Woody Guthrie, in particular, comes up again and again. As Chronicles would have it, his importance to Dylan can not be overstated. It's rare that more than a few pages go by without mention of a Guthrie song or encounter. Most vivid are Dylan's stories of visiting him in the hospital. Guthrie was dying, and being forgotten, but Dylan was there, talking to him, learning from him, a symbiotic relationship between an old man with a torch and a young man desperate to light a fire.
Dylan is closely associated with the idealism and activism of the 1960s, but he seems reluctant to carry that particular legacy. He notes that the first song he wrote, "Let Me Die in My Footsteps," was inspired by the Cold War's booming bomb shelter business:
The song was personal and social at the same time, though. That was different. Even so, this song didn't break down any barriers for me or perform any miracle. Most everything I wanted to say I could usually find in an old folk song or in one of Woody's songs. When I began performing "Let me Die in my Footsteps," I didn't even say I wrote it. I just slipped it in somewhere, said it was a Weavers song.There is an ambivalence in that action that seems to appear throughout the book, throughout Dylan's recalled life, as though he is in awe of himself as seen through the eyes of his fans, but also a little disbelieving. There's an "aw, shucks"-ness that pervades, a glimpse at a hungry kid from small town Minnesota. The book is a patchwork, a hobo's bag of stories from a life lived outside the conventions that seem to contain the rest of us.
Chronicles often also seems to be a repayment of debts, far more than an explanation. Between the stories about the couches he slept on, the clubs he played, the songs he studied, the people who mentored him, and the girls, the poets, the artists and authors who acted as muses, there is a sense of gratitude. Somewhere within the puffed-up stories of a remarkable life, Dylan seems to be saying thank you to everyone he met along the way. Though the book may be too haphazard to serve as a musical history text, the gratitude makes it a fascinating look at an iconic figure. Chronicles is both less and more than a typical entertainment autobiography, not quite what you'd expect. And if that isn't Bob Dylan, I don't know what is.
Article comments
1 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Great review, well-written (although you should know I'll be stealing the phrase "a sense of icon-by-association").
2 - Glen Boyd
I concur with Gordon but promise not to steal anything (though it is tempting).
-Glen
3 - Helen
Gratitude was the thing I noticed about Chronicles too. It was a really very surprisingly gracious and charitable book. I think that none of the many women Dylan mentions in it would be wounded by her portrayal there.
That, and the double fiercenesses: the fierceness with which he absorbed, perceived, learned, took it all in-- and the fierceness with which he defended his private self. Dylan is an icon but he's also a tireless iconoclast.
4 - Sarah Warren
I get no sense of puffed-upped stories, quite the contrary, this man retains his humility.
Also re-reading Jack Kerouac recently, it is interesting how Dylan is comfortable with this format where poetry and prose can meet.
5 - Bonnie
Thanks for the compliments.
Sarah, I think that's part of what I found interesting about the book, the way what felt like (or would feel like, were it from anyone else) the name-dropping existed side by side with this humbleness. I can't tell if Dylan is buying into his personna or if he is just giving us what we expect. Certainly, the same stories from someone less iconic would be self-agrandizing; the difference is that in Dylan's case, there's no need for self-agrandizement.
6 - Sarah Warren
Thanks for your reply Bonnie.
For me he is neither buying into his personna or giving us what we expect. The reason why most people are attracted to him is because he is that rare person who just tells it as it is. He talks in Chronicles of how he resented the assumption that he belonged to the people. He patently belongs to himself.