterranean Homesick Blues and Love Minus Zero/No Limit, and a lot of other wonderful stuff. I’m just being mean here.

If Modern Life is Chaos then meaning is abandoned, you can write absolutely anything, who cares – a whole lot of Bob’s stuff is like that, and suffers accordingly

The ghost of Belle Starr she hands down her wits
To Jezebel the nun she violently knits
A bald wig for Jack the Ripper who sits
At the head of the chamber of commerce

Well, Shakespeare, he’s in the alley
With his pointed shoes and his bells
Speaking to some French girl
Who says she knows me well
And I would send a message
To find out if she’s talked
But the post office has been stolen
And the mailbox is locked

It's really doggerel. But, as it happened, Bob found a brilliant new sound and some great musicians to help him put out his anti-message in 65 to 67, ending up with a lot of delightful whimsy in the famous Basement Tapes – new deluxe version out soon!



The next 50 years have been fairly patchy. Occasionally he takes up an actual subject (Hurricane, George Jackson) but mostly it’s Life is Chaos or, increasingly, These Women will be the Death of Me.
It’s not a nice thing to say, but the awful bust-up with Sara did re-energise Bob’s songs. The remarkable outpouring of viciousness in Idiot Wind starts with a weird and fairly silly first verse

They say I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me
I can’t help it if I’m lucky

Bob explained that if he put that in first, he could then be as insulting as he wanted (“you’re an idiot, babe, it’s a wonder you can even feed yourself”) because he was “in character”. This is surely a terrible reason to start one of your greatest songs with a daft verse.

A few years later Christianity of the ranting variety gave him a whole new subject. The songs and the energy of the gospel period were good, his voice was probably never better (listen to “When He Returns”) but many times the lyrics make these songs unlistenable :

Counterfeit philosophies have polluted all of your thoughts
Karl Marx has got ya by the throat, Henry Kissinger’s got you tied up in knots

Adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools
You got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules
Spiritual advisors and gurus to guide your every move
Instant inner peace and every step you take has got to be approved

When you gonna wake up, when you gonna wake up
When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?

(Answer : “Tomorrow, Bob, or maybe next Monday, I’m kind of busy this week.”)

After the apocalypse faded, Bob went right back to songs about chaos and meaninglessness

The cat’s in the well, the horse is going bumpety bump
The cat’s in the well, and the horse is going bumpety bump
Back alley Sally is doing the American jump

And has stayed that way pretty much since, although with a whole new songwriting technique – Songwriter as Diligent Magpie. This is where Bob raids the vast reservoir of old Americana (blues & hillbilly music before the 1940s, 19th and early 20th century poets and novelists, the more obscure the better) and rearranges and stitches and nips and tucks until

My pulse is runnin’ through my palm–the sharp hills are rising from
The yellow fields with twisted oaks that groan
Won’t you meet me out in the moonlight alone?

She’s looking into my eyes, she’s holding my hand
She says, “You can’t repeat the past.” I say, “You can’t? What do you mean, you can’t? Of course you can.”


Okay, I have now demonstrated Bob sometimes writes less than brilliant lyrics. A guy like that (there is no other guy like that) gets over-praised (e.g. by the French Academy or the American Academy of Arts and Letters

"For more than 50 years, defying categorization in a culture beguiled by categories, Bob Dylan has probed and prodded our psyches, recording and then changing our world and our lives through poetry made manifest in song – creating relationships that we never imagined could exist between words, emotions and ideas"

and knee-jerkily dismissed as overrated by bewildered 17 year olds. Ah well. The lamp-post still stands with folded arms and Shakespeare’s still in the alley and I'm in trouble with the tombstone blues.

[Ulysse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Settanta

There was a young singer called Dylan
Some love him some think he’s a villain
Some can’t stand his voice
Others say he sounds nice
To me he is one in a million

A sinistra... / A destra...


.

[John Dalton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poet Laureate for a reason.

[Jeffrey (Akiva) Savett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finally finished reading pretty much every page of this massive tome. Dylan is one of my favorite poets first and songwriters second. This book, though pricy, is a work of art in itself. It is HUMONGOUS and heavy, the pages are thick and high quality, and the lyrics, like poems, are presented on their own pages. This leaves a lot of white space which I like. I also appreciated that the editors included footnotes regarding the variations of the lyrics from different recordings. Obviously, as explained in the introduction, they couldn't take into account every bootlegged or live performance variation, but they did an excellent job of combing through all his officially recorded material for these changes.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read the lyrics to every Dylan song, and am more convinced than ever of his poetic genius. Still, I can't say I'm finished, as I'll come to this again and again. An American voice as essential as Whitman, as deep and complex as Eliot.

