Identity of the Artist: Bob Dylan’s Chronicles Essay

Early on in his rambling memoir, Chronicles (2004), Bob Dylan expresses a surprising affiliation. Id read that stuff. Voltaire, Rousseau, John Locke, Montesquieu, M artistic productioninLuthervisionaries, revolutionariesit was like I knew those guys, like theyd been living in my backyard. (p. 30) This backyard of the songwriter, identified through with(predicate) lots of his career with subversion and rebellion, is a striking revelation, though the intellectual limit of his most famous early albums may, in retrospect, be viewed as a preparation for it.In various other ways Dylan is surprising. It seems likely that he as well ask on the writing of the book out of a drive to finish up his sustenance-motive, to set the record straight with regard to both his artistic inheritance and his character as a man. The stereotype of the misunderstood artist applies in his case, in a manner to highlight non his inner humanity as a mystagogue, or governmental luminary, but as a man, relati vely, of conventionfamily-oriented, taking pleasure in consumption, in friendship, in lieu ownership, in success as a parent and provider.With marriage and fatherhood, in fact, Dylan seems decidedly to take the measure of his own would-be character. Political/ pagan spokesmanship is not for him. In fact he repeatedly deplores the sort of activist political role others try to cast him in. In the New dawn chapter, he writes The events of the day, all the cultural mumbo jumbo were imprisoning my soulnauseating me urbane rights and political leaders being gunned down the whole shebang. I was intractable to put myself beyond the reach of it all. I was a family man now, didnt want to be in that group portrait. (p. 109)Bob Dylans Chronicles 4 Fame and political miscasting evolve eventually into a martyrdom. Seeming proud of his acquaintances among the conventionally and competently famous (actor Tony Curtis, singer Frank Sinatra Jr. , country symphony booster Johnny Cash), he wants n o part of either his optimistic fans, or his politically revved-up and misguided disciples. His home is no refuge. Pursuers follow him to the country. unacceptably besieged, he moves from Woodstock in rural New York, to New York City, to the West Coast, to easternmost Hampton on Long Island, w present at last he seems find overtone refuge.Visited there by Bono of the radical group U2, he shares not so much any politically correct views, or high-powered visions of change, as his recollections of small-town Minnesota memories of ordinariness the giant kitsch statue of a Viking in the town of Alexandria, the Mesabi iron Range where he grew up (pp. 174-175). One of the more impressive aspects of Chronicles is Dylans candid self-assessments, especially in the Oh Mercy chapter. My performance days in heavy traffic had been grinding to a halt for a while, had intimately come to full stop. I had single-handedly shot myself in the foundation too many prison terms.You have to de repres entr the goods, not waste your time and everybody elses. There was a missing person inside of myself and I require to find him. (p. 147) Here the artist appears as an honest flirtman. His fame established, he recognizes that his live performances have grown shoddy. He takes himself to task, rejects self-indulgence and excuses. I felt through for, a burned-out wreck (p. 147). Such comments are not the evasions of a complacent drone, or a degenerate renegade resting on filthy laurels. This is the voice of chagrined manhood, of the tough personal stance.The singer goes on from here to chronicle his personal struggle toward a new performance style, eventuating in a whole change of approach. Dylans capacity to work through crises appears to stem from formative childhood situations later recapitulated in his musical influences. In the fifth chapter of Chronicles , River of Ice, Bob Dylans Chronicles 5 he reminisces about the diaphragm in his career just prior to his relocating in New York City. At this time he is living in Minneapolis, in the same affirm as his family, awash in Minnesotan resonances and recollections.That he is so powerfully drawn to the music of Woody Guthrie is clearly attributable to the blue-collar surround of his early home lifespan, the homely truths purveyed as standard growing-up fare by his parents. His father, he tells us, was pragmatic and always had a word of cryptic advice. His become concerns herself with his not being harmed by a lot of monkey business organisation out there in the world (p. 226). Within two pages of these recollections, he makes explicit his antipathy for the mondo teeno scene and his preference for the traditional stuff with a capital T (p.228). And the singer who embodies for him the conjunction of working class grow and the traditional stuff is, unquestionably, Guthrie. The whole uniqueness of Dylans musical art seems to take its early inspiration from this towering figure, whose work tore everything in his path to pieces and had the infinite sweep of humanity in it (p. 244). It is not too much to say that Guthrie is even a father figure to the teen musician, who aspires to be his greatest disciple and feels, though he has never met the erstwhile(a) man, that the two of them are related (p.246). An exact connection between Dylans folk-music-and-blue-collar heritage on the one hand, and his rather middle-class approach to life in the wake of his economic success as a star on the other may not exist except in the singers own psyche. Notwithstanding, the aspiration to a better lifeunderstood as an increased ability to purchase and consumeis as much an American tradition with a capital T as folk music, or union membership.Dylan makes it clear that, once he has a family (and probably before), there is never any question of divided loyalties, or the assumption of a role seriously at odds with the political status quo. For him, the American scene of his youth was wide opennot only was it not thaw by God, but it wasnt run by the Bob Dylans Chronicles 6 devil either (p. 293). And, on the evidence of his career and allegiances, this negative certainty has proven endorsement liberal for him. Bob Dylans Chronicles 1Running Head BOB DYLANS CHRONICLES Identity of the Artist Bob Dylans Chronicles Name School professor Course Bob Dylans Chronicles 2 Abstract In his autobiographic memoir, Chronicles, Bob Dylan reveals a character that is conventional and politically unradical, despite familiar misreadings and the attempts of his activist contemporaries to recruit him as spokesman for radical causes. His life and work show strong allegiances to traditional American family life and American folk music, especially that of Woody Guthrie.