Dylan's Autobiography of a Vocation: A Reading of the Lyrics 1965-1967

Description

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. Many critics have interpreted Bob Dylan's lyrics, especially those composed during the middle to late 1960s, in the contexts of their relation to American folk, blues, and rock'n'roll precedents; their discographical details and concert performances; their social, political and cultural relevance; and/or their status for discussion as "poems." Dylan's Autobiography of a Vocation instead focuses on how all of Dylan's 1965-1967 songs manifest traces of his ongoing, internal "autobiography" in which he continually declares and questions his relation to a self-determined existential summons.

Louis A. Renza is an Emeritus Professor of English at Dartmouth College, USA. He has published critical works on various US writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Sarah Orne Jewett, Stephen Crane, Henry James, Ernest Hemingway and Wallace Stevens. Starting in the 1970s and through 2010, he taught a Dartmouth course on Bob Dylan's lyrics. He also directed a 2006 conference at Dartmouth College on Dylan's works, and has published articles on them that include, respectively, critical discussions of such songs as "Went to See the Gypsy" and "Simple Twist of Fate."

Louis Renza has performed a miracle of sorts, getting to the heart of Dylan's visionary quest for meaning by focusing on his 'vocational dualism,' his endless shuttle between the public and private realms. He shows us again and again that the movement toward an ideal or real presence is defined by its drive toward subjectivity, and that a double sense accompanies every assertion, as Dylan keeps an eye on his vocation, which becomes his 'primary artistic tableau.' I've read countless books on Dylan, but this is the best of them: a stunning narrative of Dylan's major accomplishment. Renza takes us deep into Dylan, and he proves a wise and infinitely patient guide. * Jay Parini, author of The Last Station and New and Collected Poems: 1975-2015 * To read Chronicles is to know Dylan blurs fact with fancy. Is it a memoir or a ripping good yarn? His friends are there-John Hammond, Tom Petty, Bono-but so is John Wilkes Booth's ghost. Beware the autobiographical "I"-the poetic first person brings mystery. Louis Renza discerns a stubborn otherness in Dylan songs, a habit of thinking twice, with double-tracked lyrics often focused on the whys and wherefores of vocation. He takes the bait and introduces us to this palimpsestuous other, this ghost Dylan that is not quite Dylan, with fascinating results. Intelligent and beautifully written. * Michael Gilmour, Professor, Providence University College, Canada * Renza leads us through what he calls Dylan's "spiritual vocational quest" of the mid 1960s. An extraordinary journey! Through a series of dazzling close readings, he shows that Dylan's song-poems are best interpreted not as political allegories or simple autobiographical expressions, but as extended (and often tortured) reflections on the process of writing itself. * Milette Shamir, Head of American Studies, Tel Aviv University, Israel *