Review by Booklist Review
In 1977, journalist Rosenbaum interviewed Bob Dylan over a 10-day stretch--reportedly the longest interview the singer ever gave--in a Warner Bros. back lot as Dylan was going over the footage of his widely panned film, Renaldo and Clara (Rosenbaum makes a case for its rerelease). Rosenbaum's intention, he says, is to write a book not only for Dylanologists but also for those "who wonder what the fuss is about." In this "kind of biography," Rosenbaum focuses on particular aspects of Dylan's songwriting and asks, What makes Dylan Dylan? Rosenbaum discusses Dylan and the Holocaust, his northern Midwest sensibility, his Jesus period, his prophetic vision and poetic genius, and his ability to create Jewish art "with a wide multicultural reach." Influences also play a key role. Rosenbaum has a subtle and sly sense of humor, as when he notes that Dylan has a "rusty ore-cart voice that still drives some people mad" and the time he "caused a tempest in a cappuccino cup" when he left the folk scene. An idiosyncratic discussion of Dylan's artistry and impact on mainstream culture.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Literary critic Rosenbaum (In Defense of Love) takes a winding, rhapsodic look at Bob Dylan's life and work. In 1977, Rosenbaum conducted a weeklong interview with Dylan, who was working on Renaldo and Clara, a 1978 film that received dismal reviews and was quickly pulled from theaters. That disappointment, Rosenbaum suggests, in combination with Dylan's impending divorce and exhaustion, precipitated a "profound spiritual crack up" wherein he encountered a vision of Jesus in a Tucson motel and became a born-again Christian. By the early 1980s, Dylan had "recovered" and returned to secular Judaism, moving on from "scolding, sermonic" performances to an "utterly unexpected" songwriting style that "entangled" thoughts and ideas without totally refusing coherence. The author also highlights Dylan's return to metaphysical themes, a lifelong focus evident in such songs as "Desolation Row." With a digressive style that vacillates from barroom banter to academic criticism, Rosenbaum ranges far and wide across Dylan's oeuvre, holding forth not only on the possible origins of his "mystical" leanings but also his voice and mannerisms ("I'm prepared to argue that no one today smokes cigarettes more expressively than Bob Dylan"). In his obsessive effort to understand his subject, Rosenbaum vividly--if sometimes eccentrically--succeeds in capturing what it means to be a Dylan devotee, burdened with awe, ambivalence, and an overload of unanswered questions. It's a trip. (Oct.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A counterintuitive look at the underlying, too-little-understood themes of a shape-shifter's work. Rosenbaum's "Sort of Biography" proposes that Bob Dylan's work is influenced, however subconsciously, by "theodicy," an argument with God over the justification of evil in the world in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Equally inventively, the author proposes that the Nobel Prize winner's constant reinvention is foreshadowed by the "discontinuity of selves" described by Jorge Luis Borges. Everything old is new again. These are dizzying, certainly arguable theories, but one would expect no less from Rosenbaum, an eclectic New Journalist whose previous work includesExplaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil, which may help explain his theological bent here, and anEsquire piece on "phone phreaks" that reportedly inspired Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak back in the day. Rosenbaum previously interviewed Dylan as the singer was editing his four-hour epic,Renaldo and Clara, in which Dylan identified the "thin, wild mercury sound'' he was seeking, in a phrase that's since become the lodestone for innumerable blogs. It's a jumping-off point for this book, which avoids the temptations of conventional recitations of the singer's life and career and the nodular exegeses of the "Bobolators" who lose objectivity in the pursuit of obsessed fandom. In a turn of thought that may seem equally obsessive, the author denounces Dylan's ChristianSlow Train Coming era as the byproduct of a "mind-control…brainwashing cult," though it might be equally valid to acknowledge it as a response to the personal challenges he was facing at the time. Regardless, it's a pleasure to encounter a mind as brilliant and unpredictable as its subject. An essential, contrarian volume that offers rare insights and rewarding perspectives. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
