What are you reading now - and then

[Stavros]

Another saucy spat between writers, this time two men who have made a living writing about the Minnesota-born painter, lyricist and guitar-and-harmonica player, Bob Dylan . I once shared a taxi with a man who told me he was writing a book about the Manic Street Preachers. When I asked if it was about weird Christian Fundamentalists in America, he looked pained. Apparently, they are a band. I don't know if he ever finished the book, but I see him around town occasionally, but he doesn't say hello, and looks to me a lttle sad. Should he switch to Abba?

https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...ob-dylan-books

[broncofan]

I once shared a taxi with a man who told me he was writing a book about the Manic Street Preachers. When I asked if it was about weird Christian Fundamentalists in America, he looked pained.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...ob-dylan-books

Some people expect others to share the same level of interest in obscure things. I've never heard of the manic street preachers and think your guess was amusing. I like some Bob Dylan songs but I never understood the obsession with him that some of his fans have. These two writers aren't the only ones. There are people who know every lyric, every quote, and every detail of his life. I'm not saying Dylan isn't a great musician and lyricist, just that I can't understand the level of obsession.

I'm reading a book by Dorothy Hughes called Ride the Pink Horse. Two of her books were made into movies and this was the lesser known of the two. I saw the film In a Lonely Place with Bogart and so didn't want to start with that book because I'd keep imagining the main character as Bogart. Hughes' books were written around the time that more famous male writers like Chandler and Cain were producing some of their more memorable works. I've enjoyed books by Chandler and Cain but so far find Hughes' writing to be a cut above. Vivid, insightful descriptions without the sardonic one liners of Marlowe or the sleaziness of Cain. I'm enjoying this book a lot so far and am finding certain passages to be almost poetic in their beauty.

[killingmrwatson]

I'm reading a book by Dorothy Hughes called Ride the Pink Horse. Two of her books were made into movies and this was the lesser known of the two. I saw the film In a Lonely Place with Bogart and so didn't want to start with that book because I'd keep imagining the main character as Bogart.

I read In a Lonely Place but have never seen the movie, and I can attest that it's a great book. I liked it a bit more than The Expendable Man, but I think that comes down to personal preference and not the quality of either book. They're both really good.

On The Yard by Malcolm Braly is one that I really liked recently. It's a prison novel but it is quite sensitive and human. There's a relationship involving a crossdresser that is a significant part of the plot.

[broncofan]

I read In a Lonely Place but have never seen the movie, and I can attest that it's a great book. I liked it a bit more than The Expendable Man, but I think that comes down to personal preference and not the quality of either book. They're both really good.

On The Yard by Malcolm Braly is one that I really liked recently. It's a prison novel but it is quite sensitive and human. There's a relationship involving a crossdresser that is a significant part of the plot.

I'll take a look at On The Yard next. Thanks.

I want to read The Expendable Man as well for sure.

[Stavros]

I'm not saying Dylan isn't a great musician and lyricist, just that I can't understand the level of obsession.
.

'Dylanology' has been around since, I think the late 1970s. Much of it is fuelled by Dylan's reluctance or refusal to talk about his songs as well as his private life, leaving the field open to the Nerds. One of your fellow Americans once informed me that Robbie Robertson was America's greatest poet, and this man had a degree in English from that place in Madison. We had quite a few exchanges on literature at the time which, shall we say, puzzled me -mostly about him, not the Dept in Wisconsin. Another American and I had a furous exchange on whether or not Dylan was even a poet, as I said No, and she said Yes, a reversal of the most common exchanges I had with women at that time.

[Stavros]

I read In a Lonely Place but have never seen the movie, and I can attest that it's a great book. I liked it a bit more than The Expendable Man, but I think that comes down to personal preference and not the quality of either book. They're both really good.

On The Yard by Malcolm Braly is one that I really liked recently. It's a prison novel but it is quite sensitive and human. There's a relationship involving a crossdresser that is a significant part of the plot.