[M. Sarki · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those who claim that Dylan wasn’t much of a poet, you may be surprised to learn how good he really was when it came down to writing an important poem. Consider this my personal selection of the poet Dylan’s greatest hits. Please read my review here:

https://rogueliterarysociety.com/f/th...

[James F · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the most recent edition of Dylan’s official version of all of his lyrics. [Not the 2014 edition which I added the review to, but the 2016 edition, 679 pages, which isn't on Goodreads yet.] The book is my year’s main reading for my Nobel Prize Winners in Literature project; perhaps over the next eleven months I will actually be able to go back and finish the rest of Mario Vargas Llosa and maybe even go back before 2007 as I originally intended (I started the project then with the intention of working my way backwards but somehow almost each winner took me more than a year to cover.)

It is somewhat unjust to critique a book of written lyrics when they were intended to be sung, and I’m sure some of the poems that didn’t say anything much to me as poetry were justified by the musical interest. Having said that, my impression was that the first two thirds of the book were mostly very good, and the last third was of less interest. Prejudice, maybe; I listened to (and virtually memorized) his earlier albums when they came out, and I was more into folk and “folk-rock” than any other style, and of course the music we listened to in high school will always have a special resonance. But at that time, he was breaking new ground with almost every album; first the political themes of The Freewheeling Bob Dylan and The Times They Are A-Changin’, and the surrealistic lyrics of songs like “A Hard Rain’s A-gonna Fall”; then the introduction of folk song themes into rock, which defined the music of the later sixties; then the crossover between country and rock in John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline which created a whole new genre; and finally the inspired nonsense of The Basement Tapes (and interspersed through all the albums). His inspiration flags a little in some of the later albums, but Blood on the Tracks is one of his best and all of them up through Street Legal have some interesting words, not even considering the music.

The dividing line was of course his conversion to Christianity, although there are Christian references in his earlier work as well (e.g. the next to last verse of “With God on Our Side” which no one except Dylan ever includes). The problem with his two totally Christian albums (Slow Train Coming and Saved) isn’t really that they are Christian, but that the lyrics alternate between standard Christian platitudes without any originality and self-righteous condemnation of non-Christians. After the immediate fervor wore off, he returns to his earlier themes, with only occasional Christian references, but there is somewhat less originality in my opinion; the lyrics become more repetitive, the same themes of love and breaking-up (and the love songs almost seem like set-ups for the break-up songs) and much less inspired, almost forced-sounding nonsense, with even the same phrases repeated song after song (walking down the road, etc.) This is not to deny that there are some interesting lyrics in most of the albums.

Still, all in all an impressive body of poetry.

[Ramzzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

He deserved the Nobel Prize. He deserved the highest rank of Rolling Stone's greatest songwriters of all time. He deserved all the accolades he earned and perhaps even burned. He deserved his name to be carved in history.

A reader once quipped after completely reading War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, “I cannot even finish a one-page essay.” This public observation does not only point the length of Tolstoy’s masterpiece, but its beauty too—in spite the turmoil of writing such length. In relevance to Bob Dylan and his songs, what then a typical reader or listener in matching the quantity and quality of his works?

In literature, even the most casual prose in popular fiction—writing, reading or understanding poetry is the most abstract. Poetry depicts a portrayal, establishes a picture without any accompanying visuals but only with imagery. It requires putting an output with or without emotions, energy and excess. It requires a literary discipline, guided by question on how to make a narration an art through rhymes and couplets—whether traditionally romantic, or radically modern. It is creating an opera without a sound; developing an album of photographs containing you and your beloved, her hair sweeping through the wind and under the summer sun with only describing a strand. Thus, the difference against prose, poetry is scarce in freedom, yet free from the freedom’s chains. In novels and short fiction, a writer exercises his or her rights freely—with emotions, energy—all the excess. Such implies poetry as not the best means to be understood, hence even to criticize. Thus, criticizing Dylan, he had already an answer before you and I were born: “Don’t criticize what you can’t understand (The Times They Are A-Changin’).”

