The “World Socialist Web Site” has a review by Paul Bond of Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home.

It is a long, torturous, and utterly humorless read. The feeling it evokes is probably a lot like strolling through East Berlin before the wall came down.

I just do not have the heart to go through it all and take issue with any distortions contained therein. Writing about Dylan oughta be fun, on some level, and this piece is about as much fun as chewing cardboard.

Suffice it to say that the author is somewhat dissatisfied with the Scorsese documentary, and manages to meander at great length while making nary a discernible point. I did at least pick up the idea that he is one of those who thinks that Dylan is disingenuously reinventing himself, and denying what the writer apparently believes to be the politically leftist character of his early work. Somewhere along the line he refers to part of the late Dave Von Ronk’s interview in the film: “Van Ronk, although describing Dylan as generally ‘a man of the Left,’ said he was basically ‘apolitical’ and politically naive.”

It’s telling that he leaves out the next sentence that Von Ronk spoke, namely, “In retrospect, I guess he was considerably more politically sophisticated than the rest of us!” (Quoted from my memory but I’m confident he said words to that effect.) He laughs while he says this, but deserves credit for acknowledging it, even 40 years later.

It’s a lot more than the “World Socialist Web Site” would be willing to concede. But then, nothing very much can be expected of people who still believe that socialism is the answer to the world’s ills. I guess we should be grateful that they have an obscure web site filled with unreadable screed to keep themselves occupied and out of trouble. (Of-course, some would say the same about RWB.)

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