Daily Ramblings:
Sundry Items ... 10/28/2004
More October surprises, courtesy of Iowahawk.
Dig this Knight Ridder headline, just for kicks: "Arafat Death Could Lead To Instability In The West Bank And Gaza." We sure wouldn't want that.
Fortunately, it may not happen after all - not ever. Reuters, via the BBC, here quotes a shoe merchant in Ramallah, saying:
I'm afraid if he dies, there will be no authority - it will be a catastrophe for our people.
Yeah, a catastrophe ... and just when things were going so well.
And while Springsteen shills for a candidate without principles, Dylan sticks to his own and continues on one of the most astounding musical odysseys of this or any other age. Great bit in Chronicles where Dylan is trying to explain to the promoter that he wants to go back the following year to play exactly the same places he had just played that year (the genesis of the Never Ending Tour) and he's told, "that's not going to give anybody an erection." I've loant out my copy so I don't have the exact reference. The promoter prevents Dylan from doing what he wants at that stage. But Bob persisted and it's worth noting that he sure as heck has triumphed with all that. It's no small feat to tour as much as he does, to go back again and again to many fairly small markets and continue to make it work. Year after year. It's pretty darned amazing in fact. On election night Dylan will be in Wisconsin playing to an audience who showed up to hear his music. Springsteen will have his head in his hands wondering why everyone hasn't voted for John F. Kerry like he told them. Pity the poor Boss.
If You Gotta Go ... 10/27/2004b
In honor of the ailing Arafat, a few lines from a song that has often brought his visage to my mind. It's from Infidels, and since another song on Infidels is the profound defense of Israel's right to exist that is Neighborhood Bully, maybe that has something to do with how this song, Man Of Peace, resonates in that same Middle East context.
So, Yasser (and you know you can't take that Nobel Prize with you when you go), this one's for you:
-------------------------------------------------------
Things That Remain ... 10/27/2004
A much better example of a book review than what was written about here yesterday is this, a review of Dylan's Visions Of Sin from the estimable journal on religion, culture and public life: First Things.
Honest With Me ... 10/26/2004
The NY Times Sunday Book Review of Chronicles by Tom Carson really called out to be addressed, although Right Wing Bob has been trying to make ends meet this week - a persistently futile effort. The review, to put it mildly, is snide. Of-course an early and very positive review of Dylan's book was also in the NY Times, by Janet Maslin. It's been endlessly recirculated; here it is in The Arizona Republic.
Though the Sunday book review supplement has a certain cachet that the daily paper doesn't, it's probably safe to say that a bad review there doesn't necessarily sink a book. Just to get that level of attention is probably welcome to most publishers, if not writers. And in the case of Chronicles, it's too late to shut the stable door - it's at number 3 on the same NY Times' bestseller list, and has been awarded positive if not rave reviews across the English speaking world at this point.
However, it's interesting that the ultimate and essential hit piece on Bob's memoir should appear in the NY Times. There's a certain serendipity here - considering their evil hit piece this week on President Bush - the absurd "missing explosives in Iraq" story. A fairly to-the-point angle on that nonsense is here. (Bush is going to win, but big, sez Right Wing Bob.)
So, as for Tom Carson and Chronicles: it does not bode well for a serious book review in a serious publication when it begins by saying that Dylan's memoir fails to answer the question "So what was up with the mustache, dude?" He expends an entire paragraph on that unfunny inanity. From there he goes on to state that he had not "given a flying Wallenda about Dylan in years." In the rest of the review, it must be noted, he then presents himself as somehow deeply knowledgeable about the essential facts of Dylan's make-up. The essential fact - in fact - is that Bob is consumed with "image tending." And he posits that "constructing a notional, elusive but compelling identity to suit the project at hand" is central to Dylan's work and that this book is just one more such identity. Here lies the fundamental flaw in his review (other than his sheer laziness and ignorance): he fails to see that there is a consistent identity in the writer and performer we know as Bob Dylan, and that many listeners can easily follow the thread from his first recording to his most recent, and find no unresolvable clashes or contradictions. Changes in musical, lyrical or singing style do not amount to a disposal and reinvention of the central actor - i.e. the creator of the work. And for many of those self-same listeners, Chronicles represents nothing more than a straightforward (if also revelatory and rambunctious) account of the various times and experiences Dylan has chosen to write about. It isn't some brand new Bob Dylan, refitted for 2004 - it's the same Dylan we already knew through his music and interviews. Those of us who were paying attention, at least. He's just telling us stories we hadn't yet heard.
From there onwards, it's really just a matter of watching exactly how snide and low-to-the-ground Carson can get. He presumes to tell us that "in a provincial Middle American town like Eisenhower-era Hibbing, Minn" (that is so NY Times), Dylan's Jewishness must have made him a "square peg," and in not regaling us with stories about (I guess) alienation and anti-semitic attacks, Dylan is selectively omitting crucial information. Well - first of all - Dylan is not feigning to give us a detailed account of everything he has experienced in his life. It's 293 pages of fairly large type, after all. Secondly, how does Carson know what was most formative in Dylan's life in Hibbing? Why should we believe that Tom Carson knows better about what is was like to be a Zimmerman in Hibbing during that time, and that Dylan is trying to pull the wool over our eyes and leave out pivotal facts, in the name of some kind of "image tending?"
Why indeed?
There are many things that Carson presumes to tell us that he knows better than the writer of the book. He sneers at the very idea that the 20 year old Bob Dylan would have any affection for and real knowledge of American history. How could Bob even dream of seeing, as he writes in Chronicles, the ghost of John Wilkes Booth in a Greenwich Village tavern, fresh as he was from "Hibbing's superb public schools?" The reference is sarcastic - Tom Carson presumes to know that the young Robert Zimmerman had no good history teachers - and that he never saw an image of John Wilkes Booth in a textbook - or that if he did it cannot have made any impression on him. That's a helluva lot of presuming, unless Tom Carson actually attended school with the young Robert Zimmerman and his classmates in Hibbing, Minnesota (in which case I apologize). Even then, he has chosen to reject the idea that Bob may have had a particular interest in these matters, and may even have gathered his knowledge from other sources.
