Review of Chronicles Volume 1

Bob Dylan has shocked me with his autobiography.  I had low expectations for the book since he is a song writer and not an author.  Well Dylan has written an enlightening, entertaining, detailed book about music as it relates to himself. 

I was on vacation in Min when the book came out so I bought it at Mall of what's wrong with America.  I hate malls but they had a bookstore.  Then we drove north and finally ended up on Highway 61.  It was serendipitous to start reading the book in his home state on Highway 61! Ironically there is not a lot about Min. in the book.

I have never read an autobiography like this one.  The first shock was the level of detail.  He describes a train whistle blowing during a conversation decades ago and these types of details are displayed in ever section.  I would not be surprised if Bob used his own journal to as a reference as I was always going "how did he remember that?"  Or maybe he "added" the details to help paint the picture he saw in his head.  Or maybe he just has an incredible memory (we know that he must to remember the words and music to his hundreds of songs.)

The next peculiar aspect of the book is that you never really know when or where he is during a passage.  Dylan jumps all over the board even within a paragraph and he goes off on many tangents.  If there is a structure to the book, then it is definitely not chronological. Reading the book makes you feel you are sitting on a porch listening to old man telling stories.  The next time I read the book I think that I will try to figure out and record the time and places of the stories.  Brilliantly, Dylan leaves you with a vivid picture.  This is not a collection of random musings.  It is like the art where a picture is created out of many different related photographs.

I was also pleasantly surprised at the level of emotional detail Bob gives.  Because of his famous history of not talking about himself, I did not expect him to write in such a personal manner. Although, the one theme in the book is music.  There almost no detail about his "personal" life outside of music.  I appreciated this since I do not care about the color of his house or his favorite toy growing up.  Instead, we learn about what books, music, people that influenced his music. 

The book is broken into 5 sections about significant periods of his life.  They are not in chronological order and he does jump all over the place in each of the sections.  Here they are:

1. Making up the score - description of NYC when he was getting started.
2. The lost land - mainly talks about influences from Minn to NYC.
3. New Morning - living in Woodstock while trying to get isolation. Talks about NOT being the "spokesman of a generation" that he didn't even understand.
4. Oh Mercy - How he was "lost" in the 80s and how he got it back.  Extreme detail in the recording process of Oh Mercy.
5. River of Ice - Details of the time in Min right before going to NYC.  Talks about learning folk music and learning about Woody Guthrie, Jack Elliot, Joan Biaz.  Very flattering descriptions of the later 2 (attempt to clean some laundry?).

I would very much recommend this book to obviously any Dylan fans but also to anyone interested in American music.  It is quite a history lesson.  I am not so naive to think that Chronicles is the gospel of Bob or even that it is %100 historically accurate, but what I find the most interesting is the topics that Dylan chooses to talk about.  This is book about what Bob Dylan thinks has been important in his musical career.