The most recent compilation of his lyrics definitely has the atmosphere of War and Peace. A long list, but has the fulfillment of rightfully capturing the generation of generations. It simply answers too, to all the hate Bob Dylan had received and ignored after the Swedish Academy chose him as Nobel Laureate. The songs in text are beyond literary, though folk rock certainly, they are raw and reassuring in not forgetting the injustices of America and not disregarding the responsibility of being a voice of a generation. These are the anthemic lyrics by an enigmatic anarchist in his own terms.

And the poet had spoken:

“Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.”

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW, Dylan was SO prolific! I don't always love his singing style, but Oh can he write! He wrote so many songs sung by others that are among my favorite songs (Lord Protect my Child, etc.) Before I read this book, I wondered why he won the Nobel Prize. Now I know.

[BiblioPhil · Rating 4 out of 5]

The arguments are over now. Each of the great albums is the equivalent of a novel, and there are few who've written a body of novels as inspired.

[Rebecca Fröidh]

Alltså lite svårt att sätta ett betyg, det är ju låttexter.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A big, beautiful book with everything in it, from early lyrics like "Big City Blues" to the Tempest - 50 years of pop music that transcends the genre. It's all here, and unless you're the sort of person who thought it was a crime to give Dylan the Nobel Prize, you'll find it fascinating.

[Dan Durrant · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you've ever doubted that Bob deserved his Nobel, you need to read this book. What a great body of work.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book if you find Dylan's voice or music distracting. His lyrics stand alone in remarkable testimony to his genius. As good as any poetry anthology i've ever read.

[rafa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Te amo.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

On an otherwise quiet October morning in 2016, the Swedish Academy announced that Bob Dylan had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, catching much of the world by surprise. Though Dylan appeared frequently on shortlists for the award, his chances were never anything more than slim--the dream of the contrarian--and the annual disappointment over his lack of recognition always seemed to be delivered with a wistful grin by his supporters. Those who professed a deeper knowledge of the Academy's unspoken criteria pointed to other American writers--Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates--as more likely and more deserving recipients; after all, those authors were integral to understanding the modern American experience, were taught in college classes, received major awards, and wrote "serious" literature, while Dylan was little more than a folk singer--an important one, to be sure--who had aged into a strange, incoherent caricature of himself. That such a revered prize should be bestowed upon a man whose only published works were an incomprehensible and out-of-print novel, a single volume of memoir, collections of his artwork, and children's books based on his life and music, seemed downright preposterous.

On that October morning, however, the preposterous became reality.* For the first time in the 115-year history of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the award was given to someone known primarily as a songwriter rather than as a novelist, poet, dramatist, or writer of short stories. (Last year's recipient, Svetlana Alexievich of Belarus, is known for her lengthy works of oral history, another first for the Swedish Academy) What's more, Dylan became the first American in more than two decades to receive the Nobel--a gap of time that many attribute to the Swedish Academy's thinly disguised disinterest in American literature. In 2008, Horace Engdahl, then the Academy's secretary, dismissed contemporary American literature and suggested that no living author from the United States was worthy of recognition. Speaking to the Associated Press, Engdahl stated, "There is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world...not the United States. The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature....That ignorance is restraining."

The response from American critics, academics, publishers, and writers to Engdahl's assertion was instantaneous. They offered to send Engdahl a list of authors whose works, they said, disproved his belief in an ignorant and self-centered trend in literature from the States. They cited the number of American books published every year, the number of translations available to American readers, and writers who already possessed wide international audiences, all to no avail. In the years that followed, it seemed as though an entire generation of American writers would never see another one of their own honored.

Those who extolled the virtues of American literature, especially in the wake of Engdahl's public comments, advocated for a small but important selection of writers as worthy laureates--DeLillo, Roth, Oates among them--and justified such a list by noting how the work of each embodied not only the virtues of American literature--a focus on internal struggles suddenly borne outward, the pitfalls of dreams against a disinterested reality, the shades of emptiness and regret lurking behind every painted front door--but also honest, excellent, and stylistic writing. However, if you reexamine these same writers when placed beside those who won the Nobel over the previous two decades--that is to say, since Toni Morrison received the prize in 1993--you begin to see the differences. For all the variances in style and subject, the previous 23 laureates fit a certain mold. Their work focuses on the lives of the downtrodden, the dispossessed, the forgotten. They emphasize the experiences of those who are not part of the mainstream, who are not privileged, who walk through the world as innocents rather than troubled patriarchs. They confront issues of the present--genocide, censorship, inequality, totalitarianism--directly while forcing readers to suffer under the weight of the past, often whitewashed and frequently forgotten, as though the book were stitched together from the memories of the dead. The reason why Toni Morrison won a Nobel had little to do with the beauty of her prose or the complexity of her characters, though both were--and remain--stunning. Instead, she wrote books that refused to suffer from a willed amnesia, that refused to compromise content for the sake of commerce, that placed a mirror up not only to her readers but the country in which they lived and asked everyone to take a long, deep look at the reflection. Morrison understood--and understands--that placing the past behind us gives us permission to ignore it, even as it stands waiting for us on the coming horizon.

