Rating: 3/5
Review:
Interesting but questionable
Why Dylan Matters is undoubtedly very erudite and it has its
interesting facets, but I do have my doubts about the thrust of it.
Richard Thomas is a classicist and Dylan fan who really
knows his stuff about both. In this series
of essays, he analyses both the content and social impact of Dylan's music
often (but not exclusively) with reference to its parallels with classical
texts by people like Virgil, Cicero,
Ovid and so on. It's interesting for a
while, but I have to say that I got a little bogged down in it, especially as I
felt that some of what was being said was a bit tenuous. It felt at times like the converse of one of
those sort of "Virgil's Relevance Today" seminars; yes, we know that
some central themes recur throughout literature and remain true through ages,
but that doesn't necessarily make Dylan directly comparable to Virgil, even if
some of the writings of each has echoes of the other.
I have only a reasonable general knowledge of Classics and
am a Dylan fan rather than an expert, so I may not be qualified to judge, but
my sense is that Dylan's lyrics are often so brilliantly out of the ordinary
that it's almost impossible to pin them down with any exactitude. This, to me, is much of their greatness, in
that they convey and evoke profound ideas and feelings in a very oblique
way. Given this, I think it would be
possible for someone in all sorts of disciplines to draw parallels; if a
particle physicist claimed that the last verse of All Along The Watchtower discusses
quantum indeterminacy, for example, or an economist said that It's All Over
Now, Baby Blue is actually analysing the causes of recession, it would be hard
to refute them completely. I exaggerate,
of course, but I did feel that there is more than a hint here of a classicist
imposing his own discipline on the songs rather than allowing the songs to
develop their own meaning.
These reservations aside, I did find the essays readable and
quite enjoyable if I took them one at a time.
There is enough here to interest a Dylan fan, but I can only give Why
Dylan Matters a qualified recommendation.
(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)
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