(Ed. Note: This week we are pleased to present works first published by our esteemed co-editor Dr. Dale Williams Barrigar in Literally Stories UK. The theme of the week is music. All through the weekend too. Dale has a wonderful way of injecting his passion and fresh insights into his work. I think you will agree–Leila)
“I’m Nobody! Who are you?” – Emily D.
“I is another.” – Rimbaud
Bob Dylan is a bard of the old school, and also of the school that never gets old.
Long after every single Hollywood movie ever made will be penned by androids, computers, zombies, vampires, and “AI,” scattered humans everywhere will still be searching out the work of Bob Dylan, whether to read or listen to it.
When Dylan released “Murder Most Foul,” his longest song, in the middle of the Covid Pandemic, he confirmed that he deserves a Nobel Prize.
With a terrifying title from Shakespeare, this long song and short fiction is a mini-novel about the Kennedy assassination. And all assassinations, and all murders ever committed, now and in the future. Almost as if to prove that he’s a poet and story-teller more than a musician, Dylan doesn’t even sing this song. He speaks it. He tells the tale like an ancient bard, maybe even going as far back as Homer.
Dylan is often compared to Shakespeare, and for good reason. It could be that a more apt comparison is with the older writer. Homer, like Bob, spent his life traveling from town to town and speak-singing his story-songs to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument. This image of Homer has been accepted for so long that it’s become a fact of fiction that tells the truth, as real as any other Greek mythology, from Zeus to Athena.
Dylan has always cited literary writers as some of his most important, if not his most important, influences. He claimed that “Blood on the Tracks” was inspired by Anton Chekhov’s short stories. He listed his two favorite writers as Emily Dickinson and Arthur Rimbaud. He read T.S. Eliot and James Joyce in high school. He resurrected Charles Baudelaire in “Idiot Wind.” He said that all writers and artists should read John Keats and Herman Melville.
He acknowledged Walt Whitman’s genius. He went to the grave of Jack Kerouac and read Kerouac’s poetry aloud with Allen Ginsberg. He wrote his songs on a typewriter. He created an absurdist book of prose poems, and he composed a memoir that isn’t his best work but is highly readable, filled with signs of the times, then and now.
Someone once compared Bob Dylan to Ernest Hemingway, another writer for whom Dylan has expressed his approval. Both writers diagnosed their times, and fought the wars of their times. While Hemingway went to Italy as an ambulance driver, Dylan went to Mississippi as a liberal Jew who stood out in an open field and sang Civil Rights protest anthems, surely as dangerous as Hemingway heading to the front as a non-combatant who wanted to help injured soldiers.
Bob Dylan has already entered the ranks of great American authors. When we look back at history, we see that there are millions of authors who did not deserve a Nobel Prize, and many authors who did deserve it who didn’t receive it. Harold Bloom, Flannery O’Connor, Ralph Ellison, Jorge Luis Borges, James Joyce, and Leo Tolstoy are a famous half dozen of these. A hundred years from now (yes we will still be here), Dylan will be seen as a writer who deserved such a prize, and then some. His humanity, and his ways of expressing it in English story-language that never gets old-fashioned, will last a very long time, even, or especially, as the rest of the mainstream world continues to become more robotic, inhuman and tyrannical.
Saragun Springs 
Dale
This essay remains as relevant as its subject. In “American Pie” McLean calls Dylan the Jester. Over a half century later that is still true. The earned Nobel is the first truly just recognition for his long career. I wish him a hearty “Willie Nelson”–he would know what it means.
Great open for the week.
Leila
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Thank you, Leila!
Bob deserves endless credit just for sticking around. Then again, with great gifts come great responsibilities. And he has always lived up to that burden, too. Amazing to think how many people he’s inspired and consoled over the years with his life and his music.
I just got finished devouring Dorothy Parker’s first poetry collection, ENOUGH ROPE.
Funny to think that she wrote Bob’s BLOOD ON THE TRACKS 50 years before Bob did!
ENOUGH ROPE is that good and then some.
I’d read some of the individual poems before, but never the whole collection end to end until now.
And this book must be read in its entirety to get the full effect.
Every poem in it is perfect and as a whole it rivals Bob! Or even outdoes him in some ways! (Sorry Bob.)
Dale
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Hi Dale
Enough Rope is a great collection. The Portable Dorothy Parker is a classic. It contains some hilarious play reviews. But she knew her stuff, and a lot of her drive came from keeping up with the guys.
I was curious and foundcthat Bob is 84. More proof that keeping on with it adds years.
Leila
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Dale/Drifter, I’m sure you’re right in your previous post about the sad state of academic literary criticism. Depressing stuff – I’ve come across a few examples myself.
But there are always one or two honourable exceptions , and I thought your latest post on Dylan might be the right place to give a mention to the critic Christopher Ricks. Afraid I haven’t read his book about Dylan, but I have read his high praise of ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’ and his judgement that Dylan is ‘the greatest living user of the English language.’ No mealy-mouthed academic equivocation there.
Looking forwards to your next posts. bw mick
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Hi Mick!
Thanks as always for reading and commenting, it’s always a joy to hear your thoughts and your references to literature and other writers are wide-ranging and totally top-notch excellent!
(See under Lennon for more thoughts on Ricks whenever you can.)
Thanks again!
Dale
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Hey Dale
Bob Dylan is an impressive guy (understatement). I liked how you described his fight for civil rights in the field. Kind of reminded me of Woodstock.
I saw the latest movie about him, which as far as I can tell, was pretty good. I like his music and how he hung with the folk tribe back in the day. Woody Guthrie and the gang. Jonny Cash too.
Christopher
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Hi Ananias
Yes, Bob belongs in a very select group that includes The Band, Johnny Cash, Elvis, The Beatles, Nina Simone, and Emmylou Harris.
Some of my favorite work by him is his three early ’80s Christian/Gospel albums, SAVED, SHOT OF LOVE, and SLOW TRAIN COMING. The preachier songs on those albums aren’t the best, but the other songs on those three are some of his greatest, or his greatest.
They got outrageously mad at him because he told them who Jesus really was, but Bob never cared.
If you’ve never heard it, check out his song “Lenny Bruce” some time. It brings tears to the eyes – literally. The studio version from the album is GREAT and so is the live version with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Thanks for standing up to the Thought Police of the University Literary Magazines. It takes courage to face down the rising tide of soul-crushing from them which matches the soul-crushingness of the Fascists among us. Like Buddha said, sometimes The Middle Way is the way to go.
But nothing too easy is good, and we were put here for a reason too, of that I’m sure.
Dylan was one of the people who convinced me, along with Johnny Cash! Woody Guthrie is almost a god!
D
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