To be more blunt, most authors will make us confront the past, but do so incrementally and always delicately, as though the truth may be too much, or their readers possess fragile minds. A great author, on the other hand, pushes us towards the mass graves, the rusted slave-shackles, the improvised monuments to those who were disappeared by their governments. Most American writers focus their stories on small moments between people--the slow dissolution of a family, the questioning of faith, the infirmities of age against the ignorances of the young--without taking those lessons and connecting each to the greater world. This is what the Swedish Academy wants: a writer whose words resonate beyond their own mind and skin. Morrison's body of work works under the belief--one of many--that we as a nation cannot claim the mantle of freedom while standing atop a mound of chains...that we as a nation are forever engaged in a struggle for our own soul, even as we convince ourselves of our own moral superiority.

This is the reason why Bob Dylan--the eccentric, incoherent American troubadour--is a much more appropriate laureate than any of the aforementioned authors. Throughout his career, Dylan's lyrics have told stories of men and women who labor under inequities that consume them; of communities devastated by the greed and avarice of those in positions of power; of systems and institutions built to preserve liberty for the few and wealthy, rather than the many and the needy; of struggles by the downtrodden to gain the rights they need and deserve; of peace in the face of war and acceptance in the face of prejudice. Reading his lyrics today, often four or five decades after they were first written, is to see stories and images that transcend the era in which they were first put to paper. The struggles that inspired Dylan to write his songs remain to this day, and while they may differ in form, they remain the same in their devastating effects.

Take, for example, "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," a song from his 1964 album The Times They Are a-Changin', in which Dylan recounts the story of a black woman--a mother of ten--who is killed by William Zanzinger, a white man half her age, whose wealthy parents, family connections, and status in a segregated society guarantee he will see no punishment. And, as the song reveals, he receives a six-month sentence--far from the kind of resolution promised by a court of law, though one befitting a world in which Hattie Carroll was considered unworthy of justice simply because of the color of her skin. Though we may tell ourselves that we've banished such occurrences from our world, finding evidence to the contrary is not difficult: we see judges handing down harsher verdicts and punishments in cases involving people of color, while white defendants charged with heinous crimes against those same communities are found not guilty or given lenient sentences; we see prosecutors removing men and women from juries based on their ethnicities; and we see courts allowing politicians to disenfranchise non-white voters, making it increasingly difficult for them to gain the political influence they need to advocate for their rights. Dylan's song may be old, but the injustices of which he sings are ever-present in our lives.

Or take "North Country Blues," in which he sings of a poor rural community from the point of view of a young woman who lives there. Though the mines in her small town are successful--"the red iron pits ran plenty"--the narrator loses both her father and brother in a mining accident, and she decides to leave school to marry a miner. Eventually, the mine is closed completely, and when a representative from the company comes to town to explain why, the narrator records his words: "They say that your ore ain't worth digging / That it's much cheaper down / In the South American town / Where the miners work for almost nothing."

In the years to come, the town empties of people, including the narrator's husband, who disappears while she sleeps; and suddenly the narrator is alone with three children to raise in a town where there is little hope. Soon, the homes bear "cardboard filled windows," the shops close up one after another, and the narrator commiserates over the knowledge that her children will one day leave, saying, "Well, there ain't nothing here now to hold them."

Though this song is more than a half-century old, the scenes it depicts--of small towns dying away, of families struggling with poverty and job loss, of once prosperous industries leaving for distant countries and cheaper labor--are as relevant today as they were fifty years ago. Millions of Americans continue to struggle with such issues, especially in regions where mining once kept entire communities alive. Urban and suburban areas continue to grow while towns and villages see their populations become smaller and grayer as young people graduate and move away. Financial strains take their toll on families, often dragging households into poverty. And when those tasked with fixing such problems come to town, they make sure to walk in parades, promise to bring jobs back in exchange for a couple of votes, then disappear for two years, four years, six years...returning only to reassure those same people that, yes, those jobs will come back, you just need to wait a little longer, and make sure you vote for the right candidate in November.

