The music that inspired Bob Dylan

In Folk Music, Greil Marcus has captured an entire world of the creative and cultural development of the artist known as Bob Dylan in a single book. He not only tells a Dylan biography in seven songs but creates an autobiography of his own long career as a writer on music and America, as well as a rich history of American folk songs and the new life they engendered as Dylan sat down to write his own. How does he do it, I’ve often wondered when I’ve read him in the past. This time, I’ve no answers at all – only admiration and respect.

Other biographies of Dylan (a growing number) often tell you more about their authors than their subject. Writers such as Howard Sounes and Bob Spitz have focused on revealing details of Dylan’s eventful personal life which, honestly, are far less interesting than his work. Sean Wilentz’s Bob Dylan in America, which zooms in on key moments in Dylan’s creative process, and Richard Thomas’s Why Bob Dylan Matters, with its close readings of the songs, are both invaluable books for Dylan students and admirers.