- Hardcover: 384 pages
- Publisher: Chatto & Windus (7 Nov 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0701172800
- ISBN-13: 978-0701172800
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 13.5 x 3.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 959,338 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Do You Mr Jones?: Bob Dylan with the Poets and Professors
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Product Description
Product Description
In 'Ballad of a Thin Man' in 1966, Dylan launched a withering attack on the myopic critic of culture: 'Something is happening here/ And you don't know what it is,/ Do you, Mister Jones?' Yet Dylan himself has been a subject of consuming interest to many of the most significant poets and critics writing in Britain and Ireland over the last twenty years. It has even been argued that he is the finest living user of the English language - true to his genius through all his changes of stance, a romantic constantly exploring the state of his soul as he dons the cloak of lover, clown, cowboy, priest, bleak prophet of doom. In this collection, poets and professors explore different aspects of Dylan's work, writing about his impact on their own intellectual and artistic lives as well as his wider influence. Contributors include Simon Armitage, Richard Brown, Christopher Butler, Bryan Cheyette, Patrick Crotty, Aidan Day, Mark Ford, Lavinia Greenlaw, Daniel Karlin, Paul Muldoon, Nicholas Roe, Pam Thurschwell, Susan Wheeler and Sean Wilentz. Serious Dylan criticism is rare and these fascinating, specially commissioned essays are rigorous and challenging, at once a celebration and a questioning of a powerful talent, the genius Leonard Cohen called 'the Picasso of song'.
From the Publisher
Dylan laid bare by leading poets and critics.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is an edited collection of essays (and a poem) put together by Neil Corcoran of St Andrews University in Scotland where Dylan was given an honorary doctorate in mid June, preceded by an oration by Corcoran. The last time he accepted a doctorate was in 1970 at Princeton. This is one of a growing number of books by academics taking Dylan seriously, and not just obsessed with facts about his life. Recently we have had Stephen Scobie's Alias Bob Dylan; Christopehr Ricks, Dylan's Visions of Sin; David Boucher's Dylan and Cohen: Poets of Rock and Roll;, and shortly an edited collection by Boucher and Gary Browning entitled, The Political Art of Bob Dylan. The introduction emphasises Dylan's own anti-intellectualism and his negative attitude to critics and academics. The book includes discussions of familiar and unfamiliar themes. Of the former Christopher Butler elegantly argues that there is a close relation between the lyrics and the music, the music commanding attention to the words. Generally speaking the essays are rather equivocal on the question of whether Dylan is a poet. Indeed, the editor tells us that 'Dylan cannot without reserve be viewed as a poet'. Simon Armitage argues that literary criticism is not the right tool for analysing song lyrics, but this does not deter other contributors, such as Mark Ford, from ignoring the point. Ford, like Gray and Ricks, deal with Dylan in a similar fashion, that is seizing upon allusions and co-incidences that remind them of other poems or poets. He argues, for example, 'In the contexts of the myth of America, the addressee of 'Like a Rolling Stone' really should 'have it made': having 'nothing to lose' is what links, say Melville's Ishmael and Hawthorne's Pearl, Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Cooper's Natty Bumppo...'(This approach is criticised by Boucher in his Dylan and Cohen along the lines of what more do we know about a particular poem by telling readers that similar lines are to be found elsewhere!). The collection is a good and varied read and I recommend it to all Dylan fans interested in more than finding out new facts.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Professors and Poets
26 Jun 2004
Format:Paperback
This is an edited collection of essays (and a poem) put together by Neil Corcoran of St Andrews University in Scotland where Dylan was given an honorary doctorate in mid June, preceded by an oration by Corcoran. The last time he accepted a doctorate was in 1970 at Princeton. This is one of a growing number of books by academics taking Dylan seriously, and not just obsessed with facts about his life. Recently we have had Stephen Scobie's Alias Bob Dylan; Christopehr Ricks, Dylan's Visions of Sin; David Boucher's Dylan and Cohen: Poets of Rock and Roll;, and shortly an edited collection by Boucher and Gary Browning entitled, The Political Art of Bob Dylan. The introduction emphasises Dylan's own anti-intellectualism and his negative attitude to critics and academics. The book includes discussions of familiar and unfamiliar themes. Of the former Christopher Butler elegantly argues that there is a close relation between the lyrics and the music, the music commanding attention to the words. Generally speaking the essays are rather equivocal on the question of whether Dylan is a poet. Indeed, the editor tells us that 'Dylan cannot without reserve be viewed as a poet'. Simon Armitage argues that literary criticism is not the right tool for analysing song lyrics, but this does not deter other contributors, such as Mark Ford, from ignoring the point. Ford, like Gray and Ricks, deal with Dylan in a similar fashion, that is seizing upon allusions and co-incidences that remind them of other poems or poets. He argues, for example, 'In the contexts of the myth of America, the addressee of 'Like a Rolling Stone' really should 'have it made': having 'nothing to lose' is what links, say Melville's Ishmael and Hawthorne's Pearl, Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Cooper's Natty Bumppo...'(This approach is criticised by Boucher in his Dylan and Cohen alonf the lines of what more do we know about a particular poem by telling readers that similar lines are to be found elsewhere!). The collection is a good and varied read and I recommend it to all Dylan fans interested in more than finding out new facts.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Emerging Unscathed from Academic contamination
6 July 2006
Format:Paperback
A friend, who predates my relationship with Dylan's work by a mere three years and consequently knows its enduring depth,gifted this to me when it emerged in 2002. Keep in mind that Dylan says it best when reading these various responses. Check the book's title to glean Corcoran's own suspicion of academia. His own essay on 'The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll'is one of the best things in the volume, and if, like me, you are overwhelmed by its power, you'll find pleasure in the essayist's spin on it.This is a highly entertaining and extending set of interpretations which I'm sure would beguile the muse in camera.The width of his career is essayed, from dandyish gravity days to old man weary guile. Roland Barthe's 'language lined with flesh...text where we can hear the grain of the throat, the patina of consonants, the voluptuousness of vowells, a whole carnal sterephony' remains an apt description of the Dylan phenomena. This is a book which will you'll want to read over and again.
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