Even Dylan's later work, written long after the tumultuous 1960s had faded from memory, couldn't avoid touching on the problems faced by the average American. The song "Clean Cut Kid," released on his 1985 album Empire Burlesque, tells the story of a boy whose life is affected by the world around him until he throws himself off the Golden Gate Bridge in despair. He is raised with a deep sense of community and selflessness; he joins a sports team, sings in a choir, and even becomes a Boy Scout. Along the way, however, he's taught lies--"They said what's up is down, they said what isn't is / They put ideas in his head he thought were his"--in a manner that resembles indoctrination. Soon, he is drafted by the army and sent to Vietnam--"They sent him to a napalm health spa to shape up"--where alcohol, drugs, and guns become a common part of his life. When the war ends, he returns home a changed person, and without the skills he needs to leave the war behind: "They gave him dope to smoke, drinks and pills / A jeep to drove, blood to spill / They said 'Congratulations, you got what it takes' / They sent him back into the rat race without any breaks .... He bought the American dream but it put him in debt / The only game he could play was Russian roulette."

The song's refrain--"He was a clean-cut kid / But they made a killer out of him / That's what they did"--is an overt condemnation of a country that would send an entire generation off to war, oversee their return with indifference and disdain, and turn a cold shoulder to the problems they faced in the years to come. Long before PTSD was understood to the degree that it is today, American families saw the effects of a long, protracted war without rules, one that was fought by kids barely of out high school, and one that most people back home never wanted to talk about, even though it lingered behind them like a cannibalistic shadow. Among the many songs of love and heartbreak on Empire Burlesque, "Clean Cut Kid" was a clear yet overlooked reminder that Dylan had not tempered his desire for social justice, even in the age of Reagan's "Morning in America." Now, as our country faces yet another wave of soldiers who have returned from war without the skills or treatment they need to fight PTSD--and a country that seems unable or unwilling to help them, even in the face of high suicide rates among soldiers--Dylan's song is just as powerful as it was thirty years ago.

Dylan, who has devoted much of his career to moving between styles and genres with little concern for the opinions of critics and fans, has often puzzled those who look at the entirety of his output and cannot find a consistent message...or who see a once great folk singer mellowing with age, his passion and outrage diluted by commercial success and a world that has moved on from the protests of the Vietnam era. But this reading of Dylan's work ignores the fact that all good artists--writers, painters, musicians--change. If Dylan wrote and sang the same way he did fifty years ago, he'd be considered a relic of sorts, a sad novelty stuck in the past. Instead, he has used the last half-century as an opportunity to follow his own interests, even if that means facing the wrath of his devoted listeners.

In confounding others, Dylan reaffirmed his status as someone who had little interest in the wants of those in power or the patterns of a successful commercial artist. He does not need to prove himself to anyone, and his decision to skip the Nobel ceremony--because of scheduling conflicts, he said--was the clearest reminder yet that Dylan does not want or need the approval of anyone other than himself. This is precisely why he won the Nobel Prize in the first place. In bestowing him with such an honor, the Swedish Academy is saying, in essence, that those looking to advocate for American literature should look beyond the "conventional" authors who are so consistently touted as worthy of a Nobel Prize. Becoming a laureate is not the mainstreaming of a folk hero; instead, it is the world acknowledging what Americans academics have so long forgotten: American literature is at its best when it's challenging the laws and habits of its forefathers, uncovering the deeper truths about American history with clear eyes, and pushing the nation's conscience toward salvation.

But perhaps this is wrong. The larger lesson may have nothing to do with the Swedish Academy's rationale. Instead, the reaction to Dylan's win may be a chance to reassess how Americans see their relationship with literature. If any of the conventional authors had won, the announcement would have been met with words of celebration--an American, finally!--and a small uptick in sales for that authors' work, but little else. Some would have raised their voices to complain about the selection's predictability, its safeness, even its outdatedness; others would have posted long explanations for the lay-reader as to why the award was deserved after all; but the large majority of Americans who read books would have simply shrugged and forgotten.

Even Cormac McCarthy, by far the most deserving of the conventional choices, would have caused people little pause. Yes, millions have read No Country for Old Men and The Road--the latter being another of Oprah's choices, and a Pulitzer Prize-winner to boot--and millions more had seen the film adaptations of both. But go deeper into the past, beyond the instant bestsellers, and read his earlier novels--Suttree, perhaps, or The Orchard Keeper, or even the masterful and biblical Blood Meridian--and they would have discovered an author whose oeuvre is much more challenging and unorthodox than expected, and they would have set him aside as they would all the others.