The theme, you see, is that Bob Dylan is lying.
And on and on. He glibly labels the U.S. Civil War (which Dylan meditates on at some length in Chronicles), as "the 19th century's ultimate Good/Bad war," claiming that Dylan's intention is that we are meant to recall "his own time's coming storms." There is no such implication in the book - Carson indeed provides no evidence of one. And Carson's characterization of the Civil War in that manner is nothing short of juvenile, tasteless and ignorant. "The 19th century's ultimate Good/Bad war." Just a bunch of cocksure ironic bullshit.
And that's just about what the entire review is. The most sneakily insidious aspect of the whole thing is that he pretends to actually be praising the book. Dylan is lying, but doing it in such an entertaining fashion that we can forgive him. It doesn't matter whether we're reading truth or lies - nothing matters except whether the reviewer believes that it meets a certain standard of hipness or smartness or timeliness. As he says, "conditional genius is how pop culture works."
Well, Mr. Carson, you can hang your hat there if you wish. It doesn't really do it for me. I don't spend my short and precious time on this earth deliberately listening to "conditional" music, or reading "conditional" books and marvelling at how appropriate to their moment they are and how short their shelf-life will be, and laughing off how dishonest they are. If that's how you choose to approach the work of Bob Dylan, including this book, then you're just focusing on the breeze while the train is passing you by. And that's a real doggone shame.
Nothing, Really Nothing To Turn Off ... 10/22/2004
Thanks to the reader who reminded me that Kerry did go on the record previously about Dylan, in an interview with GQ magazine which took place on July 4th of this year. It was per a direct question from the interviewer, who, like Wenner below, was pressing the Senator from Massachusetts to say something interesting and believable about his taste in music. I'm just going to let the exchange stand by itself.
GQ: Who's the better band: Stones or Beatles?
JFKerry: Um...
GQ: And don't give me some lame political answer and say "I like them both." Pick one.
JK: Well, I can pick both. I can tell you the truth, and the truth is I love both. I love "Brown Sugar." I love "Jumpin' Jack Flash." I love, you know, "Satisfaction." I like "Little Red Rooster." I love every Beatles song. I mean, I love the Beatles. I love the Abbey Road album, I love the White Album.
GQ: But, c'mon—you have to choose one.
JK: But I don't have to. And that's the glory of life. I play them both. I do! I play them both. I've got them both in my car.
GQ: What about Dylan? Ever met him?
JK: I have. It was like meeting an icon. I love Dylan. He's brilliant. One of my favorite songs ever in life is... I mean, I can name any number of his songs that I love [long pause]... but you know, Lay across my big brass bed—"Lay, Lady, Lay."
Kerry Snubs Dylan ... 10/21/2004
John F. Kerry gives another interview to Rolling Stone - he had already given one during the primaries. He avoids using the F word again, although interviewer Jann Wenner uses it once in a question (instantly re-establishing his street credentials) and Kerry responds "You're damn right!" So, is that eff'ing by proxy?
On to the meat of the interview: asked who his favorite rock & roll artists are, Kerry responds:
Oh, gosh. I'm, you know, a huge Rolling Stones fan; Beatles fan. One of the most cherished photographs in my life is a picture of me with John Lennon -- who I met back in 1971 at an anti-war rally. But I love a lot of different performers.
Seems to me Kerry must've gotten wind of Dylan's affection for Barry Goldwater. I mean, if you're so predictable and lazy as to answer "the Beatles and the Stones," why not complete the 1960's holy trinity with Bob Dylan? A very pointed omission - no doubt about it. Maybe he also heard about Laura Bush's affection for Bob's music, and the fact that the Bush twins listened to "Budokan" at summer camp and that a Dylan concert was the first live gig they ever attended.
Of-course, when pressed by Wenner to diversify his taste ("You're a greatest hits kind of guy."), the inner waffler in John F. Kerry explodes to the surface. It never takes much.
I also like folk music. I like some classical. I love guitar. Oh, God. I mean, you know -- Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Buffett . . .
Hey Senator, what about Jimmy Reed, Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmy Durante, Jimmy effin' Stewart?? Are you sure you're covering all the bases? And you mention "folk music," but still no Bob Dylan? Maybe he's too fatalistic for you.
Wenner goes on to ask him about movies, specifically "Apocalypse Now." I love how Kerry responds - it says so much about him.
(Wenner) Was that what it was like going up river, on those boats?
(Kerry) That's exactly how it was, man. Sitting in that river, waiting for someone to shoot you -- but the later part of the movie, after the point where they get to the bridge, then everything becomes a little psychedelic. That got a little distant from me.
That's it: pander to the audience by saying "man," but tread carefully - don't risk endorsing anything that's too far out there and countercultural. The contrast is so stark in this election between a candidate who speaks his mind and knows himself, and a candidate who ties up his thoughts lest they betray him, and arguably doesn't know who stares back at him in the mirror.
Anyhow, I'm hopeful that Dylan won't be too rattled by this snub and will manage to continue with his tour.
Original text copyright © 2004 by RightWingBob.com
Quotes from the works of others are linked to their source or are as otherwise attributed, and are used in accordance with Fair Use guidelines. Contact: rightwingbob(at)gmail.com
Right Wing Bob On:
Who Am I And What Is This Site About?
More to come ...
Email: RightWingBob@)gmail.com
Powered by Bushmills