Dylan's Visions of Sin [Hardcover]

The reviews have been negative, but I, being an American university student, had already pre-ordered my book from this site, and, by the time i saw the reviews, could not change that. not that i would want to. I am acquainted with quite a lot of Dylan scholarship-- Michael Gray's "Song and Dance Man", various biographical treatments, as well as the multi-faceted "With the Poets and Professors" (Muldoon's poem makes the book worth it), as well as some other studies of the lyrics-- as well as some of Professor Rick's work (The Force of Poetry, Essays in Appreciation). Of course, I am a massive Dylan fan with over 100 discs in my collection. Aware of the forces that were about to collide in this book (Dylanology, serious literary scholarship, and Dylan's lyrics), I had some idea of the outcome. Perhaps that is why I am so much less disappointed (not disappointed at all, from what I have read) of the book than the reviews have been. Dylan's Lyrics, I believe, demand close-attention. Dylanologists seem, on the whole, quite poor at bringing this attention to the words. Whereas they assume Dylan's work is poetry, they make scarce efforts to demonstrate it's internal merits, too often bandying comparisons with Rimbaud, Keats, Ginsberg, Milton etc etc etc. Where they pay attention to Dylan as a man, to the historical contexts of the songs, and, sometimes (but barely) to the music itself-- and this they do typically in florid descriptions of instrumentation--they fail to bring a sole devotion to the lyrics themselves. Which is what must be done if Dylan's lyrics are to be considered literary, in any sense. Christopher Ricks, qualified more than all but a few others in the English speaking world to flip out cheap comparisons with the canon, does not do this. He treats Dylan's lyrics as literature by actually treating them. He stays with the words. With a wit, verve, and razor sharp mind that can sew as well as cut, he shows that Dylan says all that fans always knew he had to say, but couldn't manage to rationally point out. William Empson, one of Ricks' heroes, discussing mood, a feature of pop/rock music that many would consider its dominant appealing factor, says mood is worthless if it cannot be analyzed. Ricks shows that the unique mood Dylan established record after record stirs the stomachs of thousands of fans for a reason. Even if we don't know how to say what that reason is.
Reviews have complained that Ricks ignores the politics, the biography, the times, the music: but for readers of Christopher Ricks, this is not news. Ricks performs the task that somehow has been ignored when looking at Dylan, but which was the task that established so many literary figures as great before the advent of modern cultural studies: close-reading.

The book is a firecracker in itself: entertaining, bristiling with puns, shameless allusions, fantastic digressions and possibilities-- these all make it worth reading, Dylan fan or not.

What the negative reviews missed was that the book does what has not been done, and that Christopher Ricks, more than anyone writing criticism can do well, look eye to eye at the words of the songs.

Christopher Ricks is very well known for taking Dylan seriously as a poet and this is the long awaited product of many years of reflection. The basic idea of dealing with Dylan's corpus in terms of sins, virtues and graces is imaginative and promises a well structured and coherent work. Ricks' approach is clever and almost obsessive in searching for hidden meanings. It is the sort of obsession that Dylan himself finds futile and at which he frequently gets angry in interviews. There is great emphasis upon word-play and word association, and a great deal of reference to what a particular line in a song reminds the writer of in a poet like Shelley or Wordsworth. His approach, while very like that of Gray's, is much more sophisticated, but nevertheless slightly irritating at times because it says more about the cleverness of the author than it does about the subject of the book. The interpretations are idiosyncratic and largely imaginary, but nevertheless executed with grace and charm. I found Dylan and Cohen: Poets of Rock and Roll very clear in its criticism of this type of approach, which I think the author of it calls the concordance approach to literary criticism. Boucher explains why you just don't ask of some songs what they mean, such as Losing my Religion by REM or Whiter Shade of Pale by Procul Harem, you just 'delight' in the images. Nevertheless Ricks' book is a must for Dylan fans and well worth reading.

This book deserves more positive reviews. It cannot be recommended too highly. Don't let other people's negativity put you off -
if you're familiar with Dylan's music then you will surely find that this book time and time again illuminates the songs in fresh,
frequently surprising ways.

Be warned, the prose is very hard going, continually twisting and turning for no apparent reason. You certainly won't agree with
everything the author says (and indeed some of the associative chains he follows are risible in their tenuousness). The book
certainly makes no claims to be definitive. None of these things matters in the slightest. Go along with the ride and you'll
come out the other end fully satisfied - unless you're the sort of person foolish enough to want critics to do everything for
you and tell you plainly what they think you should think.

Dylan is a genius, and has many gifts. One of these is his feeling for language. That's what this book focuses on, and that's
exactly what a book like this is best equipped to do - and it does it very well. (It's not primarily intended to be a book about
Dylan the painter, Dylan the performing artist, or anything else - it's about the songs (sorry, the 'lyrics' (!))).

I've read a lot of books about Dylan. Many were enjoyable but most were otherwise ultimately a waste of time. This is one of
the very few which really taught me something that I would not otherwise have learnt.

Incidentally, the book gets easier to read as you progress. It's almost as if Ricks at first had to add in any old drivel just
to keep going and build up some momentum.