Thanks to you and Broncofan for the tips, as both these books look good -I had not heard of either author and will expore. I also wonder if the US has produced better literature on life on the margins. I am thinking of John Rechy's books City of Night and The Sexual Outlaw, and Hubert Selby Jr's Last Exit to Brooklyn. They are grittty, hard-edged with a lot of swearing and sex. The only comparable books I can think of are by the French writer Jean Genet, such as The Thief's Journal and they tend to be almost lyrical rather than crude (in the best sense of that word). The UK has not done this genre well, unless you want to include life in a Debtor's prison in Dickens's Little Dorrit, Room 101 in Orwell's 1984, or Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, three well written books that are a world away from the ones I first mentioned. Or maybe I am just not familiar with British books of this type.

[GroobySteven]

'Dylanology' has been around since, I think the late 1970s. Much of it is fuelled by Dylan's reluctance or refusal to talk about his songs as well as his private life, leaving the field open to the Nerds.

Chronicles Vol 1. He explains much of why he doesn't talk about his songs.
I hope there is a Vol 2.

[filghy2]

One of your fellow Americans once informed me that Robbie Robertson was America's greatest poet, and this man had a degree in English from that place in Madison.

Robbie Robertson can't be America's greatest poet because he is Canadian. He was a member of The Band, which was also Dylan's backing band at one point.

You don't think this is poetry? Sure, its meaning is totally obscure, but it's great wordplay.
http://www.songlyrics.com/bob-dylan/...-blues-lyrics/

[Stavros]

Robbie Robertson can't be America's greatest poet because he is Canadian. He was a member of The Band, which was also Dylan's backing band at one point.

You don't think this is poetry? Sure, its meaning is totally obscure, but it's great wordplay.
http://www.songlyrics.com/bob-dylan/...-blues-lyrics/

The remark on Robertson was made in a letter c1974 so I can't be sure if he said 'In America' rather than of it, but I suspect he didn't know Robertson was Canadian, and neither did I.

As for the Dylan, it illustrates my view, snobbish, eccentric, call it what you will, that there is a difference between a Lyric and a Poem, and in your example, one that makes more sense when sung rather than read, hence the need for the distinction.

I had a Dylan phase in the second half of the 1960s and continue to admire his work from that era, indeed, Mr Tambourine Man is one of the best songs ever written and has some of the most memorable lines in song of any genre, containing within it the mystery, the danger and the promise of a life in art -In the Jingle Jangle Morning I'll come following you. It resonates, indeed may even be inspired by and refer to that haunting conclusion to Schubert's Winterreise, one of the extraordinary works this troubled man wrote shortly before his death in Vienna at the age of 31-a cycle of songs about lost love and alienation where art alone survives as the motive force of life, much as one can imagine Dylan himself following that American 'leiermann' Woody Guthrie to New York City where the 'Folk Revival' was reaching its crescendo there, as it was in Yorkville in Toronto with people like Gordon Lightfoot and Joni Mitchell. Anyway, that's enough Dyanology for today. Here are some examples, with Melanie's rendition particularly intense, and in memory of a recital she gave in London all those years ago, such a wonderful singer.


Wunderlicher Alter,

Soll ich mit dir geh'n?

Willst zu meinen Liedern
Deine Leier dreh'n?

[Stavros]

Chronicles Vol 1. He explains much of why he doesn't talk about his songs.
I hope there is a Vol 2.

I read the book when it first came out, but I can't remember a lot about it, other than the references made to obscure musicians Dylan knew in his early years. If I can find the book I will look at it again, but I think its in a box on the stairs along with many others.

At least one claim that Chronicles Vol 2 will be published in 2020 has not come true-
https://www.bobdylan-comewritersandc...s-volume-2.htm

You can even order a copy from Waterstones-
https://www.waterstones.com/book/chr.../9780743230773