by Bob Dylan
Part of Chronicles
First published 2005
Bob Dylan tells his own story, and he does it on his own terms. Chronicles: Volume One is not a straight timeline. Dylan picks three pivotal stretches of his life and digs into them: his arrival in New York City in 1961, a period of creative crisis in the late 1980s, and the making of the 1989 album Oh Mercy in New Orleans. The New York sections are the heart of it. Dylan walks the reader through Greenwich Village when it was alive with folk music, late-night conversations, and a sense that something was about to happen. He names the people he met, the records he studied, the books he read in strangers' apartments. He writes about love, about friendship, about what it felt like to be young and certain that the world was about to open up. The New Orleans chapters show a different man, one who had lost his footing and had to find a way back to writing songs. Throughout, Dylan's prose carries the same rhythms as his music: plainspoken, digressive, and sharply observant. This is a book about how an artist is made, told by the artist himself.
Genres: biography, literary-criticism, autobiography, memoir, music
Vibes: intimate, introspective, lyrical, nostalgic, thought-provoking
Tropes: artistic-journey, coming-of-age, self-discovery
Setting: United States, New York, Greenwich Village, New Orleans
Period: 20th century, 1960s, 1980s, 1989
320 pages · Paperback · Simon & Schuster