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E-book exclusive extras:1) Christie biographer Charles Osborne's essay on Evil Under the Sun;2) "The Poirots": …
The kind of book I'll neglect sleep, work, relationships and eating meals for
This is very compelling and the new archival insights are very interesting. The tone felt a bit mean to me though. Heylin is very focussed on uncovering facts, as you'd expect from a biographer, but this means incredible works like Chronicles and Hattie Carroll are unfairly dismissed - because their truth is of a different sort than the author is after.
I picked this up in a second hand shop, not having read part 1. I'm more interested in reading about these 'middle years' these days, rather than the well-trod territory of Dylan in the 60s. I love Dylan's work in the late 70s and throughout the 80s, a lot of which remains underappreciated. I enjoyed reading a text which takes this period seriously and presents an argument for Dylan as an extraordinary artist right throughout his career.
If you're looking for a good guide to the live recordings of this period this work willl lead you to some gems. I appreciated that it encouraged me to listen more appreciatively to underrated works like the 'Hard Rain' album and the live Gospel-era recordings.
I also enjoyed the appreciation of 'Empire Burlesque' an album I love. Williams still largely dismisses 'Knocked Out Loaded', a work I enjoy much more than it's terrible …
I picked this up in a second hand shop, not having read part 1. I'm more interested in reading about these 'middle years' these days, rather than the well-trod territory of Dylan in the 60s. I love Dylan's work in the late 70s and throughout the 80s, a lot of which remains underappreciated. I enjoyed reading a text which takes this period seriously and presents an argument for Dylan as an extraordinary artist right throughout his career.
If you're looking for a good guide to the live recordings of this period this work willl lead you to some gems. I appreciated that it encouraged me to listen more appreciatively to underrated works like the 'Hard Rain' album and the live Gospel-era recordings.
I also enjoyed the appreciation of 'Empire Burlesque' an album I love. Williams still largely dismisses 'Knocked Out Loaded', a work I enjoy much more than it's terrible reputation suggests I should.
The big fault of the book is that it spends more time reading the artist than reading the art. Williams seems to believe he has some kind of special insight into exactly what Dylan is thinking and feeling. (This extends to band members too: at one point, Williams suggests a guitarist performs inadequately on a recording because of a lack of emotional maturity.) Rather than telling us what he feels as an audience member, Williams is more interested in telling us what he thinks Dylan must be feeling as a performer. This makes for repetitive and somewhat surface-level discussion of the songs.
As criticism, it works as recommendation but less so as contextualisation or explication.
The theory on performance and it's centrality to all art is interesting.
An immense pleasure to try on the ears, mind, memory, library and record collection of Greil Marcus. Some artful sentences, too.
Here's a playlist if you want to listen along: open.spotify.com/playlist/0mrQbo6FMMFitbdxuobRZd?si=eXq3KB1OTe6ZVqEBFOb1xA
'Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly …
stunning writing that gives a feeling of both trench warfare and street conflict
the book captures the joys of liberation - and how easily they can be lost
it's fascinating to see how some of Orwell's experiences and observations here come up again in '1984': a fear of rats, poor-quality tobacco falling out of cigarettes, newspapers rewriting history, worries of being informed on, and the horrors of being confined as a political prisoner
Orwell's personal bravery and dedication to goodness are also evident from this book