Dylan is the antithesis of all this. Americans know him, can recite his words from memory, can sing his songs at the simple announcement of a title. They have lived with him for decades. His music defined not only eras in people's lives but also their struggles. It's Dylan who we need to look to, not as a sort of late-in-life savior in need of a second or third act, but as someone who understands what it means to struggle, to fight for one's own survival. Dylan knows who the enemies are, even as they hide behind desks or flee from the fight, and he understands that the crumbling neighborhoods around us are not a reflection of who we are, but of those who claim to represent our interests while caring only for themselves. Dylan sings of a changing world and how beautiful it can be. But he also wants us to know that change only happens when the downtrodden and oppressed come together; and when they do, those who stand in the way of progress--those who refuse to yield to the rivers of progress--will find themselves sinking like stones.



*Perhaps my favorite example of the degree to which so-called experts failed at predicting a Dylan win comes in an article by Alex Shephard of the New Republic. Posted just days before the Swedish Academy's announcement, Shephard goes out of his way to remind his readers that "Bob Dylan 100 percent is not going to win. Stop saying Bob Dylan should win the Nobel Prize." One week later, Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize.


This review was originally published at There Will Be Books Galore.

[Victoria Nicholson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dylan always makes the best of what he has and he has many gifts. He is a great emotional singer, song arranger, songwriter, guitarist, harmonica player, and of course lyrical poet. I love his alliterations and symbolism. "He was a clean cut kid they made a killa out of him" "The answer is blowing in the wind" "A Hard Rains Gonna Fall" and "Knocking on Heavens Door" is classic imagery
for me and actually most people into poetry. "Knocking on Heavens Door" was written to be used as a Billy the kid soundtrack but I think of it as more Silas Soule's song. Dylan is probably subjective enough he would not care.

[York · Rating 5 out of 5]

Creo firmemente que este libro debería estar en cada casa del mundo. 1,300 páginas con las letras de casi todo lo grabado y publicado oficialmente por Dylan hasta el año 2012 con Tempest. Faltan muchas melodías de los Bootlegs Series, pero tiene lo básico para sumergirse y disfrutar la poesía de este genio. Algunas traducciones son terribles, pero por fortuna es una edición Bilingüe, y la sección de fun facts al final de cada disco es entretenida.
Con esto cierro mi ciclo de libros de Dylan, siguen reseñas de literatura menos clavada.

[Claudia Bluhm · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of our greatest poets and although Dylan doesn't seem to agree, The Master of protest songs. Every English student, writer, song writer, and/or studier of history should read his lyrics. I was lucky to have a teacher at UC a few years back - Dan Coshnear - who included Dylan's lyrics in his class syllabus. Dylan's songs/poems are timeless - reflecting and addressing today's world just as much as they were a mirror of the 1960's. So inspirational.

[Rudy Gutierrez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've enjoyed Dylan's music for so long but I had no idea he had even written many of these. Some I recognized right away and as I read them the song played in my head but others I had never heard before and as I read them they flowed like poetry and still was impacting. Great collection body of work. I must have 45 post-it notes to mark my favorites.

[Stacie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A three-and-a-half year journey has come to its end after reading each lyric, and listening to each and every song. Our world is such a richer one for each moment Dylan spent living, observing, composing, and singing about what being human means - and imagining what our lives could be if only we would love with our whole selves. Amazing. So grateful.

[Julio Obispo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unas traducciones que explicaban que trataban de ser cercanas a los ritmos y tiempos del escrito original.
Es una gran edición; me gustó mucho sus detalles.
La explicación y referencias de las letras me parecieron geniales.

[Maclean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a hefty number of his lyrics. The book itself is beautiful.
He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, the first lyricist to do so. If a songwriter is worthy of this award, he was a likely choice . . I'm just not sure he compares with many other international literary geniuses.

[Miguel Casillas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sublime

[Arnaldo Neto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um mergulho nas primeiras obras do maior compositor da história. Fantástico!

[Bryan Wiebe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well worth reading.

[Rob Melich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astounding output. Middle year’s content didn’t move me, seemed lyrically repetitive, but early and later years are Bobby D.

[Andrew Pitkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indispensable. Bob Dylan has been, is, and always will be, one of the great poet-songwriters of our culture.

[David O'Nan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful inspiring songs/poems

[Niels Frid-Nielsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

En fin indgang til Dylans musikalske univers